Insights from a Live Q&A Session
Join me for an unscripted hour-long studio conversation covering everything from creative philosophy to practical painting techniques and the future of art education.
In this candid live session, I share updates on my upcoming book series, discussed the intersection of AI and creativity, and offered practical advice on everything from composition to color mixing. Here are the key takeaways from an hour of real-time teaching and reflection.
Book Series Evolution: From Linear to Holistic Learning
I’m reconsidering the structure of my upcoming multi-volume series on Tonalist painting. Originally planned as a linear progression with technical information separated from philosophical concepts, I’m now leaning toward a more integrated approach—mixing the “meat, vegetables, and dessert” rather than serving them separately.
Key insight: “Each chapter is kind of its own thing… more like me writing an essay on what I have to say about that particular issue.”
The Composition Principle That Changes Everything
One of the most common mistakes we see in amateur paintings is scattered elements. My solution is elegantly simple:
Form elements into groups rather than scattering them individually.
Think of it as “islands and continents”—bring your masses together into related groups, then perhaps have one small element standing alone. This applies to everything from tree masses to rocks to architectural elements. The key is creating relationships between elements rather than treating each as an isolated component.
AI as Creative Collaborator, Not Creator
My approach to AI reveals a sophisticated understanding of its capabilities and limitations. I use AI tools like Sim Theory not to generate content, but to enhance and organize existing ideas.
For titling: Instead of struggling with my own “Tree in the Field” title tendencies, I show AI my paintings and receive suggestions like “Evening’s Embrace”—titles that come from a different perspective than our own artistic vision.
For writing: AI helps structure and clean up existing content, but doesn’t create it. “If you think it’s going to create the content for you, it won’t. It’ll just create something kind of generic.”
My creativity philosophy: Hold an idea in the center of your mind without forcing it into predetermined categories. Let disparate elements naturally attract to it. “Creativity is really very much based in bringing disparate things together, things that aren’t necessarily related.”
The Great Chromatic Black Debate
I shared my evolution from chromatic blacks (mixed from Alizarin Crimson and Sap Green) to traditional ivory black, and now to a Mars black/burnt umber combination for shadows.
The progression: • Chromatic mixing: More impressionistic, allows color temperature shifts • Ivory black: “The same black Rembrandt was using”—more authentic to Tonalist tradition
• Mars black blend: Addresses ivory black’s transparency and slow-drying issues while maintaining warmth in shadows
Key principle: “I like my shadows to be generally on the warm side more than cool.”
Content Strategy: Meeting Modern Learning Habits
My platform strategy addresses a fundamental tension we face in art education:
The challenge: My most valuable content comes from 2-3 hour live painting sessions where insights emerge from real problem-solving, but modern audiences want “instant, condensed education.”
The solution: • Full transcripts with timestamps for deep learners • Blog summaries extracting key insights
• Reference images and palette photos • Cross-platform availability (YouTube and Substack)
This approach serves both serious students who want to dig deep and busy learners who need quick access to specific information.
Print Making: The Business of Art
I’m expanding into print production using a Canon Pixma printer with 10-color archival ink system. My approach emphasizes quality over quantity—$350 ink sets and rag paper ensure museum-quality output.
Business insight: Prints allow us artists to sell our work repeatedly while maintaining quality standards, but require significant upfront investment in equipment and materials.
Traditional Wisdom in Digital Times
Throughout the session, I demonstrated how traditional artistic principles remain relevant in our AI-enhanced world. Whether we’re discussing composition, color theory, or creative process, the approach honors historical methods while embracing helpful technology.
The balance: Use AI to enhance and organize human creativity, but don’t let it replace the fundamental work of developing artistic vision and technical skill.
Moving Forward
My work represents a bridge between traditional Tonalist painting and contemporary art education. The integration of AI tools, multi-platform content strategy, and commitment to both depth and accessibility offers a model for how we master artists can share our knowledge in the digital age.
I ended the session with my characteristic warmth: “Take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones, stay out of trouble. God bless you and your family, and we’re going to fight the power.”
This live session demonstrated the value of unscripted, real-time teaching where insights emerge naturally from the process of creation and reflection.
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Transcript
Live Painting Session - M. Francis McCarthy
I’m alive! I moved the camera over here—usually it’s up there. This is probably going to be weird because I’ll keep looking at the monitor, looking away from you. I just thought it’d be nice to change the angle. That’s pretty cool, a nice change, you know?
