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+Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Painter in Oil
+       A complete treatise on the principles and technique
+       necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors
+
+Author: Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+Release Date: January 6, 2010 [EBook #30877]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PAINTER IN OIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ritu Aggarwal and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: =November Beechwood.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+
+
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+                          A COMPLETE TREATISE
+                                  ON
+                     THE PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUE
+                             NECESSARY TO
+                THE PAINTING OF PICTURES IN OIL COLORS
+
+                                  BY
+                      DANIEL BURLEIGH PARKHURST
+
+    PUPIL OF WILLIAM SARTAIN, OF BOUGUEREAU AND TONY-FLEURY, AND OF
+         AIM�E MOROT; MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK WATER COLOR CLUB;
+            FORMERLY LECTURER ON ART IN DICKINSON COLLEGE;
+                AUTHOR OF "SKETCHING FROM NATURE," ETC.
+
+
+        "_La peinture � l'huile est bien difficile;
+        Mais beaucoup plus beau que la peinture � l'eau._"
+
+
+                                BOSTON:
+                      LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
+
+
+                 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
+
+                        _All Rights Reserved_
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+
+                   TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON
+
+              PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, NORWOOD PRESS
+                             NORWOOD MASS.
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                               A. M. P.
+                THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+  _September 4th, 1897._
+
+
+
+
+                               PREFACE
+
+
+Books of instruction in the practice of painting have rarely been
+successful. Chiefly because they have been too narrow in their point
+of view, and have dealt more with recipes than with principles. It is
+not possible to give any one manner of painting that shall be right
+for all men and all subjects. To say "do thus and so" will not teach
+any one to paint. But there are certain principles which underlie all
+painting, and all schools of painting; and to state clearly the most
+important of these will surely be helpful, and may accomplish
+something.
+
+It is the purpose of this book to deal practically with the problems
+which are the study of the painter, and to make clear, as far as may
+be, the principles which are involved in them. I believe that this is
+the only way in which written instruction on painting can be of any
+use.
+
+It is impossible to understand principles without some statement of
+theory; and a book in order to be practical must therefore be to some
+extent theoretical. I have been as concise and brief in the
+theoretical parts as clearness would permit of, and I trust they are
+not out of proportion to the practical parts. Either to paint well, or
+to judge well of a painting, requires an understanding of the same
+things: namely, the theoretical standpoint of the painter; the
+technical problems of color, composition, etc.; and the practical
+means, processes, and materials through which and with which these are
+worked out.
+
+It is obvious that one cannot become a good painter without the
+ability to know what is good painting, and to prefer it to bad
+painting. Therefore, I have taken space to cover, in some sort, the
+whole ground, as the best way to help the student towards becoming a
+good painter. If, also, the student of pictures should find in this
+book what will help him to appreciate more truly and more critically,
+I shall be gratified.
+
+                                                         D. B. P.
+
+  _December 4, 1897_
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                          PART I.--MATERIALS
+    CHAPTER                                                   PAGE
+         I. Observations                                         3
+        II. Canvases and Panels                                  6
+       III. Easels                                              15
+        IV. Brushes                                             20
+         V. Paints                                              33
+        VI. Vehicles and Varnishes                              61
+       VII. Palettes                                            65
+      VIII. Other Tools                                         69
+        IX. Studios                                             76
+
+
+                       PART II.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES
+
+         X. Mental Attitude                                     85
+        XI. Tradition and Individuality                         95
+       XII. Originality                                        103
+      XIII. The Artist and the Student                         107
+       XIV. How to Study                                       110
+
+
+                     PART III.--TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES
+
+        XV. Technical Preliminaries                            123
+       XVI. Drawing                                            126
+      XVII. Values                                             138
+     XVIII. Perspective                                        146
+       XIX. Light and Shade                                    151
+        XX. Composition                                        166
+       XXI. Color                                              184
+
+
+                     PART IV.--PRACTICAL APPLICATION
+
+      XXII. Representation                                     209
+     XXIII. Manipulation                                       224
+      XXIV. Copying                                            236
+       XXV. Kinds of Painting                                  242
+      XXVI. The Sketch                                         245
+     XXVII. The Study                                          254
+    XXVIII. Still Life                                         260
+      XXIX. Flowers                                            280
+       XXX. Portraits                                          286
+      XXXI. Landscape                                          309
+     XXXII. Marines                                            335
+    XXXIII. Figures                                            347
+     XXXIV. Procedure in a Picture                             371
+      XXXV. Difficulties of Beginners                          389
+
+
+
+
+                        LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+  NOVEMBER BEECHWOOD                    _Parkhurst_ _Frontispiece_
+  STRETCHERS                                                    11
+  CANVAS PLIERS                                                 13
+  DOUBLE-POINTED TACK                                           13
+  EASEL                                                         16
+  EASEL                                                         17
+  SKETCHING EASEL                                               18
+  SKETCHING EASEL                                               19
+  BRUSHES.--Red Sable, Round                                    22
+            Red Sable                                           23
+            Red Sable, Flat                                     24
+            Round Bristle                                       26
+            Flat Bristle                                        28
+            Flat pointed                                        29
+            Fan                                                 30
+  BRUSH CLEANER                                                 31
+  OIL COLORS                                                    54
+  OVAL PALETTE                                                  65
+  ARM PALETTE                                                   67
+  THE COLOR BOX                                                 70
+  PALETTE KNIFE                                                 71
+  THE SCRAPER                                                   72
+  THE OIL-CUP                                                   73
+  MAHL-STICKS                                                   73
+  THREE-LEGGED STOOL                                            74
+  SKETCHING CHAIR                                               74
+  SKETCHING UMBRELLA                                            75
+  DRAWING OF HANDS                      _D�rer_                134
+  EGGS. WHITE AGAINST WHITE                                    154
+  THE CANAL                             _Parkhurst_            156
+  BOHEMIAN WOMAN                        _Franz Hals_           159
+  SEWING BY LAMPLIGHT                   _Millet_               161
+  DESCENT FROM THE CROSS                                       163
+  THE GOLDEN STAIRS                                            174
+  THE SOWER                             _Millet_               175
+  RETURN TO THE FARM                    _Millet_               178
+  THE FISHER BOY                        _Franz Hals_           217
+  BOAR-HUNT                             _Snyders_              221
+  GOOD BOCK                             _Manet_                227
+  SKETCH OF A HILLSIDE                                         246
+  THE RIVER BANK                        _Parkhurst_            250
+  STUDY OF A BLOOMING-MILL              _Parkhurst_            257
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 1                                            265
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 2                                            266
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 3                                            267
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 4                                            269
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 5                                            270
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 6                                            271
+  SWEET PEAS                                                   282
+  D�RER                                 _by Himself_           289
+  PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER                _Whistler_             291
+  PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF                   _Valasquez_            293
+  PORTRAIT                              _Parkhurst_            297
+  HAYSTACKS IN SUNSHINE                 _Monet_                307
+  ON THE RACE TRACK                     _Degas_                314
+  WILLOW ROAD                           _Parkhurst_            317
+  ENTRANCE TO ZUYDER ZEE                _Clarkson Stanfield_   337
+  GIRL SPINNING                         _Millet_               345
+  SKETCH OF A FLUTE PLAYER              _Parkhurst_            355
+  MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST"      _Munkacsy_             363
+  BUCKWHEAT HARVEST                     _Millet_               368
+  STUDY OF FORTUNE                      _Angelo_               373
+  �BOUCH OF PORTRAIT                    _Th. Robinson_         379
+  LANDSCAPE PHOTO. NO. 1                                       394
+  LANDSCAPE PHOTO. NO. 2                                       395
+
+
+
+
+                                PART I
+
+                              MATERIALS
+
+
+
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I
+
+                         GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
+
+
+There is a false implication in the saying that "a poor workman blames
+his tools." It is not true that a good workman can do good work with
+bad tools. On the contrary, the good workman sees to it that he has
+good tools, and makes it a part of his good workmanship that they are
+in good condition.
+
+In painting there is nothing that will cause you more trouble than bad
+materials. You can get along with few materials, but you cannot get
+along with bad ones. That is not the place to economize. To do good
+work is difficult at best. Economize where it will not be a hindrance
+to you. Your tools can make your work harder or easier according to
+your selection of them. The relative cost of good and bad materials is
+of slight importance compared with the relative effect on your work.
+
+The way to economize is not to get anything which you do not need.
+Save on the non-essentials, and get as good a quality as you can of
+the essentials.
+
+Save on the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. You
+must feel free in your use of material. There is nothing which hampers
+you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting.
+If it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to
+be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of use of
+material.
+
+The essentials of painting are few, but these cannot be dispensed
+with. Put it out of your mind that any one of these five things can be
+got along without:--
+
+You must have something to paint _on_, canvas or panel. Have plenty of
+these.
+
+You must have something to set this canvas on--something to hold it up
+and in position. Your knees won't do, and you can't hold it in one
+hand. The lack of a practical easel will cost you far more in trouble
+and discouragement than the saving will make up for.
+
+You must have something to paint with. The brushes are most important;
+in kind, variety, and number. You cannot economize safely here.
+
+You must have paints. And you must have good ones. The best are none
+too good. Get the best. Pay a good price for them, use them freely,
+but don't waste them.
+
+And you must have something to hold them, and to mix them on; but here
+the quality and kind has less effect on your work than any other of
+your tools. But as the cost of the best of palettes is slight, you may
+as well get a good one.
+
+Now, if you will be economical, the way to do it is to take proper
+care of your tools _after you have got them_. Form the habit of using
+good tools as they should be used, and that will save you a great deal
+of money.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II
+
+                         CANVASES AND PANELS
+
+
+You should have plenty of canvas on hand, and it would be well if you
+had it all stretched ready for use. Many a good day's work is lost
+because of the time wasted in getting a canvas ready. It is not
+necessary to have many kinds or sizes. It is better in fact to settle
+on one kind of surface which suits you, and to have a few practical
+sizes of stretchers which will pack together well, and work always on
+these. You will find that by getting accustomed to these sizes you
+work more freely on them. You can pack them better, and you can frame
+them more conveniently, because one frame will always do for many
+pictures. Perhaps there is no one piece of advice which I can give you
+which will be of more practical use outside of the principles of
+painting, than this of keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas,
+and the keeping of a number of each always on hand.
+
+It is all well enough to talk about not showing one's work too soon.
+But we all do, and always will like to see our work under as favorable
+conditions as possible. And a good frame is one of the favorable
+conditions. But good frames are expensive, and it is a great advantage
+to be able to have a frame always at hand which you can see your work
+in from time to time; and if you only work on four sizes of canvas,
+say, then four frames, one for each size, will suit all your pictures
+and sketches. Use the same sizes for all kinds of work too, and the
+freedom will come, as I say, in the working on those sizes.
+
+Don't have odd sizes about. You can just as well as not use the
+regular sizes and proportions which colormen keep in stock, and there
+is an advantage in being able to get a canvas at short notice, and it
+will be one of your own sizes, and will fit your frame. All artists
+have gone through the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their
+stock, and it is one of the practical things that we all have to come
+down to sooner or later, and the sooner the better,--to have the sizes
+which we find we like best, not too many, and stick to them. I would
+have you take advantage of this, and decide early in your work, and so
+get rid of one source of bother.
+
+=Rough and Smooth.=--The best canvas is of linen. Cotton is used for
+sketching canvas. But you would do well always to use good grounds to
+work on. You can never tell beforehand how your work will turn out;
+and if you should want to keep your work, or find it worth while to go
+on with it, you would be glad that you had begun it on a good linen
+canvas. The linen is stronger and firmer, and when it has a "grain,"
+the grain is better.
+
+=Grain.=--The question of grain is not easy to speak about without the
+canvas, yet it is often a matter of importance. There are many kinds
+of surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged. Some grain it is
+well the canvas should have; too great smoothness will tend to make
+the painting "slick," which is not a pleasant quality. A grain gives
+the canvas a "tooth," and takes the paint better. Just what grain is
+best depends on the work. If you are going to have very fine detail in
+the picture use a smoothish canvas; but whenever you are going to
+paint heavily, roughly, or loosely, the rough canvas takes the paint
+better. The grain of the canvas takes up the paint, helps to hold it,
+and to disguise, in a way, the body of it. For large pictures, too,
+the canvas must necessarily be strong, and the mere weight of the
+fabric will give it a rough surface.
+
+=Knots.=--For ordinary work do not be afraid of a canvas which has
+some irregularities and knots on it. If they are not too marked they
+will not be unpleasantly noticeable in the picture, and may even give
+a relief to too great evenness.
+
+=Twilled Canvas.=--The diagonal twill which some canvases have has
+always been a favorite surface with painters, particularly the
+portrait painters. This grain is a sympathetic one to work on, takes
+paint well, and is not in any way objectionable in the finished
+picture.
+
+=The best.=--The best way is to try several kinds, and when you find
+one which has a sympathetic working quality, and which has a good
+effect in the finished picture, note the quality and use it. You will
+find such a canvas among both the rough and smooth kinds, and so you
+can use either, as the character of your work suggests. It is well to
+have both rough and smooth ready at hand.
+
+=Absorbent.=--Some canvases are primed so as to absorb the oil during
+the process of painting. They are very useful for some kinds of work,
+and many painters choose them; but unless you have some experience
+with the working of them, they are apt to add another source of
+perplexity to the difficulties of painting, so you had better not
+experiment with them, but use the regular non-absorbent kinds.
+
+=Old and New.=--The canvas you work on should not be too freshly
+primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well
+dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is
+old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and
+keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had it in your own possession a
+long while, you know it is not fresh. Canvas is all the better if it
+is a year old.
+
+=Grounds.=--The color of the grounds should be of interest to you.
+Canvases are prepared for the market usually in three colors,--a sort
+of cool gray, a warm light ochrish yellow, and a cool pinkish gray.
+Which is best is a matter of personal liking. It would be well to
+consider what the effect of the ground will be on the future condition
+of the picture when the colors begin to effect each other, as they
+inevitably will sooner or later.
+
+Vibert in his "_La Science de la Peinture_" advocates a white ground.
+He says that as the color will be sure to darken somewhat with time,
+it is well that the ground should have as little to do with it as
+possible. If the ground is white there is so much the less dark
+pigment to influence your painting. He is right in this; but white is
+a most unsympathetic color to work over, and if you do not want to lay
+in your work with _frott�es_, a tint is pleasanter. For most work the
+light ochrish ground will be found best; but you may be helped in
+deciding by the general tone of your picture. If the picture is to be
+bright and lively, use a light canvas, and if it is to be sombre, use
+a dark one. Remember, too, that the color of your ground will
+influence the appearance of every touch of paint you put on it by
+contrast, until the priming is covered and out of sight.
+
+=Stretchers.=--The keyed stretcher, with wedges to force the corners
+open and so tighten the canvas when necessary, is the only proper one
+to use. For convenience of use many kinds have been invented, but you
+will find the one here illustrated the best for general purposes. The
+sides may be used for ends, and _vice versa_. If you arrange your
+sizes well, you will have the sides of one size the right length for
+the ends of another. Then you need fewer sizes, and they are surer to
+pack evenly.
+
+[Illustration: =Stretchers.=]
+
+=Stretching.=--You will often have to stretch your own canvases, so
+you should know how to do it. There is only one way to make the canvas
+lay smoothly without wrinkles: Cut the canvas about two inches longer
+and wider than the stretcher, so that it will easily turn down over
+the edges. Begin by putting in _one tack_ to hold the _middle_ of one
+end. Then turn the whole thing round, and stretch tightly lengthwise,
+and put a tack to hold it into the _middle_ of the other end. Do the
+same way with the two sides. Only four tacks so far, which have
+stretched the canvas in the middle two ways. As you do this, you must
+see that the canvas is on square. Don't drive the tacks all the way in
+at first till you know that this is so. Then give each another blow,
+so that the head binds the canvas more than the body of the tack does;
+for the pull of the canvas against the side of the tack will tear,
+while the head will hold more strands. This first two ways stretching
+must be as tight as any after stretching will be or you will have
+wrinkles in the middle, while the purpose is to pull out the wrinkles
+towards the corners. Now go back to the ends: stretch, and place one
+tack each side of the first one. In a large canvas you may put two
+each side, but not more, and you must be sure that the strain is even
+on both sides. Don't pull too much; for next you must do the same with
+the other end which should bear _half_ of the whole stretch. Do just
+the same now with the two sides. Now continue stretching and
+tacking,--each side of the middle tacks on each end, then on each
+side, then to the ends again, and so gradually working towards the
+corners, when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles will
+disappear, if you have done your work well. Don't hurry and try to
+drive too many tacks into a side at a time, for to have to do it all
+over again would take more time than to have worked slowly and done it
+properly. You may of course stretch a small canvas with your hands,
+but it will make your fingers sore, and you cannot get large canvases
+tight without help. You will do well to have a pair of "canvas pliers"
+which are specially shaped to pull the canvas and hold it strongly
+without tearing it, as other pliers are sure to do.
+
+[Illustration: =Canvas Pliers.=]
+
+When you take canvases out-doors to work, you will find it useful to
+strap two together, face inwards, with a double-pointed tack like this
+in each corner to keep them apart. You will not have any trouble with
+the fresh paint, as each canvas will then protect the other. You can
+pack freshly painted canvases for shipping in the same way.
+
+[Illustration: =Double-pointed Tack.=]
+
+=Panels.=--For small pictures panels are very useful, and when great
+detail is desirable, and fine, smooth work would make an accidental
+tear impossible to mend well, they are most valuable. They are made of
+mahogany and oak generally.
+
+Panels are useful, too, for sketching, as you can easily pack them.
+They are light, and the sun does not shine through the backs. You can
+get them for about the same cost as canvas for small sizes, which are
+what you would be likely to use, and they are often more convenient,
+particularly for use in the sketch-box.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III
+
+                                EASELS
+
+
+The important thing in an easel is that it should be steady and firm;
+that it should hold the canvas without trembling, and so that it will
+not fall as you paint out towards the edges. You often paint with a
+heavy hand, and you must not have to hold on to your picture with one
+hand and paint with the other. Nothing is more annoying than a poor
+easel, and nothing will give you more solid satisfaction, than the
+result of a little generosity in paying for a good one. The ideal
+thing for the studio is, of course, the great "screw easel," which is
+heavy, safe, convenient, and expensive. We would like to have one, but
+we can't afford it, so we won't speak of it. The next best thing is an
+ordinary easel which doesn't cost a great deal, but which is firm and
+solid and practical. Don't get one of the various three-legged folding
+easels which cost about seventy-five cents or a dollar. They tumble
+down too often and too easily. The wear and tear on the temper they
+cause is more than they are worth. It is true that they fold up out of
+the way. But they fold up when you don't expect them to; and you
+ought to be able to afford room enough for an easel anyway, if you
+paint at all.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The illustration shows one of the firmest of the inexpensive easels,
+and one which will fold up into as small a compass as any practical
+easel will. It will hold perfectly well a good-sized canvas, even with
+its frame, and will not tumble over on slight provocation.
+
+Another good easel is shown on p. 17. It is more lightly made, not so
+well braced, but is more convenient for raising and lowering the
+picture, as the catch allows the whole thing to be raised and lowered
+at once.
+
+If you are to save money on your easel, don't save on the construction
+and strength of it, but on the finish. Let the polish and varnish go,
+but get a well-made easel with solid wood. The heavier it is, the less
+easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will hold
+your picture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Sketching Easels.=--The same things are of importance in an easel for
+out-of-door work that are needed in a studio easel, except that it
+must also be portable. So if you must have a folding easel, get a
+_good_ sketching easel; or if you can't have one for in-doors and one
+for out-doors, then pay a good price for a sketching easel, and use it
+in doors and out also. There are two things which are absolutely
+essential in a sketching easel. It _must_ have legs which may be made
+longer and shorter, and it _must hold_ the canvas firmly. It is not
+enough to lean the canvas on it. The wind blows it over just when you
+are putting on an interesting touch, or the touch itself upsets it,
+either of which is most aggravating, and does not tend to
+satisfactory work. You must not be obliged to sit down to work just
+where you don't want to, a little this side or a little that side of
+the chosen spot, because the ground isn't even there and the easel
+will not stand straight. You must be able to make a leg longer or
+shorter as the unevenness of the ground necessitates. It is impossible
+to work among rocks or on hillsides if you cannot make your easel
+stand as you want it. These things are not to be got round. You might
+as well not work as to sketch with a poor sketching easel. And you
+must pay a good price for it. The sketching easel that is good for
+anything has never been made to sell for a dollar and a half. Pay
+three or four dollars for it, at any rate, and use it the rest of your
+life. I use an easel every day that I have worked on every summer for
+twelve years. Most artists are doing much the same. The easel is not
+expensive _per year_ at that rate! It is such an easel as that shown
+on the opposite page, and is satisfactory for all sorts of work.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If you are working in a strong wind, or if you have a large canvas,
+such an easel as this illustration shows is the best and safest yet
+invented, and it is as good for other work, and particularly when you
+want to stand up. And either of these easels will be perfectly
+satisfactory to use in the house.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV
+
+                               BRUSHES
+
+
+An old brush that has been properly cared for is generally better than
+a new one. It seems to have accommodated itself to your way of
+painting, and falls in with your peculiarities. It is astonishing how
+attached you get to your favorite brushes, and how loath you are to
+finally give them up. What if you have no others to take their places?
+
+Don't look upon your brushes as something to get as few of as
+possible, and which you would not get at all if you could help it.
+There is nothing which comes nearer to yourself than the brush which
+carries out your idea in paint. You should be always on the lookout
+for a good brush; and whenever you run across one, buy it, no matter
+how many you have already. Don't look twice at a bad brush, and don't
+begrudge an extra ten cents in the buying of a good one. If you are
+sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes, then take the more care
+of them. Use them well and they will last a long while; then don't
+always use the same handful. Break in new ones now and again. Keep a
+dozen or two in use, and lay some aside before they are worn out, and
+use newer ones. So when at last you cannot use one any more, you have
+others of the same kind which will fill its place.
+
+Have all kinds and sizes of brushes. Have a couple of dozen in use,
+and a couple of dozen which you are not using, and a couple of dozen
+more that have never been used.
+
+What! six dozen?
+
+Well, why not? Every time you paint you look over your brushes and
+pick out those which look friendly to what you are going to do. You
+want all sorts of brushes. You can't paint all sorts of pictures with
+the same kind of brush. Your brush represents your hand. You must give
+every kind of touch with it. You want to change sometimes, and you
+want a clean brush from time to time. You don't want to feel that you
+are limited; that whether you want to or not these four brushes you
+must use because they are all you have! You can't paint that way. That
+six dozen you will not buy all at once. When you get your first
+outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. As you look over the stock and
+pick out two or three of this kind, and two or three of that, you will
+be astonished to see how many you have--yet you don't know which to
+discard. Don't discard any. Buy them all. Then, if you don't paint, it
+will not be the fault of your brushes. And from time to time get a
+half a dozen which have just struck you as especially good ones, and
+quite unconsciously you acquire your six dozen--and even more, I hope!
+
+=Bristle and Sable.=--The brushes suitable for oil painting are of two
+kinds,--bristle and sable hair. Of the latter, _red_ sable are the
+only ones you should get. They are expensive, but they have a spring
+and firmness that the black sable does not have. Camel's hair is out
+of the question. Don't get any, if you can only have camel's hair. It
+is soft and flabby when used in oil and you can't work well with such
+brushes. The same is true of the black sable. But though the red
+sables are expensive, you do not need many of them, nor large ones, so
+the cost of those you will need is slight.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The only sables which are in any degree indispensable to you are the
+smaller sizes of _riggers_. These are thin, long brushes which are
+useful for outlining, and all sorts of fine, sharp touches. You use
+them to go over a drawing with paint in laying in a picture, and for
+branches, twigs, etc. As their name implies, you must have them for
+the rigging of vessels in marine painting also. The three sizes shown
+in the cut on the opposite page are those you should have, and if you
+get two of each, you will find them useful in all sorts of places.
+When you buy them, see that they are elastic and firm, that they come
+naturally and easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs. Test
+them by moistening them, and then pressing the point on the
+thumb-nail. They should bend evenly through the whole length of the
+hair. Reject any which seem "weak in the back." If it lays flat toward
+the point and bends all in one place near the ferrule, it is a poor
+brush.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These three larger and thicker sizes come in very useful often and it
+would be well if you were to have these too. Sometimes a thick, long
+sable brush will serve better than another for heavy lines, etc.
+
+All these brushes are round. One largish flat sable like this it would
+be well to have; but these are all the sables necessary.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Bristle Brushes.=--The sable brush or pencil is often necessary; but
+oil painting is practically always done with the bristle, or "hog
+hair," brush. These are the ones which will make up the variety of
+kinds in your six dozen. A good bristle brush is not to be bought
+merely by taking the first which comes to hand. Good brushes have very
+definite qualities, and you should have no trouble in picking them
+out. Nevertheless, you will take the trouble to select them, if you
+care to have any satisfaction in using them.
+
+=The Bristle.=--You want your brush to be made of the hair just as it
+grew on the hog. All hair, in its natural state, has what is called
+the "flag." That is the fine, smooth taper towards the natural end of
+it, and generally the division into two parts. This gives the bristle,
+no matter how thick it may be, a silky fineness towards the end; and
+when this part only of the bristle is used in the brush, you will have
+all the firmness and elasticity of the bristle, and also a delicacy
+and smoothness and softness quite equal to a sable. But this, in the
+short hair of an artist's brush, wastes all the rest of the length of
+the hair; for it is only by cutting off the "flag," and using that,
+which is only an inch or so long, that you can make the brush. Yet the
+bristle may be several inches long, and all this is sacrificed for
+that little inch of "flag." Naturally the "flag" is expensive, and
+naturally also the manufacturer uses the rest of the hair for inferior
+brushes. These latter you should avoid. These inferior brushes are
+made from the part of the bristle remaining, by sandpapering, or
+otherwise making the ends fine again after they are cut off. But it is
+impossible to make a brush which has the right quality in this way.
+
+=Selection.=--Never buy a brush without testing its evenness, as has
+been advised in the care of sables. Feel carefully the end of the
+bristles also, and see that the "flag" is there. All brushes are kept
+together for packing by paste in the bristles. See that this is soaked
+off before you test your brush.
+
+=Round or Flat.=--It will make little difference whether you use round
+or flat brushes. The flat brush is most commonly preferred now, and
+most brushes are made that way. So you had better get that kind,
+unless you have some special reason for preferring the round ones.
+
+=Handles.=--Whether the handles are nicely polished, also, is of no
+importance. What you are to look to is the quality of the bristles and
+of the making; the best brushes are likely to be nicely finished all
+over. But if you do find a really good brush which is cheaper because
+of the plain handle, and you wish to save money, do it by buying the
+plain-handled one.
+
+=Sizes and Shapes.=--You will need some quite large brushes and some
+smaller ones, some square ones and some pointed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Here are three round brushes which, for all sorts of painting, will be
+of very general utility. For most of your brushes select the long and
+thin, rather than the short and thick ones. The stubby brush is a
+useless sort of thing for most work. There are men who use them and
+like them, but most painters prefer the more flexible and springy
+brush, if it is not weak. So, too, the brush should not be too thick.
+A thick brush takes up too much paint into itself, and does not
+change its tint so readily. For rubbing over large surfaces where a
+good deal of the same color is thickly spread on the canvas, the
+thick, strong brush is a very proper tool. But where there is to be
+any delicacy of tone, it is too clumsy; you want a more delicate
+instrument. The same proportions hold with large and small brushes, so
+these remarks apply to all.
+
+=Flat Brushes.=--This is particularly applicable to the flat brushes,
+and the more that most of your brushes will be flat.
+
+You should have both broad-ended and pointed brushes among your flat
+ones. For broad surfaces, such as backgrounds and skies, the broad
+ends come in well; and for the small ones there are many square
+touches where they are useful. The most practical sizes are those
+shown on page 28. But you will often need much larger brushes than the
+largest of these.
+
+For the smaller brushes you will have to be very careful in your
+selections. For only the silkiest of bristle will do good work in a
+very small brush, and then the temptation is to use a sable, which
+should be resisted. Why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is
+that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. There is a
+looseness that is a quality to prize. All the hardness, flatness, and
+rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. When
+you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and
+woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and
+luminosity, and of freshness and freedom of touch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Some of the most useful sizes of the more pointed brushes are shown on
+opposite page. There are, of course, sizes between these, and many
+larger; but these are what you will find the best. It would be better
+to have more of each size than to have more sizes. You should try to
+work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a rule, work more with
+the larger than with the smaller brush, even for fine work. You will
+work with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you learn to put
+in small touches with the largest brush that will do it. Breadth is
+not painting with a large brush; but the man who works always with a
+small brush instinctively looks for the things a small brush is
+adapted to, and will unconsciously drift into a little way of working.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The fan brush, such as here illustrated, is a useful brush, not to
+paint with, but to flick or drag across an outline or other part of a
+painting when it is getting too hard and liney. You may not want it
+once a month, but it is very useful when you do want it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Care of Brushes.=--The best of economy in brushes lies in your care
+of them. You should never let the paint dry on them nor go too long
+without careful washing. It is not necessary to wash them every day
+with soap and water, but they would be the better for such treatment.
+
+Quite often, once a week, say, you should wash your brushes carefully
+with soap and water. You may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as
+that may melt the glue which holds the bristles together in the
+ferrule. Use strong soap with plenty of lye in it--common bar soap, or
+better, the old-fashioned soft soap. Hold several brushes together in
+one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into
+or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of
+the other hand. When the paint is well worked into the lather, do the
+same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap,
+but not in the water. Then rinse them, and carefully work them clean
+one by one, with the fingers. When you lay them aside to dry, see that
+the bristles are all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect
+condition for next painting.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Cleaning.=--But from day to day you need not take quite so much
+trouble as this. True, the brushes will keep in better condition if
+washed in soap and water every day, but it is not always convenient to
+do this. You may then use the brush-cleaner. This is a tin box with a
+false bottom of perforated tin or of wire netting about half-way down,
+which allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above it; so that
+when you put your brush in and rub it around, the paint is rinsed from
+it, and settles through the perforations to the bottom, leaving the
+liquid clear again above it. If you use this carefully, cleaning one
+brush at a time, not rubbing it too hard, and pulling the hairs
+straight by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep your brushes in
+good condition quite easily. But they will need a careful
+soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. The liquid best
+for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. Never use
+turpentine to rinse your brushes. It will make them brittle and harsh;
+but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not affect the
+brush.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V
+
+                                PAINTS
+
+
+Of all your materials, it is on your paints that quality has the most
+vital effect. With bad paint your work is hopeless. You may get an
+effect that looks all right, but how long will it stand, and how much
+better may it not have been if your colors had been good? You can tell
+nothing about it. You may have luck, and your work hold; or you may
+not have luck, and in a month your picture is ruined. Don't trust to
+luck. Keep that element out as much as you can, always. But in the
+matter of paints, if you count on luck at all, remember that the
+chances are altogether against you. Don't let yourself be persuaded to
+indulge in experiments with colors which you have reason to think are
+of doubtful quality. Keep on the safe side, and use colors you are
+sure of, even if they do cost a little more--at first; for they are
+cheaper in the long-run. And even in the time of using of one tube,
+generally the good paint does enough more work to cover the difference
+of cost.
+
+=Bad Paints.=--Suspect colors which are too cheap. Good work is
+expensive. Ability and skill and experience count in making artists'
+colors, and must be paid for. If you would get around the cost of
+first-class material you must mix it with inferior material.
+
+The first effect you will notice in using poor colors is a certain
+hindrance to your facility, due to the fact that the color is
+weak--does not have the snap and strength in it that you expect. The
+paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead and flat. This you
+will find particularly in the finer and lighter yellows. You need not
+fear much adulteration in those paints which are naturally cheap, of
+course. It is in those higher-priced colors, on which you must largely
+depend for the more sparkling qualities, that you will have most
+trouble.
+
+Unevenness of working, and lack of covering or mixing power, you will
+find in poor paints also. They have no strength, and you must keep
+adding them more and more to other colors to get them to do their
+work. All these things are bothersome. They make you give more
+attention to the pigments while working than you ought to, and when
+all is done, your picture is weak and negative in color.
+
+Another effect to be feared from bad colors is that your work will not
+stand; the colors fade or change, and the paint cracks. The former
+effect is from bad material, or bad combinations of them in the
+working, and the latter mainly from bad vehicles used in grinding
+them.
+
+I have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their
+painting--bad paint and bad combinations. Of course you can use good
+colors so that the picture will not stand. But that will be your own
+fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no
+possibility do good work with.
+
+=Good Paints.=--The three things on which the quality of good paint
+depends are good pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation.
+
+The pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. The
+term _pigment_ technically means the powdered substance which, when
+mixed with a vehicle, as oil, becomes _paint_. The most important
+pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly chemical compounds,
+including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths.
+
+As a rule, the colors made from earths may be classed as all
+permanent; those from chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be;
+and those of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions. Some
+colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when used in oil.
+Further on I will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors
+in detail. I wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the
+material of which the pigment is made has much to do with the sort of
+work that that pigment will do, and with the permanency of the effect
+which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look like
+another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different.
+
+=The Vehicles.=--The vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and
+plastic are quite as important in their effects. They not only have to
+do with the business of drying, owing to the substances used as
+dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action of one
+pigment on another.
+
+=The Preparation.=--Finally, the preparation of the pigment demands
+the utmost skill and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. The
+paints used by the old masters were few and simple, and the fact that
+they prepared them themselves had much to do with the manner in which
+they kept their color. The paints used now are less simple. We do not
+prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we
+wished to, so we are the more dependent on the integrity of the
+colorman who does it for us.
+
+The preparation of the paint begins with the chemical or physical
+preparation of each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to
+produce any particular color; and finally the mechanical process of
+grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the proper fineness
+and smoothness.
+
+=Grinding.=--The color which the artist uses must be most evenly and
+perfectly ground. The grinding which will do for ordinary house paints
+will not do for the artist's colors. Neither will the chemical
+processes suitable for the one serve for the other. Not only must the
+machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for
+artist's colors. Therefore it is that the specialization of
+color-making is most important to good colors for the use of the
+artist.
+
+=Reliable Makers.=--If you would work to the best advantage as far as
+your colors are concerned, both as to getting the best effects which
+pure pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give you, and as to
+the permanency of those effects when you have gotten them, see to it
+that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman.
+
+It is not my province to say whose colors you should use; doubtless
+there are many colormen who make artists' materials honestly and well.
+Nevertheless, I may mention that there are no colors which have been
+more thoroughly tested, both by the length of time they have been in
+the possession of painters, and by the number of painters who have
+used them, than those of Winsor and Newton of London. No colors have
+been so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly in this
+country, as these, and none are so well known for their evenness and
+excellence of quality.
+
+I do not say that these manufacturers do not make any colors which
+should not go on the palette of the cautious artist--I believe that
+they do not make that claim themselves; but such colors as they do
+assert to be good, pure, and permanent, you may feel perfectly safe in
+using, and be sure that they are as well made as colors can be. This
+is as much as can be said of any paints, and more than can be said of
+most. I have used these colors for many years, and my own experience
+is that they have always been all that a painter need ask.
+
+The fact that Winsor and Newton's colors can be found in any town
+where colors can be had at all, makes me the more free to recommend
+them, as you can always command them. This fact also speaks for the
+general approval of them.
+
+Inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to be permanent and others
+are, it is for you to compose your palette of those which will combine
+safely. This you can do with a little care. Some colors are permanent
+by themselves or with some colors, but not in combination with certain
+others. You should then take the trouble to consider these chemical
+relationships.
+
+It is not necessary for you to study the chemistry of paints, but you
+may read what has been ascertained as to the effects of combinations,
+and act accordingly. There are practically duplications of
+color-quality in pigments which are bad, and in pigments which are
+good; so that you can use the good color instead of the bad one to do
+the same work. The good color will cost more, but there is no way of
+making the bad color good, so you must pay the difference due to the
+cost of the better material, or put up with the result of using bad
+colors.
+
+=Chemical Changes.=--The causes of change of color in pigments are of
+four kinds, all of them chemical effects. 1, the action of light; 2,
+the action of the atmosphere; 3, the action of the medium; and 4, the
+action of the pigments themselves on each other. The action of light
+is to bring about or to assist in the decomposition of the pigment. It
+is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a
+sort of sheath for the color particles. The manner in which light does
+its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. The action
+of light is very slow, but it seems to do the same thing in a long
+time that heat would do in a short time.
+
+Some colors are unaffected or little affected by light, and of course
+you will use them in preference to all others. The atmosphere affects
+the paint because of certain chemical elements contained in it, which
+tend to cause new combinations with the materials which are already
+in combination in the pigment. The action of the oxygen in the air is
+the chief agent in affecting the pigment, and it is here particularly
+that light, and especially sunlight, assists in decomposition. The air
+of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric and sulphurous acids
+and sulphuretted hydrogen. This latter gas is most effective in
+changing oil paintings, because of its action in turning white lead
+dark; and as white lead is the basis of many qualities in painting,
+this gas may have a very general action.
+
+Moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of change, but there is
+little to be dreaded from this, as the oil protects the colors.
+
+Oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to have an effect on
+colors liable to change from that element, and many vehicles contain
+materials to hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration
+of the pigment. Bad oil will tend to crack the picture also. The
+greatest care should be used in this direction, as the most permanent
+colors may be ruined by bad vehicles.
+
+Pigments will not have a deteriorating effect on each other as long as
+they are solid. But if one of them is soluble in the medium, then
+chemical action commences; but as most pigments are somewhat soluble,
+there is always some danger in mixing them. The best we can do is, as
+I said before, to try to have on the palette, as far as possible,
+only colors which are friendly to each other.
+
+As a student you should not be much occupied, however, with all this.
+You must expect that all color will change somewhat. But you need not
+use those which change immediately or markedly, and you may use them
+in a way which will tend to make them change as little as may be.
+Colors have stood for years, and what is practical permanence, not
+perfect permanence, is all you need look for. If you think too much of
+the permanence of your colors, it will interfere with the directness
+of your study. Therefore, decide on a palette which is as complete and
+safe as you can make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and think
+no more about it.
+
+When you need to add a new color to your palette, choose it with
+reference to those already on it, and go ahead. This is what the whole
+subject resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student.
+
+=Opaque and Transparent Colors.=--Some colors, like the madders, have
+a jelly-like consistency when mixed with oil, others, the earths among
+them, are dense and opaque. We speak of them respectively as
+"transparent" and "solid" colors. These qualities, which divide the
+paints into two classes, have no relation to their permanency. As far
+as that is concerned you use them in the same way, as some
+transparent colors are safe and some fugitive; and the same with the
+opaque colors.
+
+The only difference is in the fact that, as a rule, the solid colors
+are better dryers. But you will notice that while you may mix these
+colors together as though this difference between them did not exist,
+in certain processes you use them differently. So you will see,
+farther on, that for a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or
+semi-opaque colors, for a scumble you naturally use the solid ones.
+You should know, however, for the sake of clearness, just what is
+meant when "solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken of, and what
+is meant by "transparent" color.
+
+=Safe and Unsafe Colors.=--Beyond what has been said of the causes of
+change in colors it is not necessary that you should know the chemical
+constituents of them. If you want to look into the matter further
+there are books, such as "Field's Chromatography," which treat fully
+of the subject, and which you may study.
+
+But practically you should know which colors are to be depended on and
+which not. Let us consider the principal colors in detail then, merely
+as to their actual stability. I will speak of them in connection with
+the plates of colors at the end of this book. I would like you to
+compare what is said of each color with the corresponding color in the
+plates. Those colors in the plates which are not spoken of here, you
+may consider as useful in showing you the character of different
+colors which are made, but which may or may not be used, according as
+you may need them. I shall not attempt to mention all the pigments
+that are in the market. You need never use more than fifteen or twenty
+all told. Many painters use more, it is true; but if you know how to
+make the best use of that number, you may safely wait till you "grow
+to them" before you bother with more. And I shall speak only of those
+which you will find essential or most generally useful, and those
+which should be particularly avoided.
+
+=Permanency.=--It should be stated what is meant by a permanent color.
+There is no color which is not to be influenced in some way. The most
+sound of pigments will change if the conditions favor the change. When
+we speak of a permanent color, we mean only one which under the usual
+conditions will stand for an indefinite time. By which is meant
+ordinary diffused daylight, not direct sunlight, and the ordinary air
+under normal conditions. If there be direct sunlight, you may expect
+your picture to change sooner or later. But one does not hang his
+pictures where the sun's rays will fall on them. If there is any
+exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer.
+Or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the
+picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother
+for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which
+depends on normal conditions of atmosphere would do.
+
+Let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent color is one which
+will stand unchanged for an indefinite length of time in a room which
+is of the usual condition of temperature and freedom from moisture,
+and where the light is diffused, and such that the direct rays of the
+sun are not on the picture often, or to any great extent. Cold will
+not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed in that condition,
+but to bend or roll it while it is very cold will of course crack it,
+and sudden and extreme changes of temperature may have the same
+effect. In other words, some care must be used with all pictures as a
+matter of course.
+
+
+                              COLOR LIST
+
+=Whites.=--_Zinc white_ is the only permanent white, but it lacks body
+and is little used. The lead whites, _flake_, _silver_, _cremnitz_,
+will darken in time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change
+with or affect change in other pigments. The zinc white is liable to
+crack. We have no perfect white, so practically you may consider the
+lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do.
+
+=Yellows.=--_Cadmium_ is permanent in all three of its forms. It is a
+color the permanence of which is of great importance; for its
+brilliancy is quite essential to modern painting, and if it were not
+permanent, the picture would soon lose the very quality for which the
+color was used. _The chromes_, which are of similar color-quality, are
+less permanent, and are almost sure to turn to a horny sort of yellow;
+and a green, which by their use was bright and sparkling, will, in a
+few months, lose its freshness--this cadmium will not do. Cadmium is
+also to be preferred to chrome, because it is of a much finer
+tonality. Greens and yellows made by the admixture of chrome are apt
+to be crude as compared with those in which cadmium was used.
+
+_Strontian yellow_ is a permanent and most useful light yellow, much
+to be preferred to all other citron yellows except the pale cadmium,
+and can be used in place of that if necessary. They are both expensive
+colors of about the same cost.
