Mark Mehaffey Ep 5 Transcript
Please note: This is an incredibly rough transcript from my conversation with Mark Mehaffey, Ep.5. It has not been checked by a human. To listen to the full audio version, head here.
Mark Mehaffey 0:00
The key is to wear out brushes mean there's no better way you can watch videos you can go to museums, you can take workshops you can do any number of things that make cut the learning curve down for you, but the best way to learn is to go outside and paint.
Kelly Anne Powers 0:18
Hello and welcome to the Learn to paint Podcast Episode Five. I'm your host Kelly and Powers and this week we're talking to that voice you just heard Mark Mahaffey. Mafi paints in many styles, he calls them his compartments, and they span both media and subject. Today we're focusing in on his plane at work, but a lot of what we talked about can work for any subject realistic or non objective. Matthew explains how he gets to the story of his work. He shares practical tips on blending color and controlling the saturation of that same color. And he talks about how and why it's so important to keep things simple. Check out my hobbies work at the website, learn to paint podcast comm slash podcast slash Episode Five. While you're there, sign up For the newsletter, you'll get each new episode sent straight to your inbox. Here we go. Hi, Mark, thank you for being with us today.
Kelly Anne Powers 1:08
What is it that you like about plein air painting?
Mark Mehaffey 1:10
There are a number of things. Number one, I'm an outdoors person. I grew up in the woods. There was a very large tracts of land they my family for years and years and years. And so they kind of let me loose on about 1200 acres at the age of five. And a trout stream ran right through it saw kind of grew up in a outdoor family hiking, hunting, fishing, and catching frogs at a young age. So I love being outdoors. One of the most fun things for me to do in the world is to go fishing. So anything that gets me Outdoors is a good thing. plein air painting gets me outdoors, there's something about having to react with what's right in front of me and get that down visually is exciting, plus, it's just exciting to be able to doors with the critters and the mosquitoes.
Kelly Anne Powers 2:02
Could you give us a bird's eye view of your process?
Mark Mehaffey 2:06
backpack filled with all my painting supplies? Drive? Okay, well, let's park here and go for a little walk back Pat goes on. Sometimes the walk is short 50 yards cuz Oh, that's cool. And sometimes it's long, a mile or two. That's why the backpack and then I walk until something strikes me as I could make a painting of that I don't walk around to find the perfect sight. I get frustrated when I paint out with a whole bunch of people because invariably, two or three or four walk around forever and never seem to get to the painting because they keep looking for the perfect sight. I pretty much feel I could make a decent painting out of anywhere as long as it's coming from within me instead of just copying what I see. So I walk along and I go, Oh, well, that's kind of interested to see what I can do with that. Like a problem to solve, and then I set everything up. And I just jumped in, there's a little bit of a schism between what I recommend, especially beginners doing what I do, I skip the value plan, let's make a two by three or three by four thumbnail. I don't skip that in the studio when working for photo references, but I skip it in plain air, because I just visualize how I want the painting to look. And then I attempt to match that visualization. And I use what I see as clues or cues to make a good painting. Sometimes, there's just just a resemblance between my painting and what I'm looking at. And I move trees I move rocks, I move water, I move all of the shapes if I need to, to say what I need to say to make a good painting, I'm a studio painter that paints and plein air not the other way around. For me plein air painting is very personal. It's a lot of fun. It's a way to get me out Doors, it feeds my studio work, the spontaneity of one carries over into the hopefully the spontaneity of the other. And I like the fact that I'm up against a wall with acrylics. So when I paint in plein air, I seldom have more than two hours to devote to that I have something else going on, you know, it's a nine by 1211 by 14, at the most 12 by 16. Let's do this, maybe two six by six paintings in the morning, usually, because I'm up so early, and then let's get back to whatever else I had planned for the day.
Kelly Anne Powers 4:38
Was it useful for you when you were learning to have the repeatable process?