Can anybody hear me? I can see that I’m making a signal on the microphone. I didn’t put out a post about this broadcast, didn’t mention it, didn’t do much of anything, so maybe no one will show up. That’s okay.
I noticed that the sound was not great last time—that’s because I had it around my neck and it was clicking. But most of the views are coming in from after the live anyway, and they’re decently looked at. I don’t really like to look at any of my stats because I don’t like to know.
Book Update - Volume 4 Progress
I’m not going to read anything from my book today, but I will talk to you about this. We are closing in on volume 4, but it may not actually be 4 volumes. I’ve been rethinking it as I look through what I’ve written, mostly on my phone, and I’m thinking I may want to change the structure a bit. I may stick with the 4 volumes, I may make it 3, but one thing I’m pretty sure I’m going to change is the structure.
I looked at one book—it was like 40 chapters or so—but I’m thinking of moving things around because each chapter is kind of its own thing. My original idea was to have one page with a painting and the next page with the writing. That didn’t work out because some of the essays—they’re not really essays, but I’m calling them chapters—each topic is more like me writing an essay on what I have to say about that particular issue.
I was talking to my associate about that the other day, and it’s like when I was a kid, we didn’t want to eat our vegetables. We had to because the vegetables are good for you—you need to eat them. So we were forced to eat our vegetables with our meat, and then we got our pudding. And I think that’s what I’m going to do to you too—just going to give you the meat in one book, the vegetable in another book, and the dessert in the next.
Book Inspiration and Format
Here’s the idea behind “Landscape Painting the Tonalist Way”—see, that’s “Landscape Painting Inside Out.” Notice they’re soft bound, about the same size. I took a lot of inspiration from this sort of format to create this book, which we just shipped book number 180 out to the world. Thank you for your support. I appreciate it, and I’ve had nothing but really great feedback on this.
[Shows Carlson book] If you don’t have this book, you can pick it up reasonably because it was very popular for a long time. This brings back so many memories for me—copyright 1958, 1953. What’s hard for me is it’s in black and white, it’s a lot of text, only a small color section. But Carlson translates really well into black and white, actually.
This is a book you want to own. I’m sure you probably bought it long ago. I don’t paint snow, but if I did, I would be really into this guy. It’s full of great stuff, it’s a really great book.
Composition Principle
One of the main things you see wrong with a lot of amateur paintings is they’ll have this element, that element, the other element, but you got to form things in groups with elements related. A good way to think of it—let’s say you’ve got tree masses. You can have another element here. I think of it as like the island with the continent. You can bring your masses together into groups and then you can have one little thing off on its own. But if you have scattered elements, that’s going to make for some bad painting—that’s no good.
This applies to rocks, bushes, flowers, trees, or clumps of trees. That’s real common with people when they’re painting rocks—just a couple rocks, no good.
Members Area and Content Strategy
I have noticed that people aren’t spending much time in the members area. I don’t actually look at my member count either, to be honest, because I don’t really like to see. I think all of the greatest content of my channel is in the members area. But there’s an appetite these days for more instant, condensed education. People don’t want to sit there and wait for some bit of information to come to them as part of a process. They’re more interested in something like this book—that’s why I’ve been selling these.
The members area now has a corresponding blog post with a cleaned-up transcript. One of the issues I think is that you’ve got maybe a two-hour, three-hour video, and there might be nothing said for stretches of time. I am teaching, but I’m in there doing my job, trying to make paintings happen. There’s times when I’m just busy, in the struggle, working it out. Then I throw you an insight here or there along the way.
The reason why the members area is so valuable and critical is because those insights are based on reality right there in the moment. Those are like super sharp arrows that are very penetrating. The thing is they’re spaced out. So you can scan the transcript now and go, “Oh, he’s going to talk about that.”
YouTube vs. Substack Strategy
The question is what goes on Substack and what goes on YouTube—it’s both, it’s a duplication. In one sense, you get a lot more with the YouTube membership because you have access to hundreds of videos, because I’ve just started with Substack. But if you go to the Substack, it’s all there because Substack lets you have the video, images, text, all in one, unlike YouTube. You get the full transcript, you get the summary of what was talked about, the video, the reference image, and a picture of my palette showing you all the colors that I used.
I have been thinking about moving those courses I was trying to sell last year to Substack to put some extra value there.