+
+_Naples yellow_ was a very prominent pigment with the older painters.
+It is still very much used, but in the simplification of your palette
+you may as well leave it out, as you can get the same qualities with
+cadmium and white. It is durable and safe, but adds another tube to
+your palette which you can well dispense with.
+
+_The ochres_ are among the oldest and safest of pigments. You can use
+them with any colors which are themselves permanent. There are several
+of them,--_yellow ochre_, _Roman ochre_, _transparent gold ochre_, and
+others. They are all native earths, and though they contain iron, they
+are sufficiently inert to be thoroughly sound colors.
+
+_The siennas_, burnt and raw, are like the ochres, native earths, very
+old and permanent colors, and may be used anywhere.
+
+_The umbers_ are in the same class with the siennas and ochres. They
+should all rank among the yellows. The browns of umber and sienna will
+make greens with blues.
+
+_Indian yellow and yellow lake_ should both be avoided as fugitive.
+
+_Aureolin_ is a rich, warm golden yellow of the greatest permanence,
+and should be used when Indian yellow and yellow lake would be used if
+they were permanent.
+
+=Reds.=--The _vermilions_ are permanent when well made. They are of
+great body and power, as well as delicacy. They are of two
+kinds,--_Chinese_, which is bluish in tone, and _scarlet_ and _orange
+vermilion_, which have the yellow quality. Both kinds are useful to
+the palette because of the practical necessities of mixing.
+
+_Light red_ is a deep, warm red earth, made by calcining ochre, and
+has the same permanence as the other ochres. It is a fine color, of
+especial value in painting flesh, and mixes with everything safely.
+
+_The madders_--_rose_, _pink_, _purple_, and _madder carmine_--are the
+only transparent reds which are permanent. Whatever the name given
+them, they should not be confounded with the _lakes_, which are
+absolutely untrustworthy. By reference to the plates you will see that
+the madders are practically the same as the lakes in color when first
+used. But the lakes fade and the madders do not. The madders cost
+about twice as much as the lakes; but you must pay the difference, for
+the lakes cannot be made to stand, and you must have the color. There
+is nothing for it but to pay twice as much and buy the madders.
+
+_The lakes_--_scarlet_, _geranium_, _crimson_, and _purple_--are all
+bad. The madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly
+used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad
+effect on the picture from cracking.
+
+Distinguish the so-called _madder lakes_ and the _lakes_; and between
+_carmine_, which is a lake, and _madder carmine_, which is a madder.
+
+=Blues.=--The _ultramarine_ of the old masters is practically unused
+to-day because of its cost. But the artificial ultramarines, while not
+quite of the same purity of color, are equally permanent, and are in
+every respect worthy to be used. Of these the _brilliant ultramarine_
+is the nearest in color to the real lapis lazuli. The _French
+ultramarine_ is less clear and vivid, but is a splendid deep blue, and
+most useful. The so-called _permanent blue_ is not quite so permanent
+as its name implies, but permanent enough for practical purposes.
+
+_Cobalt blue_ and _cerulean blue_ are two pigments, one very light and
+clear, the other darker, which are made of the oxide of the metal
+cobalt. In oil they are permanent, and do not change when mixed with
+other colors. For delicate tints, when the tones are to be subtly gray
+yet full of the primary colors, the cobalts are indispensable. You
+should always have them on hand, and generally on your palette.
+Cerulean blue is of less importance than the other, but in very clear,
+delicate blue skies it is often the only color which will get the
+effect.
+
+_Prussian blue_ possesses a depth and power and a quality of color
+which make it unique. The greenish tone gives it great value in
+certain combinations _as far as its tinting effect is concerned_. But
+it is not reliable as a pigment. It changes under various conditions,
+and fades with the light. It is not to be depended upon. _Antwerp
+blue_, a weaker kind of Prussian blue, is even more fugitive. It is a
+pity that these colors will not stand, but as they will not, we must
+get along without them.
+
+_Indigo_ has a certain grayish quality which is useful sometimes, but
+it cannot be placed among the even moderately permanent colors.
+
+_The blacks_ may be classed as blues, because they will make green if
+mixed with yellow. Considered as blues, they are, of course, dense and
+negative, and should not be too freely used. But they are all
+permanent. The only ones we need speak of are _ivory black_, which has
+a reddish cast, and _blue black_, which is weaker, but lacks the
+purplish note, which is often an advantage.
+
+=Greens.=--We need mention only a few greens. There are numerous
+greens, of various degrees of permanence, but it is not necessary to
+speak of all the colors on the market. You could not use them all if
+you had them, and we may as well confine ourselves to those we really
+need.
+
+_Veridian_, or _emeraude green_, is the deepest and coldest of our
+greens, and is permanent. It is too cold, and looks even more so at
+night. In use it needs the addition of some yellow which holds its own
+at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting will be impossible in
+gaslight, and even worse under electric light.
+
+_Emerald green_ is the same as the French _Veronese_ green, and is
+generally permanent. It is said to turn dark, and does lose some of
+its brilliancy with time and the effect of impure air. But there are
+places where one needs it, especially in sketching, and it is well to
+use it sometimes. But bear in mind that it is not absolutely
+permanent, and as the quality that it gives, brilliant light green, is
+the very one it will lose should it change, don't expect too much of
+it.
+
+_Terre verte_ is a very weak color. But it is most tender in its
+quality, and is permanent to all intents and purposes. It may get
+slightly darker in time, but will not lose the qualities for which it
+will be used. It is very useful to use with ivory black or elsewhere,
+to slightly modify a reddish tendency, and is a fine glazing color.
+
+_The chrome greens_, by whatever name, Brunswick green, or the
+better-known Cinnabar or Zinnober greens, are all bad. They are useful
+colors as color, but they will not stand, and you will even get better
+color by mixing certain yellows and blues than these will give you, so
+you had better lay them aside, tempting as they are.
+
+=Other Colors.=--You will notice that I have said nothing about the
+various browns and olives and purples. It is simply because it is
+better for you to make all these colors than to get them in the tubes.
+The earths and the browns of madder are all good, and the mixing of
+madders and good blues will make all the shades of violet and purple
+you can possibly want in their purity.
+
+=Palettes.=--We have, then, a number of pigments which are solid and
+safe, of each of the primary colors, and of such variety of qualities
+that the whole range of possible color is practicable with them in
+combination. To recapitulate, let us make a list of them.
+
+
+                        THE PERMANENT COLORS.
+
+  ZINC WHITE. (LEAD WHITE ENOUGH SO.)
+  CADMIUM YELLOW.
+  CADMIUM ORANGE.
+  CADMIUM YELLOW, PALE.
+  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+  YELLOW OCHRE.
+  ROMAN OCHRE.
+  TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+  RAW SIENNA.
+  BURNT SIENNA.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  AUREOLIN.
+  CHINESE VERMILION.
+  SCARLET VERMILION.
+  ORANGE VERMILION.
+  LIGHT RED.
+  ROSE MADDER.
+  PINK MADDER.
+  PURPLE MADDER.
+  MADDER CARMINE.
+  RUBENS MADDER.
+  ULTRAMARINE BLUE BRILLIANT.
+  ULTRAMARINE BLUE FRENCH.
+  PERMANENT BLUE.
+  COBALT.
+  CERULEAN BLUE.
+  IVORY BLACK.
+  BLUE BLACK.
+  VERIDIAN.
+  EMERALD GREEN.
+  TERRE VERTE.
+
+Here is a list of colors which will work well together, and with which
+you can do as much as is possible with colors as far as our present
+materials go.
+
+Most of these colors, I am aware, are among the more expensive ones.
+This I am sorry for, but cannot help. The good colors are at times the
+expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper ones which are permanent
+to take their places, it would be the falsest of economy to use
+others.
+
+=Palette Principles.=--In making up your palette, you must so arrange
+it that you can get pure color when you want it. There is never any
+trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is
+another matter. If you will refer to the color plates, you will see
+that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean
+towards one or the other of the other two. The scarlet red is a yellow
+red. The Chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. The same
+holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and
+strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. This is, in practice, of the
+utmost importance in the absence of the ideal color, for when we deal
+with the practical side of pigment, we deal with very imperfect
+materials which will not follow in the lines of the scientific theory
+of color. If we would have the purest and richest secondary color, we
+must take two primaries, each of which partakes of the quality of the
+other. To make a pure orange, for instance, we must use a yellow red
+and a red yellow. If we used a bluish red and a bluish (greenish)
+yellow, the blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in the form
+of a negative secondary instead of the pure rich orange we wanted.
+This latter fact is quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too
+much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless we must know how to
+get pure color also.
+
+These characteristics have a bearing on the setting of our palette,
+for we must have at least two of each of the three primary
+colors--red, yellow, and blue--and white. There may be as many more as
+you want, but there must be at least that number.
+
+But the character of the work you are doing will also have an
+influence on the colors you use. You may not need the same palette for
+one sort of picture that is essential to another. You can have a
+palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the
+combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different
+color characteristics of your picture.
+
+I will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will
+give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion.
+I do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these
+palettes, nor that they are the best possible. But they are safe and
+practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one
+better suited to your purposes. They will all be made up from the
+colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement I called
+your attention to as to the use of two of each primary.
+
+It would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the
+corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get
+acquainted with its characteristic look.
+
+[Illustration: =No. 1.= =No. 2.= =No. 3.=]
+
+=Expense.=--I have several times referred to the relative expense of
+colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than
+others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. I cannot modify
+that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive
+colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used
+constantly. Vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly
+matters. Of the deep blues the same is true. But the light yellows,
+and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity
+of their disappearance. But you can get more tubes of them, and their
+work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of
+the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that
+disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all
+over.
+
+=Sizes.=--The cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. In the
+illustration, No. 3 represents the full size of the ordinary tube of
+the average cost. Some of the most commonly used colors come in larger
+tubes at corresponding price. Only professionals get these large sizes
+except in the case of white. You use so much of this color that it
+hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. Get the
+quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains
+nearly five times as much.
+
+No. 2 represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which
+a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size
+of No. 1. In this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up;
+the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts.
+The cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers,
+siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and
+lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with.
+
+=Arrangement.=--In the following palettes I shall give the names of
+the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. The
+arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one.
+It is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the
+yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. But I
+have found this as I give it, to be the best for use, simply because
+it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use
+most, where it is most easily got at, and I think you will find it a
+good arrangement.
+
+=A Cheap Palette.=--This palette I give so that you may see the range
+possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least
+price. You can get no high key with it. All the colors are low in
+tone. You could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet
+it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred
+years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in
+the landscapes of that date. But for all sorts of indoor work and for
+portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. You
+will notice there is no bright yellow. That is because cadmium is
+expensive and chrome is not permanent. Vermilion is left out for the
+same reason. Add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange
+cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute
+permanency.
+
+                    WHITE.  NAPLES YELLOW.
+          VENETIAN RED.             YELLOW OCHRE.
+        LIGHT RED.                     ROMAN OCHRE.
+      INDIAN RED.             TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+    BURNT SIENNA.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  PERMANENT BLUE.
+    IVORY BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+=An All-Round Palette=:--
+
+                         WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+          ORANGE VERMILION.        CADMIUM YELLOW.
+        ROSE MADDER.                 ORANGE CADMIUM.
+      BURNT SIENNA.                      YELLOW OCHRE.
+    RAW UMBER.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    IVORY BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+This palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything
+with it. But for many things it is better to have more of certain
+kinds of colors and less of others. This is a good palette for all
+sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette,
+it will name it very well. For a student it will do anything he is apt
+to be capable of for a good while.
+
+=A Rich Low-Keyed Portrait and Figure Palette=:--
+
+                        WHITE.  CADMIUM.
+        CHINESE VERMILION.          ORANGE CADMIUM.
+      LIGHT RED.                        YELLOW OCHRE.
+    ROSE MADDER.               TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  COBALT.
+    BLUE BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+=A Landscape Palette.=--Landscape calls for pitch and vibration. You
+must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which
+will permit of all sorts of effects. The following will serve for
+everything out-of-doors, and I have seen it with practically no change
+in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. There are no
+browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are
+to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and
+vibration to the color. The blackest note may be gotten with
+ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the
+result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. The ochre
+is needed more particularly to warm the veridian.
+
+                        WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+        ORANGE VERMILION.           CADMIUM YELLOW.
+      PINK MADDER.                    ORANGE CADMIUM.
+    ROSE MADDER.                        YELLOW OCHRE.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    VERIDIAN.
+      EMERALD GREEN.
+
+If you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette.
+Madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully
+added to this list.
+
+=A Flower Palette.=--For painting flowers the colors should be capable
+of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. There should be no color
+on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. The
+range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the
+richness should be unlimited. In the matter of greens, it is true
+though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green
+tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and
+blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will
+put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will
+find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those
+given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf;
+therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which
+is not in tone with the flower.
+
+I am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the
+influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray.
+Here as elsewhere in these palettes I have in mind their use according
+to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the
+other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles.
+If you do not understand just why I arrange these palettes as I do,
+turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting,
+and I think you will see what I mean, and understand better what I
+say, about these combinations.
+
+Of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the
+same time. Some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and
+depth you could hardly get without them. The colors you should have as
+a rule on your palette are these:--
+
+                         WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+        ORANGE VERMILION.            CADMIUM YELLOW.
+      PINK MADDER.                       YELLOW OCHRE.
+    ROSE MADDER.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    VERIDIAN.
+      EMERALD GREEN.
+
+To add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and
+deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI
+
+                        VEHICLES AND VARNISHES
+
+
+A vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it
+fluent. The vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on
+the palette, or both. Oil colors are of course ground in oil as a
+vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in
+working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better.
+Those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits;
+those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives."
+
+All vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the
+pigments. Bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve
+them.
+
+=Oils.=--The most commonly used oils are linseed and poppy oil. They
+are neither of them quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar of
+lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying. These have a tendency to
+affect the colors; but if one will have recourse to none but the pure
+oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture. For this
+reason it would be well to use vehicles with the colors on the palette
+as little as possible--and that is against thin and smooth painting.
+
+Oil has the tendency to turn dark with time, thus turning the color
+dark also. The only way to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil
+by long exposure to the sunlight. The early German painters used oil
+so clarified, and their pictures are the best preserved as to color of
+any that we have. But the drying is even slower with purified oil than
+with the ordinary oil.
+
+It would be best, then, to use oil as little as may be in painting,
+and if you need a dryer, use it only as you actually need it in bad
+drying colors, and then very little of it.
+
+The essences of turpentine and of petroleum may be used to thin the
+paint, and are preferable to oil, because they have less darkening
+tendency. They do not, however, bind the color so well, and the paint
+should not be put on too thinly with them. Usually there is enough oil
+ground with the pigment as it comes in the tubes to overcome any
+probability of the paint scaling or rubbing when thinned with
+turpentine, but in the slow-drying, transparent colors there will be a
+liability to crack. Moderation in the use of any and all vehicles is
+the best means of avoiding difficulty. Use vehicles only when you need
+them, not habitually, and then only as much as there is real need of.
+If you use oil, use the lighter oils, and expect some darkening in
+time. Prefer turpentine to oil, and expect your color to dry rather
+"dead," or without gloss, by its use. If you intend to varnish, this
+is all right. If you do not intend to varnish the picture, keep the
+color as near the pure tones as you can. The grayer the color, the
+more the "dead" or "flat" drying will make it look colorless.
+
+=Varnishes.=--When the picture is done, after it is dry, varnishes are
+used to bring out the freshness of color, and to preserve the surface
+from outside influences of all sorts. A picture must be well dried
+before it is varnished, or it is likely to crack; six months is not
+too long to be safe. If you are in a hurry to varnish, use a temporary
+or retouching varnish.
+
+The best varnish is necessary for use on pictures. Never use any
+except a varnish especially made for the purpose by a reliable
+colorman. Those made by Winsor and Newton may all be depended upon.
+Pay a good price for it, and don't use too much.
+
+Mastic varnish is that which is most favorably known. Be sure you get
+a good and pure quality.
+
+Varnishes are made from various gums or resins dissolved in a solvent
+such as alcohol, turpentine, or oil, as the case may be. The lighter
+gums are the best for pictures, because they do not affect the color
+of the picture. Much care should be used in putting on the
+varnish--that it is even and as thinly distributed as will serve the
+purpose. It should not be flowed on, but carefully worked out with a
+clean brush, and then kept from dirt and dust until dry.
+
+The finer varnishes in oil or turpentine are best for ordinary use.
+Those in alcohol do not hold their freshness so well.
+
+Varnishes are sometimes used as siccatives, and to mix with colors
+which are liable to affect other colors, or to lack consistency.
+Usually, however, they are not needed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII
+
+                               PALETTES
+
+
+The most important qualities in a palette are that it should be large
+enough, and that it should balance well on the thumb. Whether it is
+round or square is a slight matter. The oval palette is usually best
+for the studio because the corners are seldom of use, and add weight.
+But for sketching, the square palette fits the box best.
+
+[Illustration: =Oval Palette.=]
+
+Get a palette much larger than you think you want. When you get it on
+your thumb the mixing-surface is much less than there seemed to be
+before it was set, for all the actual surface is between the row of
+colors and the thumb. If the palette is polished it is not essentially
+better; it is easier to keep clean, as far as looks go, but of no
+greater real service. If the choice is between a larger unpolished and
+a smaller polished one, the price being the consideration, get the
+larger one.
+
+Get a light wood in preference to a dark wood for a choice of color,
+but not if there is better grain or lighter weight in the darker
+palette. It is an assistance in painting not to have to compare the
+tint you are mixing with too dark a surface, for the color looks
+lighter than it is; so the light wood will help you to judge justly of
+the color while the palette is new. When it has been worked on a while
+it will come to have a sympathetic color anyway.
+
+This bears on the cleanliness of your palette. It is a mistake to
+consider that cleanliness demands that the palette should be cleaned
+to the wood and polished after every painting. On the contrary, if a
+little of the paint is rubbed out over the palette every time it is
+cleaned, after a few weeks there will come a fine smooth polish of
+paint, which will have a delicate light gray color, which is a most
+friendly mixing surface.
+
+=Adapting.=--When you get a new palette, before you use it take a
+little trouble to carve out the thumb-hole to fit your thumb. Make it
+large enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and set easily on the
+top of the hand. When the hole is too small the thumb gets numb after
+working a little while, which this will obviate.
+
+=Cleanliness.=--The cleanliness of a palette consists in its being
+always in such a condition that you can handle it without getting
+dirty; that the mixing-surface will not foul the freshly mixed paint;
+and that the paint around the edge is always so that you can pick up a
+fresh, clean brushful. If you try to clean off all your color every
+day and polish your palette nicely, you will not only take up more
+time with your palette than you do with your painting, but the fact
+that some left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy
+in putting on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner
+can fall into. You cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on
+your palette to use freely when you need it. It is all well enough to
+put on more, but nothing is more vexing than to have to squeeze out
+new paint at almost every brushful. You must have paint enough when
+you begin, to work with, or you waste too much time with these
+details.
+
+[Illustration: =Arm Palette.=]
+
+If you are painting every day, leave the good paint where it is at the
+end of your work, and scrape off all the muddy or half-used piles, and
+clean carefully all the palette except those places where the paint is
+still fresh and pure. Then, when you have to add more to that, clean
+that place with the palette-knife before squeezing out the new color.
+In this way the palette will not look like a centre-table, but it will
+be practically clean, have a good clear mixing-surface, and you will
+neither waste paint nor be stingy with it.
+
+=The Arm Palette.=--For painting large canvases, where the
+largest-sized brushes are used and paint must be mixed in greater
+quantities, the arm palette is a most convenient thing if it is well
+balanced. It is in the way rather than otherwise for small pictures,
+and is useful only as it is particularly called for.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII
+
+                             OTHER TOOLS
+
+
+It remains to speak of those tools which are not essentials, but
+conveniences, to painting. Even as conveniences, however, they are of
+importance enough to have an influence on your work. You can paint
+without them, but you will work more easily for the having of them;
+and something of the sort, although not necessarily of the same kind,
+you must have. You may improvise something, in other words, to take
+the place of these, but you would be wiser to get those which are made
+for the purpose.
+
+=The Box.=--First, the box. You must keep your things together
+somehow, and it would be as well that you keep them in a box which is
+portable and suited to the purpose. When you sketch you must have a
+proper box, and why not have one which is equally serviceable in the
+house? Those most commonly sold to amateurs are of tin, and they are
+various in size and construction, and not too expensive. The only
+thing against them is the difficulty of adapting them to service
+different from that they were designed for; that is, if you want to
+put in a different sort of panel, or if you want to fix it in the
+cover for convenience, or anything like that, you cannot readily do
+it, because you cannot use tacks in them. This counts for more than
+would seem on a sketching trip. But the tin box is light, and is not
+easily broken, and while it is in shape is practical.
+
+[Illustration: =The Color Box.=]
+
+The box to be most recommended is the wooden one. It costs more than
+the tin one,--about twice as much; but you can always arrange it for
+an emergency very readily, and if it gets broken you can fix it
+yourself, or get any carpenter to do it for you, while you may be a
+good many miles from a tinner, who would be necessary to mend your tin
+box.
+
+You had better not get too large a box. Get one long enough for the
+brushes; but if you are going to use it out-of-doors much, get a
+narrow one with a folding palette, so as to save weight. In this way
+you will get a larger palette than you could get in a smaller and
+wider box, which is an important consideration.
+
+[Illustration: =Palette Knife.=]
+
+=The Palette-Knife.=--Of more immediate necessity to your painting is
+the palette-knife. You cannot keep the palette clean without it. Now
+and again you may want to mix colors, or even paint with it. But you
+constantly get rid of the too much mixed color on your palette with
+it, and this is essential to good painting. Take some care to select a
+good knife; have the blade long enough to be springy and flexible, but
+not too long. About five inches from the wood of the handle to the end
+of the blade is a good length. And see that it bends in a true curve
+from one end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and weak in the
+middle. It should have the same even elasticity that a brush should
+have.
+
+For painting you need a "trowel palette-knife," which has a bent
+shank, making the blade and the handle on different levels, so that as
+you press the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away from the
+painted surface. The shank should be round, and the blade very fine
+and flexible. The knife should balance nicely in the hand, and turn
+freely in the fingers, so that you can paint with either face of the
+blade with equal balance. It takes some care to pick out a good
+trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse than none.
+
+=The Scraper.=--You frequently need to scrape rough paint from a
+canvas or a picture, and you need to scrape strongly to get a dirty
+palette clean. You can use an old razor for the first purpose, or a
+piece of broken glass, if you use it carefully, and any old knife can
+be used to clean your palette. But a regular tool is better than
+either. The scraper here shown is the best.
+
+[Illustration: =The Scraper.=]
+
+=The Oil-Cup.=--Do not use oils and vehicles very much. But when you
+need them you must have something to keep them in, convenient to the
+brush when working. It should have a spring to hold it on to the
+palette, and of such form that the contents are not easily spilled by
+the movement of the hand or the body when painting. The form here
+illustrated is the best that has been brought out so far.
+
+[Illustration: =The Oil-Cup.=]
+
+=The Mahl-Stick.=--Sometimes you want to rest the hand when painting,
+for steadiness. The "mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which
+one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it can be placed against
+the canvas without injury, and the hand rested on it. It is so light
+that it can be held with the brushes in the palette hand, and stiff
+enough to support the brush-hand.
+
+[Illustration: =Mahl-Sticks.=]
+
+=Sketching Adjuncts.=--Out-of-doors you must have a seat, and you
+should have an umbrella. The best seat for a man, because it can be
+folded into so small a space, is the three-legged stool. This is not
+usually satisfactory for a woman, whose skirts tip it over. The better
+seat for her is shown below. The back is not very firm, but it does
+give support, and the whole is light and strong.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The umbrella should be large and light, and one such as the
+illustration, with a valve in the top to let the wind and hot air
+through, will be found cooler and less easily blown over. You should
+have some strong rings sewed on to it, so that you can fasten it from
+four sides by strings, to keep it steady if the wind blows hard. The
+umbrella should be of light-colored material, preferably white; but if
+it is lined with black, the shade will be better, and give no false
+glow to the color.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX
+
+                               STUDIOS
+
+
+A painting-room is always a matter of serious consideration, and to
+the beginner one of difficulty. The arrangement of light is not easy,
+and a special window is almost always out of the question; yet in some
+way the light must be so managed that the canvas is not covered with
+reflected lights which prevent one from seeing what the paint is
+really like.
+
+=The North Light.=--The first thing to be looked for is a steady light
+which will be always about the same, and not be sunny part of the time
+and in the shade the rest. A window looking to the north for this
+reason is generally selected. The sun does not come into it, and the
+light is diffused and regular. The effect of the light in the studio
+is cool, but colors are justly seen in it, and the light that falls on
+any object or model in it will be always the same. If there is to be a
+skylight, this should be arranged in the same way. The sash must not
+be flat, but must be nearly enough to the vertical to prevent the
+sun's direct rays from entering, and it must for that purpose face to
+the north. This makes the skylight practically a high north light in
+the roof or ceiling, and that is what it should be.
+
+Whether the sash is above the ceiling or just below it, in the roof or
+in the wall, is of no particular importance. The thing to be seen to
+is that it is high enough for the light to enter above the head of the
+painter, and that it be so directed that only north light can come in.
+
+The size of the window is also to be carefully considered. It should
+not be too large. Too much light will be sure to interfere with the
+proper control of light and shade on your model, and too little will
+make your painting too dark. The position of the window with reference
+to the shape of the room has to do with this. The most probable form
+of a room is long and narrow. For painting it is better that the
+window be in the middle of the end wall, high up, rather than in the
+middle of the side wall. You will find that you can more easily get
+distance from your model, and at the same time get the light both on
+him and on your canvas. But a painting-room should not be too narrow.
+About one-third longer than it is wide, with the window in one end,
+will give you a good light, and the further end of the room will not
+be too dark, as it would be apt to be if the room were longer.
+Preferably, too, the window should be to the left of the centre of the
+wall rather than to the right, as you face it; so that when you are
+as near the side wall as you can get, with the light over your left
+shoulder (as it should be), the light will strike on the canvas well,
+and not too directly on the front of the model. It will give you a
+better lateral position to the window, in other words. If you have to
+accept a window in a side wall, this is even more to be looked for. If
+the window is to the right of the centre, you will have a strong
+side-light on your model; but you will either have no light on your
+canvas, or you will have to turn so that the light falls on your
+canvas from the right, which is awkward, as the paint is in the shadow
+of the hand and brush which puts it on.
+
+The height of the lower part of the window should be at least six feet
+from the floor, and for ordinary purposes the proportion of window
+space to floor space should be about one-tenth. It is impossible to
+give a rule; but if the floor is about twelve feet by sixteen, say, a
+window about five feet by four will be enough, or six and a half by
+three if it is placed horizontally. If you want intense light with
+strong contrast of light and shade on your model, have the window
+smaller and squarer, and place your easel just under it, where the
+light is good. The rest of the room will be dark. Better have the
+window large enough, and have it so curtained that you can cut off as
+much light as you need to. All this is if you are going to make
+yourself a window; in which case you will think well before you commit
+yourself. More probably you will have to get along as best you can
+with the ordinary room and the ordinary window. In which case get a
+high room with the window running up as close to the ceiling as
+possible, and facing north, then you can curtain it so as to control
+the light.
+
+=Arrangement of Ordinary Windows.=--For a good working light you
+should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from
+two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only
+interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your
+model, but will make a glare on your canvas. You can either close the
+light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so
+the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from
+the other.
+
+When you are working from still life or from a model this is often an
+advantage, for you can have a strong side-light on the model, and a
+second light on the canvas. To arrange this, have a sort of crane made
+of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square, which will swing at right
+angles with the wall, the arm reaching, say, six feet into the room.
+Swing this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so that the
+light cannot get over it, and near to the right-hand window. From
+this arm you can hang a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut
+out the light from the right-hand window when swung back over it. If
+you want to pose your model in the light of that window, while you
+paint in that of the other, swing the curtain out into the room at
+right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a cross light from the
+two windows; so that when the model is posed back of the curtain the
+light from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor the light from
+the other fall on the model.
+
+The light will be best on your picture coming from well above you as
+you work. There will then be no reflections on the paint. You may find
+it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the window which
+gives your painting-light. You will find it useful to have a shade of
+good solid holland, arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a
+string running up through a pulley at the top; so that you may pull
+the shade _up_ from the bottom instead of _down_ from the top, and so
+cut off as much of the lower part of the window as is necessary.
+
+If you need the light from the lower part of the window, you may make
+a thin curtain of muslin to cover the lower sash, which will let the
+light through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection.
+
+=The Size of the Studio.=--Of course a large studio is a good thing,
+but it is not always at one's command. But you should try to have the
+room large enough to let you work freely, and have distance enough
+from the model. The size that I have mentioned, twelve feet by
+sixteen, is as small as one should have, and one that you can almost
+always get. If the room is smaller than that, you cannot do much in
+it, and fifteen by twenty will give ample space.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART II
+
+                          GENERAL PRINCIPLES
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X
+
+                           MENTAL ATTITUDE
+
+
+There is a theoretical and a practical side to art. The business of
+the student is with the practical. Theories are not a part of his
+work. Before any theoretical work is done there is the bald work of
+learning to see facts justly, in their proper degree of relative
+importance; and how to convey these facts visibly, so that they shall
+be recognizable to another person.
+
+The ideals of art are for the artist; not for the student. The
+student's ideal should be only to see quickly and justly, and to
+render directly and frankly.
+
+Technique is a word which includes all the material and educational
+resources of representation. The beginner need bother himself little
+with what is good and what is bad technique. Let him study facts and
+their representation only. Choice of means and materials implies a
+knowledge by which he can choose. The beginner can have no such
+knowledge. Choice, then, is not for him; but to work quite simply with
+whatever comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to see, the
+brain to judge, and the hand to execute. Later, with the gaining of
+experience and of knowledge, for both will surely come, the
+determination of what is best suited for the individual temperament or
+purpose will work itself out naturally.
+
+The student should not allow the theoretical basis of art to interfere
+with the directness of his study of the material and the actual.
+Nevertheless, he should know the fact that there is something back of
+the material and the actual, as well as in a general way what that
+something is.
+
+Because the student's business is with the practical is no reason why
+he should remain ignorant of everything else. It is important that he
+should think as a painter as well as work as a painter. If he has no
+thought of what all this practical is for, he will get a false idea of
+his craft. He will see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the
+craftsmanship: that which every good workman respects as good and
+necessary, but which the wise workman knows is but the perfect means
+for the expression of thought.
+
+Some consideration, then, of the theoretical side of art is necessary
+in a book of this kind. A number of considerations arise at the
+outset, about which you must make up your mind:--
+
+Is judgment of a picture based on individual liking?
+
+Can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only?
+
+Is it worth your while to try to do good work?
+
+Can you hope to do good work at all?
+
+You must decide these questions for yourself, but you must remember
+that it depends upon how you decide them whether your work will be
+good or bad.
+
+To take the last consideration first, you may be sure that it is worth
+while to try to do good work, and mainly because you may hope to do as
+good work as you want to do. That is, precisely as good work as you
+are willing to take the trouble to learn to do. Talent is only another
+name for love of a thing. If you love a thing enough to try to find
+out what is good, to train your judgment; and to train your abilities
+up to what that judgment tells you is good, the good work is only a
+matter of time.
+
+You will notice that you must train your judgment as well as your
+ability; not all at once, of course. But how can you hope to do good
+work if you do not know what good work is when you see it? If you have
+no point of view, how can you tell what you are working for, what you
+are aiming at? And if you do not know what you are aiming at, are you
+likely to hit anything?
+
+=Train Your Judgment.=--Let us say, then, that you must train your
+critical judgment. How are you to set about it?
+
+In the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion. Make
+up your mind that when it comes to a choice between your personal
+taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what
+you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever
+had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you are
+wrong. And when you have made up your mind to that, when you have
+reached that mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards
+training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of
+mere opinion.
+
+Another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of
+catholicity--one of openness to the possibility of there being many
+ways of being right. Don't allow yourself to take it for granted that
+any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only
+right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. That point of view
+may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at
+that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature,--but it will not
+do for a student. Such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. It
+results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and
+narrowness of appreciation. You should try all things, and hold fast
+to that which is good. And having found what is good, and even while
+holding fast to it, you should remember that what is good and true for
+you is not necessarily the only good and true for some one else. You
+must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the
+same right for others. If this is not recognized, what room has
+originality to work in?
+
+The range of subject, of style, and of technical methods among
+acknowledged masters, should alone be proof of the fact that there is
+no one way which is the only good way; and if you would know how to
+judge and like a good picture, the study of really great pictures,
+without regard to school, is the way to learn.
+
+=How to Look at Pictures.=--The study of pictures means something more
+than merely looking at them and counting the figures in them. It
+implies the study of the treatment of the subject in every way. The
+management of light and shade; the color; the composition and drawing;
+and finally those technical processes of brush-work by means of which
+the canvas gets covered, and the idea of the artist becomes visible.
+All these things are important in some degree; they all go to the
+making of the complete work of art: and you do not understand the
+picture, you do not really and fully judge it, unless you know how to
+appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the means which were used
+to bring it about. All this adds to your own technical knowledge as
+well as to your critical judgment, both of which ends are important
+to your becoming a good painter.
+
+=Why Paint Well.=--You see I am assuming that you wish to be a good
+painter. There is no reason why you should be a bad painter because
+you are not a professional one. The better you paint the better your
+appreciation will be of all good work, the keener your appreciation of
+what is beautiful in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and
+pleasure in your own work. There are better reasons for painting than
+the desire to "make a picture." Painting implies making a picture, it
+is true; but it means also seeing and representing charming things,
+and working out problems of beauty in the expression of color and
+form: and this is something more than what is commonly meant by a
+picture. The picture comes, and is the result; but the making of it
+carries with it a pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to
+the power of appreciation, perception, and expression of the painter.
+This is the real reason for painting, and it makes the desire and the
+attempt to paint well a matter of course.
+
+=Craftsmanship.=--The mechanical side of painting naturally is an
+important part of your problem. You cannot be too catholic in your
+opinion with regard to it. It is vital that you be not narrowed by any
+prejudices as to the surface effect of paint. Whether the canvas be
+smooth or rough, the paint thick or thin, the details few or
+many,--the goodness or badness of the picture does not depend on any
+of these. They are or should be the result, the natural outcome
+because the natural means of expression, of the manner in which the
+picture is conceived. One picture may demand one way of painting and
+another demand a quite different way; and each way be the best
+possible for the thing expressed. It all depends on the man; the
+make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to
+attain,--all of them controlled more or less by temperament and
+idiosyncrasy. What would produce a perfect work for one man would not
+do at all for another. The works of the great masters offer the most
+marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied
+greatly in their manner of some painting at different periods of their
+lives. Rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in his early
+years, with transparent shadows and carefully modelled, solidly loaded
+lights. Later in life he painted most roughly; and "The Syndics" was
+so heavily and roughly loaded that even now, after two hundred years,
+the paint stands out in lumps--and this is one of his masterpieces. So
+again, if you will compare the manipulation in the work of Raphael
+with that of Tintoretto, that of Rubens with that of Velasquez, or
+most markedly, the work of Frans Hals with that of Gerard Dou, you
+will see that the greatest extremes of handling are consistent with
+equal greatness of result.
+
+=Finish.=--From this you may conclude that what is generally
+understood by the word "finish" is not necessarily a thing to be
+sought for. The tendency of great painters is rather away from
+excessive smoothness and detail than towards it. While a picture may
+be a good one and be very minute and smooth, it by no means follows
+that a picture is bad because it is rough. The truth is that the test
+of a picture does not lie in the character of the pigment surface _in
+itself_ at all, nor in whether it be full of detail or the reverse,
+but in the conception and in the harmonious relation of the technique
+to the manner in which the whole is conceived. The true "finish" is
+whatever surface the picture happens to have when the idea which is
+the purpose of the picture is fully expressed, with nothing lacking to
+make that expression more complete, nor with anything present which is
+not needed to that completeness. This too is the truth about
+"breadth," that much misunderstood word. Breadth is not merely breadth
+of brush stroke. It is breadth of idea, breadth of perception; the
+power of conceiving the picture as a whole, and the power of not
+putting in any details which will interfere with the unity of effect.
+
+=Intent.=--In this connection it would be well to bear in mind the
+purpose of the work on which the painter may be engaged. A man would,
+and should, work very differently on canvases intended for a study, a
+sketch, and a picture. The study would contain many things which the
+other two would not need. It is the work in which and by which the
+painter informs himself. It is his way of acquiring facts, or of
+assuring himself of what he wants and how he wants it. And he may put
+into it all sorts of things for their value as facts which he may
+never care to use, but which he wishes to have at command in case he
+should want them.
+
+The sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a
+general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most
+successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a
+picture, or which suggests a scheme. A carefully worked-up sketch is a
+contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be.
+
+A picture might have more or less of the character of either of these
+two types, and yet belong to neither. It might have the sketch as its
+motive, and would use as much or as little of the material of the
+study as should be needed to make the result express exactly the idea
+the painter wished to impart, and no more and no less.
+
+All these things should be borne in mind, as you study the
+characteristics of paintings to learn what they can mean to you beyond
+the surface which is obvious to any one; or as you work on your own
+canvas to attain such power or proficiency, such cleverness or
+facility, as you may conclude it is worth your while to try for.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI
+
+                     TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY
+
+
+A picture is made up of many elements. Certain of them are essentially
+abstract. They must be thought out by a sort of _mental vision without
+words_. This is the most subtle and intimate part of the picture.
+These are the means by which the ideal is brought into the picture.
+
+=Line, Mass, and Color.=--Such are the qualities of _line_,
+dissociated from representation; of _mass_, not as representing
+external forms; and _color_, considered as a _quality_, not as yet
+expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any
+_thing_. When these elements are combined they may make up such
+conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all
+the modifications that may come from still further combination.
+
+It is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful
+that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by
+being treated as _color_ or _line_ or _mass_, and so given place on
+the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. A face,
+for instance, may be ugly as a _face_, yet be beautiful as color or
+light and shade in the picture. These qualities, I say, do not
+represent--they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to
+which they are the terms of its thought. Nevertheless, they are the
+soul of the picture. For whatever the subject, or the objects chosen
+for representation, it is by working out combinations of these
+elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture
+really is made.
+
+The picture, _as a work of art_, is not the representation of objects
+making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of
+form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through
+those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form.
+
+I do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. Elsewhere, as
+they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on
+"Composition" and on "Color," I shall speak of them more fully. But I
+wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order
+to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one
+abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up
+a picture.
+
+The concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things
+which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you
+can also see the abstract qualities, which do not _visibly_ exist
+until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things,
+on the canvas.
+
+Beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression;
+form, as _drawing_; all representations of objects; the pigment by
+means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which
+produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and
+bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form
+or accent.
+
+In learning to paint, it is with these concrete things that you should
+concern yourself mainly. The science of painting consists in the
+knowledge of how to be the master of all the practical means of the
+craft. For it is with these that you must work, with these you must
+express yourself. These are the tools of your trade. They are the
+words of your art language--the language itself being the abstract
+elements--and the thoughts, the combinations which you may conceive in
+your brain by means of these abstract elements.
+
+You must have absolute command of these _materials_ of painting. No
+matter how ideal your thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling
+for line and color and composition, if you do not know how to handle
+the gross material which is the only medium by which this can all be
+made visible and recognizable to another person, you will fail of
+either expressing yourself, or of representing anything else.
+
+Now you will see what I have been driving at all this time; why I
+have been talking in terms which may well be called not practical. I
+want to fix your attention on the fact that there are two qualities in
+a picture: that one will be always within you, mainly, and will
+control the character of your picture, because it will be the
+expression of your mental self; and the other the practical part,
+which any one may, and all painters must learn, because it is the only
+means of getting the first into existence.
+
+The one, the abstract part, no one can tell you how to cultivate nor
+how to use. If I tried to do so, it would be my idea and not yours
+which would result. I can only tell you that it is the _thought of
+art_, and you must think your own thoughts.
+
+But the other, the material, the concrete, the practical, it is the
+purpose of this whole book to help you to understand and to acquire
+the mastery of, so far as may be done by words.
+
+Teaching by words is difficult, and never completely satisfactory. But
+much may be done. If you will use your own brains, so that what does
+not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning because of your
+thinking about it, we may accomplish a great deal. I cannot make you
+paint. I cannot make you understand. I can give you the principles,
+but you must apply them and think them out.
+
+Everything I say must be in a measure general; for the needs of every
+one are individual, and the requirement of each technical problem is
+individual. I must speak for all, and not to any one. Yet I shall
+state principles which can always be made to apply to each single
+need, and I will try to show how the application may be made.
+
+=Technique.=--The science of painting consists of a variety of
+processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and
+various objects are represented thereon. The whole body of method and
+means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called
+by names of their own. That part which applies to the putting on of
+the paint may be generally called _handling_, although the word
+_painting_ is sometimes restricted to this sense, and _brush-work_ is
+often used for the same thing. The other technical means will be
+spoken of in their proper place. Let me say now a few words as to
+_handling_ in general.
+
+Where did all this technique come from?
+
+From experiment.
+
+Ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing
+ideas upon surfaces. But it is only within the last four hundred years
+that the processes of oil painting have been in existence--simply
+because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a
+vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle of the
+fifteenth century.
+
+With the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the
+world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways
+of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and
+processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting
+to-day.
+
+From time to time there have been groups of artists who have used
+common methods, and who have developed expression through those
+methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the
+resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods
+of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect
+on different periods of painting.
+
+In this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what
+ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as "legitimate."
+And the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate
+have been varied from time to time--those condemned by one period
+being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been
+almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them.
+
+In the long run, methods and processes have received such
+authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted
+masters, that they have become the traditional property of all art,
+which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. They have
+become the stock in trade of the craft.
+
+The artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the
+trouble to understand them. He must understand them, because the
+manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish
+different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at
+results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he
+uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended.
+
+The painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be
+controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. He should feel
+free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and
+he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from
+selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring
+about his true purpose.