Mark Mehaffey 4:43
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So when I first started years ago, it was very frustrated because it's all about the materials and the, you know, how do you deal with this and the water and the paper towels and where everything goes, and all of that and then could I make it look like the way I wanted it to look and it was all so frustrating. But the key is to wear out brushes. I mean, there's no better way you can watch videos, you can go to museums, you can take workshops, you can do any number of things that make cut the learning curve down for you. But the best way to learn is to go outside and paint lots of paintings
Kelly Anne Powers 5:23
was painting from life useful and training you how to see
Mark Mehaffey 5:27
trying to replicate the effects of light or light and shadow or how color bounces into shadows or how one object the color of one object bounces into the color of another object. All of those things are enhanced. In my studio work by plein air painting, the drawing component also enters into it being able to actually make something look like what what it is. But But you know, drawing is one of those skills that can ultimately UB learned so the more you do it, the better you get at it, and being outdoors and being forced to simplify all of the huge amount of information that our eyes take in. That's a really good thing. And that carries over into my studio work. So that simplification process back and forth between tons of information. And that simplification then into the studio. Same thing, whether it's a conceptual thing right out of my head, scary proposition, or photographic based references, then that simplification to get to the essence of the visual story that I want to tell is a marriage between plein air work and studio work.
Kelly Anne Powers 6:42
What's the biggest challenge you see your students facing with materials around acrylic painting?
Mark Mehaffey 6:47
The problem for most people is they dry so fast and so oil painters especially, they have a huge amount of time to make transitions between one hue and another or one temperature another Or one value and another because they can feather those edges and make them blend so smoothly. And with acrylics unless I get four or five brushes stacked in my left hand to feather or there, I mean there's certain techniques that will work but it's more difficult with acrylics
Kelly Anne Powers 7:17
are there ways to blend acrylics for a softer edge,
Mark Mehaffey 7:21
you have two choices, you can physically blend or optically blend. So optically blend requires touching the surface more often with smaller strokes. So I can make a green by optically blending yellow and blue strokes together, not physically blending, but just placing them side by side, lots of yellow lots of blue day together will read as a green passage or I can physically blend if I wanted a very soft even transition between yellow and blue. Then I would have two brushes or two globs of paint on my Painting surface, one yellow, one blue, and I would paint them both and where they met, while acrylic was still wet, I would physically stumble or wet blend those two passages until I got that smooth transition that I wanted. And then just let that passage dry. And you can do that multiple times. It doesn't have to be always about two piles of color. You can do it with three piles of color or four piles of color just depends on how fast you want to work and how many brushes you want to have going at the same time.
Kelly Anne Powers 8:34
There's this idea that to paint spontaneously means to not plan. Do spontaneous paintings need a good plan?
Mark Mehaffey 8:44
I mean, the short answer is yes. I'm going to expound a little bit in that a plan allows you to be more spontaneous. So if you know where all the shapes are and how they fit together, and you have a fairly good idea about How later dark those shapes are. That allows you more freedom, not less. If you don't plan, like if you just jump in to the painting process with no plan, then that means you're going to make quite a few missteps along the way. So what I do is I plan where the shapes go, how they fit together, that's a done deal. And then in my head or in the studio in my sketchbooks, I actually define the values as I wish them to be in the painting. So I do that in plein air in my head, but it's in my head. If it's dark in my head or in the thumbnail, then it's going to be dark in my painting. So I follow that plan. Well that allows me to be creative with color or creative with storytelling because I have a solid plan to go from. It doesn't mean that I'm locked into the plan. I deviate if I think I can make a better painting.
Kelly Anne Powers 9:57
How many values do you plan with
Mark Mehaffey 10:00
Five values I teach with five I do my values studies in my sketchbook with five, I think in terms of five. So the five are white, light, medium, the mid tone, a medium, dark, and dark, very dark or black. So between black and white, that mid tones, it's dead center, between the mid tone and light, that's the light it's it's dead center in between the mid tone dark, that medium dark, it says that, that center between the mid tone and the dark and those five values. It's an oversimplification because of course there's huge variances in between all of those in nature. But use those five seems to simplify all of my value decisions and I'll run similar values together something may be medium dark and the mid tone. I may make it all a mid tone, just to supply unity between those two shapes and run it together because I know a lot of instructors use 10 but tend to me gets to be confusing and sometimes when I teach, if people have issues seeing value and and understanding, I'll go with just three light, mid tone and dark, and then have them do all of their thumbnails or value plans with those three, and that seems to settle it for them.