AI and Creativity
Your book series delves deep into your philosophy. What was the most challenging chapter or concept to articulate and why?
Creativity itself, and this is really important because where AI is pushing us as humanity is that if you want to be more creative, you’re going to use AI to up your game to stratospheric levels. One of the things I talk about in my chapter on creativity is that the way I approach creativity is I have this thing that I want to work on, and I hold it sort of in the center of my mind. I try not to make it one thing or the other thing. I try to just see what comes to it, what’s attracted to it.
Creativity is really very much based in bringing disparate things together, things that aren’t necessarily related. You bring them together and people go, “Whoa, that’s super creative.” That was challenging to write about because I had to really slow down my processes because this happens automatically.
AI Tools for Titling
I have two AI interfaces I’ve been using. One is text-based only, and I have another place called Sim Theory. Sim Theory has some great features—it lets you access any of the different models, you can create your own agents, and I have functionality where I can show it something on my desktop and say, “What do you think of this?”
Lately I have been showing it the image of new paintings and saying, “Hey, you got a title?” The last one that’s up on the channel, “Evening’s Embrace”—what do I call a tree by a pond? That’s just a terrible title. I’m famous for that. I got “Tree in the Field.” Galleries are like, “What tree in the field again?” “Evening’s Embrace” is a brilliant title, and I got that from pointing my AI to the picture.
Traditional Titling Methods
Here’s another thing—you can steal titles. Let’s say I did a painting and I’m going for a title. Alexander Wyant, “September Morning”—that sounds like a good title to me. Charles Harold Davis, “Twilight”—that’s a great title. “Hillside Pines,” “Forest Glen,” “White Pines at Dusk.”
Here’s a system: you’ve got weather conditions, time of day, then land features. So we can say “Storm Over the Paddock,” or “Summer Stream,” “Summer Stream at Dawn”—this kind of thing is good for quite a lot of titling.
Color Theory - Chromatic Black Discussion
You guys know me—I was very much Mr. Chromatic Black. I would mix Alizarin Crimson with Sap Green and get a chromatic black for the whole or really part of my painting. I never used ivory black originally—I just brought it in to make that green.
A lot of people like to do something similar with ultramarine and burnt umber. I did find the Alizarin Crimson/Sap Green mix to be very similar to what Gamblin was doing with their chromatic black. The interesting thing about that is you could push it a little red or push it a little green.
But once I turned my back on chromatic black because I see that as kind of a modern thing—the impressionists loved that, they loved to do their darks with a black that isn’t black. As ugly as ivory black can be, Mars black is way uglier. Mars black is kind of milky and muddy and sort of chalky. But it’s opaque.
When I mix Mars black with my burnt umber, sometimes I do add a little bit of ivory black. Compared to Mars black, ivory black is very beautiful. But ivory black is a little bit transparent for a lot of applications. I like my shadows to be generally on the warm side more than cool.
I was so happy to just use ivory black to make my green, and I thought, “Wow, this is tonalism. I’m finally getting it.” I was getting close to tonalism with the chromatics, but they have sort of a synthetic quality to me. Whereas the ivory black—that’s the same black Rembrandt was using, same black Inness was using.
Print Making Project
I’m working on a big series—I’m three in. I just done an amazing picture. I want to do 12, I’m going to have a show. But I’m also planning on making prints. I have a very nice $1,200 Canon Pixma printer with archival inks that stand up to the quality of professional grade watercolors. I’m printing on rag paper, so I’m creating something I know I can feel good about.
The Canon’s got 10 color cartridges, so it can capture very wide gamut of tones. A set of inks for this Canon printer costs like $350, but it gives me the ability to insist on good color. Once I’ve got the thing color corrected, it’s great.
One of the first prints I’m putting out is “Moody Knight’s Island.” It’s a really good painting. I’m thinking that’s probably the one I’m going to put up on the channel this weekend.
Closing Thoughts
I hope you got some value from this live session. I’ll try and do a better job of announcing that I’m going to be on. If you have questions but you’re shy or you’re not able to hit my time schedule, it’s very easy to contact me through the website. Anyone that’s ever sent me a question on my email has got an answer. You can send me your paintings too—I will give you my opinion, and I’ll be kind. I’m always kind.
Take care of yourself, your family, all your loved ones, stay out of trouble. God bless you and your family, and we’re going to fight the power.