+
+Of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. Some
+pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own
+color, or tend to destroy the color of others. You should always bear
+this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you
+should not use such materials or such processes as work against it.
+But beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of
+the workers who have gone before you are at your command, to help you
+to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent
+whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive.
+
+And this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the
+whole purpose of the picture.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII
+
+                             ORIGINALITY
+
+
+Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not
+through striving. The search for originality seldom results in
+anything worth having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the
+best way of being original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the
+most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always
+natural. Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another
+person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he
+does. The most original things are often the most simple, because they
+have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been
+seen or felt, in the most direct way.
+
+If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of
+originality. No two people are alike, neither are any two painters
+alike; they could not be. They do not look alike, nor see alike, nor
+feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike? The
+attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort
+of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting.
+
+Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don't try to paint what
+appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the
+most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely
+convey just what it is that _you_ like, unaffected by anything else.
+And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and
+expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other
+that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that
+ever was--and that is originality.
+
+But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive
+impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well,
+accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There
+are always plenty of things--ideas, impressions, conceptions,
+appreciations--waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one
+twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new
+thing.
+
+That is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang
+it on a wall, and call it by a name. The painter is the eye of the
+people. He sees things which they have no time to look for, or
+looking, have not learned to see. The painter serves his purpose best
+when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before,
+and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his
+having seen it.
+
+There is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which
+sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so
+mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in
+unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter's eye which sees and
+distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using
+facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than
+the facts.
+
+But what is a picture? I have met some strange though positive notions
+as to what is and what is not a picture. Some persons think that a
+certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are
+necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite
+and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. I remember one man who
+asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a
+sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To
+make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds,
+or better, a ship and some reflections. All this sort of thing is
+idle. A picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less
+of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of
+the idea which is the cause of its existence. And that idea may be
+tangible or not. It may include many details or none. It is an idea
+which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is
+worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and when that idea
+is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface
+is a picture. What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter
+personal to the painter of it. The manner in which it is conceived and
+produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.
+
+A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and
+line. It is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus
+knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. And as all these are
+differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being
+natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be
+original.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII
+
+                      THE ARTIST AND THE STUDENT
+
+
+It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is
+likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as
+successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he
+made it for the sake of making a picture--better probably. The making
+of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His
+is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up
+something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather
+than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of
+nature.
+
+They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This
+implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of
+selection,--of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad
+and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he
+is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants
+to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things.
+
+=Aims.=--It should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim
+of the artist are essentially different. The student's first aim is to
+learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly
+between relations. It is the training of the eye and the judgment.
+Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the
+ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must
+not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of
+materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the
+problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far
+from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his
+command before he can freely express himself.
+
+The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business.
+Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to
+being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and
+as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not
+hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.
+
+All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them,
+simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the
+necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost
+knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of
+art, but with the laws of nature.
+
+There are changes which can be made, and be right--made as nature
+might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways,
+and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in
+accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas
+through nature, not to express notions about nature.
+
+The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language
+in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths
+more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which
+they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit
+of them. This is the true fact of the picture.
+
+It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give
+the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so,
+but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the
+character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.
+
+To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the
+artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV
+
+                             HOW TO STUDY
+
+
+There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around
+the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What
+you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must
+learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature,
+and all the characteristics of pigments. All qualities, color and form
+and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know
+how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be
+trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you
+are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in
+conditions commonplace to others.
+
+You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little
+the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of
+the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is
+painted. All is material to the painter. It is not that "everything
+that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and
+possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture,
+in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In one sense nothing
+is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and
+color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange
+or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious
+qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background--is lost.
+There is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is
+nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your
+perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of
+beauty in everything that comes within your view.
+
+You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of
+view. The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be
+represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest
+sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily
+presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow,
+of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of
+light and color, and furnishes the element of relation.
+
+=Methods.=--Two general methods are at the command of the student from
+the first,--to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may
+safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also
+professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study
+rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. You cannot
+begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate
+your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying is
+not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of
+painting. The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes
+to see relations, to see them in nature. It is not to see that there
+are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure
+and to judge them. Painting is the art of perception before
+everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else
+has already perceived. Copying does not help you to _perceive_, it can
+only help to show you how something can be _expressed after_ it has
+been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of
+painting. Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the
+brush generally, may be studied by copying. These only--and for these
+things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is not ready for these,
+for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting.
+
+=Danger.=--The danger of too early copying is that the student learns
+to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which
+the surface is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious
+one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes
+clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to
+see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature,
+and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and
+suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that
+student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of
+nature--the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees
+always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's
+brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that
+is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter.
+
+These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later,
+when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground
+of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but
+with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible
+point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material
+and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and
+sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some
+hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.
+
+But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise
+copying,--the over-knowledge of process and surface, and
+under-knowledge of nature,--is to be preferred a frank crudeness of
+work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. You
+should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. Better a
+healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing
+for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents
+your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is
+insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of
+the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an
+acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others.
+
+Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help.
+There is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture
+serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of
+color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its
+own sake. If you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it
+represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work
+of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack
+of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are qualities of
+brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. You
+can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in
+studying and copying other pictures.
+
+I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity
+in your education. You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you
+can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good
+pictures, if you do it in the right way.
+
+=The Right Way.=--So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to
+get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the
+greater part of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy
+which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a
+more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original
+what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception
+and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are
+attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other execution.
+Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles;
+study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and
+hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but
+why. So that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his
+problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you will get some
+real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no
+use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a
+good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.
+
+=Why Copy.=--There are only two good reasons for making a copy,--to
+study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an
+example of the master on a work which you like. And in either case
+such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the only possible way to
+get what you want. To "get a picture," regardless of whether it really
+does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always
+through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you
+escape an entire perversion of your point of view.
+
+You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of
+thing, but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it
+is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is
+worth seeing.
+
+=Get to Nature.=--If you would really learn to paint, to see for
+yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to
+nature too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it
+is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything
+which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure,
+or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior--all things which
+actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon
+them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark.
+Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about
+all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But
+models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long
+time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are
+not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far
+advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first
+combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most practically
+useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call
+"still life,"--_"morte" nature_, dead nature is the better or more
+descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all
+combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for
+representation. Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac;
+all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this
+use.
+
+The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of
+combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that
+he can always command. There is practically no problem possible to
+in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life.
+The training in perception and representation, in composition and
+arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable;
+and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements
+as will interest you, because you need place only such things or
+colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are
+looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the
+product of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own,
+both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well
+learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line.
+
+You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing
+which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future
+work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you
+have in view,--to learn how to paint well.
+
+=Be Sincere.=--But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do
+anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting
+is difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination
+that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so
+that it is worth the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by
+insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me once that he
+believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by
+the sole criterion of conviction. Can you think of any painting being
+good without it? Can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability
+making a picture good without that. And it is quite as important in
+study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take yourself
+and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results
+come.
+
+=Joy in Your Work.=--Do it because you like to. But like good work and
+hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand
+yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be
+honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what
+you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART III
+
+                         TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV
+
+                       TECHNICAL PRELIMINARIES
+
+
+=Reasons.=--Painting is something more than laying on paint. It implies
+a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries--technical
+matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting
+is impossible.
+
+It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a
+knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as
+well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and
+why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods
+and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may
+select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main
+purpose--the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color
+and pitch, the expression of an idea--it is all right. But there are
+laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and
+the reasons for placing them in certain relations. These laws are back
+of personal idiosyncrasy. They are a part of the laws which control
+all material things. The painter may no more go contrary to them in
+painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the
+practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with
+the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If
+the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture
+will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically
+fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which
+give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the
+laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression
+inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them.
+
+=Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.=--It is not necessary that you
+should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the
+application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have
+some practical notions about them and their effect on your work.
+
+You can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go.
+The farther the better. The more you study them the more you will find
+them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely
+within their limitations. But this is not the place for special study.
+There are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must
+go to them.
+
+But a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out
+of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting.
+I can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that
+amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as
+a painter. What I shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely
+left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are
+determined by the same reason.
+
+As you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and
+think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the
+process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually
+essential to it--which is part and parcel of it.
+
+Another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any
+discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words
+or phrases which must be understood. To speak of technical things
+presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of
+the words there can be no comprehension of the thought.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI
+
+                               DRAWING
+
+
+Drawing is basic to painting. Good painting cannot exist without it. I
+do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but
+that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be
+felt; and that is drawing. Drawing is not merely form, but implies
+these other things, and painting is not legible without them. They go
+to the completeness of expression. Movement, and action, as well as
+composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing,
+and they are vital to a painting.
+
+=Importance of Drawing.=--Much has been said and written of drawing as
+being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse
+all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. This is a mistake.
+Drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express
+anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. But
+still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not
+strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply
+because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it
+would be a drawing.
+
+All painters fall into two classes,--those who are most sensitive to
+the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of
+color and tone. But the great colorists, the painters _par
+excellence_, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who
+find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made
+painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. And
+looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more
+important than other qualities.
+
+=Neglect of Drawing.=--Great artists have sometimes not been perfect
+draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they
+have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they
+have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness
+in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his
+temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express
+his temperamental richness of color. These things are superficial to
+the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it
+in accepting the picture. And a great colorist may be so forgiven; he
+makes up for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness
+for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman.
+
+The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. A painter,
+who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work
+weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." Lack of firmness,
+indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. Those firm,
+simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work
+of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. They
+mean precision. Precision means position. Position means drawing.
+
+=Proportions.=--All good work is from the general to the particular,
+from the mass to the detail. Keep that in mind as a fundamental
+principle in good work, whatever the kind. You should never place a
+detail till you have placed your larger masses. The relative
+importance of things depends on the consideration of those most
+important first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.
+
+Proportions next. Largest proportions, then exactness of relative
+proportions. Study first in masses. See nothing at first but the large
+planes. As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head, not the head on
+to the nose." In getting proportions of the great masses, let no small
+variations of line or form break into your study of the whole.
+Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. If you
+cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines
+of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the
+general direction of them. Train yourself to look at things in this
+way. There is nothing which will not fall into position so. This will
+not be easy at first. The training of a quick perception of these
+things is a part of your training in drawing--the first essential. It
+is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but
+that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts,
+and so makes more easy the study of proportion. The accuracy of the
+general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser
+proportions which come within them.
+
+You see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on
+a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. It saves time
+for you, too. You do not have to rub out so much. The great lines and
+planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place.
+Spend much time over this part of a drawing. Cut the time you give to
+a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of
+larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and
+study and correct these until they are right.
+
+Once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it
+would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect.
+
+=Modelling.=--In the same way that you have laid out the proportions
+in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. Model your
+drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are
+in place. Avoid seeing curves in relief as you have avoided curves of
+outline. Try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large
+enough to give a definite mass of relief. Don't be afraid of an edge
+in doing this. Let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and
+stop. This again is not for any effect in itself, but only for
+facility and exactness. Later you can loose it as much as you see fit
+in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these
+again into the most subtle.
+
+Study first the outline and then the planes. Constantly compare them
+as to relation; you will find it suggestive. Remember that your aim is
+to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes
+the parts, the parts are incidental.
+
+=Measurements.=--You will always have to use measurements for the sake
+of accuracy. Probably you will never be able to dispense with them.
+The best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so
+that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. You
+will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting
+this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the
+habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver.
+
+Hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip
+along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them
+across the coal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions into
+themselves and into each other. Height and breadth are checks to each
+other. If the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the
+smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each
+other _as well as to breadth_. Measure these and you are sure of being
+right.
+
+=Steps.=--Divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. You will
+find it a helpful thing in studying. You will do it quite naturally
+later. Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.
+
+_First step._--Measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole
+group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.
+
+_Second step._--Outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines
+possible. Give the general shape of the whole. This blocks it in.
+
+_Third step._--Measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts
+most prominent, if it be a single object. Measure its height and
+breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the
+dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. Enclose it in straight
+lines as you did with the whole mass.
+
+_Fourth step._--Find the more important of the lesser proportions in
+each object, and block them out also. This should map out your drawing
+exactly and with some completeness.
+
+_Fifth step._--Lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines,
+and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so.
+
+_Sixth step._--This should leave your paper with a few large masses of
+dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller
+masses, giving more refinement to the whole. This also should so break
+up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.
+
+_Seventh step._--Put in such accents of dark, or take out such of
+light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing.
+
+I do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but
+it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less
+modified, is practically the basis of all methods. In practised hands
+it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. I have
+seen most beautiful work done in this way.
+
+=Home Study.=--It is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw
+well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good
+drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them.
+
+Good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the
+exactness must come first. The structure of the thing must be shown
+without unnecessary detail. You should always look at any really good
+drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of
+helpful suggestion to you.
+
+[Illustration: =Drawing of Hands.= _D�rer._]
+
+=Study the Masters.=--Get photographs of drawings by the masters of
+drawing, and study them. See how they searched their model for form
+and character. Do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner
+in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning.
+
+In this drawing by Albrecht D�rer you have a splendid example of
+exactness and feeling for character. You could have no better type of
+what to look for and how to express it. Although it is not important
+that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it
+is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the
+character of the surface--which is one of the ways in which the point
+helps to search out the modelling.
+
+This drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground;
+a very good way to study.
+
+A good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old
+masters, in subject. A hand or part of any object is enough to study
+from. There is no need to always demand a picture in everything you
+do.
+
+=Materials.=--For all purposes which come in the range of the painter
+you should use charcoal. For purposes of study it is the most
+satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and
+easily corrected. For sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas
+it is equally good.
+
+You should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical
+positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the
+pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all
+you need in that direction.
+
+In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than
+place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and
+accurately. Sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which
+include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this
+can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative
+afterwards.
+
+=Imitation.=--Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not
+the most important thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the
+truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater
+character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact
+which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the
+whole. There is something more important than detail, and the
+essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing
+which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more
+true to the larger fact.
+
+Then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express
+through his representation of the external; and he is justified in
+altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more
+important self-expression. Of course the self must be worth
+expressing. There is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere
+inability. But a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the
+complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever
+means he has taken.
+
+=Feeling.=--Drawing must be a matter of feeling. A perception of
+essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the
+facts. The good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of
+facts first, always searching for those most important, and
+emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his
+eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come
+also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. And the
+trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of
+expression. This is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to
+be aimed at,--the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and
+do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of
+expression which comes of that perfect union.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII
+
+                                VALUES
+
+
+=The Term.=--The word "values" is seldom understood by the average
+individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. It means simply
+the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of
+color considered as light and dark. Translate the word into
+"importance," and think what it means. The relative importance,
+strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt
+in the whole--that is its value. A weak value is a note which does not
+make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. A false value is a
+touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or
+masses of color in the picture, _considered_ as _light and dark_--_not
+as color per se_.
+
+=Importance.=--As soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how
+important values must be to the whole picture. It is not possible to
+do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. In
+one sense it is incidental to drawing. When you consider drawing as
+the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of
+relief, as well as outline, values come into play to give the
+relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. In this it
+becomes part of drawing.
+
+=Values and Color.=--As soon, however, as color becomes a part of the
+picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished
+from the painting of previous centuries. Values, of course, always
+existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint
+without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative
+strength of tones. But the word is never heard in relation to old
+masters. It is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it
+probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the
+fact which it represents.
+
+The older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole
+object--a head or a figure, say--in relation to itself; and that was
+values--but restricted values. The whole picture was arranged on the
+basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of
+composition of that picture. This is not values, but what is generally
+understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." The
+modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as
+a technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a
+picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which
+expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse.
+
+=Basis of Modern Painting.=--Instead of the old composition in
+arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual
+arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the
+values over the whole canvas. In this way the quality of "value"
+becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. For you cannot
+accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the
+light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of
+relations over the whole canvas. Every most insignificant spot of
+light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep
+its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all
+the rest. Each value must keep its place according to the laws of
+fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. The whole picture must be
+either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary
+arrangement. Any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection
+must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else
+there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. The modern painter
+accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result.
+
+=Absolute and Relative Values.=--We may speak of values as absolute or
+relative. This relates to the key or pitch of a painting. It is the
+contribution to the art of painting which was made by the French
+painter, Manet. You may paint a picture in the same pitch as nature,
+or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch.
+
+The relations of the different values of the picture will hold the
+same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other.
+But the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute
+light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature.
+This would be relative values.
+
+Or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may
+be the same, value for value, as in nature. This would be absolute
+values.
+
+The attempt at absolute values was not made at all before Manet's
+time. A landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch
+of nature, and an interior as frankly painted up, or lighter. In both
+cases the values had to be condensed,--telescoped, so to
+speak,--because pigment would not express the highest light nor the
+lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations
+between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of
+difference between each value had to be diminished--but _relatively_
+they were the same. The degree of variation from the actual was the
+same all through.
+
+With absolute values the painter aims at giving the _just note_,--the
+exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. He tries to paint
+up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light.
+
+=Close Values.=--This naturally calls for a fine distinction of
+tones--the utmost subtlety of perception of values. To paint a picture
+in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black,
+and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the
+picture, the values must be _close_; must be studied so closely as to
+take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly
+express it. This sort of thing was not thought of by the older
+painters. It is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting.
+It is a substitution of the study of _relation_ for the study of
+_contrast_.
+
+=Study of Values.=--You see at once how important, how vital, the
+study of values is to painting. Even if you paint with arbitrary
+lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits,
+you have to consider and study them as they apply to _parts_ of your
+picture. You will find no good painter of old time who did not study
+relations. If you look at a Velasquez, you will find that he knew
+values, even though he did not use the word.
+
+But if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to
+express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if
+you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that
+world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to
+make the study of values fundamental to your work.
+
+="The Fourth Dimension."=--You study values with your eyes only, but
+you cannot _measure_ values. Length, breadth, and thickness you can
+measure; but values constitute what might be called a "_Fourth
+Dimension_," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any
+mechanical aid. Your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge
+differences of value.
+
+=Helps.=--There are, however, several things which you can use to help
+you in training your eye to distinguish values. When you look for
+values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only
+masses and relations. You must _unfocus_ your eye. The focussed eye
+sees the fact, and not the relation. Anything which will help you to
+see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the
+values more distinctly.
+
+=Half-closed Eyes.=--The most common way is to half close the eyes,
+which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. Some
+painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide
+open, but to focus them on some point _beyond_ the values they are
+studying. This is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but
+becomes less difficult with practice.
+
+=The Blur Glass.=--An ordinary magnifying-glass of about 15-inch
+focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents,
+will blur the details, and help you to see the values, because it
+makes everything vague except the masses. You can frame it for use by
+putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you
+can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. Of
+course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken
+if unprotected.
+
+Do not try to look _through_ the glass at your subject, but _at_ the
+glass and the image on it.
+
+=The Claude Loraine Mirror.=--This is a curved mirror with a black
+reflecting surface. The object is reflected on it, _reduced_ both in
+size and pitch. It concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps
+to distinguish the relative values.
+
+You can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back
+of a piece of plate glass black. The real Claude Loraine mirror is
+expensive.
+
+=The Common Mirror= is also very helpful in distinguishing values. It
+reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see
+your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the
+result. Place the group and your painting side by side, if you are
+painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror.
+Do the same with a portrait and the sitter.
+
+=Diminishing Glass.=--Much the same effect can be had by using a
+double concave lens. The picture is not reversed, but it is reduced,
+and the details eliminated.
+
+In using any of these means you must remember that it is always the
+relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of
+these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything
+in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                             PERSPECTIVE
+
+
+There are two kinds of perspective, linear and a�rial. The former has
+to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as
+they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of
+distance. The latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is
+due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in
+objects farther and farther away from the observer.
+
+=A�rial Perspective.=--To the student, a�rial is _color_ perspective,
+because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a
+distance. Modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance,
+and so a�rial perspective is largely a matter of _values_. That they
+are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a
+matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important
+thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to
+relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a
+picture.
+
+To the student, a�rial perspective should be only a matter of
+observation and of the study of relations of color and value. There
+are no rules. The effect depends on greater or less density of
+atmosphere. Near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and
+farther objects through a thicker one. All you have to do to express
+it is to recognize the relative tones of color. Paint the colors as
+they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with
+a�rial perspective.
+
+But though I say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that I
+mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought
+and study. You will have to use all your powers of perception if you
+wish to do good work in this direction. Especially on clear days, or
+in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great
+distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is
+simply another name for close values. And close values, you remember,
+are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color.
+
+The only rule for a�rial perspective is to use your eyes, and do
+nothing without a previous careful study of nature.
+
+=Linear Perspective.=--For most kinds of painting, a technical
+knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every
+painter should understand the general principles of it. In most cases
+all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing all lines
+carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or
+vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. Apply to
+all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any
+other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as
+you are drawing from an object before you. But if you go into
+perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. A little perspective is a
+dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts
+of half-understood things than to be of any real help.
+
+There are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete
+knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. Whenever you
+have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you
+have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures
+are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and
+they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you
+cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make
+most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great
+exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will
+not be true.
+
+Such men as G�r�me and Alma-Tadema plan their pictures most carefully,
+and so did Paul Veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical
+knowledge of perspective.
+
+But this is not the place to teach you perspective. It is a subject
+which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the
+elucidation of it. In a work of this kind anything more than a mention
+of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. If
+you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid
+attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care
+to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time
+to it, and study it thoroughly.
+
+=Foreshortening.=--In this connection I may speak of something which
+is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. As its name
+implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems
+shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while
+perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from
+you. Like a�rial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is
+to study nature, not rules.
+
+Perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. Pose
+your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort,
+place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then
+study the drawing _as it appears_, thinking nothing of _how it is_;
+make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no
+problem of foreshortening at all, but study the relations of lines,
+of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of
+itself.
+
+After all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman
+will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. Therefore,
+learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX
+
+                           LIGHT AND SHADE
+
+
+=Chiaroscuro.=--A few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. This is
+a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers
+up to within the last thirty or forty years. It has of late become
+almost unused. The reason for this was explained in the chapter on
+"Values." Nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what
+the word meant, and still means. Although he may hear and use it less
+frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures,
+certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and
+are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. He should
+know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation
+to the work of to-day.
+
+Chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which
+is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of
+painting. Of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy.
+Chiaroscuro is an Italian compound word whose two parts, _chiar_ and
+_oscuro_, signify simply _bright_ and _obscure_, or _light_ and
+_dark_. Hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards
+all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of
+coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the
+clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. The art of
+clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and
+arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their
+degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single
+objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole,
+so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner
+possible; that is, _so as to produce the most desirable effect upon
+the senses and spirit of the observers_. In a word, its end and aim
+are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of
+light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values,
+reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." The
+italics are mine.
+
+You see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. But it is to be
+again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not
+only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so
+arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to
+fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while
+the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. In this way
+the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct
+element of composition, and a very important one. The _quality_ of
+"light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. It is stated
+(whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was
+according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some
+permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to
+light and to dark. The gradations of light and dark were studied of
+course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was
+calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the
+space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in
+the picture. They wrought with the _quality of light and shade_ as an
+_element_, just as they would with the quality of line or of color,
+considered apart from objects or facts they might represent.
+
+=Arbitrary Lighting.=--This is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of
+in the chapter on "Values"; and although the older painters included
+what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of
+arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall,
+or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we
+would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting
+generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and
+as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past.
+
+=Light and Shade.=--But we may use the old word with a more
+restricted meaning. If we use it to mean literally light and shade,
+the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side
+and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very
+important and practical matter for present study.
+
+[Illustration: =Eggs. White against White.=]
+
+=Objects Visible by Light and Shadow.=--If you will put a white egg on
+a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will
+see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of
+it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other
+side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg
+is visible. You will also see, if you manipulate the egg, that
+according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to
+the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less
+distinct.
+
+=Contrast.=--Apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how
+important the principle of contrast is to the representation of
+nature. Not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color.
+And you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in
+different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are,
+of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow.
+
+=Constant Observation.=--The painter is constantly studying with his
+eyes. It is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in
+order to be always studying. Keep your brain active in making
+observations and considering the relations in nature around you. The
+amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say
+nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in
+the practice of selection of motives for work. Schemes of color or
+composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's
+brain. They are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a
+chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards
+worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is the artist's business
+to catch the suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works
+out her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not
+complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of
+constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an
+infinite mine of possibilities to him.
+
+[Illustration: =The Canal.= _Burleigh Parkhurst._
+Effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect of studio
+light in "Bohemian Woman," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by
+Lamplight."]
+
+=Perception.=--Only by continually observing and judging of contrasts
+and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions;
+yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these
+distinctions.
+
+=Effects of Light.=--It is important to study the different qualities
+of light. Take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny
+day and on a gray day. On the former, fine distinctions of color are
+less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and
+shadow. On a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the
+finer distinctions are more marked. For the study of the subtleties of
+color choose a gray day.
+
+So, too, is the difference marked between the general light of
+out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. The pitch is
+different. Outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light
+is clearer, more full, than in-doors.
+
+There is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts
+you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room.
+
+Compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown
+in the illustrations on pages 156 and 159. The one is the diffused,
+out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. The character
+of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. The head would
+have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more
+reflected light.
+
+Other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the
+manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen
+in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. Artificial
+light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also,
+which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in
+its more concentrated effects in the studio. Compare the picture of
+the "Woman Sewing by Lamplight," by Millet, with the "Canal" and the
+"Bohemian Woman" given above. The effects of gas and electric light
+also should be studied. Their characteristics both of contrast and,
+particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch
+as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities.
+
+Another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the
+same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the
+effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the
+light with reference to them and to the observer. The simplest light
+is the side-light from a single window. This gives broad, sharp masses
+of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more
+simple. With the observer in the same relative position to the
+subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the
+contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of
+recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. In this
+position of light the values become "close." To make the object seen
+at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be
+observed.
+
+[Illustration: =Bohemian Woman.= _Frans Hals._
+Effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with
+diffused light of open air in the "Canal," and artificial light in
+"Woman Sewing by Lamplight."]
+
+[Illustration: =Sewing by Lamplight.= _Millet._
+Effect of artificial light contrast to be compared with natural light
+in illustrations of "Canal" and "Bohemian Woman."]
+
+[Illustration: =Descent from the Cross.=]
+
+Portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a
+direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in
+character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and
+drawing of the face.
+
+=Cross Lights.=--The most confusing and difficult of study and
+representation are the "_cross lights_." If there are several windows
+or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object
+painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the
+rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and
+shade. The rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other
+side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the
+result. This is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its
+solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully
+solve it is not far from the end of his "student days."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX
+
+                              COMPOSITION
+
+
+=Importance.=--Composition is of the utmost importance. It is
+impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it
+as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes
+about. But you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense.
+There is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be
+considered in making the picture balance.
+
+The arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the
+colors must all be right if the composition be right. Composition is
+the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more
+or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with
+the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. You may
+not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. It may
+almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies
+or even pictures. But even then there is possible the most subtle
+discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be
+found in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest
+elements. The more complicated the materials which are to be worked
+into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but,
+for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a
+simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single
+thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine
+choice will tell.
+
+=The �sthetic.=--I have already mentioned briefly the �sthetic
+elements of a picture. I have called to your attention that back of
+the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the
+theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the
+technical processes and management of concrete material which make
+painting possible, is the �sthetic purpose of the work of art; without
+this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more
+or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description,
+the interest in which would lie wholly in the _fact_, and would perish
+whenever interest in the fact should cease. It is not the _fact_, nor
+even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a
+thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact
+has been forgotten. The perennial interest of a work of art lies in
+the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the
+facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with
+which he expresses those ideas which are purely �sthetic; which do not
+rest on material things. These have to do with material things only by
+rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they
+themselves could not otherwise have.
+
+=Theory.=--Does this sound unpractical? Well, it is unpractical. Does
+it seem mere theory? It is theory. I want to impress it on you that it
+is theory. For it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not
+understand it, you only understand art from the outside. Consciously
+or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely �sthetic
+qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself
+through them.
+
+=Art for Art's Sake.=--This is the real meaning of the much-debated
+phrase, "Art for art's sake." The mistake which leads to the
+misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding
+"art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a
+very different thing. Certainly every painter will work to attain the
+most perfect technique he is capable of. But not for the sake of the
+technique, but for what it will do. The better the technique the
+better the control of all the means to expression. If you take
+technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the
+manipulations of art, technique is only a means, and it is so that I
+mean it to be understood here. If you broaden its meaning to include
+all the _mental_ conceptions and means, that is another thing, and one
+likely to lead to confusion of idea. So I use the word technique in
+its strictest sense.
+
+=The �sthetic Elements.=--What, then, are these �sthetic qualities I
+have spoken of? Will you consider the quality of "line"? Not _a_ line,
+but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be
+done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other
+elements. Now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and
+"color"? Do you see that here are three terms which suggest
+possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely
+intellectual. What may be done with them may be done, primarily,
+without taking into consideration the representation of any material
+fact whatsoever. Take as the type, conventional ornament. You can make
+the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm
+lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color.
+
+Take architecture. Quite aside from the use of the building is the
+�sthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color.
+
+And so in the picture the question of _art_, the question of �sthetic
+entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and
+mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and
+material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever
+universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if
+immortal it ever can be.
+
+=Composition.=--The bearing of all this on composition should be
+obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. In the
+composition of a picture all the elements come into play. It is in
+composition that the management of the abstract results in the
+concrete.
+
+Let us look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are
+qualities, which you always look for in a picture,--good drawing, of
+course, and good color. But there are such things as these: Harmony,
+Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity. Where do they
+come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to
+some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or
+twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them
+onto it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration is, like any other
+intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and
+takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. You will get these
+qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which
+make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the
+result. It is arrangement then.
+
+=Arrangement.=--But arrangement of what? how? The objects. But on some
+principle back of them. Consider another set of qualities: proportion,
+i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast;
+accent,--these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your
+objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete.
+Objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and
+mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as
+so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on
+canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of
+�sthetics.
+
+With these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and
+line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and
+accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace,
+dignity, and force may result. And this is composition.
+
+=No Rules.=--Naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the
+very essence of art, rules are of very little use. Ability in
+composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a
+continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just
+as the development of any other ability calls for training.
+
+The best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to
+appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful.
+Cultivate your taste in that direction; and with the taste to like
+good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you
+when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to
+your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill.
+
+Rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the
+true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with
+a successful result.
+
+Principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according
+to the kind of picture you have in hand. The principles are the same,
+of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a
+landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference.
+
+=Suggestions.=--The first suggestion that might be made as a help to
+the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole
+always. No matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they
+must all be considered as parts of a _whole_, which must have no
+effect of being too much broken up.
+
+If the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way
+that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in
+each group, and groups in a whole. There should usually be a main
+mass, and the others subsidiary masses. There should be a centre of
+interest of some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and
+this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance.
+
+=Simplicity= is a good word to have in mind. However complicated the
+composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will
+control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself,
+but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that
+part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a
+dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the
+masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of
+those masses.
+
+=Study placing= of things in different sizes relative to the size of
+the canvas. Make sketches which take no note of anything but the
+largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till
+they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their
+details. Apply the _steps_ suggested for drawing to the study of
+composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality
+which is proper to composition.
+
+=Line.=--Each of the main elements of composition can be used as a
+problem of arrangement. You can study _composition_ in line, in mass,
+or in color.
+
+"The Golden Stairs," by Burne-Jones, is almost purely an arrangement
+in _line_, and beautifully illustrates the use of this element as the
+main �sthetic motive in a picture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Compare this composition in line with the "Descent from the Cross," in
+which the _line_ is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in
+connection with _mass_ to a much greater extent, and involved with
+interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. Consider the effect which
+each picture derives as a whole from this management of these
+elements. The one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of
+rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining
+power and impressiveness.
+
+[Illustration: =The Sower.= _Millet._
+To show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight
+and dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.]
+
+Often the whole composition should be a balancing of the elements, as
+in this case. But the emphasizing of one element will always emphasize
+the characteristics to which those elements tend as the main
+characteristic of the picture.
+
+Grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally from arrangement chiefly
+in _line_. If _mass_ comes into the picture, the masses may be
+arranged to help the _line_, or to modify it. In "The Sower" the
+management of mass is such as to give great dignity, and almost
+solemnity, to the picture, yet not to take away from the rhythmic
+swing and action of the figure which comes from line, but even to
+emphasize it. Compare this in these respects with the lighter grace of
+"The Golden Stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater
+activity, of the "Descent from the Cross."
+
+Of course masses will come into the picture; but either the masses
+themselves can be arranged into line, or there can be emphasis given
+to lines which break up or modify the masses, so that the character of
+the picture is governed by them.
+
+=Mass.=--In the arrangement of mass, light and shade and color are
+effective. Smaller groups may be made into a larger one, and
+individual objects also brought together, by grouping them in light or
+in shade, or by giving them a common color.
+
+[Illustration: =Return to the Farm.= _Millet._
+To show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the
+statuesque."]
+
+Weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics of _mass_.
+Line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass
+alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. The
+"Return to the Farm," by Millet, shows this combination, the reverse
+of "The Sower." In this, the _line_ is used to enrich the repose and
+weight, the statuesque of the _mass_. In the other, the _mass_ gives
+dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of the _line_.
+
+The color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the
+emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. Color will not
+only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the
+balance will be lost.
+
+=Color.=--This is mainly where composition in color will come in.
+Light and shade or chiaroscuro, as I explained in the last chapter,
+are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. And you
+never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also.
+Of color itself I shall speak in the next chapter. It is only
+necessary to point out the fact of connection here. Of course in
+painting, all the elements are most closely related. Although it is
+necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you
+keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and
+modify each other.
+
+=A Principle.=--There is a well-established principle in architecture,
+that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure.
+A hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which
+case the proportions would neutralize each other--you would have a
+simple square, characterless. You may emphasize height or
+breadth--not both, or you get the same negative character.
+
+So you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the
+composition of a picture. Don't try to express too many things in one
+picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the
+rest be subordinate to it. There is perhaps no law more rigid than the
+one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and
+purpose. One main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to
+lend itself to the strengthening of that.
+
+To a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not
+absolutely. As a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the
+main element.
+
+=Leverage.=--I have often thought that much insight into the
+principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained
+by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A small
+mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much
+greater mass. The greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be
+balanced by quite a small spot. But leverage must come in to help.
+Somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum.
+And the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation
+with reference to that point. Or the element of apparent density will
+come in. The large mass will be the least dense, the small one the
+most dense, and the equilibrium is established. For composition is but
+the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have.
+
+There are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line,
+but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence.
+Individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because
+composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not
+help. A fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law,
+and the trained eye is the only measure. As in values, so in
+composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the
+work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and
+block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you
+practical experience.
+
+=Scale.=--One point of great importance should be noticed. That is the
+effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with
+reference to the size of the canvas. This is analogous to what is
+called _scale_ in architecture.
+
+If the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of
+the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its
+own scale on all other objects. You can make a figure impress the
+observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few
+inches long. A house or castle coming into the picture may be made to
+give its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead
+of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. This will be due to
+the _placing_ of it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in
+anything else. The manner of painting will also lend importantly to
+it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a
+little manner.
+
+The placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a
+useless expedient in such a case. At times it may be successful, often
+of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object
+of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is
+intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it.
+
+=Placing.=--This matter of placing is one which you should constantly
+practise. Make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature.
+Try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of
+composition. In making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often
+have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give it
+_scale_ by the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to
+the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. In this way you
+will be studying composition in a most practical way.
+
+=Still Life.=--For practical study of composition, the most useful
+materials you can have are to be found in still life. Nowhere can you
+have so great freedom of arrangement in the concrete. You can take as
+many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of
+relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so
+study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing
+together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of
+actual objects. This you should constantly do, till composition is no
+more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work
+out freely and visibly intellectual �sthetic ideas almost
+unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the
+possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the
+falsities of accidental combinations.
+
+=Don't Attempt too much.=--Don't be too ambitious. Begin with simple
+arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new
+combination and grouping. When you are going to paint, remember that
+too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the
+picture, and may lead to discouragement.
+
+In the Chapter on "Still Life" I will explain more practically the
+means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making
+composition a practical study to you.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI
+
+                                COLOR
+
+
+The subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two
+branches,--color as a _quality_, and color as _material_. Considered
+in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a
+scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and
+technical one. The material and technical side has been treated of in
+the Chapter on "Pigments." In this chapter we will have to do with
+color considered as an �sthetic element.
+
+=The Abstract.=--The quality of _color_ is the third of the great
+elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter
+works �sthetically.
+
+Just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means
+of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass
+which go to the making of the �sthetic structure, so he uses these in
+the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. In this relation
+nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to
+do for the color-scheme of his picture. If he wants a certain red in a
+certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little
+difference to him, _thinking in color_, whether that red note is
+actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon,
+or by a lobster. The scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what
+object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be
+decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness
+as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main
+fact that red color is needed at that point. If he were a designer of
+conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. At that
+point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it.
+The painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in
+different materials.
+
+=The Ideal.=--This is the reason that a still-life painting is as
+interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great
+interest in the telling of a story. To the painter the story, or the
+objects which tell it, are of minor importance. That the picture is
+beautiful in color is what moves him. As composition and color the
+thing is an admirable piece of �sthetic thinking and �sthetic
+expression, and so gives him a purely �sthetic delight; and the
+technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he
+is a technician. The representation of the objects incidental to the
+subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture
+considered as an �sthetic thought.
+
+This is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental
+consciousness. And it is probable that many painters do not so
+distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of
+view. But consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these
+terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and
+whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the
+great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the
+growth and permanency of his own fame. That is why a great popular
+reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. The �sthetic qualities
+of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent
+reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally
+�sthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value.
+Without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental
+coincidence with popular taste.
+
+If a painter is really great in the power of conception and of
+expression of any of the great �sthetic elements, his work will be
+permanently great. It will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus
+of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so,
+and nothing but obliteration can prevent it.
+
+I am explicit in stating these ideas, not because I expect that you
+will learn from this book to be a great master of the �sthetic, but
+because I am assured that you can never be a painter unless you
+understand a painter's true problems. You must be able to know a good
+picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try
+for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of
+looking at a painter's work. The technical problems are the control of
+the materials of expression. The painter must have that control. The
+student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the
+means to convey his ideas. But those ideas, if he be a true painter,
+are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and
+color, and of their combinations.
+
+=The Color Sense.=--Therefore color is a thing to be striven for for
+its own sake. Good color is a value in itself. You may not have the
+genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the
+color sense can be definitely acquired. I will not say that color
+initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to
+judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a
+good painter, even of a great one.
+
+I knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness
+as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a
+very inferior perception of color to the power which, as I say, came
+near to greatness. He was an able painter and a well-trained one
+before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he
+deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the
+result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply by recognizing where he
+needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine
+distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. Summer
+after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to
+study out certain problems. Every year he set himself mainly one
+problem to solve. This year it might be luminosity; next it might be
+the domination of a certain color; another year the just
+discrimination of tones--and he became a most exquisite colorist.
+
+So, as I knew his work before and after this self-training, and as I
+know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, I think I
+can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color
+sense is possible.
+
+=Taste.=--It is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent
+on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color
+does not rest on mere opinion. That a good colorist's idea of color
+does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking,
+in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to
+his. The colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by
+rule. He works from his feeling of what is right. But there is a law
+back of his taste and feeling. The laws of color harmony are
+definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated.
+Color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of
+light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves.
+
+=Color Waves.=--These waves of light give sensations of color which
+vary with the rapidity or length of the wave, and certain combinations
+of wave lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others will not
+be. This is a matter of scientific fact; it is not a notion. The
+mathematical relations of color waves have been calculated as
+accurately as the relations of sound waves have been. It is possible
+to make combinations of mathematical figures which shall represent a
+series of harmonious color waves. And it is possible to measure the
+waves radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove them,
+_mathematically_, to be bad color.
+
+It is a satisfaction to the artist to know that this is so; because
+although he will never compose color-schemes by the aid of
+mathematics, it gives him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes
+the assurance of the man who claims the right to assert his opinion on
+color because "one man's taste is as good as another's." It is also
+encouraging to the student to know it, because he then knows that
+there is a definite knowledge, and not a personal idiosyncrasy, on
+which he can found his attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic
+life.
+
+=Color Composition.=--The artist's problem in color composition is
+analogous to that of line and mass, but is of course governed by
+conditions peculiar to it. The qualities which derive from line and
+mass are emphasized or modified by the management of color in relation
+to them. The painter in this direction uses the three elements
+together. Contrast and accent are attributes of color. Dignity and
+weight, as well as certain emotional qualities, such as vivacity and
+sombreness, may give the key to the picture in accordance with the
+arrangement of its color-scheme.
+
+The mass may be simplified and strengthened, or broken up and
+lightened, by the color of the forms in it. By massing groups of
+objects in the same color, or by introducing different colors in the
+different forms in the same group, the mass is emphasized or weakened.
+So in line, the same color in repetition will carry the line through a
+series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the emphasis of line.
+Masses can be strung into line, like beads, on a thread of color. In
+the great compositions of the old Venetian painters this marshalling
+of color groups constituted a principal element. The decorative unity
+of these great canvases could have been possible in no other way.
+
+As I have said, the key of the color-scheme has a direct emotional
+effect, so adding to the power and dignity or the grace and
+lightsomeness of the composition. The analogy between color and
+imagination is marked. Certain temperaments instinctively express
+their ideals through color. To the painter color may be an
+all-influencing power; it is the glory of painting.
+
+Drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks directly to the
+emotions, and conveys at a glance the idea which is re-enforced
+through the slower intellectual perception of the meaning of forms. In
+some unexplained way it expresses to the observer the temperamental
+mood; the joyousness, the severity or agitation which was the cause of
+its conception. In this strange but direct manner the color note aids
+the expression by line and mass of the �sthetic emotion which is the
+meaning of the painter's thought.