Kelly Anne Powers 11:17
Why do you suggest the value studies,
Mark Mehaffey 11:19
the value study, especially multiple value studies may give you options for a better painting value is how we see the world. And there are many times when you see a tree and the value of that tree may be a middle trunk and the mass of leaves this shape, but it may be more important for your painting to make that tree very dark as in the silhouette, thereby making whatever is behind it much lighter. And so I make those options in paint. So if I do the painting, and I look and I go, this has value issues, everything's a mid tone, then I can just go Oh, well, okay. It's been drying now for three or four or five minutes, let's just make that tree darker. And so I just go ahead and do it. But as a beginner, I think it might be very helpful to make little compositional outlines of the shapes, and then fill in the values that you would like for your painting in those shapes. And that's just another helpful part of the process that you can put there to relate to. And also, the light changes as we're painting out. So you know, like, every few minutes, the sun moves, we move actually, the sun doesn't. And so the light changes, shadows change their shape, the quality of the light changes. And so the value study helps in terms of those kinds of changes.
Kelly Anne Powers 12:45
How do you assign values and what's important about how you assign values?
Mark Mehaffey 12:51
If I'm after a specific atmospheric feeling mood event like fog, it's very misty and foggy here today. Then the values are closer together. But usually I'm after a certain amount of value contrast that huge amount of difference between black and white. And that edge between black and white draws the viewers attention. So a lot of my plein air work is high contrast, really dark, dark place next really light light. And I think in terms of that contrast value contrast being in or around my focal area, the story I want to tell, and then everything else is not quite as much contrast. And if I put that values that are similar close together, that tells the viewer this area's not quite so important. So I based the value work and color choices on the story that I want to tell based on what I'm seeing, it may not match the values that I'm seeing, because I can make a better painting by changing the values and that's the part that I can do in my head after all, These years that I probably would recommend that beginners do the compositional value study maybe even more than once, one two or three times to see the value possibilities in what's before them.
Kelly Anne Powers 14:14
What are you taking them from the scene? You're not taking values from the scene.
Mark Mehaffey 14:19
I am taking some clues about value from this scene and and sometimes I reproduce the almost as I see them with the some enhancement or simplification. I walk along and say, well, that's kind of interesting. I think I can make a painting out of that. And so then I decided okay, so what the specific story I want to tell exactly is it about the small shapes as light and dark hits the small shapes is about the figure in the distance is about the close value relationship of the banks of fog that role in obscure color and shape. So there's a lot of different things that could enter into that decision, I try to get it to one principal store instead of multiple competing stories, which is what I see often in plain air work, because people try to reproduce what they see. And there's just so much. What I try to do is decide, okay, well, this is the visual story. Everything else is either supportive or secondary. And if its secondary, I try to leave it up. And all of that gets done. Hopefully inside of a couple hours of work. Often, I can get two or three paintings done in two hours if they're small, six by six eight by 10. Nine by 12. Were some of my painting friends are getting only one painting done in that same amount of time, because they have a tendency towards putting everything in.
Kelly Anne Powers 15:47
Why is simplification important for a good painting? Why not just paint What's there? It's there. It seems to work.
Mark Mehaffey 15:53
Yeah, I'm going to teach a plein air painting class for Interlochen Fine Arts Center in in northern Michigan. Soon, one of the first things we do after going through all of our equipment in the morning is to talk about this simplification process. So I set them a problem each day. And the first days problem is, OK, you have 10 to 12 shapes total the you can deal with, you must tell your story with 10 or 12 shapes. And that forces the painters that have lots of experience to get back to this huge simplification, and it forces the beginners to know that they have to be able to tell their story, whatever it may be visually, wherever they set up in only 10 to 12 shapes. It's a kind of a difficult problem to solve until you've been through the process a number of times and that's not to say that your painting can't have the DH shapes. Of course it can, but as a beginner and getting started because nature offers us just so much information. Visually we see it all that simplification process is something That seems to ground the beginners into a place where they're safe. And also 10 to 12 shapes forces them to really think about what it is they want to say visually. Because if, let's say, for example, their landscape includes a figure, well, the figure can be stated would one shape or 10 to 12 shapes. And if they have 10 to 12 shapes in the figure, that leaves them kind of out of luck for the landscape that the figures in. So it's that balance of, Okay, what's the fewest amount of brushstrokes I can use to tell this story? And the less you say, sometimes, the more involved the viewer gets, because the viewer has to put themself into there and make some decisions about what it is you're trying to say. And that gets them visually involved.