+
+=Key.=--The key, then, is an important part of the picture. The very
+terms _warm_ and _cold_ applied to colors suggest what may be done by
+color arrangement. The _pitch_ of the picture places it, in the
+emotional scale.
+
+=Tone.=--Tone is harmony; the perfect balance of color in all parts of
+the picture. Fine color always means the presence, in all the color of
+the picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less proportion.
+Leave one color out in some proportion, and you have just so much less
+of a balance. I do not mean that some touch may not be pure color. On
+the contrary, the whole picture may be built up of touches of pure
+color. But the balance of color must be made then by touches of the
+different colors balancing each other, not only all over the picture,
+but in each part of it, to avoid crudity or over-proportion of any
+color. Generally the color scheme is dominated by some one color:
+which means that every touch of color on the canvas is modified to
+some extent by the presence of that color, keeping the whole in key.
+Each color retains its personal quality, but the quality of the
+dominant color is felt in it.
+
+=False Tone.=--This is not to be attained by painting the picture
+regardless of color relations, and then glazing or scumbling some
+color all over the whole. This is the false tone of some of the older
+historical painters, particularly of the English school of the earlier
+part of this century. They "painted" the picture, and then just before
+exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and
+some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. This did, in fact, bring
+the picture in tone after a fashion. But it is not a colorist's
+method. It is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a
+vicious color sense. True tone is not something put onto the picture
+after it is painted. It is an inherent part of its color conception,
+and is worked into it while the picture is being painted, and grows to
+perfection with the growth of the picture. It is of the very essence
+of the picture. It is the dominant balance of color qualities; the
+result of a perfect appreciation of the value of every color spot
+which goes to the expression of the artist's thought.
+
+In one sense it is the same as _atmosphere_ in that the tonality of
+the picture is the atmosphere which pervades it. It may perhaps be
+best described by saying that it is that combination of color which
+gives to the picture the effect of every object and part in it having
+been seen under the same conditions of atmosphere; having been seen at
+the same time, with the same modification, and with the same degree
+and quality of light vibration. Tone is _color value_ as distinguished
+from value as degree of power as light and shade; and in this is the
+perfection of subtlety of color feeling.
+
+=Tone Painters and Colorists.=--Some painters have been called "tone
+painters," while others have been called "colorists;" not that tone
+painters are not colorists, but that there is a difference. It is a
+difference of aim, a difference of desire. Those painters who are
+usually called colorists, like Titian and Rubens, are in love with the
+richness and power of the color gamut. They are full of the splendor
+of color. They paint in full key, however balanced the canvas. Each
+note of color tells for its full power. Their stop is the open
+diapason, and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals and full
+chords.
+
+The tone painter deals with close intervals. He is in love with subtle
+harmonies. What he loves is the essence of the color quality, and not
+its splendor. With the closest range he can give all possible
+half-tones and shades and modulations of color, yet never exceed the
+gray note perhaps; never once go to the full extent of his
+palette-power.
+
+The utmost delicacy of perception and feeling, and the most perfect
+command of materials and of values, are necessary to such a painter.
+Above all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite subtlety
+and the exquisiteness of power are his. And yet this is the thing
+least appreciated by the lay mind, the most difficult to encompass,
+and requiring the most knowledge to appreciate.
+
+=Scientific Color.=--To the scientist color is simply the irritation
+of the nerves of the retina of the eye by the waves of light.
+Different wave lengths give different color sensations. It is the
+generally accepted theory now that there are three primary sensations;
+that is, that the eye is sensitive to three kinds of color, and that
+all other shades and varieties of color are the results of mingling or
+overlapping of the waves which produce those three colors, and
+irritating more or less the nerves sensitive to each color
+simultaneously. These three primary colors are now stated to be red,
+blue, and _green_. The older idea was that they were red, blue, and
+_yellow_; and was based on experiments with pigments. Pigments do give
+these results; for a mixture of blue and yellow _pigment_ will give
+green, and a mixture of red and green _pigment_ will not give yellow,
+while the reverse is the fact with _light_.
+
+White light is composed of all the colors. And the white light may be
+broken up (separated by refraction or the turning aside of light rays
+from their true course) into the colors of the rainbow, which is
+itself only this same decomposition of light by atmospheric
+refraction. Black is the absence of light, and consequently of color.
+This is not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has never been
+produced. The pigment simply reflects light rays which fall on it;
+that is, pigments have the power of absorbing, and so rendering
+invisible, certain of the rays which, combined, make up the white
+light which illumines them; and of transmitting others to the eye by
+reflection. We see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by,
+those rays which are not absorbed, but which are reflected.
+
+All pigment is more or less absorbent of color rays, and more or less
+reflective of them; certain color rays being absorbed by a pigment,
+and certain other rays being reflected by it. The pigment is named
+according to those rays which it reflects. As a color-producing
+substance, then, the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color
+rays. But a true mirror would reflect all rays unmodified. If we could
+paint with mirrors, each of which would reflect its own color
+_unsullied_, we could do what the scientist does with light; but the
+painter deals with an imperfect mirror which gives no color rays back
+unsullied by rays of another class, and so our results cannot be the
+same as the scientist's. So that just in accordance with the degree of
+purity of transmitting power of a pigment will be the purity of the
+color which we get by its use. But absolute purity of pigment we
+cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do with light, and we deal
+with a practical fact rather than a scientific fact, as painters.
+
+=Primaries and Secondaries.=--As all the other shades of color are
+produced by the combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or
+vibrations in the light rays from the primary colors, we have a series
+of colors called secondaries, because they are made up of the rays of
+any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of
+blue and red. When dealing with _light_ the secondaries are: shades of
+violet and purple from red and blue; shades of orange red, orange,
+orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green from red and green; and
+bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green--the character of
+the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the
+mixture.
+
+These conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in
+white light. The primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment,
+as I have stated, but the principles do. It will avoid confusion if I
+speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with pigment, it
+being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing
+with rather than a scientific one.
+
+In dealing with _pigment_ the primaries are red, blue, and _yellow_,
+not _green_. Of course the secondaries are also changed; and we have
+purple and violet shades from red and blue, orange from red and
+_yellow_, and green from blue and yellow--all of which vary in shade
+with the proportion of the mixture of the primaries, as is the case
+with light.
+
+=Tertiaries.=--Another class of shades or colors is called _tertiary_,
+or third; for they are mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a
+primary with a secondary which does not result from mixture with that
+primary. Tertiaries are all _grays_, and grays are practically always
+tertiaries. If you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help
+you in management of color. Grays are, to the painter, always
+combinations of color which include the three primaries. The usual
+idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of color. This is not
+so. Gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of
+color, however rich it may be, is always quiet in effect as a whole;
+that is, grayish--good color is never garish. It is very important
+that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. You
+cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. If you try to
+make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious
+color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of
+the true problem. Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of
+primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries,
+are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they
+are also more luminous; they are _live_ color instead of _dead_ color.
+Grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should
+not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is in
+_pigment_), giving a certain color quality to the gray that results
+from it.
+
+=Complementary Colors.=--Two colors are said to be complementary to
+each other when they together contain the three primaries in equal
+strength. Green, for instance, is the complementary of red, for it
+contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is complementary to
+blue; and purple (red and blue) is complementary to yellow.
+
+The knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the
+painter, for all the effects of color contrast and color harmony are
+due to this. Complementary colors, in mass, side by side, contrast.
+The greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries.
+
+Complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them
+are side by side, as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or
+grays by the mixing of the rays.
+
+=The Law of Color Contrast.=--"When two dissimilar colors are placed
+in contiguity, they are always modified in such a manner as to
+increase their dissimilarity."
+
+=Warm and Cold Colors.=--Red and yellow are called warm colors, and
+blue is called a cold color. This is not that the color is really cold
+or warm, of course, but that they convey the impression of warmth and
+coldness. It is mainly due to association probably, for those things
+which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those
+which are cold contain more blue. There is a predominance of cold
+color in winter and of the warm colors in summer.
+
+From the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize
+the secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less
+proportionately of the warm or cold primaries.
+
+In contrasting colors these qualities have great effect.
+
+=Color Juxtaposition.=--In studying the facts of color contrast and
+color juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the
+ordinary way, will have one effect; and the same pigments in the same
+proportions, mixed not by stirring them into one mass, but by laying
+separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite
+another. The gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great,
+because you have mixed the _color rays_, which are really light rays,
+instead of mixing the _pigment_ as in the usual way. You have really
+mixed the color by mixing _light_ as far as it is possible to do it
+with pigment. You have taken advantage of all the light reflecting
+power of the pigment on which the color effect depends. Each pigment,
+being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it,
+unaffected by the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it;
+while the neutralizing power of the other color being side by side
+with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by
+overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color,
+made up of the two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and
+full of life.
+
+="Yellow and Purple."=--It is this principle which is the cause of the
+peculiarity in the technique of certain "Impressionist" painters. The
+"yellow lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the side of a
+color that color which will be most effective in forcing its note.
+
+Brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study
+of the law of color contrast and color juxtaposition. The effect of
+complementaries in color contrast is what you must study for this, for
+the theory of it. For the practice of it, study carefully and
+faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the
+real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or
+light contrast which you see. Purple shadows and yellow light
+re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature.
+Refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result
+without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the
+condemnation on it. Closer study of the relations is the way to find
+the art of concealing art.
+
+But yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. All through
+the range of color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the
+primaries, this principle of complement plays a part. There is no
+color effect you can use in painting which does not have to do, more
+or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to
+emphasize; or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it. Train your
+eyes to see what the color is which makes the effect. Analyze it, see
+the parts in the thing, so that you may get the thing in the same way,
+if you would get it of the same force as in nature.
+
+=Practical Color.=--All these theoretical ideas as to color have their
+relation to the actual handling of pigment, which is the craft of the
+painter. The facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation have
+a practical bearing on the painter's work, both in what he is to
+express and how he is to do it; as to his conception of a picture and
+his representation of facts. In his conception he must deal with the
+possibilities of effect of color on color. The power of one color to
+strengthen the personal hue of another, or its power to modify that
+hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color in the picture is the true
+image of the color he has seen in his mind. In the same degree must
+this possibility affect his representation of actual objects.
+
+The greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight or atmospheric
+effects come from the power to produce vibration by cool contrasted
+with warm color. You will find that a red is not so rich in any
+position as when you place its complementary near it. At times you
+will find it impossible to get the snap and sparkle to a
+scarlet--cannot make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture as
+you want it without placing a touch of purple, perhaps, just beside
+it; to place near by a darker note will not have the same effect. It
+is the contrast of color vibration, not the contrast of light and
+shade, which gives the life. And at the same time that you enhance the
+brilliancy of the several notes of color in the picture, you harmonize
+the whole. For the mosaic of color spots all over the canvas brings
+about the balance of color in the composition, and harmony is the
+result.
+
+=Study Relations.=--You must constantly study the actual relations of
+color in nature. You will find, if you look for it, that always, just
+where in art you would need a touch of the complementary for strength
+or for harmony, nature has put it there. She does it so subtly that
+only a close observer would suspect it. But the thing is there, and it
+is your business to be the close observer who sees it, both for your
+training as a colorist, and your use as an interpreter of nature's
+beauties. It is your business to see subtly, for nature uses colors
+subtly. The note sparkles in nature, but you do not notice the
+complementary color near it. Can you not also place the complementary
+color so that it is not seen, but its influence on the important color
+is felt? It is by searching out these _finesses_ of nature that you
+train your eye. You must actually see these colors. At first you may
+only know that they must be there because the effect is there. But
+your eye is capable of actually recognizing them themselves, and you
+are no painter till it can. The theoretical knowledge is and should be
+a help to you, but the actual power of sight is most important. A
+painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his self-training, but
+power of eye he must have as the result of that training. The
+instantaneous recognition of facts and relations, the immediate and
+perfect union of eye and thought, are what make that intuitive
+perception which is the true feeling of the artist.
+
+Work this out with eye and palette. Study the color and its relation
+in nature, and study its analogy in the pigment touches on the canvas.
+
+=The Palette.=--You try to attain nature's effects of light with
+pigment. Pigment is less pure than light. You cannot have the same
+scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the
+arrangement of your palette will help you. As you have not a perfect
+blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors
+for one. Your paints will always be more or less impurely primary. No
+one red will make a pure purple with blue, and an equally pure orange
+with yellow. Yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able to make.
+Have, then, both a yellowish or orange red and a bluish or purplish
+red on your palette. Do the same with blue and yellow. In this way you
+can not only get approximately pure secondaries when you need them,
+but the primaries themselves lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so
+that you can make very delicate combinations with pure colors. A
+bluish yellow and a yellowish blue, for instance, will make a rather
+positive green. By using a reddish yellow and a bluish or purplish
+red, you practically bring in the red note, and make a grayer green
+while still using only two pigments.
+
+So, too, you get similar control of effects by the use of opaque or
+transparent pigments, the transparent ones tending to richness, the
+opaque to dulness of color. Various processes in the manner of laying
+on paint bring about these different qualities, and will be spoken of
+in the chapter on "Processes."
+
+Classify your pigments in your mind in accordance with these
+characteristics. Think of the ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque,
+and as yellows tending to the reddish. With any blue they make gray
+greens because of the latter quality, and they make gray oranges with
+red because of the dulness of their opacity and body. For richer
+greens think of the lighter chromes and cadmium yellows or citrons;
+and for the richer oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. With
+reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions for one side of
+the scale, and the Chinese or bluish vermilion on the other side. The
+deeper and heavier reds fall in line the same way. Indian red is
+bluish, light red and Venetian red are yellowish.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART IV
+
+                        PRACTICAL APPLICATION
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII
+
+                            REPRESENTATION
+
+
+Although much has been said about the theoretical and abstract side of
+painting, and the importance of the �sthetic elements in art have been
+insisted upon, it is not to be supposed for a moment that painting
+does not deal with actual things. All painting which is not purely
+conventional must deal with and represent nature and natural facts.
+These are the body of the picture; the �sthetic elements are the heart
+of it. I believe that it is important that you should know that there
+is that side to painting, and should have some insight into it; that
+you should see that there is something else to think of than the
+imitation of natural objects. I would have you think more nobly of
+painting than to believe that "the greatest imitation is the greatest
+art." Beneath the imitation of the obvious facts of nature are the
+deeper facts and truths, and in and through these may you express
+those qualities of intellectual creation by means of which only,
+painting is not a craft, but an art.
+
+But for all that, painting does, and always must, deal with those
+obvious facts; and however much you may give your mind to the problems
+of composition and color, you must base it on a foundation of ability
+to represent what you see. Represent well the external objects, and
+you are in a position to interpret the spirit of them. For as nature
+only manifests her inner spirit through her outward forms and facts,
+you must be able to paint these well before you can do anything else.
+
+The intellectual action which perceives and constructs is the art, the
+skill which represents and reproduces is the science, of painting.
+
+Painting is the art of expression in color. The fact of color rather
+than form is the fundamental characteristic of it. The use of pigment
+rather than other materials is implied in its name. Therefore the
+science of painting deals with the materials with which to produce on
+canvas all manner of visible color combinations; and those processes
+of manipulation which make possible the representation of all the
+facts of color and light, of substance and texture, through which
+nature manifests herself.
+
+It is not enough to have the pigment, nor even that it should get
+itself onto the canvas. Different characteristics call for different
+management of paint. Luminosity of light and sombreness of shadow will
+not be expressed by the same color, put on in the same way. Different
+forms and surfaces and objects demand different treatment. The
+science of painting must deal with all these.
+
+It has been said that there are as many ways of painting as there are
+painters. Certainly there are as many ways as there are men of any
+originality. For however a painter has been trained, whatever the
+methods which he has been taught to use, he will always change them,
+more or less, in adapting them to his own purposes. And as the main
+intent of the art of an epoch or period differs from that of a
+previous one, so the manner of laying on paint will change to meet the
+needs of that difference. The manner of painting to-day is very
+different from that of other times. Some of the old processes are
+looked upon by the modern man as quite beneath his recognition. Yet
+these same methods are necessary to certain qualities, and if the
+modern man does not use or approve of those methods, it is because he
+is not especially interested in the qualities which they are necessary
+to.
+
+There is probably no one statement which all fair-minded painters will
+more willingly acquiesce in, than one which affirms that the method by
+which the result is attained is unimportant, provided that the result
+_is_ attained, and that it is one worth attaining. Every man will,
+whether it is right or not, use those methods which most surely and
+completely bring about the expression of the thing he wishes to
+express. In the face of this fact, and of the many acknowledged
+masterpieces, every one of which was painted in defiance of some rule
+some time or other alleged to be the only right one, it is not
+possible to prescribe or proscribe anything in the direction of the
+manipulation of colors. The result _must_ be right, and if it is, it
+justifies the means. If it be not right, the thing is worthless, no
+matter how perfectly according to rule the process may be. As Hunt
+said, "What do I care about the grammar if you've got something to
+say?" The important thing is to say something, and if you do really
+say something, and do really completely and precisely express it, as
+far as a painter is concerned it will be grammatical. If not to-day,
+the grammar will come round to it to-morrow. Henry Ward Beecher is
+reported to have answered to a criticism on grammatical slips in the
+heat of eloquence, "Young man, if the English language gets in the way
+of the expression of my thought, so much the worse for the English
+language!" In painting, at any rate, the _complete_ expression of
+thought _is_ grammatical, and if not, so much the worse for the
+grammarians.
+
+=Try Everything.=--Know, then, all you can about all the ways of
+manipulating paint that have ever been used. Use any or all of those
+ways as you find them needful or helpful. There is none which has not
+the authority of a master behind it, and though another master may
+decry it, it is because, being a master, he claims the very right he
+denies to you.
+
+Experiment with all; but never use any method for the sake of the
+method, but only for what it is capable of doing for you in helping
+expression.
+
+=Safety.=--The only real rule as to what to use and what not, applies
+to the effect on the permanence of your canvas. Never use pigments
+which will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause others to
+fade. Avoid all such using of materials as you know will make your
+picture crack, or in any other way bring about its deterioration.
+
+=Good Painting.=--But for all I have just said, there is an
+acknowledged basis of what is good painting. If any man or school lays
+on paint in a frank, direct way, getting the effect by sheer force of
+putting on the right color in just the right place, with no tricks nor
+affectations, that is good painting; and the more simple, direct, and
+frank the manner of handling, the better the painting.
+
+Let us understand what direct painting is first, and then consider
+varieties of handling. For whatever may be the subsequent
+manipulations, the picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct
+possible manner of laying on paint, and the other processes are mainly
+to modify or to further and strengthen the effect suggested in the
+first painting. And generally, also, in all sketches and studies
+which are preliminary preparations for the picture, the most direct
+painting is used, and the various processes are reserved for working
+out more subtle effects on the final canvas.
+
+=Old Dutch Painting.=--Probably there are no better examples of frank
+painting than the works of the old Dutchmen. You should study them
+whenever you have a chance. Waiving all discussion as to the �sthetic
+qualities of their work,--as _painters_, as masters of the craft of
+laying on paint, they are unexcelled. And in most cases, too, they
+possessed the art of concealing their art. You will have to use the
+closest observation to discover the exact means they used to get the
+subtle tones and atmospheric effects.
+
+The only obvious quality is the perfect understanding and skill of
+their brush-work. In the smoothest as well as in the roughest of their
+work, you can note how perfectly the brush searches the modelling, and
+with the most exquisite expressiveness and perfect frankness, follows
+the structural lines. No doubt there were often paintings, glazings,
+and scumblings; but they always furthered the meaning of the first
+painting, and never in the least interfered with or obscured the
+effect of _na�vet�_, of candor of workmanship.
+
+It is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work that you should
+strive to attain as the basis of your painting. Learn to express
+drawing with your brush, and to place at once and without indecision
+or timidity the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at
+that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an
+effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of
+after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent
+manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision.
+Direct painting is the fundamental process of all good painting.
+
+Let me take the type of old Dutch painting to represent to you this
+quality of direct painting. First of all notice a basis of perfect
+drawing,--a knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits of no
+fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise and direct recognition
+of structure. Note that this drawing is as characteristic of the
+brush-work as of the drawing which is under it. Observe that the
+handling of the whole school, from the least to the greatest, is
+founded on a similar and perfect craftsmanship,--the same use of
+materials; the same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample palette;
+the same use of solid color candidly expressing the planes of
+modelling, freely following the lines of structure; the absence of
+affectation or invention of individual means. Whatever the
+individuality of the artist, it rests on something else than
+difference of technique. From the freest and most direct of painters,
+Frans Hals, to the most smooth and detailed, Gerard Dou, the
+directness and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same, and founded
+on the same technical basis of color manipulation. The one is more
+eager, terse, the other more deliberate and complete; but both use the
+same pigments, both use the same solid color, are simple, lucid, both
+occupied solely with the thing to be expressed, and the least degree
+in the world with the manner of it. That manner comes from the same
+previous technical training which each uses in the most
+matter-of-course way, with only such change from the type, as his
+temperament unconsciously imposes on him.
+
+There is nothing like it elsewhere. Study it; notice the
+unaffectedness of brush-stroke in Rembrandt. See how it is the same as
+Hals, but less perfunctory. See how the brush piles up paint again and
+again along the same ridge of flesh, taking no notice of its
+revelation of the insistence of attempt at the right value, nor of its
+roughness of surface. To get that drawing and that color in the
+freest, frankest, most direct way: that is the aim. The absolute
+conviction of it: that is the essence of this technique of the old
+Dutch masters. And whatever else it may have or may not have, you will
+find in it all that you can find anywhere of suggestion of direct and
+frank and sincere painting, and nothing I can say will give you any
+such clear idea of what you should strive for as the basis of all the
+different sorts of brush-work necessary or useful in the production of
+an oil painting.
+
+[Illustration: =The Fisher Boy.= _Frans Hals._
+To show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and
+simplicity of means, always present in Dutch work, though never so
+free as with Hals.]
+
+=Detail.=--The question of detail may well come in here. How far are
+you to carry detail in your painting? The Dutch painters went to both
+extremes. Gerard Dou worked two weeks on a broom-handle, and hoped to
+finish it in a few days more. Frans Hals would paint a head in an
+hour. The French painter Meissonier paints the high light on every
+button of a trooper's coat, and De Neuville barely paints the button
+at all. What way are you to turn? Which are you to choose? We have a
+great deal said nowadays against detail in painting. Much is said of
+breadth and broad painting. Which is right?
+
+=True Breadth.=--The answer lies in the central idea of the picture.
+There are times when detail may be very minute, and times when the
+greatest freedom is essential. True breadth is compatible with much
+even minute detail in the same canvas. For breadth does not mean
+merely a large brush. It never means slap-dash. It is the just
+conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary
+to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best
+expressed.
+
+Detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to
+its size it is allowable. A decorative canvas, a picture which is to
+be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect,
+much justness of composition and color. Largeness of conception and
+execution, and only so much detail as shall be necessary to the best
+expression compatible with that largeness. On the other hand, a
+"cabinet picture," a small panel, will admit of microscopic detail if
+it be not so painted that the detail is all you can see. And just here
+is the heart of the whole matter. Whether you use much or little
+detail, it is not for the sake of the detail, not for any interest
+which lies in the detail itself, but for what power of expression may
+lie in it. If the picture, large or small, be largely conceived, and
+its main idea as to subject and those qualities of �sthetic meaning I
+have spoken of are always kept in view, and never allowed to lose
+themselves in the search for minuteness, then any amount of detail
+will take its place in true relation to the whole picture. If it does
+not do this it is bad.
+
+The relations of parts to the whole are the key to the situation
+always.
+
+Nothing is right which interferes with the true relations in the
+picture. This is where the working for detail is most likely to lead
+you astray. It takes great ability and power to keep detail where it
+belongs. Detail is always the search for small things, and they are
+almost sure to obtrude themselves to the neglecting of the more
+important things. Details which do not stay in their places had better
+be left out of the picture. There is such a thing as _values_ in
+_facts_ as well as other parts of your work. And this applies to
+breadth as well as to detail.
+
+[Illustration: =Boar-Hunt.= _Snyders._
+To show relation of detail to the whole picture. The detail is carried
+far, yet does not interfere with emphasis of action and life. The
+picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.]
+
+Gerard Dou remains a great painter, and even a broad painter, strange
+as it may sound, in spite of his microscopic work. But only because of
+his breadth of eye. The detail is not the most important thing with
+him. It is in the picture, and you can see it when you look for it.
+But as you look at the picture it is not peppered all over with
+pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot be seen. Every
+detail stays back as it would in nature; loses itself in the part to
+which it belongs; modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen until
+it is looked for. This is broad painting, because the main things are
+emphasized; and if the details are painted they are seen in their true
+relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed to them.
+
+With much or little detail, this is what is to be aimed at. Whether
+with big brushes or little ones, the expression of the main idea, of
+the important, the vital things,--this is broad painting, and this
+only.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII
+
+                             MANIPULATION
+
+
+=Premier Coup.=--Something similar to what I have spoken of as "direct
+painting" has long been a much-advocated manner of painting in France,
+under the name of _Premier Coup_; which means, translated literally,
+"first stroke."
+
+It is taught that the painter should use no after or overworkings at
+all; but that he should carefully and deliberately select the color
+for his brush-stroke, and then lay it on the canvas at one stroke,
+each after-stroke being laid beside some previous one, until the
+canvas has been covered by a mosaic of color each shade representing a
+single "first-stroke," with no after-stroke laid over it to modify its
+effect. Such a process tends to great deliberation of work and
+exactness of study. Probably no better thing was ever devised for the
+training of the eye and hand. But it has its limits, and is not often
+rigidly adhered to in the painting of pictures; although the fresh,
+direct effect of this sort of work is preserved as far as possible in
+much modern French work, and that quality is held in great esteem.
+
+This manner of painting is especially useful in the making of sketches
+and studies, and leads to a strong control of the brush and the
+resources of the palette.
+
+In all painting of this character the color should have body.
+Transparent color should not be used alone, but only to modify the
+tint of the more solid pigments; for the transparent colors used
+indiscriminately are apt to crack, which characteristic is avoided
+when the heavier color forms the body of the paint.
+
+=Solid Painting.=--In most cases solid painting is the safest,--the
+least likely to crack, and the most safely cleaned from varnish and
+dirt without injury to the paint itself. It is firmer in character
+too, and gives more solidity of effect to the picture.
+
+=Mixing.=--In mixing colors you should be careful not to over mix.
+Don't stir your paint. Too much mixing takes the life out of the
+color. Particles of the pure color not too much broken up by mixing
+are valuable to your work, giving vibration and brilliancy to it. The
+reverse is muddiness, which is sure to come from too much fussing and
+overworking of wet paint. Don't use more than three pigments in one
+tint if you can help it, and mix them loosely. If you must use more
+colors, mix still more loosely. Put all the colors together, one
+beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up
+loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly.
+Never muddle the color on the canvas. Don't put one color over another
+more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one
+kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty
+color, which of all things in painting is most useless.
+
+Keep the color clean and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and
+free. Never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the
+color is, and mix it as you want it. Decide just where the touch is to
+go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. If it isn't right,
+daubing into it or pat-patting it won't help it. Either leave it, or
+mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped this one off.
+
+Don't try to economize on your mixing. A color mixed for one place
+will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with
+it. Have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially
+for each brush-stroke. On the other hand, don't be niggardly with your
+paint. Don't use less paint than you need. Mix an ample brushful and
+put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you
+should use each time. The variety of tone and value which comes of
+mixing new color for every touch of the brush is in itself a charm in
+a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it.
+
+[Illustration: =Good Bock.= _Manet._
+To illustrate direct and solid painting.]
+
+=Corrections.=--As far as you can, make corrections by over-painting
+when the paint is dry, or nearly so. When I say don't work into wet
+color to correct, I do not mean that you are never to do so, but that
+to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty. Of
+course it is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when
+you do, do it with deliberation. Don't lose your head and pile wet
+paint on wet paint in the vain hope of getting the color by force of
+piling it on. You will only get it worse and worse. Get it as nearly
+right as you can. If it is hopeless, scrape it off clean, and mix a
+fresh tint. If it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go
+ahead; and put a better color on that place to-morrow when it is dry,
+if you can.
+
+=Keep at it.=--But above all don't be permanently satisfied with the
+almost. Don't be afraid to put paint over dry paint till it is right.
+Work at it day after day. Let the paint get thick if it will, if only
+you get the thing right. The secret of getting it right is to keep at
+it, and be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. When
+you can see nothing wrong you can do no better. But as long as your
+eye will recognize a difference between what is on the canvas and what
+ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are shirking
+if you stop. Never call a thing done as long as you can see something
+wrong about it. No matter what any one else says, your work must come
+up _at least_ to the standard of what you yourself can see.
+
+=Loose Painting.=--Sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very
+loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure
+pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show
+somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. Too much of
+this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right
+place is not to be obtained in any other way. The paint may be dragged
+over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less
+thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into
+its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. All these
+ways will be spoken of as they suggest themselves in other chapters.
+Solid color, generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of body
+is rather strengthened by it than the reverse.
+
+=Scumbling.=--Another means of modifying the color and effect of a
+painting has perhaps always been more or less commonly in use. This is
+called _scumbling_, and may be considered under the head of solid
+painting, as it is always done with body, and never with transparent,
+color. The process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color,
+without thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried.
+Generally this _scumble_ is of a lighter color than the
+under-painting, and is rubbed on with a stubby brush slightly charged
+with the paint. As much surface as is desired may be covered in this
+way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to
+reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. Often the effect is very
+successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and
+rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by
+scumbling. Too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and
+after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to avoid
+this.
+
+The scumble may be used with the richer and darker colors, too, to
+modify towards richness the tone of parts of the picture, or to darken
+the value. Most often, however, its value lies in its use to bring
+harsher and sharper parts together, and to give the hazy effect when
+it is needed.
+
+Scumbling will not have a good effect when it is not intended to
+varnish the picture afterwards; for the oil in the paint is absorbed
+immediately, and the rubbing of color gives a dead look to the canvas
+which is very unpleasant, and decidedly the reverse of artistic.
+
+=Glazing.=--A very valuable process, the reverse of scumbling, is
+glazing. It has always been in use since the invention of the oil
+medium. All the Italian painters used it; it is an essential part of
+their system of coloring. The rich, deep color of Titian, the warm
+flesh of Raphael, and the jewel-like quality of the early German
+painters are impossible without some form of glaze. The Germans
+perhaps made glazes with white of egg before oil was used as a
+vehicle. But to glaze is the only way to get the fullest effect of the
+quality characteristic of the transparent paints.
+
+A glaze is a thin wash of transparent color flowed over an
+under-painting to modify its tone or to add to its effect. It is not
+always transparent color, but usually it is. Sometimes opaque or
+semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze by virtue of the fact
+that it is thinned with a vehicle either oil or varnish, and _flowed_
+on. A scumble is _rubbed_ on, and is never pure transparent color.
+
+=Advantages of Glazing.=--The advantages are the gain in harmony, in
+force, in brilliancy; you may correct a color when it is wrong, or
+perfect it when it is not possible to get the force or richness
+required without it. These are the qualities which have made it used
+by all schools more or less.
+
+=Disadvantages.=--There are, however, quite as evident and marked
+disadvantages. The free use of oil as a thinning vehicle, although it
+makes possible a greater degree of richness of color, is very likely
+to turn the picture brown in time. Oil will always eventually have a
+browning effect on all paints, even when mixed with them as little as
+is absolutely necessary. If you make a tinted varnish of oil (which
+is practically what a glaze is), you add so much, to the surely
+darkening action of the oil on the picture.
+
+If, again, you depend upon a glaze for the richness of color for your
+picture, and you use a color which is not permanent, your glaze fades,
+and your color is not there. A glaze is particularly liable to be
+injured by the cleaner if it ever gets into his hands. He works down
+to fresh color, and what with the browning of the glaze and the fact
+that the cleaner is more anxious that the picture should be cleaned
+than that its color should be fine, he will, in nine cases out of ten,
+_clean_ off the glaze which may be the final and most expensive color
+the painter has put on it.
+
+Glazing is little used nowadays, compared with what it once was. But
+there are times when you cannot get what you want in any other way,
+and when you are sure that glazing is the only thing which will give
+you your result, the only law for the painter comes in,--get your
+result.
+
+=Precautions.=--If you do glaze, however, there is a right and a wrong
+way. You should not use a glaze as a last resort. It is better to
+calculate on it beforehand; for you always glaze with a darker tint
+upon a lighter one, so that if you have not allowed for this, you will
+get your picture too low in tone before you know it.
+
+If you want to make your picture, or a part of it, brighter and
+lighter, bring it up in pitch with body color first, with solid
+painting, and then glaze it.
+
+Do not glaze on color which is not well dried. The drying of the under
+color and the drying of the glaze are apt to be different in point of
+time, and the picture will crack. If the vehicle is the same as was
+used in the under-painting, and the drying qualities of both paintings
+are the same, there is no danger. But when color dries, it shrinks and
+flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking differently are sure to
+pull apart, and that causes cracking. If the under-painting is well
+dry, but not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable of still
+absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle to bind the coats
+together, your glaze will stand. But rather than have it too soft,
+have the under-painting too hard, and then before you glaze go over it
+with a little thin, quick-drying varnish, and glaze into that. The
+varnish will hold the two coats of paint together.
+
+Glazing, as well as scumbling, implies the obligation to varnish your
+picture. Whenever you use oil freely you will have to varnish your
+picture to keep it bright and fresh in color.
+
+It would be wise never to use a glaze as a final process. Glaze to get
+the tone or to modify it, but paint into the glaze with body color,
+and you keep the advantage of the glaze without many of the
+disadvantages of it, and the picture has a more solid effect of
+painting.
+
+=Frott�e.=--Closely akin to the glaze in manner, but very different in
+use, is the _frott�e_, or "rubbing." This is generally used on the
+fresh surface of the canvas, to "rub in" the light and shade or the
+first coloring of the picture after the drawing is done. It is one of
+the safest and wisest ways of beginning your picture. You can either
+rub in the picture with a _frott�e_ of one color, as sienna or umber,
+or you can use all the colors in their proper places, only using very
+little vehicle, and making something very thin in tint, somewhat
+between a glaze and a scumble. You can make a complete drawing in
+monochrome in this way, or you can lay in all the ground colors of the
+picture till it has much the effect of a complete painting. Then, as
+you paint and carry the picture forward, every color you put on will
+be surrounded with approximately the true relations, instead of being
+contrasted by a glare of white canvas.
+
+A _frott�e_ is a most sympathetic ground to paint over.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV
+
+                                COPYING
+
+
+Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of
+manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful,
+sometimes necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the
+results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter
+must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. Before
+the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be
+placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and
+their relation to that plan. This calls for some method of exact
+reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that
+purpose. The process of copying is that method.
+
+From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical
+means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter
+whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why
+and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study
+with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as
+the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the
+expression at the same time.
+
+This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said
+before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye;
+and the training of the power of perception rather than the
+understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The
+processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature
+are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find
+his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is
+still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as
+he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can
+give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of
+nature should come first. The _seeing_ of what is must precede the
+_stating_ of it.
+
+But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to
+be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right
+places.
+
+Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for
+something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student
+makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing,
+but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and
+whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the
+original.
+
+This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really
+having a picture which is more than superficially like the original;
+but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which
+cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.
+
+Study your original carefully before and while working on your own
+canvas. See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the
+same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a
+large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with
+a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush
+than the painter used on the picture you are copying.
+
+The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted
+solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. Never glaze nor
+scumble because _you_ can't get the colors without. Your business is
+to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. And any other
+manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the
+problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you
+certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. You are not
+originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another
+man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying
+to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your
+canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of
+fact his canvas shows that he did it another way.
+
+This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of
+course any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is
+precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and I have
+found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to
+advanced students.
+
+So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if
+you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes
+used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship
+of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.
+
+In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing
+freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else,
+and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful
+studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have
+qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the
+model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than
+they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the
+characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been
+worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over
+again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not
+only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. For
+this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which
+combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand,
+without which the work would be too rigid and hard.
+
+="Squaring up."=--This process is called "squaring-up," and consists
+of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its
+lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part
+of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no
+matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual
+laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.
+
+The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points
+horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think
+best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one
+part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. It is not necessary that
+there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit
+the lines of the study.
+
+Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping
+them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines
+cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the
+study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not
+according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other
+that the horizontal ones are, or not.
+
+Number the spaces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at
+one side the same.
+
+Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of
+spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done
+with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can
+make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the
+outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will
+be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working
+to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is
+not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the
+horizontal, in both the study and the picture.
+
+By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the
+study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line
+or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same
+part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the
+same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to
+modify it, or correct it.
+
+In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the
+smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any
+surface you please.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV
+
+                           KINDS OF PAINTING
+
+
+Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a
+certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get
+into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand
+what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which
+he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but
+love it he must, if he would have others love it.
+
+You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what
+you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it.
+"_Un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in
+loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in
+loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a
+fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a
+temperament."
+
+Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do
+than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to
+think so. And even then, you may find that when you have worked out
+all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or
+insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and
+subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in
+easy things is the hardest of all.
+
+=Classification.=--Divide paintings into two classes,--those
+representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects
+in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it
+is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century
+it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door
+light.
+
+Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the
+principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference
+of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures.
+It has changed the whole color-scheme.
+
+An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be
+painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose
+a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was
+right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked
+up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in
+concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your
+century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon.
+
+Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what
+distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends
+on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the
+facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a
+different application of the universal principles. Don't think that
+landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of
+green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a
+smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that
+the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the
+more obvious right are more easily seen.
+
+You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the
+different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what
+common to all. You must find to what �sthetic qualities each most
+readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and
+what are the problems they offer.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI
+
+                              THE SKETCH
+
+
+The sketch is the germ of the picture. It contains the idea which may
+later become the finished work. In your sketches you gather effects
+and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. You do not work long
+over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. You do not make it
+because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which
+charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note
+of.
+
+Understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will
+get more good from the making of them. For your sketching is an
+important matter to your painting. You do not learn how to paint by
+sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you
+can learn no other way. A sketch is not a picture; neither is it a
+study. Each of these things has its special purpose and function, and
+its proper character.
+
+A sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived.
+Everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. One
+idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches.
+
+There are two kinds of sketches: those made from nature to seize an
+effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely
+some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. Both
+are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of
+the artist.
+
+[Illustration: =Sketch of a Hillside blocked in from Nature, First
+Suggestion of Composition, etc.=]
+
+The first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a
+sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of
+changes in his original idea. It is in this form that he works out
+his picture problem. He is troubled here by nothing but the one thing
+he has in mind at this time. It may be an arrangement of line or of
+mass. He changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling
+himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of
+color, nor of anything but that one of composition. It may be a scheme
+of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble
+the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of
+color to the painter, and everything bends to that. When this has been
+decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough
+to think of other things. And think of other things he does, before he
+makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other
+sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish
+more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the
+problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in
+the completed painting.
+
+It is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of
+purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards
+built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all
+the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition
+or color; are not conceptions of the brain. There are suggestions
+received from nature which the painter perceives rather than
+conceives. Possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the
+sketch that they first become tangible and stable. This is the sketch
+from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea
+hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any
+or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment.
+
+The painter must always sketch from nature. Only by so doing can he be
+constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected
+by multitudinous facts. The sketch preserves for him the evanescent
+effects of nature, which the study would not so entirely, because not
+so simply, grasp. The sudden storm approaches; the fleeting cloud
+shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow; these, as well as the more
+permanent, but equally charming effects of mass against mass of wood
+and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can only store up for future use or
+reference in his sketches.
+
+=Main Idea Only.=--In the making of the sketch, then, no problem
+should come in but that of the expression of the main idea,--no
+problem of drawing or of manipulation of color. To get the idea
+expressed in the most direct and immediate and convenient way,
+anything will do to sketch on or with; that which presents the least
+difficulty is the best. The matter of temperament, of course, comes
+in largely, and technical facility. That which you can use most
+freely, use in your sketching, and keep for other occasions the new
+means or medium. Use freely, if you can, black and white for whatever
+black and white will express, and pigment for all color effects. Oil
+for greatest certainty and facility of correction.
+
+=Quick Work.=--Make your sketch at one sitting, or you will have
+something which is not a sketch. Work long enough, and it may be a
+study; but more than one sitting makes it neither one thing nor the
+other. To say nothing of the fact that the conditions are unlikely to
+be exactly the same again, you are almost sure on the second working
+to have lost the first impression,--the freshness and directness of
+purpose which the first impress gives; and this is the very heart of a
+sketch. You must never lose sight of what was the original purpose of
+it; never forget what it was which first made you want to paint it. No
+matter what else you get or do not get, if you lose this you lose all
+that can give it life or reality.
+
+The very fact that you have limited yourself to one working makes you
+concentrate on that which first caught your attention, and that is
+what you want to seize.
+
+Overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere with the
+directness and force with which this is expressed.
+
+Remember that nature is never at rest. You must catch her on the wing,
+and the more quickly you do it the more vivid will be the effect.
+
+[Illustration: =The River Bank.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._
+Half-hour sunset sketch.]
+
+"Nature is economical. She puts her lights and darks only where she
+needs them." Do the same, and use no more effort than will suffice to
+express that which is most important. The rest will come another time.
+
+Try to keep things simple. Keep the impression of unity; have the
+sketch one thing only.
+
+Express things as they look. As they look to _you_ and at _this time_.
+How they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not
+to the point. What you know they are or may be will not help you, but
+only hinder you in a sketch. The more facts the worse, in sketching.
+Remember always what a sketch is for. Don't be beguiled into trying to
+make a picture of it, nor a study of it. Above all, don't try to make
+a clever thing of it. Make something sincere and purposeful of it, and
+have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one
+thing as you can.
+
+=Keep Looking.=--Always keep your eyes open and your mind receptive;
+do not be always looking for reasons. Accept the charm as it presents
+itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express it with; if
+not, study it, and get something into your mind and memory from it.
+The simplest way of expressing it, and the simplest elements which
+cause it, you can study without the materials to preserve it, and you
+so keep your receptivity and quicken your power of observation.
+
+Your sketch will be more quickly done, directly and more forcefully,
+if you map out the thing rather deliberately first with a few very
+exact lines and masses in some way: then you have a free mind to
+concentrate on the effect. A few values and masses well placed are the
+things you most want; you can almost always spare time to ensure
+their exactness by a few measurements and two or three rubs of color
+first. Of course if the sketch is of a passing gleam you can do
+nothing but get a few smudges of color. But get them true in value and
+in color relation; get the glow of it, or you will get nothing.
+
+=Canvases of a Size.=--In sketching from nature, have the habit of
+using always the same sized canvases or panels. They pack better, and
+you learn to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and better work.
+Make them big enough to do free work on, yet small enough to cover
+easily, so that you lose no time in mere covering of surface. Ten
+inches by fourteen is plenty small enough, and fifteen by twenty large
+enough, for most persons. Suit yourself as to the size, but settle on
+a size, and stick to it. Nothing is more awkward and inconvenient than
+to have stacks of canvases of all sizes and shapes.
+
+Always have plenty of sketching materials on hand. You will lose many
+a good effect which will pass while you are getting your kit ready.
+
+In sketching, avoid details. When you want them, make a study of them.
+In a sketch they only interfere with frankness of expression. One or
+two details for the sake of accent only, may be admitted.
+
+Make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut a square hole in a card,
+and look through it. Decide what is the essence of it, what is vital
+to the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. Put in what you need
+for the conveying of that, and leave out everything else.
+
+=Work Solidly.=--Work in body color, and lay on your paint fully and
+freely. In getting an effect of light, don't be afraid of contrast
+either of value or of color. Paint loosely; get the vibration which
+results from half-mixed color. Don't flatten out the tone. Load the
+color if you want to. In twenty years you will wonder to see how
+smooth it has become.
+
+Freedom and breadth give life to a sketch. Don't work close to your
+work. Don't bend over it. Use plenty of color, large brushes, and
+strike from the shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII
+
+                              THE STUDY
+
+
+The qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which
+make a good sketch. In the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or
+to the one thing which is its purpose. The study is what its name
+implies, and its purpose is not one thing, but many. In a study you
+put in everything which may be valuable. You store it with facts. You
+leave out nothing which you wish to put in. It is all material. You
+can take and leave in using it afterwards, as you could from nature.
+Of course every study has some main intention, but you must take the
+trouble to give everything that goes to the making of that.
+
+A study is less of a picture than a sketch is. For unity of effect is
+vital to both a sketch and a picture. But this quality is of no
+essential value in a study--unless it be a study of unity. For you can
+make a _study_ of anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed
+interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge.
+
+But in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you
+deliberately and carefully study everything in it, while in a sketch
+you work only for general effect. The study is the storehouse of facts
+to the painter. By it he assures himself of the literal truths he
+needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as
+mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained
+in this way.
+
+In making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself
+by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. A study of
+an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple
+object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few
+hours. But in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and
+remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture,
+but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be
+useful only so far as it is accurate.
+
+In making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and
+leave all other qualities for the picture. Don't glaze and scumble,
+but work as directly as you can. Study the structure and texture of
+whatever you are doing. Understand it thoroughly as you go on, and
+search out whatever is not clear to you. This is no place for effects;
+nor for slighting or shirking. If you do not do work of this kind
+thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all--better; for you are at
+least not training yourself to be careless.
+
+There are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study
+is not that place.
+
+Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get all your foundation
+work true. Have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and
+then build your superstructure of careful study.
+
+Don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here.
+All that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to
+have it. You can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a
+groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.
+
+Be exact also with your values. If your study is not sure of its
+values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later.
+
+Make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will
+represent. You can paint a picture under any light you please if your
+studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to
+nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture
+representing another are useless to that picture.
+
+No good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. When you
+are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare
+yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may
+require. Don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and
+your "general knowledge." That sort of thing is something which a
+painter of experience may do after storing his mind for years with
+all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people--least of
+all for a student. And it is a dangerous way for any one to work. Even
+the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he
+does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. Take time to be
+right.
+
+[Illustration: =Study of a Blooming-Mill.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+Don't be afraid of taking measurements. Every one who did anything
+worth looking at took measurements. Leonardo laid down a complete
+system of proportions. You can't get your proportions right without
+measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be
+right. Use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals
+and verticals. If you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and
+measure. It takes less time than correcting.
+
+Whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. Character
+is not a conglomeration of details. The detail is the incident of
+character. See what the vital things are first, then search farther.
+
+Use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. Think as you work.
+Don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. Don't work
+absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. If your mind is tired, if your
+eye won't see, stop and rest a while. Tired work runs your picture
+down hill.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+                              STILL LIFE
+
+
+The name of still life is used in English for all sorts of pictures
+which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. The
+French word for it is better than ours. They call it "_nature morte_"
+or dead nature.
+
+There is no kind of painting which is more universally useful--to the
+student as well as to the painter. It furnishes the means for
+constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. You need never
+lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit
+quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery,
+and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in
+a convenient light.
+
+You can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make
+it include any phase of study. The advantage of its possible variety,
+scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and
+manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner.
+
+=Materials.=--Practically anything and everything is available for
+still life. You should be constantly on the lookout for interesting
+objects of all kinds. Try to get a collection which has as much
+variety in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things are
+generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things
+the best. An object is not intrinsically better because of its being
+more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities,
+as of color or history, because of its age.
+
+What you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things
+you get. The cost is not of any importance at all. You can pick up
+things for a few cents which will be most useful. Have all sorts of
+things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. Have metals and glass,
+and books and plaques. They all come in, and they add to the variety
+and interest of your compositions.
+
+=Draperies.=--The study of drapery particularly is facilitated by
+still-life study. You can arrange your draperies so that they are an
+essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to
+paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of "staying
+power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to
+the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in
+any other kinds of work. The value of the antique in drawing lies in
+its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In still life you
+have the same, with color added. You can give all your attention and
+time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day
+if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you
+left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is only the more useful.
+You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To
+study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question,
+because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be
+gotten into exactly the same lines again.
+
+Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into
+any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.
+
+In draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you
+have of the more massive objects,--variety of surface, of color, and
+of texture. Do not have all velvet and silk. These are very useful and
+beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk.
+Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by
+men, and so you should study them. Sometimes you want the drapery as a
+background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface
+qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in
+the other objects of the group.
+
+As to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but
+see to it that the colors are good,--in themselves "good color," not
+harsh nor crude. It does you no good as a student to learn how to
+express bad color. Neither is it good training for you, in studying
+how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your
+group into good color in your picture.
+
+Good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with
+much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid
+spotty or prominent design in it. Still, the more kinds you have, the
+more you can vary your work.
+
+If your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it
+more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. There is very little
+material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the
+color is too strong, don't use it.
+
+Don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush.
+The fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress
+does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a
+foreground color. These old and faded materials furnish some of the
+most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in
+general of other still-life things.
+
+=The Use of Still Life.=--There is no way in which you can better
+study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. The
+fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any
+color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect
+and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not
+by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to
+composition that is of the greatest service to you. You can use (and
+should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise
+composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a
+table. That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and
+books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and
+usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color
+do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the
+effect, but the effect itself.
+
+It is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make
+very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one
+or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all
+the practical knowledge possible.
+
+=Practical Composition.=--Suppose you were going to work with still
+life, how would you begin? In the first place, get a good composition.
+Never work from a bad one. You must learn composition some time, so
+you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a
+still-life study. Take any number of things and put them on a table,
+get a simple background to group them against. Consider your things,
+and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the
+composition. It is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or
+composition) tells against it; so get rid of anything which will not
+help the composition.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 1.=]
+
+For instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a
+table. You might paint them, but they are not arranged. There is no
+composition. They would lack one commanding characteristic of a good
+picture if you were to paint them so. What do they lack as they are?
+They have no logical connection with each other, either in arrangement
+or in the placing, to begin with. They do not help each other either
+in line or mass. They are crowded, huddled together. You could do with
+less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. But
+suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the
+rest.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 2.=]
+
+Here are some of the things, with others taken away. The combination
+is simpler, but still it is not satisfactory. There is some logical
+connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. They are still
+huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance;
+they are simply things. If you change them about a little, having
+regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something
+better out of these same objects.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 3.=]
+
+Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and
+mass, and to break up the round of the plaque; the handle turned
+around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where
+it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or
+awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the
+coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in
+balancing the whole is considered. The drapery is spread out so as to
+have some probability. It does not help much in line, but it does in
+mass and in color (in the original). It could be bettered, but it will
+do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable position, and helps
+to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the
+coffee-pot. There is not much light and shade in this composition, nor
+much distinction. But it does balance, and would make a good study,
+and is a very respectable piece of composition,--simple, modest, and
+dignified.
+
+Now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated,
+and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same
+things in it when completed. We have simply the same group, with the
+bottle and glass added. The stout jug in the first group is left out
+because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily.
+The tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count
+either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and
+therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our
+composition. The things we have here are enough, but they are not
+right as they are now. They injure rather than help the last
+arrangement. The bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of
+it; a composition must be _one thing_, no matter how many objects go
+to the making of it. This is two things. Draw a line down between the
+bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions,
+both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 4.=]
+
+Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything. We have now got
+two groups and a thing. The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the
+bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull
+them together, but can't. The plaque has no connection with anything.
+They are all pulled apart. In the last group at least there was some
+chief mass, the first complete composition. Now every one is for
+himself; three up and down lines and a circle--that's about what it
+amounts to.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 5.=]
+
+Let's group them,--push them together. Place the bottle near the
+coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot
+dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 6.=]
+
+Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the
+centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the
+glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of
+the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and
+gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole.
+This group is about as well placed as these objects will come. There
+is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.
+
+Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with
+only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact
+and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line
+come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as
+elements in your group.
+
+In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and
+see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things
+together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on
+"Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.
+
+=Scope of Study.=--Drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to
+which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and
+values with still life. The drawing is not so severe as that of the
+antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to
+draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you
+please; and as I said at first, you need never lack an amiable model.
+
+All sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life;
+and of color and texture also. The study of surface and texture is
+most important to you. If you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a
+cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience
+a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet
+or satin dress, you would not succeed. These all involve problems of
+skill and facility of representation. When you paint a portrait or
+figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to
+deal with, as new, problems of this sort. You should have arrived at
+some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not
+complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. This is where
+still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier.
+
+=Interest.=--But the use of this sort of painting is not only its
+practical _use_. You need not feel that it is all drudgery--which is
+something that most students do not love! You may make pictures with a
+much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture,
+and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is
+your work as study. You can be as interested in the beauty and the
+picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the
+better. To see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be
+the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. An artist's eye is
+sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it.
+The student's should be also. No artist but has found delight in
+painting still life. No student should think it beneath his serious
+study.
+
+=Procedure.=--Study painting first in still-life compositions. When
+you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front
+of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a
+single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color
+contrast. All the problems of manipulation are there for you to study.
+No processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot
+use in this study.
+
+Learn here what you will need in other lines of work.
+
+=Beginning.=--The best way to make a study from still life is to begin
+with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. You may shade it more
+or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and
+forms. The shading means the modelling and the values in black and
+white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can
+be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. But you must have
+the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality.
+You must know _where_ a value is to go before you can justly place it.
+The value is the _how much_. You must have the _where_ before the _how
+much_ can mean anything in drawing. It would be well to lay in some of
+the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more
+naturally and truly so than with mere outline. The outline encloses
+the form, but with nothing but outline you are less apt to feel the
+reality of the form. The planes of values fill in the outline and give
+substance to it. They map it out so that it takes thickness and
+proportion; it is more real. And any fault of outline is more quickly
+seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form
+and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right.
+
+=The Frott�e.=--Make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with
+charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it
+tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of
+the canvas.
+
+Be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple
+and well defined. Draw all characteristic details, but only the most
+important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain
+a drawing.
+
+Fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer.
+
+In beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thin _frott�e_
+which shall re-enforce the drawing with color. You may do this with
+one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas
+bare for the lights. Many of the best painters lay in all pictures
+this way. What color is to be used is a matter for consideration. It
+should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that
+if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still
+look all right. Raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with
+burnt sienna and black. You can make a mixture that seems right. This
+establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a
+bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of
+the effect of each touch of color you put on.
+
+If there is much variety of color in the various objects of your
+composition, it is better to make your _frott�e_ suggest the different
+colors. Instead of making a monochrome _frott�e_, rub in each object
+with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid,
+nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. Nevertheless,
+you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a
+distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so
+carefully studied. When you come to put on solid color with this sort
+of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as
+well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into
+it.
+
+Into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body
+color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and
+working down through the half darks into the darks. Paint the
+background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to
+handling. Paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. There is no
+need to pile up masses of wrong color. You should try to be sure of
+the color before you lay it on. Study the color in the group, mix on
+the palette, and compare them. Think at least two minutes for every
+one minute of actually laying on paint. You save time in the end by
+being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. Put on color firmly and
+with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of
+the body of it.
+
+=Loaded Lights.=--It was a principle with the older painters to paint
+the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights.
+It gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which
+was much valued. But don't think about this; don't let it influence
+the frankness of your painting. The theory is in itself largely
+obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able
+painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it.
+I only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it
+down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting.
+Like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the
+greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of
+painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as
+suits your purpose. The main thing is to get the right color and value
+in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least
+affected, manner possible.
+
+You may work into your _frott�e_, then, more or less solidly as you
+feel will give you the best representation of the color you see.
+
+=Solid Painting.=--Don't paint always in the same way. It is a mistake
+to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. Different things
+require different handling. Let the thing suggest how you shall paint
+it. If you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last
+instead of rubbing in thinly first. But always have an accurate
+drawing underneath.
+
+In working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each
+brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the
+appearance of reality. If the canvas is light, begin by putting in the
+main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. You get the
+most immediate effect of reality by the _relief_; the relief you get
+most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with
+what is already there. Establish your most telling values first, then
+work from them towards less immediately effective things.
+
+=Color and Values.=--Study the color at the same time you do the
+value. Put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. If you
+do, you will have to paint that spot twice,--once for the value, and
+again for the color. You might as well paint for the two qualities in
+one stroke. It takes more thought, but it gives you more command of
+your work. It doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it
+saves time in the long run.
+
+=Relations and Directness.=--Study to give the true relations of
+things. Try to get the just color quality. Give it at once. Don't get
+it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it.
+You will never learn to paint that way. Paint intensely while you
+paint. Use all the energy you have. Paint with your whole strength for
+a half or a whole hour, and then rest. You will accomplish more so
+than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way.
+
+=Directness.=--Directness comes from making up your mind just what
+tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first,
+then putting it there with no coaxing. Get the right color on your
+brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly
+down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the
+result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that
+it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. Then do that
+and stop.
+
+Directness and justness of relation are the most important things in
+painting. They tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and
+to the student. Whatever you do, work for that. Try to have no
+vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and
+the effect of it will show on your canvas.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX
+
+                                FLOWERS
+
+
+Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same
+control of combination, but you have not the same control of time.
+Flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you
+can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most
+exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well.
+
+People seem to think that any one can paint flowers. On the contrary,
+almost no one can paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in
+the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted.
+Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so
+infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely
+subtle in substance and sentiment.
+
+When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have
+not got the _quality_.
+
+What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax,
+neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these
+are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower
+petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals.
+
+Yet you cannot paint the _petals_ either, else you lose the _flower_.
+You must paint the _quality_ of the petal, and the _character_ of the
+flower.
+
+All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and
+it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be
+something else, and you can never get it back to its original form
+again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What will
+you do?
+
+=Mass and Value.=--There is something besides the flower and the
+petal; there is the _mass_. The mass is _one thing_, and it is
+surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. You
+must make this visible. The difference in value in flowers is
+something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me
+once. Yet the difference is there. The bunch has its nearer and its
+farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious
+expression of it.
+
+When you begin a group of flowers, get the _whole_ first. Make up your
+mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in
+front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. Do not
+paint the little things, the personal things first then. Paint what is
+common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the
+rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the _forms_ of the accents,
+and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their
+values. For you will have to change these, and you should have nothing
+there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can you get
+the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be
+wrong.
+
+[Illustration: =Sweet Peas.=]
+
+Get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of
+the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change,
+substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of
+the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that
+which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new
+flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general
+relation. As you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and
+constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from
+general to particular. Finally, from new flowers, put in those more
+individual touches which give the personal flowers.
+
+This is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. But
+it should not discourage you. Nothing takes the place of the flower
+picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint
+flowers.
+
+=General Principles Hold Always.=--Still, the principles of all
+painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in
+general will have its application to flowers.
+
+Paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them
+enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth
+painting, even if there be difficulties.
+
+=Details Again.=--Don't make too much of unimportant things. The whole
+is more than the part; the flower than the petal. Of course you can't
+paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the
+petals so that you can't see anything else. If the character of the
+flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of
+any special petal, suggest the petals only. If the petal is important
+to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it
+well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or
+do not paint it at all.
+
+=Colors.=--Colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than
+less subtle than you think them. If you have a doubt, make it more
+delicate--give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers are
+never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of
+strength. Black will be the most useless color of your palette. Make
+your grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a flower is shadow
+on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by
+refinement of color.
+
+=Sketches.=--Make sketches of flowers constantly. Try to carry the
+painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an
+hour. Practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible
+with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your
+picture.
+
+Get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work
+better in more difficult combinations.
+
+When you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to
+your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what
+not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. It
+will be a more patient sitter than they.
+
+Apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to
+the sketching of flowers. Either rub in quickly a _frott�e_ and then
+paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately
+to render the characteristic qualities. When you sketch flowers don't
+take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a
+half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you
+can complete in that time.
+
+When you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious
+canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. Then
+put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the
+flower. Make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. In the
+study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and
+relief, effect and large accent.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX
+
+                              PORTRAITS
+
+
+Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is
+more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of
+the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a
+great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this
+field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other
+kinds of work.
+
+You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with
+having got a likeness. Likeness is a very commonplace thing, which
+almost any one can get. If there were no other qualities to be tried
+for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. Back of the
+likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character,
+which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception
+to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage.
+
+=Character.=--The first requisite in a good portrait is
+character,--more than likeness, more than color or grace, before
+everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and
+make a portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything else may be
+added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this
+is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. Some of the greatest
+painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest
+beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. Holbein's
+wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere
+expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of
+drawing. There are masterpieces of Albrecht D�rer which rest on the
+same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of Himself by D�rer.
+Likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will
+be there in spite of you.
+
+Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he
+got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be
+there. The same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on
+the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly
+passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the
+man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. The
+painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the
+painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more
+on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always.
+Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your
+sitter. Get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there
+is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can
+always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger
+character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of
+feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large
+expressiveness of the individual. You may find it elsewhere than in
+the face. The character affects the whole movement of the man. The set
+of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders
+alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. Study
+to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail
+as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in
+getting those details.
+
+=Qualities.=--There are other great qualities also which you can get
+in a portrait. All the qualities of color and tone, of course. But the
+simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line
+and mass. The great things to be done with composition may as well be
+done in portrait as elsewhere. If you would see what may be done with
+a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by Whistler. You
+could not have a better example. It is one of the greatest portraits
+of the world. Notice the character which is shown in every line and
+plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of the individuality. Notice
+the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and
+space--the proportion. See how quiet it is and simple, yet how just
+and true. Of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you
+can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. It is
+these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great
+work of art as well.
+
+[Illustration: =D�rer=, _by Himself_.
+To be studied as an example of directness and na�vet� of painting.]
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait of his Mother.= _Whistler._]
+
+=Drawing.=--Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as
+other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can
+make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work,
+the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and
+characteristic lines. Get the masses and the more important planes,
+and don't try for details. You can get these afterwards, or leave them
+out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well
+done.
+
+Don't undertake too much in your work. Make up your mind how much you
+can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever
+lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made
+masterpieces of such paintings. You may be content also. See how
+little Velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing
+of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade.
+
+=Painting.=--Of course you can help your color with glazing and
+scumbling, but work for simplicity first. It is not necessary to use
+all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable
+training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the
+better the training will be.
+
+Study the Portrait of Himself, by Albrecht D�rer. You will find no
+affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. You will
+not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you
+should not try for it. It will depend on the brush-stroke. It implies
+a precision of eye as well as of hand. It means drawing quite as much
+as painting,--drawing in the painting. You will not get this great
+precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can.
+Don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study,
+and the most direct expression of planes that you can give.
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait of Himself.= _Velasquez._]
+
+Let your brush follow lines of structure. Don't lay on paint across a
+cheek, for instance. Notice the direction of the muscle fibre. It is
+the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical
+structure to a face. If your brush follows those, you will find that
+it takes the most natural course of direction.
+
+Do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. Note the
+lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them.
+
+See that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." The
+head is round, more or less; it is not flat. The planes of it cross
+the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return.
+This in all directions. You must make your painting express this. It
+is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a
+whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the
+atmosphere. The hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the
+skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is
+a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can
+feel--can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected
+with the front part by the sides. All this you must make evident in
+your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull
+turned toward you. How make it evident? By values and directness of
+brush-stroke.
+
+=Background.=--Never treat the background as something different from
+the head. The whole thing must go together. The slightest change in
+the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself.
+For the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color
+or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief
+of the head.
+
+Paint the two together, then. Make the head and all that goes with it
+or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect
+each other. Your background is not something which can be laid in
+after the head is finished. True you can paint the background
+immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head,
+extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone,
+and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the
+head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling.
+
+It is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background
+behind it. Particularly is this true when there are windows or any
+objects whatever in the background. It is most important that the
+whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same
+relation of light. This is hardly to be done when the head is one
+painting and the background another.
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+This is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is
+planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate
+portraits and compositions which include several figures or special
+surroundings. But the principle holds good here also. The relation
+must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the
+one upon the other always kept in mind.
+
+=Complex Portraits.=--It is often possible to pose your model so as to
+bring out some characteristic occupation. This is often done in
+portraits of distinguished men. Such a treatment gives opportunity for
+composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may
+make up the background.
+
+In such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to
+make the thing �sthetically interesting as well as interesting as a
+portrait. Composition in mass,--the consideration of the head and
+shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,--is necessary in the
+simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of
+action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be
+considered, as was done so beautifully in Whistler's portrait. In this
+the study of composition is your problem. You may study it all the
+time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before
+you begin to paint.
+
+Plan your canvas carefully always. Know just where everything is
+coming. When you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have
+trouble later.
+
+=Portraits Good Training.=--I would not have you undertake to paint a
+portrait rashly. You should know what you are to expect. If you are
+not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing
+color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to
+get discouraged. Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may
+expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing a head from the life is a
+very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay
+in one position as long as you can pay the rent. So in the painting of
+it, too, the color itself is alive. Flesh is something very elusive to
+see the color of. And when you find that just as you begin to get
+things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at
+that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is
+changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that
+"_la nature ne s'arr�te pas_."
+
+I would have you know all this, I say, before you begin on your first
+portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will
+find it extremely good practice. The very difficulties bring more
+definitely to you the real problems of painting. The fact that it is
+really the representation of something which has life has an interest
+quite of its own. The constant change of position on the part of the
+model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or
+if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will
+show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless
+there is something larger to place them on.
+
+Don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that
+you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is
+most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. But, having begun,
+keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. Remember that
+you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work,
+and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own.
+
+You will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make
+it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty
+well over the worst of it. The knowledge that it is to be seen will
+make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying
+for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you
+should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure,
+it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen
+it!
+
+=Beginning a Portrait.=--The ways of beginning portraits are
+innumerable. There is no one right way. Some are right for one painter
+or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are
+more advisable for the beginner.
+
+You can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body
+color, or you can begin it with _frott�es_, and paint solidly into
+that. Take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other,
+according to what are the special qualities you want your work to
+have.
+
+If you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use
+of paint and of drawing, I would suggest that you make a few studies
+of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too
+large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. This will leave you no
+extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of
+the head, with only a few inches of background around it. You will
+probably make the head too large. A head looks larger than it really
+is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. If you measure them
+you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the
+top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. Take this as the regular
+size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions
+according to that.
+
+Make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give
+only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. Within
+this, block out the features largely. Don't draw the eyes, but only
+the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light
+and shade of the nose.
+
+=Construction.=--In these studies avoid trying to get anything more
+than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. Use body color.
+Don't think of anything but what you have to represent. Never mind how
+the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in
+value, and as near the color as you can get. Put it on with the full
+brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. Get it light
+where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough
+to give some relief. Don't try for any problems. Set your model in a
+simple, strong light and go ahead.
+
+No details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. Try to feel the
+skull under these planes of light and dark. Have the edges of them
+pronounced and firm.
+
+Do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. You will never be
+able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the
+plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. You
+will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light
+falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. Inside of this is
+the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on
+the upper lid. Lay these in. Do the same with the other planes, and
+put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no
+consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and
+color.
+
+Now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express
+the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you
+have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to
+a head. You will begin to understand how it should "construct." Into
+this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in
+value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the
+whole.
+
+Always when painting a head solidly, work this way. Get the action and
+character of the head as a whole. Block in the planes of the face and
+the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the
+lesser characteristics. But always get the character, even the first
+look of resemblance, with this blocking in. Details and features will
+not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you
+have not gotten the character first by the representation of those
+proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the
+accidental positions of the detail of feature.
+
+=The Frott�e.=--If you want to be more exact with your drawing before
+you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing
+in charcoal. Then make a _frott�e_ in one color, and paint into and
+over that, as was described in the Chapter on "Still Life."
+
+By careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn
+the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as
+you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are
+modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these
+fundamentally different ways of working.
+
+If you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can
+the first day. Put in your _frott�e_ the next, or make your blocking
+in; then after that do your painting into the _frott�e_, or the
+working out of such details as you decide to put in.
+
+Titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in
+and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze.
+
+But you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. When
+you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making
+all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. Work first
+for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such
+facts. Perception and representation by any most convenient means are
+the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance
+until a certain amount of advance is made along this line.
+
+Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the
+details, but the _fact_ of it. Try to lay in things so that you have a
+solid ground to work onto and into later.
+
+Look for the vital things. Don't try for "finish." Finish is not
+worked for nor painted into a picture; finish _occurs_ when you have
+represented all you have to express. When you have got character and
+values and true representation of color, you will find that the
+"finish" is there without your having bothered about it.
+
+The masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces
+where the light strikes and the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The
+lines disappear. You only see large planes of values; express these at
+once and simply.
+
+Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first.
+Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you
+must get the important things first. Learn to be strong _first_, or
+you never will be. Delicacy comes after strength, not before.
+
+So, too, freedom comes after knowledge--is the result of knowledge. So
+paint to learn. If it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the
+understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for
+other things later.
+
+[Illustration: =Haystacks in Sunshine.= _Monet._
+To show certain characteristics of handling in "Impressionist" work.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI
+
+                              LANDSCAPE
+
+
+From the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of
+painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. But
+work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there
+are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will
+help you in figure-work. The manner of painting figures has been much
+modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of
+view which are due to the study of landscape and the important
+position that it has come to occupy.
+
+In the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a
+branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure
+painters. In this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is
+now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. But further
+than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range
+of painting. From the development of the study of outdoor nature, and
+particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of
+nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or
+unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the
+figure as on the painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible
+to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter
+of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the
+figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of
+course now.
+
+The whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of
+color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well
+as in the other branches of work.
+
+=Pitch.=--In no direction is this more marked than in the matter of
+_pitch_, or _key_. With the study of landscape, the range of gradation
+from light to dark has broadened. A picture may now be painted in a
+"high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in
+it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty
+years ago.
+
+This question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration.
+One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck
+with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever
+kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation.
+This is not merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist"
+idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country
+within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now.
+I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in
+any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work--are light
+in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker.
+The impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the
+work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models
+out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape
+out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of
+the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and
+carried it farther.
+
+=Bright Pictures.=--Whatever may be thought of the work of those
+painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that
+they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present
+quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a
+permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true--true
+to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor
+light _is bright_, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too
+great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once
+this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence
+all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of
+knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view
+have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look
+for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go
+out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years
+ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not
+have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For
+our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the
+eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.
+
+=Average Observation.=--I say we see only what we look for, what we
+expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at
+first. In looking at nature the average observer does not even see the
+obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a
+rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of
+the relations of things; no analysis; no real _seeing_, only a
+conventional acceptance of a thing as a _thing_. Men look at nature
+with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different
+idea. Nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been
+accustomed to see in other pictures. They get their idea of how nature
+looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently
+conceived they have difficulty in taking it in.
+
+For this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." I remember
+being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what I thought of "these
+bright pictures." When I asked which pictures he had reference to, I
+found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting
+landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color
+and value. One would think that the fact that the whole force of an
+extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would
+produce a picture with at least truth of observation. Yet this was not
+what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked,
+which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an
+extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish
+sky, reflected in a pool of water. The "bright picture" seemed to me
+exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with
+"nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just
+the point. The average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature
+what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature.
+
+But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He may paint a dark picture,
+but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. He may not paint
+daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so.
+With every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts
+so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal
+with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression.
+
+[Illustration: =On the Race Track.= _Degas._
+To show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.]
+
+The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may
+not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore
+not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you
+cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious
+that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There is
+no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it
+is the most vital quality. You might as well paint water without
+recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without
+recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.
+
+=A Help.=--You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as
+well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look
+through at your landscape. Have one side covered with black velvet and
+the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the lights
+with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a
+frame.
+
+=Key and Harmony.=--But you should remember that the high key for
+out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither
+does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your
+picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious
+and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced
+type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony
+with them. It means that good color is always good color, and will
+always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of
+either. One picture is simply a different note from the other, that is
+all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations
+of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing
+them, and your picture will be harmonious.
+
+Make your notes just _all over_ your canvas. Have some of them just
+and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to
+make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony.
+The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the
+colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try
+for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door
+color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.
+
+The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement,
+vibration and life,--these are the things which the modern painter has
+discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made
+modern landscape a vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or do
+not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel,
+and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they
+are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.
+
+=Landscape Drawing.=--Landscape is more difficult to draw than is
+generally thought; not only is the character affected by the _scale_
+of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The
+curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to
+give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably
+exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are
+seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to
+be gained by just representation of them. To give the character of a
+tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more
+precise observation than it generally gets.
+
+[Illustration: =Willow Road.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important
+things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each
+line than about the number of lines.
+
+Don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many
+objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided
+what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to
+express, and then draw most carefully those parts. See which are the
+_most expressive lines_ in it. Get the swing and movement of those
+lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get
+these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as
+subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you begin to
+paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.
+
+Don't get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time
+and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the
+mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many.
+Having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of
+color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in
+other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the
+real reason of existence of your picture.
+
+In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been
+said of sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most
+bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and
+colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will
+neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you
+just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike.
+Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the
+general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before
+you even at the risk of over-repetition. In no kind of picture can you
+drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In
+landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must
+select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to
+concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize
+those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.
+
+=Selection.=--When you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the
+French call it, select it for something definite. There is always
+something which makes you think this particular view will make a good
+picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in
+detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the
+whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a
+beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees,
+or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a
+group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you--else you
+had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know
+quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.
+
+When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for,
+then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that
+characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a
+very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave
+out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the
+only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception
+of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole
+field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in
+the expression of it.
+
+=Detail.=--Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether
+big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more
+important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express
+character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail _where the
+emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not
+a touch more.
+
+=Structure.=--Have your foreground details well understood in drawing
+and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it
+does require _structure_. Everything requires structure. _Structure is
+fundamental to character._ If you will not take the trouble to study
+the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all.
+Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough
+to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.
+
+I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but
+"structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would
+get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If
+you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the
+anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the
+world, you will understand its character, and that is what is
+important, everywhere.
+
+=Work in Season.=--Make your picture in the season which it
+represents. I don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in
+winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer
+quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half
+painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up"
+afterwards.
+
+Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin
+and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of
+material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working
+from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to
+work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at
+least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will
+find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed
+material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply
+it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the
+picture, you can just go out and study it.
+
+=Out-of-door Landscapes.=--The most important movement in modern art,
+the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have
+mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. It was thought by some
+clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to
+take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from
+a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole
+picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way,
+certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the
+color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and
+frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The
+spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture
+was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as
+things in themselves interesting and important. The result on
+landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed
+unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the
+making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.
+
+It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these
+men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for
+itself, or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with
+landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. Make
+sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please;
+but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you,
+and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. For
+your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will
+get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get
+any other way. You will also acquire a power of concentration and of
+selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the
+utmost importance to you.
+
+=Impressionism.=--It is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein
+air_ without mention of the "Impressionists." You should understand
+what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the
+impressionist stands for. Whether we like it or not, this work is not
+to be ignored. It has tried for certain things, and has shown that
+they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed
+to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands.
+
+In the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow."
+Any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside,
+is a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow are incidental to
+the impressionist, not essential. It is only one of the ways of
+handling color by means of which it was found possible to express
+certain qualities of light.
+
+Before everything else the real impressionist stands for the
+representation of the personal conception and method as against the
+traditional. He believes that if a man has anything of his own to say,
+he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature
+has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a
+personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas
+and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that
+whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express
+it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is
+_his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is
+"personal."
+
+=Luminosity.=--The impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the
+light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it
+vibrates. He does not think that living light can be represented by
+dead color. He strives to make his color live also. This is the secret
+of the purple and yellow. By the contrast of these two colors, by the
+combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors
+and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and
+so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. He actually applies on his
+canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color
+scientifically. He applies practically in his work those laws which
+the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. The result in some
+hands is garish, crude. But the best men have shown that it is
+possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous
+brilliancy that have never before been attained. The crudity is the
+result of the man, not of the method.
+
+=The Application.=--The application of all this to your own work is
+that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the
+observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of
+pigment as will bring this about. Try to study the actual contrasts of
+color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. Study the facts
+which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other,
+and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results.
+
+=The Luminists.=--This is the principle of all "loose painting"
+carried out scientifically. It is the cause of the peculiar technique
+of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The
+manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of
+outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the
+quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what
+they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate
+explicable.
+
+Now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical
+application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of
+the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of
+out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for
+yourself. If the complete adoption of it implies too much of a
+sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then
+modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the
+balance of qualities you most want. There is one way to get light and
+brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you
+need it.
+
+This is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. The placing
+of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding
+to the brilliancy of light. You will find this most useful when you
+want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight
+and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the
+richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more
+strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can.
+Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of
+objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of
+warm and cool than contrast of light and dark.
+
+Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising you to be an impressionist.
+I wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at
+nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will
+be of use to you in the painting of landscape. I would have you know
+what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in
+certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then I
+would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely
+serve your purpose.
+
+Do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because
+of any advocacy whatsoever. Know first what you want to paint and why.
+Let nature speak to you. Go out and look at landscape. Study and
+observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use
+the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. Don't ask
+yourself, nor let any one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method?
+or, Does this belong to this or that school? Don't bother about
+schools or methods at all. Look frankly to see, accept frankly, and
+then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. Be
+sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will
+surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and
+whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor
+matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in
+painting, and method of representation one of the least.
+
+=Atmosphere.=--A universal characteristic of nature will be a
+fundamental one in landscape. A landscape which you cannot breathe in
+is not a perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere, and the
+expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. But
+atmosphere is not haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness
+of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do
+most in getting it. You had better not try for atmosphere as a thing,
+but as a result. Anything so universal and so indefinite can be
+expressed by no one thing. If you try to get it by any one means you
+will miss it. Study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness
+of value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be
+satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that
+your picture will not lack atmosphere.
+
+=Color of Contour.=--An important thing for you to look for and to
+study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy
+even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a
+combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will
+reveal themselves to you.
+
+No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color
+surrounding it lacks variety. All along the edge of forms and objects,
+of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The
+outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from identity
+of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself.
+The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The
+inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness,
+gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are
+qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of
+light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant
+variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the
+visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the
+picture, and all the objects represented in it.
+
+Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the
+movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their
+own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is
+most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and
+air.
+
+=Skies.=--In the painting of the sky there are several points to be
+kept in mind. The sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement.
+Cloud masses change continually. If there are no clouds there is
+constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of
+color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a
+dead, flat tint.
+
+Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad,
+flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with
+horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a
+lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm
+and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed
+color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will
+be flat and even, but not dense and dead. So far as the sky is
+concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not
+by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.
+
+=Clouds.=--If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get
+the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. As
+they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be
+characteristic. The type form is what you must get, and the suggestion
+of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of
+the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. The direction of the
+sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud
+mass is never hard, never rigid. The pitch and luminosity and subtlety
+are what give you most of the effect of it.
+
+Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a _cumulus_, _cirrus_,
+_stratus_, or what not. This character is important; but the character
+lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental
+outlines or the special position of it for the moment.
+
+=Sky Composition.=--The massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor
+in the composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is
+capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. As it is not
+constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with
+truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as
+an element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the
+forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of
+them.
+
+=Diffused Light.=--Much of the characteristic quality of out-door
+light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the
+refraction and the reflection of the sky. The light which bathes the
+landscape comes in all directions from the sky. Necessarily, then, the
+sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it.
+Even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in
+the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell
+against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will
+look lighter. There are times when the sun glares on a white building
+or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue.
+But these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would
+give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light,
+even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the
+higher value. It is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or
+the reverse, as we cannot have both.
+
+Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is
+really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if
+there be a bit of sun breaking through on it.
+
+But in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always
+lighter and more luminous than anything under it.
+
+=Three Planes.=--It will help you in understanding the way the light
+falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes,
+and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according
+to the position of the sun with reference to them.
+
+The position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a
+point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything
+that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at
+some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some
+sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly,
+the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full
+amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of
+foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by
+diffused and reflected light. The planes lying between these two
+extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at
+right angles to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun declines
+from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the
+horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late
+afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses
+are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and
+water are in shadow.
+
+However obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less;
+and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in
+landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know.
+
+Millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art
+of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these
+facts.
+
+He said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the
+light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or
+less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color
+and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its
+representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects,
+lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties of the art rested
+on it. He showed a painting of a single pear in which these things
+were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete
+and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the
+observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything
+which was vital to painting.
+
+=Short Sittings.=--This characteristic, and the steady change of
+position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are
+directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting
+from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very
+long at a time. The light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only
+takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is seldom that
+you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half
+at a sitting. Some men do work two or three hours, but they are not
+studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three
+hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under
+these conditions. Of course on gray days this is less marked, but you
+must suit your sittings to the time and facts.
+
+It would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time
+on each, and many days on all. You would have the truest work.
+
+Monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he
+starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and
+paints on each till the light has changed. Theodore Robinson seldom
+worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one
+canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and
+sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons.
+
+Any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color
+must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII
+
+                               MARINES
+
+
+All that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. You
+have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. There
+is no need to say the same things over again. It is only necessary to
+take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things
+which are peculiar to the sea.
+
+=Sea and Sky.=--To begin with, the relation of the sky to what is
+under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in
+painting. The sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting
+surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by
+the reflections of the sky on its surface. The sky color is always
+modifying the water--when and how depends on the condition of the
+weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. Sometimes
+the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost
+lost, but the influence is there.
+
+This relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky
+is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is
+there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not
+recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad.
+
+I cannot tell you all about these things. The variety of effects and
+relations is infinite. You must study them, paint them in the presence
+of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of
+air and atmosphere and light and color that I have spoken of
+elsewhere--all have most vital importance on marine painting. You must
+study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky
+observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can.
+
+=Movement.=--If "_la nature ne s'arr�te pas_" ordinarily, the fact is
+even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of
+ceaseless motion. Somehow, you must not only study in spite of the
+continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt.
+This you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole
+surface--the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves.
+The waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the
+wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the
+whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. The
+wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. See that first,
+and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and
+help to express it.
+
+[Illustration: =Entrance to Zuyder Zee.= _Clarkson Stanfield._]
+
+=Wave Drawing.=--How shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave?
+Every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and
+shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in
+logical and practically identical sequence of movement. You can only
+study this by constant watching. You look at the wave, and then turn
+your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is
+not there. Well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave;
+it isn't possible. Don't expect to. Study the movement and type forms;
+think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and suggestive
+relation of it to other masses, and put that down.
+
+There is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or
+color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you
+will see a succession of waves of similar kind. Or look at a wave and
+follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in
+the main keeps itself for some time.
+
+Look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the
+eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over
+and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and
+relations. And as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite
+of yourself. Your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but
+meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was
+the same in shape, but only varied in position.
+
+In this way you will come to know the wave forms. Jot them down,
+either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too
+much. Try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch,
+with a characteristic direction and movement. No amount of explanation
+will tell you anything. You must sit and look, think, analyze, and
+suggest, then generalize as well as you can.
+
+=Open Sea and Coast.=--The open sea is all movement. Even a ship, the
+most rigid thing on it, moves with it. But you do not have to study
+these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. You can start
+from a stable base. Study coast things first. You have then the
+relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can
+simplify the thing somewhat. What has been said of motion holds good
+still; but you can get something definite in a rock mass, and study
+the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong
+enough.
+
+The study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the
+open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. Breakers
+and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give
+great variety of subject and problem. In the drawing of rocks the
+study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the
+study of wave forms. You must try to give the feeling of weight to
+them. The mass and immovability add to the charm and character of the
+water about them.
+
+=Subject.=--Don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. Of course
+there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from
+that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you
+should study. Whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse
+everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small,
+otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. So if you
+would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the
+main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse
+take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it
+adequately. If it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this.
+
+=Ships.=--The painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less
+the painting of vessels of different kinds. You may put the ship in so
+insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague
+representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge
+of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to
+the ship in your picture.
+
+=Detail.=--You do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. You do
+not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in
+order to paint a ship properly. To do this would miss the spirit of
+it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take
+the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own
+peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar
+arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in
+the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent
+the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the
+trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the
+kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any
+kind of vessel or boat you may paint. There is again only one way to
+know this. If you are not especially a painter of marines, you may
+find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition
+and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go
+in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to
+know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places.