Kelly Anne Powers 17:49
How do you keep a shape interesting, if you're talking about for example, like a giant sky, it's a big shape or a line of dark trees. How do you make it so that it still has Energy and life.
Mark Mehaffey 18:01
Yeah, two different answers. Number one, it may not need to be interesting, it can be just a silhouette, it could be one solid value from one in the shape to the other, it can be one solid hue from one end of the shape to the other, if other parts of the painting are eminently more interesting, so you wouldn't want that conflict. However, having said that, if I end up with a rather large shape, that's an important part of or a lot of the composition, what I can do is slightly vary the temperature from one side of the shape to the other, or I can vary the hue from one side to the other to create more interest. Or I can break up or create indices of change along the length of that shape to create a little incident, or added interest around the perimeter of that ship to all kinds of manipulations you can do to make an area of the painting that is uninteresting, more interesting, always keeping in mind The story that you want to tell,
Kelly Anne Powers 19:02
obviously most interesting focal point second most interesting secondary focal point and then maybe just let the other stuff especially in plain air.
Mark Mehaffey 19:12
Yeah, yes. Like let the other stuff go or let's leave it out in the first place. Yeah, yeah, cuz plein air is little different. I use plein air studies plein air work sometimes for larger studio work. And a lot of artists do that. Sometimes they're just standalone because I need to get outdoors and that's about half the time because studio work takes on a life of its own. I got a couple other compartments that take up a lot of time and every artist is different in terms of where they're going with the product, the end product, I don't worry quite so much about that. Occasionally I'll do one and go Damn, not bad. And you know, so goes into frame and a gallery gets that one but that's not the ultimate goal. It just happens occasionally
Kelly Anne Powers 19:59
from a company This is standpoint, again, all of this is happening in your head intuitively at this point.
Mark Mehaffey 20:05
I know I'm not supposed to interrupt you, but I have to because the intuition thing has become quite the topic of conversation. So there's a difference between artistic intuition than our normal intuition. We all have that intuition of, I don't think I'm going to park my car in this dark parking lot. It's the intuition that tells us something bad could happen. Intuition in terms of creativity and painting is different, because it's intuition, usually based on years and years of experience. So all of the previous paintings of my life enter into my intuitive decision making about this particular painting. So that's a little bit different. So my intuition is based on lots of brush miles. So compositionally, what has worked in the past may work this time, or I may get really, really brave and do something that I've never tried before, which I often will do, just create a problem solver.
Kelly Anne Powers 21:00
When you're beginning this stuff feels so mechanical, like a machine that hasn't been boiled or jerky. Where? Oh, must think through five values. Oh,
Mark Mehaffey 21:11
must work or even setting up equipment.
Kelly Anne Powers 21:14
Yeah. And then hopefully eventually if you do it enough, it becomes intuitive artistically intuitive. So some of what we're talking about is like how does a beginner think through this so that eventually they get to the level where they don't have to jerkily think through it. So from a composition standpoint, what decisions are you making about how you're setting up and positioning the scenes that you're about to paint?