+Your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books
+with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and
+incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. Ships under full sail
+and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm--he
+can never have too many of these facts to refer to.
+
+The true marine painter is nine parts a sailor. If he does not take,
+or has not taken a voyage at sea, at least has passed and does pass a
+large part of his time among vessels and sailors. He knows them both;
+his details are facts that he understands. And what he puts in or
+leaves out of a painting is done with the full knowledge of its
+relative importance to his picture and to the significance of the
+ship.
+
+All this sounds like a good deal to undertake; but to the man who
+loves the water and what sails upon it, it is only following his
+liking, and any one who does not love all this should content himself
+with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea pictures are not
+to be painted from recipes any more than any other thing, and ships
+particularly cannot be represented without an understanding of them.
+And after all, you do not have to do all this study at once. If you
+will only study well each thing that you do, and never paint one
+vessel or boat without understanding that one; if you will study the
+one you are doing now, and will do the same every time,--eventually
+you will have piled up a vast deal of knowledge without having
+realized how much you were doing.
+
+=Color of Water.=--You must study the color of water in the large when
+you paint it. Remember that its color depends on other things than
+what it is itself. The character of the bottom, whether it be rocky
+or sandy, and the depth of the water, will affect its color; and to
+one accustomed to see these things, the picture betrays its truth or
+falsity at a glance, especially as the character of the wave and the
+great movement of the whole surface are influenced by the same things.
+
+[Illustration: =Girl Spinning.= _Millet._
+Example of "_contre jour_" and out-of-door contrast of light and
+shade.]
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+                               FIGURES
+
+
+The broadest classification of figure pictures is to consider them as
+of two kinds,--those painted in an out-door or diffused light, and
+those painted in an in-door or concentrated light. The painting of
+figures out-of-doors you will find more difficult if you have had no
+experience in painting them in the studio. The problems of light and
+shade and color are more complex in the diffused light, and the
+knowledge of structure and modelling, as well as of special values
+gained by studio study, will be most helpful to you when you paint
+out-of-doors. I should say, then, don't attempt any serious painting
+of the human figure in the open air till you have had some experience
+with its special problems in the house.
+
+=The Nude.=--No good figure-work has ever been done which was not
+founded on a knowledge of the nude. Whether the figure is draped or
+not, the nude is the basis of form. The best painters have always made
+their studies of pose and action in the nude, and then drawn the
+draperies over that. This insures the truth of action and structure,
+which is almost sure to be lost when the drawing of the form is made
+through drapery or clothing. The underlying structure is as essential
+here as in portrait. It is the more imperative that the body be felt
+within the clothes from the fact that it cannot be seen. There must be
+no ambiguity; no doubt as to the anatomy underneath; for without this
+there can be no sense of actuality.
+
+I do not say paint the nude. On the contrary, if you want to go so far
+as that in the study of the figure, you must not attempt to do it with
+the aid of a book. Go to a good life class. But I wish to emphasize
+the principle that when you undertake to paint anything involving the
+figure, you must know something of the structure of what is more or
+less hidden, and must make allowance for the disguising of form which
+the draping of it will inevitably cause.
+
+And when you draw your figure, you should lay in your main lines, at
+any rate, from the nude figure if you can. If you cannot command a
+professional model for this purpose, you can only be more careful
+about your study of the underlying lines and forms as they are
+suggested by the saliencies of the draperies.
+
+If this is the case, be most accurate in those measurements which
+place the proportions of the parts which show through the covering,
+and try to trace out by the modelling where the lines would run. By
+mapping out these proportions, and drawing the lines over the drapery
+masses wherever you can make them out, you can judge to a certain
+extent of the truth of action in your drawing.
+
+The use of a lay figure will help you somewhat if you can get one
+which is true in proportion. It will not help you much in the finer
+modelling, but it will at least insure your structural lines being in
+the right place, and that is as much as you can hope for without the
+special study of the nude.
+
+A lay figure is expensive, costing about three hundred dollars in this
+country. You will hardly be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only
+professional painters can afford to pay so much for accessories. But
+small wooden ones are within the means of most people, and will be
+found useful for the purpose I have mentioned, and one should be
+obtained.
+
+When you have assured yourself, as far as you can by its use with and
+without special draperies, of the right action of your drawing, you
+must do your painting from the draped model.
+
+=The Model.=--Never paint without nature before you. If you paint the
+figure, never paint without the model. For the sake of the study of
+it, it goes without saying that you can learn to paint the figure only
+by studying from the figure. But beyond that, for the sake of your
+picture, you can have no hope of doing good work without working from
+the actual object represented. The greatest masters have never done
+pictures "out of their heads." The compositions and �sthetic qualities
+came from their heads it is true, but they never worked these things
+out on canvas without the aid of nature. And the greater the master,
+the more humble was he in his dependence on nature for the truth of
+his facts.
+
+Much more, then, the student needs to keep himself rigidly to the
+guidance of nature; and this he can only do by the constant use of the
+model.
+
+=One Figure or Many.=--Whether you have one or more figures, the
+problem may be kept the same. The canvas must balance in mass and line
+and in color. When you decide to make a picture with several figures,
+study the composition first as if they were not _figures_, but groups
+of masses and line. Get the whole to balance and compose, then decide
+your color composition. Simplify rather than make complex. The more
+you have of number, the more you should consider them as parts of a
+whole. Keep the idea of grouping; combine the figures, rather than
+divide them. Have every figure in some logical relation to its group,
+and then the group in relation to the other parts. Don't string them
+out or spot them about. Study the spaces between as well as the
+spaces they occupy. And don't fill up these spaces with background
+objects. That will not bind the group together, but will separate it.
+Fill the spaces with air and with values--even more important!
+
+All this arranged, paint each group and each figure as if it were one
+thing instead of many. As you treat the head, the body, the dress, and
+the chair as all parts of a whole in a single sitting figure, so treat
+the various heads, bodies, dresses, etc., in a group as parts of a
+whole, by studying always the relations of each to each. And then
+study to keep the different groups as parts of whole canvas in the
+same way.
+
+=Simplicity of Subject.=--But do not be too ambitious in your
+attempts. Keep your subjects simple. Don't be in a hurry to paint many
+figures. Paint one figure well before you try several.
+
+You will find plenty of scope for your knowledge and skill in single
+figures. Practise with sketches and compositions, if you will, in
+grouping several figures, and try to manage them so that the whole
+shall be simple in mass and effect; but do not attempt, as a student,
+without experience and skill in the painting of one figure, to paint
+pictures containing several. By the time you can really paint a single
+figure well, you can dispense with a manual of painting, and branch
+out as ambitiously as you please. In the meantime, everything that
+you have knowledge enough to express well, you can express with the
+single figure.
+
+With the model, the background, the pose and occupation, the clothing
+and draperies, and whatever accessories may be natural to the thing as
+elements, it is possible to work out all the problems of line and mass
+and color. If a really fine thing cannot be made with one figure, more
+figures will only make it worse.
+
+Look again at Whistler's portrait of his mother. Consider it now, not
+as a portrait, but as a single figure. What are the qualities of it
+which would be helped if there were more in it? The very simplicity of
+it makes the handling of it more masterly.
+
+Look also at the one simple figure of Millet's "Sower;" all the great
+qualities of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one
+canvas you will find in this.
+
+See what movement and dignity there are in it. How statuesque it is!
+It is monumental. It has scale; it imposes its own standard of
+measurement. There are air and envelopment and light and breadth. Are
+these not qualities enough for one canvas?
+
+=Nature the Suggester.=--Take your suggestions, your ideas, for
+pictures from nature. Keep your eyes open. Observe all poses which may
+hint of possible schemes of light and shade, of composition, or of
+color. It is marvellous how constantly groupings and poses and effects
+of all kinds occur in every-day life. Humanity is kaleidoscopic in its
+succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and
+different, but equally suggestive of a picture if you will take the
+hint. The picture which originates in a natural occurrence is always
+true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. Truth is more various
+than fiction. It is easier to see than to invent. And in the
+arrangement of the material which nature freely and constantly
+furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of man.
+
+=Action and Character.=--The picture comes from the action--resides in
+it. The action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of
+it. Any gesture or position which is the natural and unaffected result
+of an essential action will be true and vital, suggestive of nature,
+and beautiful because it will inevitably have character--be
+characteristic. The beauty of the picture is not something external to
+the costumes, occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be
+found, contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made visible, by
+the mere logical working out of the need, the custom, or the occasion.
+
+Emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement.
+
+Daily life swarms with pictures. You do not need to go to other places
+and other times for subjects. If you are awake to what is going on
+around you, if you see the essential line of the occupation, or the
+mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you will
+have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. And it
+is your business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. Everything
+is commonplace till you see the charm in it. The artistic possibility
+does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but in the fact that the
+thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and
+contrast; and these are the artist's opportunities. Keep your eyes
+open for them; learn to recognize them when you see them; look for
+these rather than for the details of the accidental fact which brings
+them out. See the movement of it, and the relation of it to what
+surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it.
+
+Here is a composition which is an almost literal rendering of the
+movement and light and shade effect of a position quite accidentally
+seen.
+
+The whole effect of lighting and of line, the grouping and the pose,
+resulted purely from the musician's desire to get a good light on his
+music. There was no need to add to it. It was simply necessary to
+recognize the charm of it, and to represent that charm through it as
+frankly as it could be done.
+
+[Illustration: =Sketch of a Flute Player.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+=Posing the Model.=--Let the character of the model suggest the pose.
+If you have a scheme for a picture, choose a model whose personality
+will lend itself naturally to the occupation or action natural to that
+scheme. Then follow the suggestion which you find in the model. Some
+rearrangement will always be necessary if you do not use as a model
+the same person who originally gave you the idea for the picture.
+Every human being has a different manner. You cannot hope for exactly
+the same expression in one person that you found in another. But put
+the model as nearly as you can in the same situation and pose, and
+then when the model eases from the unnatural muscular balance into the
+one natural to him, you will find the idea taken from your first
+observation translated into the characteristics of your present model.
+
+Never try to place a model in a pose which he can only hold by an
+unnatural strain. You will not get a satisfactory result from it.
+Study your model; see what poses he most naturally falls into, and
+then take advantage of one of these, and arrange your picture with
+reference to it.
+
+Never attempt to represent a character in your picture by using a
+model of a different class or type from it; you will not be successful
+either in painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor in
+painting a peasant from a model who is a lady. The life and occupation
+and thought common to your model will get into your painting of her;
+and if that is not in accordance to the idea in the picture, your
+picture will be false. The dress, no less than the pose and
+occupation, must be such as is natural to your model. The accessories
+of your picture must befit the character you wish to paint; otherwise
+your model becomes no more than a lay figure.
+
+Take note of the characteristics which are peculiar to your model, and
+use them; do not change them nor idealize them. Rather paint them as
+they are, and make them a vital part of your study of the subject.
+This is the best you can do with these characteristics. They may be
+the most expressive thing in your picture. If they are of such a
+nature that you cannot use them in this way, then do not use this
+model at all; you cannot get rid of these things. In trying to obscure
+or idealize them, you only lose character, or paint a character into
+your model which is unnatural to him; the result will not be
+satisfactory.
+
+=Quiet Sitters.=--An inexperienced painter should not use a model with
+too much vivacity of body or of expression. The quiet, reposeful,
+thoughtful model, who will change little in position or manner, will
+simplify the problem. A model too wide awake or too sleepy will either
+of them give you trouble.
+
+Avoid very young children as models, and particularly babies. They are
+never quiet, and the problems you will have even with the best of
+models will be made enormously more difficult by their restlessness.
+
+For your first work choose models with well-marked faces, and pose
+them in a direct light which will give you the simplest and strongest
+effect of light and shade.
+
+See that your sitter is in as comfortable a position as you can get
+him into, so that the pose can be held easily. Don't attempt difficult
+and unusual attitudes. Such things require much skill and knowledge to
+take advantage of, and to use successfully. Make your effect more in
+the study of composition and color than in fanciful poses. Later, when
+you have gained experience, you may do this sort of thing.
+
+If you are painting a face, see that the eyes are in at a restful
+angle with the head, and that they are not facing a too strong light,
+nor are obliged to look at a blank space. Give them room to have a
+restful focus, and perhaps something pleasant or interesting to look
+at.
+
+=Length of Pose.=--No sitter can hold a pose in perfect
+motionlessness. Do not expect it. You must learn to make allowance for
+certain slight changes which are always occurring. You must give your
+model plenty of rest, too, especially if he be not a professional
+model. A half-hour pose to ten minutes' rest is as much as a regular
+model expects to do as a rule. If you have a friend posing for you,
+particularly if it be a woman, twenty minutes' pose and ten minutes'
+rest, for a couple of hours, is all you should expect; and if the
+pose is a standing one, this will probably be more than she can
+hold--make the rests longer.
+
+An inexperienced model--and sometimes even a trained one--is likely to
+faint while posing, particularly if the room be close. Look out for
+this; watch your sitter, and see that she is not looking tired. The
+minute that you see the least sign of fatigue, if she shows
+pallor--rest. Do not get so absorbed in your canvas that you do not
+notice your model's condition. If you are observing and studying your
+model as closely as you should, you can hardly fail to notice any
+change that may occur, and you should at once give her relief.
+
+=Distance.=--Don't work too near your model, nor too near your canvas.
+As regards the first, be far enough away to see the whole of the
+figure you are painting, or of that part which you are doing, entirely
+at one focus of the eye, and yet near enough to see the detail
+clearly. If you are too near, you see parts at a time, and do not see
+it as a whole. If you are too far, you see too generally for good
+study. You might make it a rule to be away from your subject a
+distance of about three or four times the extreme measurement of it.
+If it is a full length, say fifteen to twenty feet, if you can get so
+large a room. If it is a head and shoulders, about six or eight feet.
+Never get closer than six feet.
+
+As to your canvas, work at arm's length. Don't bend over--again you
+see parts, and you must treat your canvas as a whole. Never rest your
+hand or arm on the canvas. Train your arm to be steady. Sit up
+straight, hold your brush well out at the end of the handle, and your
+arm extended; now and then, if you need closer work, lean forward, and
+if necessary use a rest-stick; but as a rule your work will be
+stronger and hang together better if you work as I have suggested. Of
+course you will often get up, and walk away from your work. Set your
+easel alongside the model, and go away to a distance, and compare
+them. Too intense application to the canvas forgets that relations,
+effect, and wholeness of impression are of the greatest importance,
+and are only to be judged of when seen at some distance.
+
+=Background.=--Under the general title of background you may place
+everything which will come in as accessory to the figure, and against
+or alongside of which it stands. The picture must "hang together";
+must have envelopment; must be a whole, not an aggregation of parts.
+Everything that goes to the making up of this whole must have a
+natural and logical connection with it. From the first conception of
+the picture you must consider the background as an essential part of
+it, and as something which will have a vital effect upon the figure.
+The color of the background must be thought of as a part of, because
+affecting, the figure itself. The simplicity or variety in the
+background, the number of objects in it, must be considered as to the
+effect on the figure also. You cannot make the background a patchwork
+of objects and colors without interfering with the effect of the main
+thing in the picture.
+
+If your figure is simple and quiet, keep the background the same. Make
+it a principle to treat the background simply always. If the character
+of the case demands some detail, and a variety of objects, then treat
+them so that their effect is as simple as possible; and the figure
+must be made stronger, in order that the variety in the background
+shall not overpower it. Control it by the way the light or the color
+masses, or simplify the painting of them. Keep the background in value
+as regards prominence and relief of objects as well as in the matter
+of color.
+
+=Composition of Backgrounds.=--You can make the background help the
+figure, not merely by the painting of objects which help to
+explain,--that is of course,--but in the placing and arranging of them
+you may emphasize the composition. Whether the background be a curtain
+with its folds, or an interior with its furniture, you can and must
+make every object, every fold of the drapery, every mass of wall or
+object, distinctly help out in the composition as line and mass. Your
+composition must balance; the line and movement of the figure must
+have its true relation. The way you use whatever goes into the
+picture, the objects which make up the background, the way they group,
+and the spaces between them, must have a helpful reference to that
+movement, and to the balance of the whole.
+
+=Simplicity.=--Lean always towards simplicity in composition as
+against complexity. In backgrounds particularly, avoid detail and
+over-variety. Don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted with
+_things_. If it is necessary, put it in; if it is not necessary, leave
+it out; and if there is the slightest doubt which it is, leave it out.
+
+The most common and the most fatal mistake is to make the picture too
+"interesting." The interest in a picture does not lie in the quantity
+of things expressed, but in the character of them, and in the quality
+of their representation. If you cannot treat a simple composition
+well, if you cannot make a picture balance well, and make it
+interesting with a quiet background, be sure a multitude of objects
+will not help it. The more you put into it the worse it will be. Learn
+to be master of the less before you try to be master of the more.
+
+[Illustration: =Milton Dictating "Paradise Lost."= _Munkacsy._
+To show use of background. Notice also the composition.]
+
+=Lighting.=--I have spoken of lighting in general in other chapters.
+You must apply the principles to your use of figures. Study the
+different effects which you can get on the model by the different ways
+of placing in reference to the window. Whatever lighting will be
+difficult in one kind of painting will be no less so in another. Avoid
+cross-lights, and do not be ambitious to try unusual and exceptional
+effects. If one should occur to you as charming, of course do it, if
+it is not too difficult, but don't go around hunting for the strange
+and weird. There is beauty enough for all occasions in such effects as
+are constantly coming under your observation. What was said about
+simplicity of subject will apply here as well, for the light and color
+effect is naturally a part of the subject. The most practical lights
+are those which fall from one side, so as to give simple masses of
+light and dark; they should come from above the level of the head, so
+as to throw the shadow somewhat downwards.
+
+="Contre Jour."=--One kind of posing with reference to lighting, gives
+very beautiful effect, but calls for close study of values, and is
+very difficult. It is called in French, _contre jour_; that is,
+literally, "against the day," or, against the light. It is a placing
+of the model so that the light comes from behind, and the figure is
+dark against the light. From its difficulty it should not be taken as
+a study by a beginner, for modelling and color are difficult enough at
+best. When they are to be gotten in the low key that the light behind
+necessitates, and with the close values which this implies, the
+difficulty is enormously increased. But before you attempt the human
+figure in the open air, you will find it very good study to work in
+the house _contre jour_. The effect of a figure out-doors has many of
+the qualities of _contre jour_. The diffusion of light and the many
+reflections make the problem more complex; but the contrast, the close
+values, and the subtle modelling which you must study in _contre jour_
+will be good previous training before going out-doors with a model.
+
+Look at Millet's "Shepherdess Spinning," at the head of this chapter,
+as an example of _contre jour_.
+
+=Figures Out-of-doors.=--In painting, an object is always a part of
+its environment. So a figure must partake of the characteristics of
+its surroundings. Out-of-doors it is part of the landscape,
+characterized by the qualities which are peculiar to landscape. The
+diffusion of light, the vibration and the movement of it, the
+brilliancy and pitch, the cross-reflections and the envelopment,--all
+these give to the figure a quality quite different from that which it
+has in the house. There is no such definiteness either of drawing, or
+of light and shade, or of color. The problem is a different one. You
+must treat your figure no more as something which you can control the
+effect of, but as something which, place it in what position, in what
+surroundings, you will, it will still be affected by conditions over
+which you have no control.
+
+Textures and surface qualities, local or personal colors, lose their
+significance to the figure out-of-doors. They become lost in other
+things. The pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or
+value,--these are what are of importance. The more you search for the
+qualities which would be a matter of course in the house, the more you
+will lose the essential quality,--the quality of the fact of
+out-doors.
+
+When in the house, you can have things as definite as you wish;
+out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light.
+The shadows do not fall where you expect them to. The values are less
+marked. The stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant
+movement of nature. The color is influenced by the diffused color of
+the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and
+the sky. The light does not fall _on_ the face so much as it falls
+_around_ it. The modelling is less, the planes are not precise. The
+expression is as much due to the influence of what is around it as to
+the face itself.
+
+All this means that you must study and paint the figure from a new
+point of view. You do not make so much of what the model is as how the
+model looks in these surroundings. You must not look for so much
+decision, and you must study values closely. Look more for the
+modelling of the mass than for the modelling of surface. Look more for
+the vibration of light and air on the flesh and drapery colors than
+for these colors in themselves. Look for color of contours in the
+model. Study the subtleties of values of contours, and make your
+figure relieve by the contrast of value in mass rather than by the
+modelling within the outline. See how the figure "tells" as a whole
+against what is behind it first, and keep all within that first
+relation.
+
+[Illustration: =Buckwheat Harvest.= _Millet._]
+
+It is possible to look for and to find many of the qualities which
+distinguish the figure in the studio light; sometimes you may want to
+do so. The telling of a story, the literary side of the picture, if
+you want that side, sometimes needs help that way. But in this you
+lose larger characteristics, and the picture as a whole will not have
+the spirit of open air in it.
+
+What has been said of the painting of landscape applies to the
+painting of figures in landscapes. Pose your figure out-of-doors if
+you would represent it out-of-doors. Then paint it as if it were any
+other out-door object. If the figure is more important to the
+composition than anything else in the landscape, as it often will be,
+then study that mainly, and treat the rest as background, but as
+background which has an influence which must be constantly recognized.
+
+Never finish a figure begun out-doors by painting afterwards from a
+model posed in the house. Leave the figure as you bring it in. If it
+is not finished, at least it will be in keeping with itself; and this
+will surely be lost if you try to work it from a model in different
+conditions.
+
+=Animals.=--Animals should be considered as "figures out-of-doors."
+There is no essential difference in the handling one sort of a figure
+or another. The anatomy is different, and the light falls on different
+textures, but the principle is not changed. You must consider them as
+forms influenced by diffused light and diffused color, and paint them
+so. You will find that often, especially in full sunlight, the color
+peculiar to the thing itself is not to be seen at all. The character
+of the light which falls on it gives the note, and controls. In the
+shade the effect is less marked, but the constant flicker makes the
+same sort of variation, though not to the same extent.
+
+There is no secret of painting animals either in the house or
+out-of-doors which is not the same as the secret of painting the human
+figure. If you would paint an animal, get one for a model and study
+it. Work in some sort of a house-light first, in a barn or shed, or,
+if it be a small animal, in your studio. Study as you would any other
+thing, from a chair to a man. The principles of drawing do not change
+with the character of anatomy. The animal may be less amiable a poser,
+but you must make allowance for that.
+
+When you have got a knowledge of the form, and the character of color
+and surface, take the animal out-doors, get some one to help hold him,
+and apply the same principles that would govern your study of a rock
+or a tree in the open air.
+
+As for fur, and all that sort of thing, treat it as you would any
+other texture-problem in still life.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+                        PROCEDURE IN A PICTURE
+
+
+Some pictures, particularly those begun and finished in the open air,
+may be frankly commenced immediately on the canvas from nature as she
+is before the painter, and without any special processes or methods of
+procedure carried on to completion. But many pictures are of a sort
+which renders this manner of work unwise or impossible. There may be
+too many figures involved. The composition, the drawing, or other
+arrangement may be too complicated for it, and then the painter has to
+have some methodical and systematic way of bringing his picture into
+existence. He must take preliminary measures to ensure his work coming
+out as he intends, and must proceed in an orderly and regular manner
+in accordance with the planning of the work. It is in this sort of
+thing that he finds sketches and studies essential to the painting of
+the picture as distinguished from their more common use as training
+for him, or accumulation of general facts.
+
+=Preliminaries.=--There must be made numbers of sketches, first of the
+slightest and merely suggestive, and then of a more complete, kind,
+to develop the general idea of composition from the first and perhaps
+crude conception of the picture. All the great painters have left
+examples of work in these various stages. It is a part of the training
+of every student in art schools to make these composition sketches,
+and to develop them more or less fully in larger work. In the French
+schools there are monthly _concours_, when men compete for prizes with
+work, and their success is influenced by a previous _concour_ of these
+composition sketches.
+
+This preliminary sketch in its completed stage gives the number and
+position and movement of the figures and accessories, with the
+arrangement of light and shade and color. There is no attempt to give
+anything more than the most general kind of drawing, such details as
+the features, fingers, etc., being neglected. The light and shade on
+the single figures also is not expressed, but the light and shade
+effect of the whole picture is carefully shown, and the same with the
+color-scheme. It is this first sketch that establishes the character
+of the future picture in everything but the details. Sometimes this
+work is done on a quite large canvas, but usually is not more than a
+foot or two long, and of corresponding width.
+
+=Studies.=--After this there must be studies made for the drawing of
+the single figures, and for more exactness of line and action in the
+bringing of all together into the whole. This work is usually done in
+charcoal, from the life, and sometimes on a piece of drawing-paper
+stretched over the same canvas that the picture will be painted on, or
+otherwise arranged, but of the same size. Often, however, this work,
+too, is done on a smaller scale than that of the picture, especially
+when the picture is to be very large. This is based on the preliminary
+sketch as composition, and is intended to carry that idea out more in
+full, and perfect the drawing of the different figures, and to
+harmonize the composition. The composition and relation of figures
+both as to size and position on the final canvas depend on this study.
+
+[Illustration: =Study of Fortune.= _Michael Angelo._]
+
+=Corrections.=--In making these studies and in transferring them to
+the canvas, corrections are of course often necessary. The correction
+may or may not be satisfactory. To avoid too great confusion from the
+number of corrections in the same place, they are not made always
+directly on the study or canvas, but on a curtain of tissue paper
+dropped over it. The figure may be completely drawn, and is to be
+modified in whole or in part. The tissue paper receives the new
+drawing, and the old drawing shows through it, and the effect of the
+correction can be compared with that of the first idea. The study
+itself need not then be changed until the alteration which is
+satisfactory is found, as the process may be repeated as many times
+as necessary on the tissue paper, and the alterations finally embodied
+in the completed study.
+
+=Figure Studies.=--The studies for the various single figures are now
+made in the nude from the model, generally a quarter or half life
+size--a careful, accurate light and shade drawing of every figure in
+the picture, the model being posed in the position determined on in
+the study just spoken of. Sometimes further single studies are made
+with the same models draped, and generally special studies of drapery
+are made as well; these studies are afterwards used to place the
+figures in position on the canvas before the painting begins.
+
+=Transferring.=--The composition study must now be transferred to the
+canvas, to give the general arrangement and relative position, size,
+and action of the figures, etc. If the drawing is the same size as the
+canvas it is done by tracing, if not, then it is "squared up." In this
+stage of the process mechanical exactness of proportion is the thing
+required, as well as the saving of time; all things having been
+planned beforehand, and freedom of execution coming in later. This
+establishes the proportions, the sizes, and positions of the several
+figures on the final canvas. The drawing is not at this stage
+complete. The more general relations only are the purpose of this.
+
+Onto this preparation the studies drawn from the nude model are
+"squared up," and the drawing corrected again from the nude model.
+This drawing is now covered with its drapery, which is drawn from the
+life in charcoal, or a _frott�e_ of some sort. At this stage the
+canvas should represent, in monochrome, very justly, what the finished
+picture will be in composition, drawing, and light and shade. If the
+_frott�e_ of various colors (as suggested in the chapter on "Still
+Life") has been used, the general color scheme will show also. This
+completes the preliminary process of the picture, and when the
+painting is begun with a _frott�e_, this stage includes also the
+_first painting_.
+
+="The �bouch."=--An _�bouch_ is a painting which, mainly with body
+color, blocks in broadly and simply the main masses of a composition.
+Sometimes an _�bouch_ is used as one of the preliminary color studies
+for a picture, especially if there is some problem of drapery massing
+to be determined, or other motive purely of color and mass. Or if
+there is some piece of landscape detail such as a building or what not
+to come in, _�bouches_ for it will be made to be used in completing
+the picture. But more commonly the _�bouch_ is the first blocking-in
+painting of the picture, by means of which the greater masses of color
+and value are laid onto the canvas, somewhat rudely, but strongly, so
+as to give a strong, firm impression of the picture, and a solid
+under-painting on which future work may be done. Whether this
+_�bouch_ is rough or smooth, just how much of it will be body or solid
+color and how much transparent, just what degree of finish this
+painting will have,--these depend on the man who does it. No two men
+work precisely the same way.
+
+Some men make what is practically a large and very complete sketch.
+Some paint quite smoothly or frankly, with more or less of an effect
+of being finished as they go, working from one side of the picture
+gradually across the whole canvas. Others work a bit here and a bit
+there, and fill in between as they feel inclined. Another way is to
+patch in little spots of rather pure color, so that the _�bouch_ looks
+like a sort of mosaic of paint.
+
+In the matter of color, too, there is great difference of method. Some
+men lay in the picture with stronger color than they intend the
+finished picture to have, and gray it and bring it together with
+after-painting. Others go to the other extreme, and paint grayer and
+lighter, depending on glazings and full touches of color later on to
+richen and deepen the color. All the way between these two are
+modifications of method. The main difference between these extremes is
+that when stronger color is used in the first painting, the process is
+to paint with solid color all through; while if glazings are to be
+much used, the _�bouch_ must be lighter and quieter in color, to allow
+for the results of after-painting. For you cannot glaze _up_. You
+always glaze _down_. The glaze being a transparent color, used without
+white, will naturally make the color under it more brilliant in color,
+but darker in value, just as it would if you laid a piece of colored
+glass over it. And this result must be calculated on beforehand.
+
+[Illustration: =�bouch of Portrait.= _Th. Robinson._
+One sitting of one hour and a half.]
+
+Which of all these methods is best to use depends altogether on which
+best suits the man and his purpose in the picture or his temperament.
+A rough _�bouch_ will not make a smooth picture. A mosaic gives a
+pure, clear basis of color to gray down and work over, and may be
+scraped for a good surface. It is a deliberate method, and will be
+successful only with a thoughtful, deliberate painter. If a man is a
+timid colorist, a strong, even crude, under-painting will help to
+strengthen his color. A good colorist will get color any way. For a
+student, the more directly he puts down what he sees, the less he
+calculates on the effect of future after-painting, the better.
+
+But whichever way a man works as to these various beginnings, the
+chief thing is, that he understand beforehand what are the peculiar
+advantages and qualities of each, and that he consider before he
+begins what he expects to do, and how he purposes to do it.
+
+=Further Painting.=--The first painting may be put in from nature with
+the help of the several models in succession. More probably it will
+be put in from the color sketch which furnishes the general scheme,
+and from a number of studies and _�bouches_ which will give the
+principal material for each part of the canvas. With the next painting
+comes the more exact study from models and accessories themselves. The
+under-painting is in, the color relations and the contrasts of masses,
+but all is more or less crude and undeveloped. Every one thing in the
+picture must be gradually brought to a further stage of completion.
+The background is not as yet to be carried farther as a whole. If the
+canvas is all covered, so that the background effect is there, it is
+all that is needed as yet. The most important figures are to be
+painted, beginning with the heads and hands, and at the same time
+painting the parts next to them, the background and drapery close
+around them, so that the immediate values shall all be true as far as
+it has gone.
+
+No small details are painted yet. The whole canvas is carried forward
+by painting all over it, no one thing being entirely finished; for the
+same degree of progress should be kept up for the whole picture. To
+finish any one part long before the rest is done, would be to run the
+risk of over-painting that part.
+
+After the heads and other flesh parts, the draperies should be brought
+up, and the background and all objects in it painted, to bring the
+whole picture to the same degree of completion. This finishes the
+second painting. It is all done from nature direct, and is painted
+solidly as a rule. Even if the first painting has been a _frott�e_
+this one will have been solidly painted into that _frott�e_, although
+the transparent rubbing may have been left showing, whenever it was
+true in effect; most probably in the shadows and broader dark masses
+of the backgrounds. In this second painting no glazings or scumblings
+come in. The canvas is brought forward as far as possible with direct
+frank brush-work with body color before these other processes can be
+used. Glazes and such manipulations require a solid under-painting,
+and a comparative completion of the picture for safe work. These
+processes are for the modifying of color mainly; you do not draw nor
+represent the more important and fundamental facts of the picture with
+them. All these things are painted first, in the most frank and direct
+way, and then you can do anything you want to on a sure basis of
+well-understood representation. There will be structure underneath
+your future processes.
+
+=The Third Painting.=--The third painting simply goes over the picture
+in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the
+important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or
+strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights.
+The procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture
+was begun with an _�bouch_ of body color or a _frott�e_ of transparent
+color. The third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a
+whole further toward being finished.
+
+=Rough and Smooth.=--If body color has been used pretty freely in the
+two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in
+places by the time it is ready for the third painting. Whether that
+roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the
+painter to decide for himself. Among the greatest of painters there
+have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly.
+I have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of
+detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute
+detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of
+the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the
+heavier brush-strokes. The effect of color, and especially luminosity,
+has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these
+things are to be considered. As a rule, it might be well to look upon
+either extreme as something not of importance in itself. The mere
+quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any
+more than the mere quality of roughness is. If these things are
+necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities
+which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these
+qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. The
+painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to
+the picture. If he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the
+expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of
+the surface quality of his canvas will not bother him beyond the
+effect that it has upon his attaining of that expression.
+
+=Scraping.=--The second painting will be well dry before the third
+begins, especially if the paint be more rough and uneven than is for
+any reason desirable. Almost every painter scrapes his pictures more
+or less. There is pretty sure to be some part of it in which there is
+roughness just where he doesn't want it. For the third painting, that
+is to say, after the main things in the picture are practically
+entirely finished, there remains to be done the strengthening and
+richening and modifying of the colors, values, and accents, and the
+bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking.
+Before this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all
+over. If it does need it, you may use a regular tool made for that
+purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it being held firmly in
+such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas.
+
+It is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off
+such projections and unevenness of paint as would interfere with the
+proper over-painting.
+
+The third painting represents any and all processes that may be used
+to complete the picture. There is no rule as to the number of
+processes or "paintings." You may have a dozen paintings if you want
+them, and after the first two they are all modifications and
+subdivisions of the third painting; for they all add to furthering the
+completion of the picture. They are all done more or less from nature,
+as the second painting was. There should be very little done to any
+picture without constant reference to nature.
+
+If you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. Don't "tone" it
+with a general wash of some color. That is not the way pictures are
+"brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of the glaze. The glaze,
+like any other application of paint, is put on just where it is needed
+to modify the color of that place where the color goes. The use of a
+scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be
+painted into and over with solid color, and that again modified as
+much as is called for. The thing which is to be carefully avoided is
+not the use of any special process, but the ceasing from the use of
+some process or other before the thing is as it should be,--don't stop
+before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of
+the idea of the picture.
+
+This completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what
+is ordinarily looked upon as "finish." Finish is not surface, but
+expression; and completeness of expression may demand roughness and
+avoidance of detail and surface at one time quite as positively as it
+demands more detail and consequent smoothness at another.
+
+And this final completeness comes from the last paintings which I
+group together as the "third." Scumble and glaze and paint into them,
+and glaze and scumble again. Use any process which will help your
+picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any
+picture being a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition
+that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. Those
+qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of
+meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more
+general qualities of color and tone. Emphasis and force of accent,
+such detail as you want, and the final and more delicate perceptions
+of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be
+divided into several paintings.
+
+=Between Paintings.=--When a painting is dry and you begin to work on
+it again, you will probably find parts of its surface covered with a
+kind of bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures the
+work altogether. It is "dried in." In drying, some of the oil of the
+last painting is absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze is
+the result. You cannot paint on it without in some way bringing it
+back to its original color. You cannot varnish it out at this stage,
+for this will not have a good effect on your picture.
+
+="Oiling Out."=--You can oil it all over, and then rub all the oil off
+that you can. This will bring it out. But the oil will tend to darken
+the picture; too much oil should be avoided. Turpentine with a little
+oil in it will bring it out also, but it will not stay out so long,
+but perhaps long enough for you to work on it. If you put a little
+siccative de Harlem in it, or use any picture varnish thinned with
+turpentine, it will serve well enough. There is a retouching varnish,
+_vernis � retoucher_, which is made for this purpose, and is perfectly
+safe and good.
+
+The picture must be well dried before it is finally varnished.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV
+
+                      DIFFICULTIES OF BEGINNERS
+
+
+All painters have difficulty with their pictures, but the trouble with
+the beginner is that he has not experience enough to know how to meet
+it. The solving of all difficulties is a matter of application of
+fundamental principles to them; but it is necessary to know these
+principles, and to have applied them to simple problems, before one
+can know how to apply them to less simple ones.
+
+I have tried to deal fully with these principles rather than to tell
+how to do any one thing, and to point out the application whenever it
+could be done.
+
+There are, however, some things that almost always bother the
+beginner, and it may be helpful to speak of them particularly.
+
+=Selection of Subject.=--One of the chief objections to copying as a
+method of beginning study is that while it teaches a good deal about
+surface-work, it gives no practical training just when it is most
+needed. The student who has only copied has no idea how to look for a
+composition, how to place it on his canvas, or how to translate into
+line and color the actual forms which he sees in nature. These things
+are all done for him in the picture he is copying, yet these are the
+very first things he should have practised in. The making of a picture
+begins before the drawing and painting begins. You see something
+out-doors, or you see a group of people or a single person in an
+interesting position. It is one thing to see it; how are you
+practically to grasp it so as to get it on canvas? That is quite a
+different thing. How much shall you take in? How much leave out? What
+proportion of the canvas shall the main object or figure take up? All
+these are questions which need some experience to answer.
+
+In dealing with figures experience comes somewhat naturally, because
+you will of course not undertake more than a head and shoulders, with
+a plain background, for your first work. The selecting of subject in
+this is chiefly the choice of lighting and position of head, which
+have been spoken of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the canvas
+should be reduced to the making of the head as large as it will come
+conveniently. The old rule was that the point of the nose should be
+about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases on the ordinary
+canvas this brings the head in the right place. As you paint more you
+will put in more and more of the figure, and so progress comes very
+naturally.
+
+But in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at
+first. There is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that
+it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. Practice in
+still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are
+seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to
+see. Even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come
+to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its
+simplicity. The simplicity which you should look for to make your
+selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but
+the definiteness of some marked object or effect. What is good as a
+"view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. You want
+something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it.
+A long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is
+simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? In an
+ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color
+without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. It can be painted,
+of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject
+for a master, not for a student. But suppose there were a tree or a
+group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky,
+and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in
+the clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose all was in broad
+light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other
+shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of
+it. Immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make
+your picture around. The field and hill alone will make a study of
+distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an
+effective sketch. The two effects I have supposed give the possibility
+for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture.
+
+This central object or effect which I have supposed also clears up the
+matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. With merely the
+hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side
+or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. But
+the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. The tree
+and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. Very well, then,
+make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. Then
+what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and
+you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size,
+it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither
+in the middle exactly nor too much to one side.
+
+Here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view,
+with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. One shows the
+lack of saliency, although the tree is there. In the other the camera
+was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree
+became large enough to be of importance in the composition. The
+placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this
+case.
+
+=Centralize.=--Now, as you go about looking for things to sketch,
+look always for some central object or effect. If you find that
+what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite
+and graspable,--some contrast of form, or light and shade, or
+color,--don't attempt it. The thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a
+picture in it, but not for you. You are learning how to look for and
+to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched,
+without too much subtlety either of form or color or value.
+
+=Placing.=--Having found your subject with something definite in it,
+you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." It will not do to
+put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it
+happens. You will not be satisfied with the effect of this. The object
+of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call
+attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at.
+Then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to
+be seen whether anything else is seen or not. This is the first thing
+to be thought of in placing your subject. _Where_ is it to come on
+the canvas? How much room is it to take up? If it is too large, there
+is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. If it is to
+be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference
+to. On the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it
+insignificant.
+
+[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 1.=]
+
+If it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and
+sky,--where your horizon line will come. Then, having drawn that line,
+make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect
+or object--a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get
+merely its simplest suggestion of outline. These two things will show
+you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of
+the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. If it isn't right, rub it
+out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one
+side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. When you have
+done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important
+thing.
+
+[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 2.=]
+
+=Still Life, etc.=--If your subject be still life, flowers, or an
+animal or other figure, go about it in the same way. Look at it well.
+Try to get an idea of its general shape, and block that out with a few
+lines. You will almost always find a horizontal line which by cutting
+across the mass will help you to decide where the mass will best come.
+First, the mass must be about the right size, and then it must balance
+well on the canvas. Any of the things suggested as helping about
+drawing and values will of course help you here. The reducing-glass
+will help you to get the size and position of things. The card with a
+square hole in it will do the same. Even a sort of little frame made
+with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands will cut off the
+surrounding objects, and help you see your group as a whole with other
+things out of the way.
+
+=Walk About.=--A change of position of a very few feet sometimes makes
+a great difference in the looks of a subject. The first view of it is
+not always the best. Walk around a little; look at it from one point
+and from another. Take your time. Better begin a little later than
+stop because you don't like it and feel discouraged. Time taken to
+consider well beforehand is never lost. "Well begun is half done."
+
+=Relief.=--In beginning a thing you want to have the first few
+minutes' work to do the most possible towards giving you something to
+judge by. You want from the very first to get something recognizable.
+Then every subsequent touch, having reference to that, will be so much
+the more sure and effective. Look, then, first for what will count
+most.
+
+=What to look for.=--Whether you lay your work out first with
+black-and-white or with paint, look to see where the greatest contrast
+is. Where is there a strong light against dark and a strong dark
+against light? Not the little accents, but that which marks the
+contact of two great planes. Find this first, and represent it as soon
+as you have got the main values, in this way the whole thing will tell
+as an actuality. It will not yet carry much expression, but it will
+look like a _fact_, and it will have established certain relations
+from which you can work forward.
+
+=Colors.=--It ought to go without saying that the colors as they come
+from the tube are not right for any color you see in nature however
+you think they look. But beginners are very apt to think that if they
+cannot get the color they want, they can get it in another kind of
+tube. This is a mistake. The tubes of color that are actually
+necessary for almost every possible tint or combination in nature are
+very few. But they must be used to advantage. Now and then one finds
+his palette lacking, and must add to it; but after one has
+experimented a while he settles down to some eight or ten colors
+which will do almost everything, and two or three more that will do
+what remains. When you work out-of-doors you may find that more
+variety will help you and gain time for you; that several blues and
+some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular
+outfit. Still even then, when you have got beyond the first frantic
+gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself constantly using
+certain colors and neglecting others. These others, then, you do not
+need, and you may leave them out of your box.