Mark Mehaffey 21:41
Oh, using the analogy and it's the, the setup of the equipment. So all of my easel, my tripod, my box of paints, my palette, my water bottle, my paper towels, my brushes, everything that I used to paint and planar fits in that pack and when I get to the spot Wherever that spot may be, I put the pack down, I can set everything up inside of two minutes, and be ready to paint inside of three minutes ready to go, panel, everything ready to go. So when I teach, the very first thing we do is we set it all up and we take it all down and we set it all up again. And from the repetition of that, they get much better because you don't want to waste your time taking 45 minutes or half an hour or even 20 minutes to set everything up. You're there to paint. So that setup takedown setup takedown, and it's through repetition that that smoothness comes about. It's the same thing with painting, especially plein air painting, the more you do it, the better you get at your particular process. So from years of plein air painting once a week, twice a week my process has been stabilized so I don't really even have to think about it in terms of I see a story I wish to tell I'm probably gonna Gonna put that star of the show that important story in one of the four third quadrants on my rectangle or square and then work out from that focal area and that's basically how I start
Kelly Anne Powers 23:14
once you know the focal point, how do you keep the viewers eyes
Mark Mehaffey 23:21
at it? It reminds me of a I have another compartment the viewers should know this. Anybody that goes to my website will certain Lee know it man about almost half of my work is totally non objective abstract work, which is just designed based and internally designed based in that work. That artist, the other me feels that there can be multiple competing focal areas, which makes the I jumped around quite a bit internally in that rectangular picture space. I even don't mind taking the viewers eye off as long as I have a path to lead them back on again. It's a little Different with plein air painting, and plein air painting different artists different conceptual bass, different compartment. I have a story to tell. There's one particular star of the show. And that started the show. Everything else focuses around that I may have a supporting cast of characters, which will be also important, but not quite as important. As the star of the show. I want the viewer to get what I had to say visually about what I'm looking at in plein air. So it's two different processes and two different conceptual basis in plain air. I want people to get that vision, the painting that I saw in my head, not quite the same with my non objective work where I don't mind if they jump around, leave and then come back for a while. It's just two separate compartments.
Kelly Anne Powers 24:53
How do you use edges in the studio play network?
Mark Mehaffey 24:57
Basically, we have lost edges. edges which are non existent, they just fade into the neck shape. Or we have soft edges where the edge has been assembled over or feathered over so that you can see the difference between shapes, maybe a slight temperature difference or a slight value difference. But the edges there, it's just very soft. And then we have hard edges, hard edges tell the viewer this area is important look here, soft edges, not so much. Maybe supporting and last edges, not important at all. And so I use all three of those edges in my acrylic work, even repainting whole sections of painting to soften one particular area or lose an edge in one particular area to get what I want. And so I usually retain hard edges for in or around the focal area, the story,
Kelly Anne Powers 25:52
how important is designed to you and your work a lot.
Mark Mehaffey 25:55
So that's why I seldom Walk out and paint what I see. There's so much information usually, and everything needs to be redesigned to make them more effective work. Am I on the lookout for the perfect spot? Sure, just like I'm on the lookout for the one out of about 100 sometimes two out of 100 photographs that might make a painting with minimal changes. It's not that the other 98 won't work. It's just that it takes a redesign of the other 98 photographic references to make a good painting. Same thing painting and plein air. Everything needs to be redesigned telephone pole doesn't have to be there just because it's there. This tree doesn't have to be there. It can be over here and it can be lighter or darker or bigger or smaller because the painting needs it to be that way. So I feel free to completely redesign what I'm seeing to tell the story that I need to tell. It's freeing really once you get this idea across especially Beginners because they they're so locked into what they see that sometimes they lose sight of the fact that they're supposed to make a decent painting out of that, thinking back to mark the head only been painting for 10 years, the difference between seeing something that could make the painting better versus trying to show everything that's happening a long time ago now a very long time ago, my concern was, could I make it look like what I was seeing with paint, you know, that has a lot to do with drawing skills initially. And that also has to do with Okay, turning color into three dimensional vision into that two dimensional surface and trying to represent that. And so there were a lot of years where that was my main concern, can I make it look like that? You know, I left that behind a long time ago. I know I'm, I'm good enough to make it look like that. Maybe not quite so good as some of my contemporaries who are also good at representational work, but it's more My impression now and the feeling within me that I tried to get on the canvas, as opposed to replicating what I see, you know, it's always this back and forth, back and forth. Okay. Yeah, I want people to recognize this as a tree, but I don't care if they recognize it as that tree
Kelly Anne Powers 28:18
and if you have the shape of the tree, you can get away with a lot.
Mark Mehaffey 28:23
Yeah, we recognize things via their silhouette. So every artist is different. My impetus is more towards my inner feelings and the storytelling and, and I manipulate a lot of things. A lot of my friends are more about Okay, this is absolutely gorgeous. I would like to show people that I feel that this is gorgeous, and their whole being is about acquiring the skills to do that and they do absolutely marvelous job. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that approach either.
Kelly Anne Powers 28:54
One of the principles of design that you concentrate on,
Mark Mehaffey 28:56
the two that are most important to me are dominant. And unity, and I use one to achieve the other. So dominance in terms of temperature dominance, that could be huge temperature value, by having a dominant principle hold all of that together that supplies the Unity for all of it all other things being equal. And I do think about rhythm and, and a couple other things, but usually that's after the fact. So I'm always about let's make something important, let's have something be dominant. To help hold all of this together. Often it will be temperature warm or cool. And sometimes I'll simplify that even to Okay, this is going to be a yellow painting. I see this as a yellow painting and of course that will assign a warm temperature dominance to that, but all of that holds that together and then I can make color decisions based on that. So if it's a yellow painting, maybe I'm going to use the compliment, violet or near compliment blue violet in the focal area, which will create a visual Bounce for the viewer. So it's those two principles of design, which I keep in my head and the others kind of float through or they get assigned a position in critique after the fact. But not while I'm painting because it's way too much to think about.
Kelly Anne Powers 30:16
So you would go into when you're doing the planning in your brain, you would say this is going to be a yellow painting, or this is going to be a warm dominant painting or this is going to be a light value dominant painting high key painting high key painting that happens before the first paintbrush goes down.
Mark Mehaffey 30:38
Yet does and dot because it's acrylic and because it dries quickly, I can change my mind anytime during the process. Part of the reason that nine times out of 10 I paint an acrylic in plein air that 10th time is water color.
Kelly Anne Powers 30:56
What is a mother color? Have you read my book? I have read your book. Mark? Oh, okay.
Mark Mehaffey 31:02
It's in plain aircrew like for for the listeners that haven't heard and Walter Foster's the publisher, link. Yeah, there'll be a link. Okay, it was my winter project, I was honored to be asked to do that. So mother color, and that's again another way to supply unity to your work. So it's a problem that I set for myself and searching again for a cohesive whole. So before I start, I mix pre-mix a pile of color, let's say a mid tone violet, and there's my pile. It's there on my palate. So I begin as always, and delineate the shapes and make sure I know what the star of the show is going to be. All of my color mixtures will contain some of that mid tone vile. So let's take green for example, if I put some of that violet in green because of the yellow component in the green, that mid tone violet will slightly neutralize the green That's okay. Because that mother colors going to slightly alter every single color choice in that whole painting. And I always make an effort to use a significant portion of that mother color also in the painting as is, and that mother color acts as the unifying element to hold all of that together.
Kelly Anne Powers 32:20
That seems like a really useful way, especially for a beginner to practice unity.
Mark Mehaffey 32:25
It does. It's like supplying automatic unity. It's a little frustrating, especially for beginners because the saturation thing like but I need a bright green here, but you can't get a bright green. If you mix this with this. Try it anyway. Do you know what I mean? There's compromises. Yes.
Kelly Anne Powers 32:42
What is the most important things about color that you think someone needs to know to set a good foundation
Mark Mehaffey 32:49
color has four components, right? It's whew, that's the actual color that it is green, red, blue, and then value that's how light or dark The color is. And then temperature, that's how warm or cool that color is. And then saturation, that's how brighter doll that color is. And that's the same regardless. So every selection, you have to take that sort of into account. And it can be overwhelming, especially as beginners, they have a tendency to buy all the tubes. So a bunch of primaries, a bunch of secondaries, and they got this big box of tubes, and they just get like overwhelmed. So I always go back to like three primaries, plus black and white, and then learn those and how they work. Make a bunch of paintings with those. And then as you work and you feel the need to add to those add to those slowly, and as you add to them learn those and how they work with the first three, and then just slowly build over the course of 10 years to 50 years.
Kelly Anne Powers 33:53
What palette of colors to use?