+
+=Too Many Tubes.=--If you have too many colors, they are a trouble
+rather than a help to you. You must carry them all in your mind, and
+you do not so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and taking
+up the paint from different parts of your palette instinctively--which
+means that you are gaining command of it. Never put a new color on
+your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special
+reason for it. Better get well acquainted with the regular colors you
+have, and have only as many as you can handle well.
+
+=Mixing.=--Use some system in mixing your paint. Have your palette set
+the same way always, so that your brush can find the color without
+having to hunt for it. Have a reasonable way too of taking up your
+color before you mix it. Don't always begin with the same one. Is the
+tint light or dark? strong or delicate? What is the prevailing color
+in it? Let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors
+together for mixing. Let these things have to do also with the
+proportionate quantity of each. Suppose you have a heavy dark green to
+mix, what will you take first? Make a dash at the white, put it in the
+middle of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? How much
+paint would you have to take before you got your color? Yet I've seen
+this very thing done, and others equally senseless. What is the green?
+Dark. Bluish or warm? Will reddish or yellowish blue do it best? How
+much space do you want that brushful to cover? Take enough blue, add
+to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color.
+Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. The
+color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't
+mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab
+of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in
+quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep
+it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of
+each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every
+time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its
+vibration and life.
+
+Now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? White?
+Wait a minute. Think. Will white take away the richness of it? White
+always grays and flattens the color. Don't put it into a warm, rich
+color unless it belongs there. Then only as much as is needed.
+
+Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value on a forehead in
+full light? White first, then a little modifying color, yellow first,
+then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. When you have
+a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. Then gray it
+as much as you need to, never the reverse. But when you want a
+delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it
+cautiously.
+
+These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary to take the trouble to
+write it down? But common-sense is not always attributed to artists,
+and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense
+to his painting at first. To say it to him opens his eyes. Best be on
+the safe side.
+
+=Crude Color.=--The beginner is sure to get crude color, either from
+lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints
+he knows he wants. In the latter case crude color either comes from
+too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought
+together, which is only another form of the same, for an added
+complementary would make it right. For instance, Prussian blue and
+chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly
+put anywhere--a strong, crude green. Well, what is the complementary?
+Red? And what does a complementary do to a color? Neutralizes, grays.
+Then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to
+kill its quality.
+
+Or if you don't want the color that makes, take a little reddish
+yellow, ochre say, and possibly a little reddish blue, new blue or
+ultramarine; add these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the
+same kind of green. This is the principle in extreme. Still, the best
+way would be not to try to make a green of Prussian blue and chrome
+yellow. It is better to know the qualities of each tube color on your
+palette. Know which two colors mix to make a crude color, and which
+will be gray, more or less, without a third.
+
+=Muddy Color.=--Dirty or muddy color comes from lack of this last. You
+do not know how your colors are going to affect each other. You mix,
+and the color looks right on the palette, but on the canvas it is not
+right. You mix again and put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first
+tint and you get--mud. Why? Both wrong. Scrape the whole thing off.
+With a clean spot of canvas mix a fresh color. Put it on frankly and
+freshly and let it alone--don't dabble it. The chances are it will be
+at least fresh, clean color.
+
+Over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than
+three colors are used. When you don't get the right tint with three
+colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. If that is
+not so, and you must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or
+you will have to mix the tint again.
+
+=Dirty Brushes and Palette.=--Using dirty brushes causes muddy color.
+Don't be too economical about the number of brushes you use. Keep a
+good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out of your brush often.
+If the color is getting muddy, clean your palette and take a clean
+brush. Your palette is sure to get covered with paint of all colors
+when you have painted a little while. You can't mix colors with any
+degree of certainty if the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints.
+Use your palette-knife--that's what it's for. Scrape the palette clean
+every once in a while as it gets crowded. Wipe it off. Take some fresh
+brushes. Then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the fault
+of your tools.
+
+=Out-door and In-door Colors.=--There is one source of discouragement
+and difficulty that every one has to contend against; that is, the
+difference in the apparent key of paint when, having been put on
+out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. Out-of-doors the color looked
+bright and light, and when you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray,
+and perhaps muddy and dead. This is something you must expect, and
+must learn how to control.
+
+As everything that the out-door light falls upon looks the brighter
+for it, so will your paint look brighter than it really is because of
+the brilliancy of the light which you see it in. You must learn to
+make allowance for that. You must learn by experience how much the
+color will go down when you take it into the house.
+
+Of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary thing in working
+out-of-doors, and if it is lined with black so much the better for
+you; for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming through the
+cloth, and while it shades your canvas, it does to some extent give a
+false glow to your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances.
+
+Mere experience will give you that knowledge more or less; but there
+are ways in which you can help yourself.
+
+When you first begin to work out-doors try to find a good solid shade
+in which to place your easel, and then try to paint up to the full
+key, even at the risk of a little crudeness of color. Use colors that
+seem rather pure than otherwise. You may be sure that the color will
+"come down" a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. Then, if the
+shade has been pretty even, and your canvas has had a fair light, you
+will get a fairly good color-key.
+
+=Predetermined Pitch.=--Another way is to determine the pitch of the
+painting in some way before you take the canvas out-of-doors. There
+are various ways of doing this. The most practical is, perhaps, to
+know the relative value, in the house and out-doors, of the priming of
+your canvas. Have a definite knowledge of how near to the highest
+light you will want that priming is. Then, when you put on the light
+paint, if you keep it light with reference to the known pitch of the
+priming, you will keep the whole painting light.
+
+=Discouragement.=--We all get discouraged sometimes, but it is
+something to know that the case is not hopeless because we are. That
+what we are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason that it
+may not get done eventually. Often the discouragement is not even a
+sign that what we are doing is not going well. The discouragement may
+be one way that fatigue shows itself, and we may feel discouraged
+after a particularly successful day's work--in consequence of it very
+probably. Make it a rule not to judge of a day's work at the end of
+that day. Wait till next morning, when fresh and rested, and you will
+have a much more just notion of what you have done.
+
+When you begin to get blue about your work is the time to stop and
+rest. If the blues are the result of tire, working longer will only
+make your picture worse. A tired brain and eye never improved a piece
+of painting. And in the same spirit rest often while you are painting.
+If your model rests, it is as well that you rest also. Turn away from
+your work, and when you get to work again you will look at it with a
+fresh eye.
+
+=Change Your Work Often.=--Too continued and concentrated work on the
+same picture also will lead to discouragement. Change your work, keep
+several things going at the same time, and when you are tired of one
+you may work with fresh perceptions and interest on another.
+
+Stop often to walk away from your work. Lay down your palette and
+brushes, and put the canvas at the other end of the room. Straighten
+your back and look at the picture at a distance. You get an impression
+of the thing as a whole. What you have been doing will be judged of
+less by itself and more in relation to the rest of the picture, and so
+more justly.
+
+When things are going wrong, stop work for the day. Take a rest. Then,
+before you begin again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look
+the picture over--consider it, compare it with nature, and make up
+your mind just what it lacks, just what it needs, just what you will
+do first to make it as it should be. It is marvellous how it drives
+off the blues to know just what you are going to do next.
+
+
+
+
+                         TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
+
+3. Illustration captions are indicated by =caption=.
+
+4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the
+   closest paragraph break.
+
+5. The word d'oeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original on page 242.
+
+6. In the List of Illustrations, page number for "Descent from Cross"
+   is corrected to 163 (original text is 165).
+
+7. The following misprints have been corrected:
+     "heavvier" corrected to "heavier" (page 16)
+     "interor" corrected to "interior" (page 141)
+     "arrangemen" corrected to "arrangement" (page 171)
+     "analagous" corrected to "analogous" (page 190)
+     "freeest" corrected to "freest" (page 216)
+     "n�ivet�" corrected to "na�vet�" (page 289)
+
+8. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies
+   in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been
+   retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PAINTER IN OIL ***
+
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+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+  <head>
+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Painter In Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst.
+    </title>
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+    .poem             {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem span.i8     {display: block; margin-left: 8em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
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+  </head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Painter in Oil
+       A complete treatise on the principles and technique
+              necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors
+
+Author: Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+Release Date: January 6, 2010 [EBook #30877]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PAINTER IN OIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ritu Aggarwal and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="100%" alt="Cover Page." title="Cover Page." />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus001" id="illus001"></a>
+<img src="images/illus001.jpg" width="100%" alt="November Beechwood." title="November Beechwood." />
+<span class="caption">November Beechwood. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h1>THE PAINTER IN OIL<br /><br /></h1>
+
+<h3>A COMPLETE TREATISE</h3>
+
+<h5>ON</h5>
+
+<h3>THE PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUE</h3>
+
+<h5>NECESSARY TO</h5>
+
+<h3>THE PAINTING OF PICTURES IN OIL COLORS<br /><br /></h3>
+
+<h5>BY</h5>
+
+<h3>DANIEL BURLEIGH PARKHURST</h3>
+
+<h5>PUPIL OF WILLIAM SARTAIN, OF BOUGUEREAU AND TONY-FLEURY, AND OF<br />
+AIM&Eacute;E MOROT; MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK WATER COLOR CLUB;<br />
+FORMERLY LECTURER ON ART IN DICKINSON COLLEGE;<br />
+AUTHOR OF "SKETCHING FROM NATURE," ETC.<br /><br /></h5>
+
+
+<div class="poem"><p>
+<span class="i8">"<i>La peinture &agrave; l'huile est bien difficile;</i></span>
+<span class="i8"><i>Mais beaucoup plus beau que la peinture &agrave; l'eau.</i>"<br /></span>
+</p></div>
+
+<h3><br /><br />BOSTON:</h3>
+<h2>LOTHROP, LEE &amp; SHEPARD CO.</h2>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1898, by Lee and Shepard</span><br />
+<br />
+<i>All Rights Reserved</i><br />
+<br />
+<span class="smcap">The Painter in Oil</span><br /><br /><br />
+</h5>
+
+<h6>TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS &amp; SON<br />
+<br />
+PRESSWORK BY BERWICK &amp; SMITH, NORWOOD PRESS<br />
+NORWOOD MASS.</h6>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h5>TO</h5>
+
+<h2>A. M. P.</h2>
+
+<h5>THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.</h5>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>September 4th, 1897.</i></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>Books of instruction in the practice of painting
+have rarely been successful. Chiefly because they
+have been too narrow in their point of view, and
+have dealt more with recipes than with principles.
+It is not possible to give any one manner of painting
+that shall be right for all men and all subjects.
+To say "do thus and so" will not teach any one
+to paint. But there are certain principles which
+underlie all painting, and all schools of painting;
+and to state clearly the most important of these
+will surely be helpful, and may accomplish something.</p>
+
+<p>It is the purpose of this book to deal practically
+with the problems which are the study of the
+painter, and to make clear, as far as may be, the
+principles which are involved in them. I believe
+that this is the only way in which written instruction
+on painting can be of any use.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to understand principles without
+some statement of theory; and a book in order
+to be practical must therefore be to some extent
+theoretical. I have been as concise and brief in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span>
+the theoretical parts as clearness would permit of,
+and I trust they are not out of proportion to the
+practical parts. Either to paint well, or to judge
+well of a painting, requires an understanding of
+the same things: namely, the theoretical standpoint
+of the painter; the technical problems of
+color, composition, etc.; and the practical means,
+processes, and materials through which and with
+which these are worked out.</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that one cannot become a good
+painter without the ability to know what is good
+painting, and to prefer it to bad painting. Therefore,
+I have taken space to cover, in some sort,
+the whole ground, as the best way to help the
+student towards becoming a good painter. If,
+also, the student of pictures should find in this
+book what will help him to appreciate more truly
+and more critically, I shall be gratified.</p>
+
+<p style='text-align:right;'>D. B. P.</p>
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>December</i> 4, 1897</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Table of Contents">
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="#PART_I">PART I.&mdash;MATERIALS</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><small>CHAPTER</small></td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">I.</a></td>
+  <td>Observations</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">II.</a></td>
+  <td>Canvases and Panels</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_6">6</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">III.</a></td>
+  <td>Easels</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_15">15</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV.</a></td>
+  <td>Brushes</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_20">20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">V.</a></td>
+  <td>Paints</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI.</a></td>
+  <td>Vehicles and Varnishes</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_61">61</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII.</a></td>
+  <td>Palettes</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII.</a></td>
+  <td>Other Tools</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_69">69</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX.</a></td>
+  <td>Studios</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_76">76</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="#PART_II">PART II.&mdash;GENERAL PRINCIPLES</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">X.</a></td>
+  <td>Mental Attitude</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_85">85</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI.</a></td>
+  <td>Tradition and Individuality</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII.</a></td>
+  <td>Originality</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_103">103</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII.</a></td>
+  <td>The Artist and the Student</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV.</a></td>
+  <td>How to Study</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_110">110</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="#PART_III">PART III.&mdash;TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV.</a></td>
+  <td>Technical Preliminaries</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI.</a></td>
+  <td>Drawing</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_126">126</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII.</a></td>
+  <td>Values</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_138">138</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII.</a></td>
+  <td>Perspective</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_146">146</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX.</a></td>
+  <td>Light and Shade</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_151">151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX.</a></td>
+  <td>Composition</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_166">166</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a></td>
+  <td>Color</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_184">184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3">&nbsp;</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="3" align="center"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV.&mdash;PRACTICAL APPLICATION</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">XXII.</a></td>
+  <td>Representation</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_209">209</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">XXIII.</a></td>
+  <td>Manipulation</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_224">224</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">XXIV.</a></td>
+  <td>Copying</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_236">236</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">XXV.</a></td>
+  <td>Kinds of Painting</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">XXVI.</a></td>
+  <td>The Sketch</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_245">245</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII">XXVII.</a></td>
+  <td>The Study</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_254">254</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">XXVIII.</a></td>
+  <td>Still Life</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_260">260</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">XXIX.</a></td>
+  <td>Flowers</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">XXX.</a></td>
+  <td>Portraits</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_286">286</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">XXXI.</a></td>
+  <td>Landscape</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_309">309</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">XXXII.</a></td>
+  <td>Marines</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIII">XXXIII.</a></td>
+  <td>Figures</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_347">347</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXIV">XXXIV.</a></td>
+  <td>Procedure in a Picture</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_371">371</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXV">XXXV.</a></td>
+  <td>Difficulties of Beginners</td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_389">389</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="List of Illustrations">
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td align="right"><small>PAGE</small></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus001"><span class="smcap">November Beechwood</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><i>Frontispiece</i></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus024"><span class="smcap">Stretchers</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_11">11</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus026a"><span class="smcap">Canvas Pliers</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus026b"><span class="smcap">Double-Pointed Tack</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus029"><span class="smcap">Easel</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_16">16</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus030"><span class="smcap">Easel</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus031"><span class="smcap">Sketching Easel</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus032"><span class="smcap">Sketching Easel</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><span class="smcap">Brushes</span>.&mdash;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus035">Red Sable, Round</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus036">Red Sable</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_23">23</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus037">Red Sable, Flat</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus039">Round Bristle</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_26">26</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus041">Flat Bristle</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus042">Flat Pointed</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td><a href="#illus043">Fan</a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus044"><span class="smcap">Brush Cleaner</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_31">31</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus067"><span class="smcap">Oil Colors</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus078"><span class="smcap">Oval Palette</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus080"><span class="smcap">Arm Palette</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus083"><span class="smcap">The Color Box</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_70">70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus084"><span class="smcap">Palette Knife</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus085"><span class="smcap">The Scraper</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus086a"><span class="smcap">The Oil-Cup</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus086b"><span class="smcap">Mahl-Sticks</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_73">73</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[Pg xii]</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus087a"><span class="smcap">Three-legged Stool</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus087b"><span class="smcap">Sketching Chair</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_74">74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus088"><span class="smcap">Sketching Umbrella</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus147"><span class="smcap">Drawing of Hands</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>D&uuml;rer</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_134">134</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus167"><span class="smcap">Eggs. White against White</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_154">154</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus169"><span class="smcap">The Canal</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus172"><span class="smcap">Bohemian Woman</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Franz Hals</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus174"><span class="smcap">Sewing by Lamplight</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Millet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_161">161</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus176"><span class="smcap">Descent from the Cross</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_163">163</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus187"><span class="smcap">The Golden Stairs</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus188"><span class="smcap">The Sower</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Millet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_175">175</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus191"><span class="smcap">Return to the Farm</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Millet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus230"><span class="smcap">The Fisher Boy</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Franz Hals</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_217">217</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus234"><span class="smcap">Boar-Hunt</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Snyders</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_221">221</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus240"><span class="smcap">Good Bock</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Manet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_227">227</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus259"><span class="smcap">Sketch of a Hillside</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_246">246</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus263"><span class="smcap">The River Bank</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_250">250</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus270"><span class="smcap">Study of a Blooming-Mill</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_257">257</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus278"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 1</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus279"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 2</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_266">266</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus280"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 3</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus282"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 4</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_269">269</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus283"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 5</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_270">270</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus284"><span class="smcap">Still Life, No. 6</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_271">271</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus295"><span class="smcap">Sweet Peas</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_282">282</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus302"><span class="smcap">D&uuml;rer</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>by Himself</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_289">289</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus304"><span class="smcap">Portrait of his Mother</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Whistler</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_291">291</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus306"><span class="smcap">Portrait of Himself</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Valasquez</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus310"><span class="smcap">Portrait</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_297">297</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus320"><span class="smcap">Haystacks in Sunshine</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Monet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_307">307</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus327"><span class="smcap">On the Race Track</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Degas</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus330"><span class="smcap">Willow Road</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_317">317</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus350"><span class="smcap">Entrance to Zuyder Zee</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Clarkson Stanfield</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_337">337</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus358"><span class="smcap">Girl Spinning</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Millet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus368"><span class="smcap">Sketch of a Flute Player</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Parkhurst</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_355">355</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus376"><span class="smcap">Milton Dictating</span> "<span class="smcap">Paradise Lost</span>"</a></td>
+  <td><i>Munkacsy</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_363">363</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus381"><span class="smcap">Buckwheat Harvest</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Millet</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_368">368</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus386"><span class="smcap">Study of Fortune</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Angelo</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_373">373</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td><a href="#illus392"><span class="smcap">&Eacute;bouch of Portrait</span></a></td>
+  <td><i>Th. Robinson</i></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_379">379</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus407"><span class="smcap">Landscape Photo. No. 1</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_394">394</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2"><a href="#illus408"><span class="smcap">Landscape Photo. No. 2</span></a></td>
+  <td align="right"><a href="#Page_395">395</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h1><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I<br /><br />
+MATERIALS</h1>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1>THE PAINTER IN OIL</h1>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<h3>GENERAL OBSERVATIONS</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is a false implication in the saying that
+"a poor workman blames his tools." It is not
+true that a good workman can do good work with
+bad tools. On the contrary, the good workman
+sees to it that he has good tools, and makes it a
+part of his good workmanship that they are in
+good condition.</p>
+
+<p>In painting there is nothing that will cause you
+more trouble than bad materials. You can get
+along with few materials, but you cannot get along
+with bad ones. That is not the place to economize.
+To do good work is difficult at best.
+Economize where it will not be a hindrance to
+you. Your tools can make your work harder or
+easier according to your selection of them. The
+relative cost of good and bad materials is of slight
+importance compared with the relative effect on
+your work.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+The way to economize is not to get anything
+which you do not need. Save on the non-essentials,
+and get as good a quality as you can of the
+essentials.</p>
+
+<p>Save on the number of things you get, not on
+the quantity you use. You must feel free in your
+use of material. There is nothing which hampers
+you more than parsimony in the use of things
+needful to your painting. If it is worth your
+while to paint at all, it is worth your while to be
+generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary
+freedom of use of material.</p>
+
+<p>The essentials of painting are few, but these
+cannot be dispensed with. Put it out of your
+mind that any one of these five things can be got
+along without:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>You must have something to paint <i>on</i>, canvas
+or panel. Have plenty of these.</p>
+
+<p>You must have something to set this canvas on&mdash;something
+to hold it up and in position. Your
+knees won't do, and you can't hold it in one hand.
+The lack of a practical easel will cost you far
+more in trouble and discouragement than the
+saving will make up for.</p>
+
+<p>You must have something to paint with. The
+brushes are most important; in kind, variety, and
+number. You cannot economize safely here.</p>
+
+<p>You must have paints. And you must have
+good ones. The best are none too good. Get
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span>
+the best. Pay a good price for them, use them
+freely, but don't waste them.</p>
+
+<p>And you must have something to hold them,
+and to mix them on; but here the quality and
+kind has less effect on your work than any other
+of your tools. But as the cost of the best of palettes
+is slight, you may as well get a good one.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if you will be economical, the way to do
+it is to take proper care of your tools <i>after you
+have got them</i>. Form the habit of using good
+tools as they should be used, and that will save
+you a great deal of money.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2>
+<h3>CANVASES AND PANELS</h3>
+
+
+<p>You should have plenty of canvas on hand, and
+it would be well if you had it all stretched ready
+for use. Many a good day's work is lost because
+of the time wasted in getting a canvas ready. It
+is not necessary to have many kinds or sizes.
+It is better in fact to settle on one kind of surface
+which suits you, and to have a few practical sizes
+of stretchers which will pack together well, and
+work always on these. You will find that by
+getting accustomed to these sizes you work more
+freely on them. You can pack them better, and
+you can frame them more conveniently, because
+one frame will always do for many pictures. Perhaps
+there is no one piece of advice which I can
+give you which will be of more practical use outside
+of the principles of painting, than this of
+keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas, and
+the keeping of a number of each always on hand.</p>
+
+<p>It is all well enough to talk about not showing
+one's work too soon. But we all do, and always
+will like to see our work under as favorable conditions
+as possible. And a good frame is one of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+favorable conditions. But good frames are expensive,
+and it is a great advantage to be able to have
+a frame always at hand which you can see your
+work in from time to time; and if you only work
+on four sizes of canvas, say, then four frames,
+one for each size, will suit all your pictures and
+sketches. Use the same sizes for all kinds of work
+too, and the freedom will come, as I say, in the
+working on those sizes.</p>
+
+<p>Don't have odd sizes about. You can just as
+well as not use the regular sizes and proportions
+which colormen keep in stock, and there is an advantage
+in being able to get a canvas at short
+notice, and it will be one of your own sizes, and
+will fit your frame. All artists have gone through
+the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their
+stock, and it is one of the practical things that we
+all have to come down to sooner or later, and the
+sooner the better,&mdash;to have the sizes which we
+find we like best, not too many, and stick to them.
+I would have you take advantage of this, and decide
+early in your work, and so get rid of one source
+of bother.</p>
+
+<p><b>Rough and Smooth.</b>&mdash;The best canvas is of linen.
+Cotton is used for sketching canvas. But you
+would do well always to use good grounds to work
+on. You can never tell beforehand how your work
+will turn out; and if you should want to keep your
+work, or find it worth while to go on with it, you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+would be glad that you had begun it on a good
+linen canvas. The linen is stronger and firmer,
+and when it has a "grain," the grain is better.</p>
+
+<p><b>Grain.</b>&mdash;The question of grain is not easy to
+speak about without the canvas, yet it is often a
+matter of importance. There are many kinds of
+surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged.
+Some grain it is well the canvas should have; too
+great smoothness will tend to make the painting
+"slick," which is not a pleasant quality. A grain
+gives the canvas a "tooth," and takes the paint
+better. Just what grain is best depends on the
+work. If you are going to have very fine detail in
+the picture use a smoothish canvas; but whenever
+you are going to paint heavily, roughly, or loosely,
+the rough canvas takes the paint better. The
+grain of the canvas takes up the paint, helps to
+hold it, and to disguise, in a way, the body of it.
+For large pictures, too, the canvas must necessarily
+be strong, and the mere weight of the fabric will
+give it a rough surface.</p>
+
+<p><b>Knots.</b>&mdash;For ordinary work do not be afraid of
+a canvas which has some irregularities and knots
+on it. If they are not too marked they will not
+be unpleasantly noticeable in the picture, and may
+even give a relief to too great evenness.</p>
+
+<p><b>Twilled Canvas.</b>&mdash;The diagonal twill which some
+canvases have has always been a favorite surface
+with painters, particularly the portrait painters.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+This grain is a sympathetic one to work on, takes
+paint well, and is not in any way objectionable in
+the finished picture.</p>
+
+<p><b>The best.</b>&mdash;The best way is to try several kinds,
+and when you find one which has a sympathetic
+working quality, and which has a good effect in
+the finished picture, note the quality and use it.
+You will find such a canvas among both the rough
+and smooth kinds, and so you can use either, as
+the character of your work suggests. It is well
+to have both rough and smooth ready at hand.</p>
+
+<p><b>Absorbent.</b>&mdash;Some canvases are primed so as to
+absorb the oil during the process of painting. They
+are very useful for some kinds of work, and many
+painters choose them; but unless you have some
+experience with the working of them, they are apt
+to add another source of perplexity to the difficulties
+of painting, so you had better not experiment
+with them, but use the regular non-absorbent kinds.</p>
+
+<p><b>Old and New.</b>&mdash;The canvas you work on should
+not be too freshly primed. The painting is likely
+to crack if the priming is not well dried. You
+cannot always be sure that the canvas you get
+at stores is old, so you have an additional reason
+for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand.
+Then, if you have had it in your own possession a
+long while, you know it is not fresh. Canvas is
+all the better if it is a year old.</p>
+
+<p><b>Grounds.</b>&mdash;The color of the grounds should be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>
+of interest to you. Canvases are prepared for the
+market usually in three colors,&mdash;a sort of cool
+gray, a warm light ochrish yellow, and a cool pinkish
+gray. Which is best is a matter of personal
+liking. It would be well to consider what the effect
+of the ground will be on the future condition
+of the picture when the colors begin to effect each
+other, as they inevitably will sooner or later.</p>
+
+<p>Vibert in his "<i>La Science de la Peinture</i>" advocates
+a white ground. He says that as the color
+will be sure to darken somewhat with time, it is
+well that the ground should have as little to do
+with it as possible. If the ground is white there
+is so much the less dark pigment to influence your
+painting. He is right in this; but white is a most
+unsympathetic color to work over, and if you do
+not want to lay in your work with <i>frott&eacute;es</i>, a tint
+is pleasanter. For most work the light ochrish
+ground will be found best; but you may be helped
+in deciding by the general tone of your picture.
+If the picture is to be bright and lively, use a light
+canvas, and if it is to be sombre, use a dark one.
+Remember, too, that the color of your ground will
+influence the appearance of every touch of paint
+you put on it by contrast, until the priming is
+covered and out of sight.</p>
+
+<p><b>Stretchers.</b>&mdash;The keyed stretcher, with wedges
+to force the corners open and so tighten the canvas
+when necessary, is the only proper one to use.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span>
+For convenience of use many kinds have been invented,
+but you will find the one here illustrated
+the best for general purposes. The sides may be
+used for ends, and <i>vice versa</i>. If you arrange
+your sizes well, you will have the sides of one size
+the right length for the ends of another. Then
+you need fewer sizes, and they are surer to pack
+evenly.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus024" id="illus024"></a>
+<img src="images/illus024.jpg" width="100%" alt="Stretchers." title="Stretchers." />
+<span class="caption">Stretchers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Stretching.</b>&mdash;You will often have to stretch your
+own canvases, so you should know how to do it.
+There is only one way to make the canvas lay
+smoothly without wrinkles: Cut the canvas about
+two inches longer and wider than the stretcher, so
+that it will easily turn down over the edges. Begin
+by putting in <i>one tack</i> to hold the <i>middle</i> of
+one end. Then turn the whole thing round, and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+stretch tightly lengthwise, and put a tack to hold
+it into the <i>middle</i> of the other end. Do the same
+way with the two sides. Only four tacks so far,
+which have stretched the canvas in the middle
+two ways. As you do this, you must see that the
+canvas is on square. Don't drive the tacks all
+the way in at first till you know that this is so.
+Then give each another blow, so that the head
+binds the canvas more than the body of the tack
+does; for the pull of the canvas against the side
+of the tack will tear, while the head will hold more
+strands. This first two ways stretching must be
+as tight as any after stretching will be or you will
+have wrinkles in the middle, while the purpose
+is to pull out the wrinkles towards the corners.
+Now go back to the ends: stretch, and place one
+tack each side of the first one. In a large canvas
+you may put two each side, but not more, and
+you must be sure that the strain is even on both
+sides. Don't pull too much; for next you must
+do the same with the other end which should bear
+<i>half</i> of the whole stretch. Do just the same now
+with the two sides. Now continue stretching and
+tacking,&mdash;each side of the middle tacks on each
+end, then on each side, then to the ends again,
+and so gradually working towards the corners,
+when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles
+will disappear, if you have done your work well.
+Don't hurry and try to drive too many tacks into
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span>
+a side at a time, for to have to do it all over again
+would take more time than to have worked slowly
+and done it properly. You may of course stretch
+a small canvas with your hands, but it will make
+your fingers sore, and you cannot get large canvases
+tight without help. You will do well to
+have a pair of "canvas pliers" which are specially
+shaped to pull the canvas and hold it strongly without
+tearing it, as other pliers are sure to do.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus026a" id="illus026a"></a>
+<img src="images/illus026a.jpg" width="100%" alt="Canvas Pliers." title="Canvas Pliers." />
+<span class="caption">Canvas Pliers.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 30%;">
+<a name="illus026b" id="illus026b"></a>
+<img src="images/illus026b.jpg" width="100%" alt="Double-pointed Tack." title="Double-pointed Tack." />
+<span class="caption">Double-pointed Tack.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>When you take canvases out-doors to work, you will find it useful to
+strap two together, face inwards, with a double-pointed tack like this
+in each corner to keep them apart. You will not have any trouble with
+the fresh paint, as each canvas will then protect the other. You can
+pack freshly painted canvases for shipping in the same way.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span>
+<b>Panels.</b>&mdash;For small pictures panels are very useful,
+and when great detail is desirable, and fine,
+smooth work would make an accidental tear impossible
+to mend well, they are most valuable.
+They are made of mahogany and oak generally.</p>
+
+<p>Panels are useful, too, for sketching, as you can
+easily pack them. They are light, and the sun
+does not shine through the backs. You can get
+them for about the same cost as canvas for small
+sizes, which are what you would be likely to use,
+and they are often more convenient, particularly
+for use in the sketch-box.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<h3>EASELS</h3>
+
+
+<p>The important thing in an easel is that it
+should be steady and firm; that it should hold the
+canvas without trembling, and so that it will not
+fall as you paint out towards the edges. You
+often paint with a heavy hand, and you must not
+have to hold on to your picture with one hand and
+paint with the other. Nothing is more annoying
+than a poor easel, and nothing will give you more
+solid satisfaction, than the result of a little generosity
+in paying for a good one. The ideal thing
+for the studio is, of course, the great "screw
+easel," which is heavy, safe, convenient, and expensive.
+We would like to have one, but we
+can't afford it, so we won't speak of it. The next
+best thing is an ordinary easel which doesn't cost
+a great deal, but which is firm and solid and practical.
+Don't get one of the various three-legged
+folding easels which cost about seventy-five cents
+or a dollar. They tumble down too often and too
+easily. The wear and tear on the temper they
+cause is more than they are worth. It is true that
+they fold up out of the way. But they fold up
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>
+when you don't expect them to; and you ought to
+be able to afford room enough for an easel anyway,
+if you paint at all.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 35%;">
+<a name="illus029" id="illus029"></a>
+<img src="images/illus029.jpg" width="100%" alt="Easel." title="Easel." />
+</div>
+
+<p><a href="#illus029">The illustration</a> shows one of the firmest of the inexpensive easels,
+and one which will fold up into as small a compass as any practical
+easel will. It will hold perfectly well a good-sized canvas, even with
+its frame, and will not tumble over on slight provocation.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 35%;">
+<a name="illus030" id="illus030"></a>
+<img src="images/illus030.jpg" width="100%" alt="Easel." title="Easel." />
+</div>
+
+<p>Another good easel is shown on <a href="#illus030">p. 17</a>. It is more lightly made, not so
+well braced, but is more convenient for raising and lowering the
+picture, as the catch allows the whole thing to be raised and lowered
+at once.</p>
+
+
+<p>If you are to save money on your easel, don't
+save on the construction and strength of it, but
+on the finish. Let the polish and varnish go, but
+get a well-made easel with solid wood. The <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'heavvier'">heavier</ins>
+it is, the less easily it packs away, to be sure,
+but the more steadily it will hold your picture.</p>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 35%;">
+<a name="illus031" id="illus031"></a>
+<img src="images/illus031.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketching Easel." title="Sketching Easel." />
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>
+<b>Sketching Easels.</b>&mdash;The same things are of importance in an easel
+for out-of-door work that are needed in a studio easel, except that it
+must also be portable. So if you must have a folding easel, get a
+<i>good</i> sketching easel; or if you can't have one for in-doors and one
+for out-doors, then pay a good price for a sketching easel, and use it
+in doors and out also. There are two things which are absolutely
+essential in a sketching easel. It <i>must</i> have legs which may be made
+longer and shorter, and it <i>must hold</i> the canvas firmly. It is not
+enough to lean the canvas on it. The wind blows it over just when you
+are putting on an interesting touch, or the touch itself upsets it, either of which is most aggravating,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>
+and does not tend to satisfactory work. You must not be obliged to sit down to work just
+where you don't want to, a little this side or a little that side of
+the chosen spot, because the ground isn't even there and the easel
+will not stand straight. You must be able to make a leg longer or
+shorter as the unevenness of the ground necessitates. It is impossible
+to work among rocks or on hillsides if you cannot make your easel
+stand as you want it. These things are not to be got round. You might
+as well not work as to sketch with a poor sketching easel. And you
+must pay a good price for it. The sketching easel that is good for
+anything has never been made to sell for a dollar and a half. Pay
+three or four dollars for it, at any rate, and use it the rest of your
+life. I use an easel every day that I have worked on every summer for
+twelve years. Most artists are doing much the same. The easel is not
+expensive <i>per year</i> at that rate! It is such <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> an easel as
+that shown on the opposite <a href="#illus031">page</a>, and is satisfactory for all sorts of
+work.</p>
+
+<p>If you are working in a strong wind, or if you
+have a large canvas, such an easel as <a href="#illus032">this illustration</a>
+shows is the best and safest yet invented, and
+it is as good for other work, and particularly when
+you want to stand up. And either of these easels
+will be perfectly satisfactory to use in the house.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 40%;">
+<a name="illus032" id="illus032"></a>
+<img src="images/illus032.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketching Easel." title="Sketching Easel." />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<h3>BRUSHES</h3>
+
+
+<p>An old brush that has been properly cared for
+is generally better than a new one. It seems to
+have accommodated itself to your way of painting,
+and falls in with your peculiarities. It is astonishing
+how attached you get to your favorite brushes,
+and how loath you are to finally give them up.
+What if you have no others to take their places?</p>
+
+<p>Don't look upon your brushes as something to
+get as few of as possible, and which you would
+not get at all if you could help it. There is nothing
+which comes nearer to yourself than the brush
+which carries out your idea in paint. You should
+be always on the lookout for a good brush; and
+whenever you run across one, buy it, no matter
+how many you have already. Don't look twice
+at a bad brush, and don't begrudge an extra ten
+cents in the buying of a good one. If you are
+sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes,
+then take the more care of them. Use them well
+and they will last a long while; then don't always
+use the same handful. Break in new ones now and
+again. Keep a dozen or two in use, and lay some
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>
+aside before they are worn out, and use newer
+ones. So when at last you cannot use one any
+more, you have others of the same kind which
+will fill its place.</p>
+
+<p>Have all kinds and sizes of brushes. Have a
+couple of dozen in use, and a couple of dozen
+which you are not using, and a couple of dozen
+more that have never been used.</p>
+
+<p>What! six dozen?</p>
+
+<p>Well, why not? Every time you paint you look
+over your brushes and pick out those which look
+friendly to what you are going to do. You want
+all sorts of brushes. You can't paint all sorts
+of pictures with the same kind of brush. Your
+brush represents your hand. You must give every
+kind of touch with it. You want to change sometimes,
+and you want a clean brush from time to
+time. You don't want to feel that you are limited;
+that whether you want to or not these four
+brushes you must use because they are all you
+have! You can't paint that way. That six dozen
+you will not buy all at once. When you get your
+first outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. As you
+look over the stock and pick out two or three
+of this kind, and two or three of that, you will
+be astonished to see how many you have&mdash;yet
+you don't know which to discard. Don't discard
+any. Buy them all. Then, if you don't paint, it
+will not be the fault of your brushes. And from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+time to time get a half a dozen which have just
+struck you as especially good ones, and quite unconsciously
+you acquire your six dozen&mdash;and even
+more, I hope!</p>
+
+<p><b>Bristle and Sable.</b>&mdash;The brushes suitable for oil
+painting are of two kinds,&mdash;bristle and sable
+hair. Of the latter, <i>red</i> sable are the only ones
+you should get. They are expensive, but they
+have a spring and firmness that the black sable
+does not have. Camel's hair is out of the question.
+Don't get any, if you can only have camel's
+hair. It is soft and flabby when used in oil
+and you can't work well with such brushes. The
+same is true of the black sable. But though the
+red sables are expensive, you do not need many
+of them, nor large ones, so the cost of those you
+will need is slight.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus035" id="illus035"></a>
+<img src="images/illus035.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable, Round" title="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable, Round" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The only sables which are in any degree indispensable
+to you are the smaller sizes of <i>riggers</i>.
+These are thin, long brushes which are useful
+for outlining, and all sorts of fine, sharp touches.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span>
+You use them to go over a drawing with paint in
+laying in a picture, and for branches, twigs, etc.
+As their name implies, you must have them for
+the rigging of vessels in marine painting also.
+The three sizes shown in the cut on the opposite
+<a href="#illus035">page</a> are those you should have, and if you get
+two of each, you will find them useful in all sorts
+of places. When you buy them, see that they are
+elastic and firm, that they come naturally and
+easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs.
+Test them by moistening them, and then pressing
+the point on the thumb-nail. They should bend
+evenly through the whole length of the hair. Reject
+any which seem "weak in the back." If it
+lays flat toward the point and bends all in one
+place near the ferrule, it is a poor brush.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus036" id="illus036"></a>
+<img src="images/illus036.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable" title="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable" />
+</div>
+
+<p>These three larger and thicker sizes come in
+very useful often and it would be well if you were
+to have these too. Sometimes a thick, long sable
+brush will serve better than another for heavy
+lines, etc.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>
+All these brushes are round. One largish flat
+sable like this it would be well to have; but these
+are all the sables necessary.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus037" id="illus037"></a>
+<img src="images/illus037.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable, Flat" title="Brushes.&mdash;Red Sable, Flat" />
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Bristle Brushes.</b>&mdash;The sable brush or pencil is
+often necessary; but oil painting is practically always
+done with the bristle, or "hog hair," brush.
+These are the ones which will make up the variety
+of kinds in your six dozen. A good bristle brush
+is not to be bought merely by taking the first
+which comes to hand. Good brushes have very
+definite qualities, and you should have no trouble
+in picking them out. Nevertheless, you will take
+the trouble to select them, if you care to have any
+satisfaction in using them.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Bristle.</b>&mdash;You want your brush to be made
+of the hair just as it grew on the hog. All hair,
+in its natural state, has what is called the "flag."
+That is the fine, smooth taper towards the natural
+end of it, and generally the division into two
+parts. This gives the bristle, no matter how thick
+it may be, a silky fineness towards the end; and
+when this part only of the bristle is used in the
+brush, you will have all the firmness and elasticity
+of the bristle, and also a delicacy and smoothness
+and softness quite equal to a sable. But this, in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span>
+the short hair of an artist's brush, wastes all the
+rest of the length of the hair; for it is only by
+cutting off the "flag," and using that, which is
+only an inch or so long, that you can make the
+brush. Yet the bristle may be several inches
+long, and all this is sacrificed for that little inch
+of "flag." Naturally the "flag" is expensive, and
+naturally also the manufacturer uses the rest of
+the hair for inferior brushes. These latter you
+should avoid. These inferior brushes are made
+from the part of the bristle remaining, by sandpapering,
+or otherwise making the ends fine again
+after they are cut off. But it is impossible to
+make a brush which has the right quality in this
+way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Selection.</b>&mdash;Never buy a brush without testing
+its evenness, as has been advised in the care of
+sables. Feel carefully the end of the bristles also,
+and see that the "flag" is there. All brushes are
+kept together for packing by paste in the bristles.
+See that this is soaked off before you test your
+brush.</p>
+
+<p><b>Round or Flat.</b>&mdash;It will make little difference
+whether you use round or flat brushes. The flat
+brush is most commonly preferred now, and most
+brushes are made that way. So you had better
+get that kind, unless you have some special reason
+for preferring the round ones.</p>
+
+<p><b>Handles.</b>&mdash;Whether the handles are nicely polished,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>
+also, is of no importance. What you are
+to look to is the quality of the bristles and of the
+making; the best brushes are likely to be nicely
+finished all over. But if you do find a really good
+brush which is cheaper because of the plain handle,
+and you wish to save money, do it by buying the
+plain-handled one.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sizes and Shapes.</b>&mdash;You will need some quite
+large brushes and some smaller ones, some square
+ones and some pointed.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus039" id="illus039"></a>
+<img src="images/illus039.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Round Bristle" title="Brushes.&mdash;Round Bristle" />
+</div>
+
+<p><a href="#illus039">Here</a> are three round brushes which, for all
+sorts of painting, will be of very general utility.
+For most of your brushes select the long and
+thin, rather than the short and thick ones. The
+stubby brush is a useless sort of thing for most
+work. There are men who use them and like
+them, but most painters prefer the more flexible
+and springy brush, if it is not weak. So, too, the
+brush should not be too thick. A thick brush
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span>
+takes up too much paint into itself, and does not
+change its tint so readily. For rubbing over large
+surfaces where a good deal of the same color is
+thickly spread on the canvas, the thick, strong
+brush is a very proper tool. But where there is
+to be any delicacy of tone, it is too clumsy; you
+want a more delicate instrument. The same proportions
+hold with large and small brushes, so
+these remarks apply to all.</p>
+
+<p><b>Flat Brushes.</b>&mdash;This is particularly applicable to
+the flat brushes, and the more that most of your
+brushes will be flat.</p>
+
+<p>You should have both broad-ended and pointed
+brushes among your flat ones. For broad surfaces,
+such as backgrounds and skies, the broad
+ends come in well; and for the small ones there
+are many square touches where they are useful.