Mark Mehaffey 33:55
In plein air and for most of my studio work also, I use a split Primary palette. So that's a warm and a cool of each of primary colors they are. And there are substitutes for practically all of these. But right now in acrylic, cad yellow light as my cool yellow and cad yellow dark or kid Dale of deep depending on the manufacture for my warm yellow, and then a lizard Crimson for my cool red and sometimes I'll substitute Conoco Don rose as a cool red, Permanent Rose also sometimes enters into the equation. They're all cool reds, I handle them all about the same and then for my warm red would be CAD red light, which is a very warm red approaching orange. And then for blues, a cobalt blue stays on my palate. It's kind of my neutral, but my cool blue is the yellow blue, which is tends towards the green and very strong. And then for my warm blue would be ultra marine blue. I'm experimenting with amateur blue, which is kind of a cool blue but not as cool as the yellow plus it's much, much darker than cobalt Altima rain or the yellow blue. And the so I can get a really dark dark with an acronym blue mixed with a lizard crimson. And sometimes I'll put a little yellow in it to neutralize the violent mixture. So I get a kind of a neutral, dark with that mixture. So I have all of those in my plane air kit plus black and white. I sold me as black. It's just not necessary, but I keep it and then always my favorite golden Titanium White stays in there also. Yeah, so that's that's pretty much it for plein air. And that's easy to manipulate on a small palette, and watercolor I have the same split primary equivalent, which means I get to mix and control the saturation of all of my secondary screen by little orange are all mixed by me. And I get to control how bright those secondary mixtures are.
Kelly Anne Powers 35:58
And then how do you control how bright The secondary mixtures are and this comes into warm and cool of each of those colors, right? Yeah, absolutely. So
Mark Mehaffey 36:05
mixing light colors has a tendency to produce the most saturated. So let's take green for example. The most saturated green I can make would be with my cool cat yellow light mixed with my cool blue, they love blue. And if I mix those two together, the resulting green is very saturated bro think bright, as opposed to doll. So that's very bright. If I mix say, cad yellow light with all terrain blue, I'm going to get a green it's going to be a pleasing green but it won't be quite so saturated. Because of the red component in the rain. I'm getting a little bit of red into the mixture red is the opposite of green, they have a tendency to neutralize, so the resulting mixture is a little more neutralized than the first mixture. And then I can push that even farther by mixing cad yellow Dark, which tends towards the orange, it's got a little red in it with all terrain blue, which has also a little red in it. So now I'm getting red from two different primaries. And so the resulting green mixture is very subdued, D saturated, dull. And so I have the utmost of control over the saturation just by the split primary palette that I use to mix those secondary swift and then of course black and white are both D saturate color. So if you had white to anything that makes it dollar and if you had black, anything that makes it dollar lighter and darker to of course, but less saturated color mixtures. So my split primary palette is not hindering it, it kind of frees me up for control. And most artists I know are into control.
Kelly Anne Powers 37:49
This also says that if someone is painting and they think like why, why are my color so double check the temperature of the color.
Mark Mehaffey 37:58
Yeah, check your mix. Absolutely, yep. And especially if you're dumping a bunch of white into your color all the time, that will have a tendency to make things dollar.
Kelly Anne Powers 38:07
I think there is this idea that acrylics are perfectly opaque, especially the heavy body acrylics. I have not found that true. In my experience, a lot
Mark Mehaffey 38:17
of them are quite transparent like a loser and Crimson is very transparent, they will blues very transparent, all the Conoco Jones are transparent. So I do have a tense the think transparent as opposed to opaque but only in so far the darks go. I don't mind transparent darks at all in acrylic sort of mimics the transparent darks that oil painters use oftentimes. And then the more opaque passages are when I start putting Titanium White into mixtures to get lighter. So my lighter passages I saved for a little bit later in the process, and those get applied usually on top of or around the darks which I did earlier in the process. Not everybody works that way. But the viewer and the is kind of the cool thing. It's the same thing with my mixed water media work that I do in the studio using transparent watercolor and wash. Well, same thing with transparent darks and opaque lights in acrylic. In one the light goes through the transparent layers and hits whatever ground you're using or whatever paper using it comes back through and you get that transparent glow and the other in the opaque the light hits and bounces right back to your eyes. And so the viewer sees that difference and it just adds more interest to your work.
Kelly Anne Powers 39:33
You just mentioned a colored ground. What is a colored ground? Why do you use it?
Mark Mehaffey 39:38
I seldom paint on white my grounds are usually prepared commercial Canvas panels by any three or four manufacturers or by Burt's mounted panels raw and then just sold them white myself. Let the jostle dry and then a play a colored ground. My favorite of course is can't red light and I've been painting on it for years. Like CAD red light for a number of reasons. One, it's a middle value as it comes from the two because it's a middle value. If I put a passage down and it's darker, I know I'm darker than a mid tone. And if it appears lighter, I'm lighter than a mid tone because that can red light is that middle value. Also, it's very warm, can red light approaches orange, it's definitely a warm red. And so if it's a warm dominant painting, I can allow more of the kid red light to show through and enhance that warm dominance. And if it's a cool painting, then I can let little pieces of that can read like peek through cover most of it and those will be across the color wheel from the cool dominance and add that little sparkle to the painting. So that's why I like that. Do I always use it? No. Sometimes I'll take a white just old panel and I'll just tone it with a neutral more brown. A lot like oil painters do with like burn number Burnt Sienna tone and get rid of that way and then begin there. Sometimes I'll just set myself a problem and I'll tone my panel like bright yellow, or violet, and then try to make the plein air painting work with some of that, or a lot of that are a little bit of that showing through. It's just all about the problem solving thing and having fun with it. So when I pack say, I have time maybe to do two paintings, I'll throw four panels in, and they'll be like, maybe two can red light, maybe one's white, and I'm going to tone it, maybe one's yellow or violet or something else. And and they all go with me. And so I get to wherever I'm going to paint and I go, Well, maybe this would be an appropriate time to do this one. And so I'll put that down and just make the painting work with whatever ground was down there. I can adjust all of the color and temperatures and values based on the ground and what I see as I go and that just gives me another way. Get involved in the process gives me another problem to solve gets me frustrated, which is, you know, it's kind of like a good thing like, Okay, can I solve this visual problem that I just set for myself, so it's not always the same. That's the danger. And I need to say this for the listeners. The danger of that repeatable process is that you're always going to produce the work that you always have. If you always work in the same fashion. I try to change up something about the way I work so that my work is always evolving. I suppose that's why I'm kind of a compartmentalised artists and what I do also because I always feel that change leads to growth, at least it does for me.
Kelly Anne Powers 42:44
So for someone trying to learn to paint, especially if they have a limited time, would you suggest focusing on finishing paintings, or would you suggest that they break down skills that they want to focus on
Mark Mehaffey 42:58
and the skill build comes. It's like drawing drawing is a learned skill. I taught high school for many years. And it's a repeatable, learned skill. It's just like I would tell the athletes that I got in class. If you're playing basketball, and you shoot three point baskets for an hour, every day, I can pretty much guarantee you, you will get better at shooting three point baskets. There's no doubt about it. If you draw every day, especially drawing from life, you will get better at drawing. It's a learned skill. And the high school kids always surprised themselves and me too. Sometimes it will with their acquisition of that particular skill. Once you've acquired that skill, then it becomes about more of the content of the work, you know, the storytelling, the emotional connection that you like to form with yourself and the viewer in there and and the skill level just helps you get there. You'll acquire the skill by just doing lots of paintings and because you get more comfortable, your hand eye coordination gets better. Your vision gets better. So my advice always is sure, take classes, go to museums, read, listen, watch videos, sure do all of that, but the best thing you can do to get better.
Kelly Anne Powers 44:20
Pete, you can find more about Mark Mahaffey at his website, Mark Mahaffey, fine art.com, on Facebook and on Instagram, and we'll have links to all of that in the show notes. Thank you so much for joining us today, Mark.
Mark Mehaffey 44:34
It was absolutely My pleasure. Thank you.
Kelly Anne Powers 44:36
Thanks for joining us this week, had to learn to paint podcast comm slash podcast slash Episode Five to get the show notes links to his work and to sign up for the newsletter. And if you enjoy today's episode, share with a friend. Happy painting