+The most practical sizes are those shown on <a href="#illus041">page 28</a>.
+But you will often need much larger brushes
+than the largest of these.</p>
+
+<p>For the smaller brushes you will have to be
+very careful in your selections. For only the
+silkiest of bristle will do good work in a very small
+brush, and then the temptation is to use a sable,
+which should be resisted. Why you should avoid
+using the sable as a rule is that it will make the
+painting too "slick" and edgy. There is a looseness
+that is a quality to prize. All the hardness,
+flatness, and rigidity that are desirable you can get
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span>
+with the bristle brush. When you work too much
+with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and
+woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities
+of atmosphere and luminosity, and of freshness
+and freedom of touch.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus041" id="illus041"></a>
+<img src="images/illus041.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Flat Bristle" title="Brushes.&mdash;Flat Bristle" />
+</div>
+
+<p>Some of the most useful sizes of the more
+pointed brushes are shown on opposite <a href="#illus042">page</a>.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+There are, of course, sizes between these, and
+many larger; but these are what you will find the
+best. It would be better to have more of each
+size than to have more sizes. You should try to
+work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a
+rule, work more with the larger than with the
+smaller brush, even for fine work. You will work
+with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span>
+learn to put in small touches with the largest
+brush that will do it. Breadth is not painting
+with a large brush; but the man who works
+always with a small brush instinctively looks for
+the things a small brush is adapted to, and will
+unconsciously drift into a little way of working.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus042" id="illus042"></a>
+<img src="images/illus042.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Round Pointed" title="Brushes.&mdash;Round Pointed" />
+</div>
+
+<p>The fan brush, such as <a href="#illus043">here illustrated</a>, is a useful
+brush, not to paint with, but to flick or drag
+across an outline or other part of a painting when
+it is getting too hard and liney. You may not
+want it once a month, but it is very useful when
+you do want it.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus043" id="illus043"></a>
+<img src="images/illus043.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brushes.&mdash;Fan" title="Brushes.&mdash;Fan" />
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Care of Brushes.</b>&mdash;The best of economy in brushes
+lies in your care of them. You should never let
+the paint dry on them nor go too long without
+careful washing. It is not necessary to wash
+them every day with soap and water, but they
+would be the better for such treatment.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+Quite often, once a week, say, you should wash
+your brushes carefully with soap and water. You
+may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as
+that may melt the glue which holds the bristles
+together in the ferrule. Use strong soap with
+plenty of lye in it&mdash;common bar soap, or better,
+the old-fashioned soft soap. Hold several brushes
+together in one hand so that the tips are all of a
+length, dip them together into or rub them onto
+the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm
+of the other hand. When the paint is well worked
+into the lather, do the same with the other brushes,
+letting the first ones soak in the soap, but not in
+the water. Then rinse them, and carefully work
+them clean one by one, with the fingers. When
+you lay them aside to dry, see that the bristles are
+all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect
+condition for next painting.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 30%;">
+<a name="illus044" id="illus044"></a>
+<img src="images/illus044.jpg" width="100%" alt="Brush Cleaner." title="Brush Cleaner." />
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Cleaning.</b>&mdash;But from day
+to day you need not take
+quite so much trouble as
+this. True, the brushes
+will keep in better condition
+if washed in soap and
+water every day, but it is
+not always convenient to
+do this. You may then use the brush-cleaner.
+This is a tin box with a false bottom of perforated
+tin or of wire netting about half-way down, which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above
+it; so that when you put your brush in and rub it
+around, the paint is rinsed from it, and settles
+through the perforations to the bottom, leaving
+the liquid clear again above it. If you use this
+carefully, cleaning one brush at a time, not rubbing
+it too hard, and pulling the hairs straight
+by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep
+your brushes in good condition quite easily. But
+they will need a careful soap-and-water washing
+every little while, besides. The liquid best for
+use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or
+coal oil. Never use turpentine to rinse your
+brushes. It will make them brittle and harsh;
+but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and
+will not affect the brush.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<h3>PAINTS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Of all your materials, it is on your paints that
+quality has the most vital effect. With bad paint
+your work is hopeless. You may get an effect
+that looks all right, but how long will it stand,
+and how much better may it not have been if
+your colors had been good? You can tell nothing
+about it. You may have luck, and your work
+hold; or you may not have luck, and in a month
+your picture is ruined. Don't trust to luck. Keep
+that element out as much as you can, always. But
+in the matter of paints, if you count on luck at all,
+remember that the chances are altogether against
+you. Don't let yourself be persuaded to indulge
+in experiments with colors which you have reason
+to think are of doubtful quality. Keep on the
+safe side, and use colors you are sure of, even if
+they do cost a little more&mdash;at first; for they are
+cheaper in the long-run. And even in the time
+of using of one tube, generally the good paint does
+enough more work to cover the difference of cost.</p>
+
+<p><b>Bad Paints.</b>&mdash;Suspect colors which are too cheap.
+Good work is expensive. Ability and skill and experience
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span>
+count in making artists' colors, and must
+be paid for. If you would get around the cost of
+first-class material you must mix it with inferior
+material.</p>
+
+<p>The first effect you will notice in using poor
+colors is a certain hindrance to your facility, due
+to the fact that the color is weak&mdash;does not have
+the snap and strength in it that you expect. The
+paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead
+and flat. This you will find particularly in the
+finer and lighter yellows. You need not fear
+much adulteration in those paints which are naturally
+cheap, of course. It is in those higher-priced
+colors, on which you must largely depend
+for the more sparkling qualities, that you will
+have most trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Unevenness of working, and lack of covering
+or mixing power, you will find in poor paints
+also. They have no strength, and you must keep
+adding them more and more to other colors to
+get them to do their work. All these things are
+bothersome. They make you give more attention
+to the pigments while working than you ought
+to, and when all is done, your picture is weak and
+negative in color.</p>
+
+<p>Another effect to be feared from bad colors is
+that your work will not stand; the colors fade or
+change, and the paint cracks. The former effect
+is from bad material, or bad combinations of them
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+in the working, and the latter mainly from bad
+vehicles used in grinding them.</p>
+
+<p>I have seen pictures go to pieces within a month
+of their painting&mdash;bad paint and bad combinations.
+Of course you can use good colors so that
+the picture will not stand. But that will be your
+own fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors
+which you can by no possibility do good work
+with.</p>
+
+<p><b>Good Paints.</b>&mdash;The three things on which the
+quality of good paint depends are good pigment,
+good vehicles, and good preparation.</p>
+
+<p>The pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and
+vegetable origin. The term <i>pigment</i> technically
+means the powdered substance which, when mixed
+with a vehicle, as oil, becomes <i>paint</i>. The most
+important pigments now used are artificial products,
+chiefly chemical compounds, including chemical
+preparations of natural mineral earths.</p>
+
+<p>As a rule, the colors made from earths may be
+classed as all permanent; those from chemicals,
+permanent or not, as the case may be; and those
+of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions.
+Some colors are good when used as water colors,
+and bad when used in oil. Further on I will speak
+of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors in
+detail. I wish here to emphasize the fact that
+the origin of the material of which the pigment
+is made has much to do with the sort of work
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+that that pigment will do, and with the permanency
+of the effect which is produced; and therefore
+that while a paint may look like another, its
+working or its lasting qualities may be quite different.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Vehicles.</b>&mdash;The vehicles by which the pigment
+is made fluent and plastic are quite as important
+in their effects. They not only have to
+do with the business of drying, owing to the substances
+used as dryers, but they may have to
+do with the chemical action of one pigment on
+another.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Preparation.</b>&mdash;Finally, the preparation of the
+pigment demands the utmost skill and knowledge,
+if the colors are to be good. The paints used by
+the old masters were few and simple, and the fact
+that they prepared them themselves had much
+to do with the manner in which they kept their
+color. The paints used now are less simple. We
+do not prepare and grind them ourselves, and we
+could hardly do so if we wished to, so we are
+the more dependent on the integrity of the colorman
+who does it for us.</p>
+
+<p>The preparation of the paint begins with the
+chemical or physical preparation of each pigment,
+and then comes the mixing of several to produce
+any particular color; and finally the mechanical
+process of grinding with the proper vehicle to
+bring it to the proper fineness and smoothness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+<b>Grinding.</b>&mdash;The color which the artist uses must
+be most evenly and perfectly ground. The grinding
+which will do for ordinary house paints will
+not do for the artist's colors. Neither will the
+chemical processes suitable for the one serve for
+the other. Not only must the machinery, but the
+experience, skill and care, be much greater for
+artist's colors. Therefore it is that the specialization
+of color-making is most important to good
+colors for the use of the artist.</p>
+
+<p><b>Reliable Makers.</b>&mdash;If you would work to the best
+advantage as far as your colors are concerned,
+both as to getting the best effects which pure
+pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give
+you, and as to the permanency of those effects
+when you have gotten them, see to it that you
+get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman.</p>
+
+<p>It is not my province to say whose colors you
+should use; doubtless there are many colormen
+who make artists' materials honestly and well.
+Nevertheless, I may mention that there are no
+colors which have been more thoroughly tested,
+both by the length of time they have been in the
+possession of painters, and by the number of
+painters who have used them, than those of Winsor
+and Newton of London. No colors have been
+so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly
+in this country, as these, and none are so
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span>
+well known for their evenness and excellence of
+quality.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that these manufacturers do not
+make any colors which should not go on the palette
+of the cautious artist&mdash;I believe that they do not
+make that claim themselves; but such colors as
+they do assert to be good, pure, and permanent,
+you may feel perfectly safe in using, and be sure
+that they are as well made as colors can be. This
+is as much as can be said of any paints, and more
+than can be said of most. I have used these
+colors for many years, and my own experience is
+that they have always been all that a painter need
+ask.</p>
+
+<p>The fact that Winsor and Newton's colors can
+be found in any town where colors can be had at
+all, makes me the more free to recommend them,
+as you can always command them. This fact also
+speaks for the general approval of them.</p>
+
+<p>Inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to
+be permanent and others are, it is for you to compose
+your palette of those which will combine
+safely. This you can do with a little care. Some
+colors are permanent by themselves or with some
+colors, but not in combination with certain others.
+You should then take the trouble to consider these
+chemical relationships.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary for you to study the chemistry
+of paints, but you may read what has been
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span>
+ascertained as to the effects of combinations, and
+act accordingly. There are practically duplications
+of color-quality in pigments which are bad,
+and in pigments which are good; so that you can
+use the good color instead of the bad one to do
+the same work. The good color will cost more,
+but there is no way of making the bad color good,
+so you must pay the difference due to the cost
+of the better material, or put up with the result
+of using bad colors.</p>
+
+<p><b>Chemical Changes.</b>&mdash;The causes of change of color
+in pigments are of four kinds, all of them chemical
+effects. 1, the action of light; 2, the action of
+the atmosphere; 3, the action of the medium; and
+4, the action of the pigments themselves on each
+other. The action of light is to bring about or to
+assist in the decomposition of the pigment. It is
+less marked in oil than in water color, because the
+oil forms a sort of sheath for the color particles.
+The manner in which light does its deteriorating
+work is somewhat similar to that of heat. The
+action of light is very slow, but it seems to do
+the same thing in a long time that heat would do
+in a short time.</p>
+
+<p>Some colors are unaffected or little affected by
+light, and of course you will use them in preference
+to all others. The atmosphere affects the
+paint because of certain chemical elements contained
+in it, which tend to cause new combinations
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>
+with the materials which are already in combination
+in the pigment. The action of the oxygen in
+the air is the chief agent in affecting the pigment,
+and it is here particularly that light, and especially
+sunlight, assists in decomposition. The air
+of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric
+and sulphurous acids and sulphuretted hydrogen.
+This latter gas is most effective in changing oil
+paintings, because of its action in turning white
+lead dark; and as white lead is the basis of many
+qualities in painting, this gas may have a very
+general action.</p>
+
+<p>Moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of
+change, but there is little to be dreaded from this,
+as the oil protects the colors.</p>
+
+<p>Oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to
+have an effect on colors liable to change from that
+element, and many vehicles contain materials to
+hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration
+of the pigment. Bad oil will tend to
+crack the picture also. The greatest care should
+be used in this direction, as the most permanent
+colors may be ruined by bad vehicles.</p>
+
+<p>Pigments will not have a deteriorating effect
+on each other as long as they are solid. But if
+one of them is soluble in the medium, then chemical
+action commences; but as most pigments are
+somewhat soluble, there is always some danger in
+mixing them. The best we can do is, as I said
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span>
+before, to try to have on the palette, as far as
+possible, only colors which are friendly to each
+other.</p>
+
+<p>As a student you should not be much occupied,
+however, with all this. You must expect that all
+color will change somewhat. But you need not
+use those which change immediately or markedly,
+and you may use them in a way which will tend
+to make them change as little as may be. Colors
+have stood for years, and what is practical permanence,
+not perfect permanence, is all you need
+look for. If you think too much of the permanence
+of your colors, it will interfere with the
+directness of your study. Therefore, decide on a
+palette which is as complete and safe as you can
+make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and
+think no more about it.</p>
+
+<p>When you need to add a new color to your palette,
+choose it with reference to those already on
+it, and go ahead. This is what the whole subject
+resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student.</p>
+
+<p><b>Opaque and Transparent Colors.</b>&mdash;Some colors, like
+the madders, have a jelly-like consistency when
+mixed with oil, others, the earths among them,
+are dense and opaque. We speak of them respectively
+as "transparent" and "solid" colors.
+These qualities, which divide the paints into two
+classes, have no relation to their permanency. As
+far as that is concerned you use them in the same
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>
+way, as some transparent colors are safe and some
+fugitive; and the same with the opaque colors.</p>
+
+<p>The only difference is in the fact that, as a rule,
+the solid colors are better dryers. But you will
+notice that while you may mix these colors together
+as though this difference between them
+did not exist, in certain processes you use them
+differently. So you will see, farther on, that for
+a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or
+semi-opaque colors, for a scumble you naturally
+use the solid ones. You should know, however,
+for the sake of clearness, just what is meant when
+"solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken
+of, and what is meant by "transparent" color.</p>
+
+<p><b>Safe and Unsafe Colors.</b>&mdash;Beyond what has been
+said of the causes of change in colors it is not
+necessary that you should know the chemical constituents
+of them. If you want to look into the
+matter further there are books, such as "Field's
+Chromatography," which treat fully of the subject,
+and which you may study.</p>
+
+<p>But practically you should know which colors
+are to be depended on and which not. Let us
+consider the principal colors in detail then, merely
+as to their actual stability. I will speak of them
+in connection with the plates of colors at the end
+of this book. I would like you to compare what
+is said of each color with the corresponding color
+in the plates. Those colors in the plates which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+are not spoken of here, you may consider as useful
+in showing you the character of different colors
+which are made, but which may or may not be
+used, according as you may need them. I shall
+not attempt to mention all the pigments that are
+in the market. You need never use more than
+fifteen or twenty all told. Many painters use
+more, it is true; but if you know how to make
+the best use of that number, you may safely wait
+till you "grow to them" before you bother with
+more. And I shall speak only of those which you
+will find essential or most generally useful, and
+those which should be particularly avoided.</p>
+
+<p><b>Permanency.</b>&mdash;It should be stated what is meant
+by a permanent color. There is no color which
+is not to be influenced in some way. The most
+sound of pigments will change if the conditions
+favor the change. When we speak of a permanent
+color, we mean only one which under the usual
+conditions will stand for an indefinite time. By
+which is meant ordinary diffused daylight, not
+direct sunlight, and the ordinary air under normal
+conditions. If there be direct sunlight, you may
+expect your picture to change sooner or later.
+But one does not hang his pictures where the
+sun's rays will fall on them. If there is any exceptional
+condition of moisture in the air, the picture
+may suffer. Or if from any cause unusual
+gases are in the atmosphere, or if the picture be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+too long in a dark, close place, the picture may
+smother for lack of fresh air, just as any other
+thing, plant or animal, which depends on normal
+conditions of atmosphere would do.</p>
+
+<p>Let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent
+color is one which will stand unchanged
+for an indefinite length of time in a room which is
+of the usual condition of temperature and freedom
+from moisture, and where the light is diffused, and
+such that the direct rays of the sun are not on
+the picture often, or to any great extent. Cold
+will not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed
+in that condition, but to bend or roll it
+while it is very cold will of course crack it, and
+sudden and extreme changes of temperature may
+have the same effect. In other words, some care
+must be used with all pictures as a matter of
+course.</p>
+
+
+<h4>COLOR LIST</h4>
+
+<p><b>Whites.</b>&mdash;<i>Zinc white</i> is the only permanent
+white, but it lacks body and is little used. The
+lead whites, <i>flake</i>, <i>silver</i>, <i>cremnitz</i>, will darken in
+time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change
+with or affect change in other pigments. The
+zinc white is liable to crack. We have no perfect
+white, so practically you may consider the
+lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span>
+<b>Yellows.</b>&mdash;<i>Cadmium</i> is permanent in all three
+of its forms. It is a color the permanence of
+which is of great importance; for its brilliancy is
+quite essential to modern painting, and if it were
+not permanent, the picture would soon lose the
+very quality for which the color was used. <i>The
+chromes</i>, which are of similar color-quality, are less
+permanent, and are almost sure to turn to a horny
+sort of yellow; and a green, which by their use
+was bright and sparkling, will, in a few months,
+lose its freshness&mdash;this cadmium will not do.
+Cadmium is also to be preferred to chrome, because
+it is of a much finer tonality. Greens and
+yellows made by the admixture of chrome are apt
+to be crude as compared with those in which cadmium
+was used.</p>
+
+<p><i>Strontian yellow</i> is a permanent and most useful
+light yellow, much to be preferred to all other citron
+yellows except the pale cadmium, and can be
+used in place of that if necessary. They are both
+expensive colors of about the same cost.</p>
+
+<p><i>Naples yellow</i> was a very prominent pigment with
+the older painters. It is still very much used, but
+in the simplification of your palette you may as
+well leave it out, as you can get the same qualities
+with cadmium and white. It is durable and safe,
+but adds another tube to your palette which you
+can well dispense with.</p>
+
+<p><i>The ochres</i> are among the oldest and safest of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span>
+pigments. You can use them with any colors
+which are themselves permanent. There are several
+of them,&mdash;<i>yellow ochre</i>, <i>Roman ochre</i>, <i>transparent
+gold ochre</i>, and others. They are all native
+earths, and though they contain iron, they are sufficiently
+inert to be thoroughly sound colors.</p>
+
+<p><i>The siennas</i>, burnt and raw, are like the ochres,
+native earths, very old and permanent colors, and
+may be used anywhere.</p>
+
+<p><i>The umbers</i> are in the same class with the siennas
+and ochres. They should all rank among the
+yellows. The browns of umber and sienna will
+make greens with blues.</p>
+
+<p><i>Indian yellow and yellow lake</i> should both be
+avoided as fugitive.</p>
+
+<p><i>Aureolin</i> is a rich, warm golden yellow of the
+greatest permanence, and should be used when
+Indian yellow and yellow lake would be used if
+they were permanent.</p>
+
+<p><b>Reds.</b>&mdash;The <i>vermilions</i> are permanent when well
+made. They are of great body and power, as well
+as delicacy. They are of two kinds,&mdash;<i>Chinese</i>,
+which is bluish in tone, and <i>scarlet</i> and <i>orange vermilion</i>,
+which have the yellow quality. Both kinds
+are useful to the palette because of the practical
+necessities of mixing.</p>
+
+<p><i>Light red</i> is a deep, warm red earth, made by
+calcining ochre, and has the same permanence
+as the other ochres. It is a fine color, of especial
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+value in painting flesh, and mixes with everything
+safely.</p>
+
+<p><i>The madders</i>&mdash;<i>rose</i>, <i>pink</i>, <i>purple</i>, and <i>madder
+carmine</i>&mdash;are the only transparent reds which
+are permanent. Whatever the name given them,
+they should not be confounded with the <i>lakes</i>,
+which are absolutely untrustworthy. By reference
+to the plates you will see that the madders are
+practically the same as the lakes in color when
+first used. But the lakes fade and the madders do
+not. The madders cost about twice as much as
+the lakes; but you must pay the difference, for
+the lakes cannot be made to stand, and you must
+have the color. There is nothing for it but to pay
+twice as much and buy the madders.</p>
+
+<p><i>The lakes</i>&mdash;<i>scarlet</i>, <i>geranium</i>, <i>crimson</i>, and <i>purple</i>&mdash;are
+all bad. The madders and lakes are all
+slow dryers; but unless carelessly used with other
+colors which are not yet dry they need not have
+a bad effect on the picture from cracking.</p>
+
+<p>Distinguish the so-called <i>madder lakes</i> and the
+<i>lakes</i>; and between <i>carmine</i>, which is a lake, and
+<i>madder carmine</i>, which is a madder.</p>
+
+<p><b>Blues.</b>&mdash;The <i>ultramarine</i> of the old masters is
+practically unused to-day because of its cost.
+But the artificial ultramarines, while not quite of
+the same purity of color, are equally permanent,
+and are in every respect worthy to be used. Of
+these the <i>brilliant ultramarine</i> is the nearest in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>
+color to the real lapis lazuli. The <i>French ultramarine</i>
+is less clear and vivid, but is a splendid
+deep blue, and most useful. The so-called <i>permanent
+blue</i> is not quite so permanent as its name
+implies, but permanent enough for practical purposes.</p>
+
+<p><i>Cobalt blue</i> and <i>cerulean blue</i> are two pigments,
+one very light and clear, the other darker, which
+are made of the oxide of the metal cobalt. In
+oil they are permanent, and do not change when
+mixed with other colors. For delicate tints, when
+the tones are to be subtly gray yet full of the
+primary colors, the cobalts are indispensable.
+You should always have them on hand, and generally
+on your palette. Cerulean blue is of less
+importance than the other, but in very clear, delicate
+blue skies it is often the only color which will
+get the effect.</p>
+
+<p><i>Prussian blue</i> possesses a depth and power and
+a quality of color which make it unique. The
+greenish tone gives it great value in certain combinations
+<i>as far as its tinting effect is concerned</i>.
+But it is not reliable as a pigment. It changes
+under various conditions, and fades with the light.
+It is not to be depended upon. <i>Antwerp blue</i>,
+a weaker kind of Prussian blue, is even more fugitive.
+It is a pity that these colors will not stand,
+but as they will not, we must get along without them.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span>
+<i>Indigo</i> has a certain grayish quality which is
+useful sometimes, but it cannot be placed among
+the even moderately permanent colors.</p>
+
+<p><i>The blacks</i> may be classed as blues, because
+they will make green if mixed with yellow. Considered
+as blues, they are, of course, dense and
+negative, and should not be too freely used. But
+they are all permanent. The only ones we need
+speak of are <i>ivory black</i>, which has a reddish cast,
+and <i>blue black</i>, which is weaker, but lacks the
+purplish note, which is often an advantage.</p>
+
+<p><b>Greens.</b>&mdash;We need mention only a few greens.
+There are numerous greens, of various degrees
+of permanence, but it is not necessary to speak of
+all the colors on the market. You could not use
+them all if you had them, and we may as well confine
+ourselves to those we really need.</p>
+
+<p><i>Veridian</i>, or <i>emeraude green</i>, is the deepest and
+coldest of our greens, and is permanent. It is too
+cold, and looks even more so at night. In use it
+needs the addition of some yellow which holds its
+own at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting
+will be impossible in gaslight, and even worse
+under electric light.</p>
+
+<p><i>Emerald green</i> is the same as the French <i>Veronese</i>
+green, and is generally permanent. It is said
+to turn dark, and does lose some of its brilliancy
+with time and the effect of impure air. But there
+are places where one needs it, especially in sketching,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>
+and it is well to use it sometimes. But bear
+in mind that it is not absolutely permanent, and
+as the quality that it gives, brilliant light green,
+is the very one it will lose should it change, don't
+expect too much of it.</p>
+
+<p><i>Terre verte</i> is a very weak color. But it is most
+tender in its quality, and is permanent to all intents
+and purposes. It may get slightly darker
+in time, but will not lose the qualities for which
+it will be used. It is very useful to use with ivory
+black or elsewhere, to slightly modify a reddish
+tendency, and is a fine glazing color.</p>
+
+<p><i>The chrome greens</i>, by whatever name, Brunswick
+green, or the better-known Cinnabar or Zinnober
+greens, are all bad. They are useful colors as
+color, but they will not stand, and you will even
+get better color by mixing certain yellows and
+blues than these will give you, so you had better
+lay them aside, tempting as they are.</p>
+
+<p><b>Other Colors.</b>&mdash;You will notice that I have said
+nothing about the various browns and olives and
+purples. It is simply because it is better for you
+to make all these colors than to get them in the
+tubes. The earths and the browns of madder are
+all good, and the mixing of madders and good
+blues will make all the shades of violet and purple
+you can possibly want in their purity.</p>
+
+<p><b>Palettes.</b>&mdash;We have, then, a number of pigments
+which are solid and safe, of each of the primary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>
+colors, and of such variety of qualities that the
+whole range of possible color is practicable with
+them in combination. To recapitulate, let us make
+a list of them.</p>
+
+
+<h4>THE PERMANENT COLORS.</h4>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span class="smcap">Zinc White.</span> (<span class="smcap">Lead white enough so.</span>)<br />
+<span class="smcap">Cadmium yellow.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cadmium orange.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cadmium yellow, pale.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Strontian yellow.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Yellow ochre.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Roman ochre.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Transparent gold ochre.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Raw sienna.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Burnt sienna.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Raw umber.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Aureolin.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Chinese vermilion.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Scarlet vermilion.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Orange vermilion.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Light red.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Rose madder.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Pink madder.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Purple madder.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Madder carmine.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Rubens madder.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ultramarine blue brilliant.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ultramarine blue French.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Permanent blue.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cobalt.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cerulean blue.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ivory black.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Blue black.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Veridian.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Emerald green.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Terre verte.</span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>Here is a list of colors which will work well
+together, and with which you can do as much
+as is possible with colors as far as our present
+materials go.</p>
+
+<p>Most of these colors, I am aware, are among
+the more expensive ones. This I am sorry for,
+but cannot help. The good colors are at times
+the expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper
+ones which are permanent to take their places, it
+would be the falsest of economy to use others.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>
+<b>Palette Principles.</b>&mdash;In making up your palette,
+you must so arrange it that you can get pure
+color when you want it. There is never any
+trouble to get the color negative; to get richness
+and balance is another matter. If you will refer
+to the color plates, you will see that in each of the
+three primary colors there are pigments which
+lean towards one or the other of the other two.
+The scarlet red is a yellow red. The Chinese
+vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds.
+The same holds with yellows and blues, as orange
+cadmium is a red yellow, and strontian yellow is a
+greenish yellow. This is, in practice, of the utmost
+importance in the absence of the ideal color, for
+when we deal with the practical side of pigment,
+we deal with very imperfect materials which will
+not follow in the lines of the scientific theory of
+color. If we would have the purest and richest
+secondary color, we must take two primaries, each
+of which partakes of the quality of the other.
+To make a pure orange, for instance, we must
+use a yellow red and a red yellow. If we used a
+bluish red and a bluish (greenish) yellow, the
+blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in
+the form of a negative secondary instead of the
+pure rich orange we wanted. This latter fact is
+quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too
+much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless
+we must know how to get pure color also.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+These characteristics have a bearing on the
+setting of our palette, for we must have at least
+two of each of the three primary colors&mdash;red,
+yellow, and blue&mdash;and white. There may be as
+many more as you want, but there must be at
+least that number.</p>
+
+<p>But the character of the work you are doing
+will also have an influence on the colors you use.
+You may not need the same palette for one sort
+of picture that is essential to another. You can
+have a palette which will do all sorts of work, but
+a change in the combinations may often be called
+for in accordance with the different color characteristics
+of your picture.</p>
+
+<p>I will suggest several palettes of different combinations
+which will give you an idea of how you
+may compose a palette to suit an occasion. I do
+not say that you should confine yourself to any
+or all of these palettes, nor that they are the best
+possible. But they are safe and practical, and you
+may use them until you can find or compose one
+better suited to your purposes. They will all be
+made up from the colors we have in our list, and
+will all have the arrangement I called your attention
+to as to the use of two of each primary.</p>
+
+<p>It would be well if you were to compare each
+of the colors with the corresponding one in the
+plates at the end of the book, and get acquainted
+with its characteristic look.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>
+<b>Expense.</b>&mdash;I have several times referred to the
+relative expense of colors, and stated that when
+the good color was of greater cost
+than others, there was nothing for
+it but to get the best. I cannot
+modify that statement, but it is
+well to say that as a rule the expensive
+colors are
+not those that you
+use the most of,
+although some are
+used constantly.
+Vermilion is so
+strong a color that the cost hardly matters. Of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span>
+the deep blues the same is true. But the light
+yellows, and the madders and cobalt, will often
+make you groan at the rapidity of their disappearance.
+But you can get more tubes of them, and
+their work remains, while were you to use the
+cheaper paints, the flight of the color from the
+canvas would make you groan more, and that
+disappearance could never be made good except
+by doing the work all over.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus067" id="illus067"></a>
+<img src="images/illus067.jpg" width="100%" alt="Oil Colors." title="Oil Colors." />
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Sizes.</b>&mdash;The cheapest colors come in the largest
+tubes. In the illustration, No. 3 represents the full
+size of the ordinary tube of the average cost. Some
+of the most commonly used colors come in larger
+tubes at corresponding price. Only professionals
+get these large sizes except in the case of white.
+You use so much of this color that it hardly pays
+to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. Get
+the quadruple tube, which is nominally four times
+as large, but contains nearly five times as much.</p>
+
+<p>No. 2 represents the actual size of the second
+size of tubes in which a few regular-priced colors
+come; while the smallest tube is the size of No. 1.
+In this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put
+up; the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and
+ultramarines and cobalts. The cheap colors are
+the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers,
+siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of
+greens and blues and lakes, which you had better
+have nothing to do with.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span>
+<b>Arrangement.</b>&mdash;In the following palettes I shall
+give the names of the colors, as you would look
+down upon them on your palette. The arrangement
+is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient
+one. It is as well to arrange them with
+white at the right, then the yellows, then the reds,
+the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. But I have
+found this as I give it, to be the best for use, simply
+because it keeps the proper colors together,
+and the white, which you use most, where it is
+most easily got at, and I think you will find it a
+good arrangement.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Cheap Palette.</b>&mdash;This palette I give so that you
+may see the range possible with absolutely sound
+colors which are all of the least price. You can
+get no high key with it. All the colors are low in
+tone. You could not paint the bright pitch of
+landscape with it, yet it is practically what they
+tried to paint landscape with a hundred years ago,
+and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens
+in the landscapes of that date. But for all sorts
+of indoor work and for portraits you will find it
+possible to get most beautiful results. You will
+notice there is no bright yellow. That is because
+cadmium is expensive and chrome is not permanent.
+Vermilion is left out for the same reason.
+Add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and
+orange cadmium, and you have a powerful palette
+of great range and absolute permanency.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">White.</span>&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Naples Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Venetian Red.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 6em;"><span class="smcap">Yellow Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Light Red.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Roman Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Indian Red.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 6em;"><span class="smcap">Transparent Gold Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Burnt Sienna.</span></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Raw Umber.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Permanent Blue.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Ivory Black.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Terre Verte.</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p><b>An All-Round Palette</b>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">White.</span>&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Strontian Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Vermilion.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Cadmium Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Rose Madder.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 7em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Cadmium.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Burnt Sienna.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Yellow Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Raw Umber.</span></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cobalt.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ultramarine.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Ivory Black.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Terre Verte.</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>This palette is a pretty large one, and you can
+do almost anything with it. But for many things
+it is better to have more of certain kinds of colors
+and less of others. This is a good palette for all
+sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life
+palette, it will name it very well. For a student
+it will do anything he is apt to be capable of
+for a good while.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Rich Low-Keyed Portrait and Figure Palette</b>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">White.</span>&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Cadmium.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Chinese Vermilion.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Cadmium.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Light Red.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">Yellow Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Rose Madder.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 5em;"><span class="smcap">Transparent Gold Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Raw Umber.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cobalt.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Blue Black.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Terre Verte.</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>
+<b>A Landscape Palette.</b>&mdash;Landscape calls for pitch
+and vibration. You must have pure color and
+great luminosity, yet a range of color which will
+permit of all sorts of effects. The following will
+serve for everything out-of-doors, and I have seen
+it with practically no change in the hands of very
+powerful and exquisite painters. There are no
+browns and blacks in it because the colors which
+they would give are to be made by mixing the
+purer pigments, so as to give more life and vibration
+to the color. The blackest note may be gotten
+with ultramarine and rose madder with a little
+veridian if too purple; the result will be blacker
+than black, and have daylight in it. The ochre is
+needed more particularly to warm the veridian.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">White.</span>&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Strontian Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Vermilion.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Cadmium Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Pink Madder.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 7.5em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Cadmium.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Rose Madder.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 10em;"><span class="smcap">Yellow Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cobalt.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ultramarine.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Veridian.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Emerald Green.</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>If you paint figures out-of-doors you will need
+this same palette. Madder carmine or purple
+madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully added
+to this list.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Flower Palette.</b>&mdash;For painting flowers the colors
+should be capable of the most exquisite and delicate
+of tints. There should be no color on the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span>
+palette which cannot be used in any part of the
+picture. The range need not be so great in some
+respects as in others, but the richness should be
+unlimited. In the matter of greens, it is true
+though hard to convince the amateur of, that if
+there were no green tube in your box, and you
+mixed all your greens from the yellows and blues,
+the picture would be the better. As to the browns,
+they will put your whole picture out of key. In
+this palette I am sure you will find every color
+which is needed. There are few greens, but those
+given can be used to gray a petal as well as to
+paint a leaf; therefore there is no likelihood of
+your using a color in a leaf which is not in tone
+with the flower.</p>
+
+<p>I am calculating on your using all your ability
+in studying the influence of color on color, and in
+mixing pure colors to make gray. Here as elsewhere
+in these palettes I have in mind their use
+according to the principles of color and light and
+effect as laid down in the other parts of the book,
+which deal specially with those principles. If you
+do not understand just why I arrange these palettes
+as I do, turn to the chapters on color, and on
+the different kinds of painting, and I think you
+will see what I mean, and understand better what
+I say, about these combinations.</p>
+
+<p>Of course you do not need all of these colors on
+your palette at the same time. Some are necessary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span>
+to certain flowers whose richness and depth
+you could hardly get without them. The colors
+you should have as a rule on your palette are
+these:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>
+<span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">White.</span>&nbsp; <span class="smcap">Strontian Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 3em;"><span class="smcap">Orange Vermilion.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 4em;"><span class="smcap">Cadmium Yellow.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Pink Madder.</span></span>&nbsp; <span style="margin-left: 9em;"><span class="smcap">Yellow Ochre.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Rose Madder.</span></span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Cobalt.</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Ultramarine.</span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><span class="smcap">Veridian.</span></span><br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Emerald Green.</span></span><br />
+</p></div>
+
+<p>To add to these when needed, you should have
+in your box, pale and deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion,
+madder carmine, and purple madder.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<h3>VEHICLES AND VARNISHES</h3>
+
+
+<p>A vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with
+the color to make it fluent. The vehicle may be
+ground with the pigment or mixed with it on the
+palette, or both. Oil colors are of course ground
+in oil as a vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient
+to add to them, in working, such a vehicle
+as will thin them, or make them dry better.
+Those which thin or render more fluent the paint
+are oils and spirits; those which make them dry
+more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives."</p>
+
+<p>All vehicles must of necessity have an effect on
+the permanency of the pigments. Bad vehicles tend
+to deteriorate them; good ones preserve them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Oils.</b>&mdash;The most commonly used oils are linseed
+and poppy oil. They are neither of them
+quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar
+of lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying.
+These have a tendency to affect the colors; but
+if one will have recourse to none but the pure
+oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture.
+For this reason it would be well to use
+vehicles with the colors on the palette as little
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span>
+as possible&mdash;and that is against thin and smooth
+painting.</p>
+
+<p>Oil has the tendency to turn dark with time,
+thus turning the color dark also. The only way
+to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil by
+long exposure to the sunlight. The early German
+painters used oil so clarified, and their pictures
+are the best preserved as to color of any that we
+have. But the drying is even slower with purified
+oil than with the ordinary oil.</p>
+
+<p>It would be best, then, to use oil as little as may
+be in painting, and if you need a dryer, use it only
+as you actually need it in bad drying colors, and
+then very little of it.</p>
+
+<p>The essences of turpentine and of petroleum
+may be used to thin the paint, and are preferable
+to oil, because they have less darkening tendency.
+They do not, however, bind the color so well, and
+the paint should not be put on too thinly with
+them. Usually there is enough oil ground with
+the pigment as it comes in the tubes to overcome
+any probability of the paint scaling or rubbing
+when thinned with turpentine, but in the slow-drying,
+transparent colors there will be a liability
+to crack. Moderation in the use of any and all
+vehicles is the best means of avoiding difficulty.
+Use vehicles only when you need them, not habitually,
+and then only as much as there is real need
+of. If you use oil, use the lighter oils, and expect
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span>
+some darkening in time. Prefer turpentine to
+oil, and expect your color to dry rather "dead," or
+without gloss, by its use. If you intend to varnish,
+this is all right. If you do not intend to varnish
+the picture, keep the color as near the pure tones
+as you can. The grayer the color, the more the
+"dead" or "flat" drying will make it look colorless.</p>
+
+<p><b>Varnishes.</b>&mdash;When the picture is done, after it
+is dry, varnishes are used to bring out the freshness
+of color, and to preserve the surface from outside
+influences of all sorts. A picture must be
+well dried before it is varnished, or it is likely to
+crack; six months is not too long to be safe. If
+you are in a hurry to varnish, use a temporary or
+retouching varnish.</p>
+
+<p>The best varnish is necessary for use on pictures.
+Never use any except a varnish especially
+made for the purpose by a reliable colorman.
+Those made by Winsor and Newton may all be
+depended upon. Pay a good price for it, and don't
+use too much.</p>
+
+<p>Mastic varnish is that which is most favorably
+known. Be sure you get a good and pure quality.</p>
+
+<p>Varnishes are made from various gums or resins
+dissolved in a solvent such as alcohol, turpentine,
+or oil, as the case may be. The lighter gums are
+the best for pictures, because they do not affect
+the color of the picture. Much care should be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>
+used in putting on the varnish&mdash;that it is even
+and as thinly distributed as will serve the purpose.
+It should not be flowed on, but carefully worked
+out with a clean brush, and then kept from dirt
+and dust until dry.</p>
+
+<p>The finer varnishes in oil or turpentine are best
+for ordinary use. Those in alcohol do not hold
+their freshness so well.</p>
+
+<p>Varnishes are sometimes used as siccatives, and
+to mix with colors which are liable to affect other
+colors, or to lack consistency. Usually, however,
+they are not needed.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<h3>PALETTES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The most important qualities in a palette are that it should be large
+enough, and that it should balance well on the thumb. Whether it is
+round or square is a slight matter. The oval palette is usually best
+for the studio because the corners are seldom of use, and add weight.
+But for sketching, the square palette fits the box best.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 30%;">
+<a name="illus078" id="illus078"></a>
+<img src="images/illus078.jpg" width="100%" alt="Oval Palette." title="Oval Palette." />
+<span class="caption">Oval Palette.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Get a palette much larger than you think you want. When you get it on
+your thumb the mixing-surface is much less than there seemed to be
+before it was set, for all the actual surface is between the row of
+colors and the thumb. If the palette is polished it is not essentially
+better; it is easier to keep clean, as far as looks go, but of no
+greater real service. If the choice is between a larger unpolished and
+a smaller polished one, the price being the consideration, get the
+larger one.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span>
+Get a light wood in preference to a dark wood
+for a choice of color, but not if there is better
+grain or lighter weight in the darker palette. It
+is an assistance in painting not to have to compare
+the tint you are mixing with too dark a surface,
+for the color looks lighter than it is; so the
+light wood will help you to judge justly of the
+color while the palette is new. When it has been
+worked on a while it will come to have a sympathetic
+color anyway.</p>
+
+<p>This bears on the cleanliness of your palette.
+It is a mistake to consider that cleanliness demands
+that the palette should be cleaned to the
+wood and polished after every painting. On the
+contrary, if a little of the paint is rubbed out over
+the palette every time it is cleaned, after a few
+weeks there will come a fine smooth polish of
+paint, which will have a delicate light gray color,
+which is a most friendly mixing surface.</p>
+
+<p><b>Adapting.</b>&mdash;When you get a new palette, before
+you use it take a little trouble to carve out the
+thumb-hole to fit your thumb. Make it large
+enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and
+set easily on the top of the hand. When the
+hole is too small the thumb gets numb after
+working a little while, which this will obviate.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cleanliness.</b>&mdash;The cleanliness of a palette consists in its being
+always in such a condition that you can handle it without getting dirty; that the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>
+mixing-surface will not foul the freshly mixed paint; and that the
+paint around the edge is always so that you can pick up a fresh, clean
+brushful. If you try to clean off all your color every day and polish
+your palette nicely, you will not only take up more time with your
+palette than you do with your painting, but the fact that some
+left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy in putting
+on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner can fall
+into. You cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on your
+palette to use freely when you need it. It is all well enough to put
+on more, but nothing is more vexing than to have to squeeze out new
+paint at almost every brushful. You must have paint enough when you
+begin, to work with, or you waste too much time with these details.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 30%;">
+<a name="illus080" id="illus080"></a>
+<img src="images/illus080.jpg" width="100%" alt="Arm Palette." title="Arm Palette." />
+<span class="caption">Arm Palette.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If you are painting every day, leave the good paint where it is at
+the end of your work, and scrape off all the muddy or half-used piles,
+and clean carefully all the palette except those places where the
+paint is still fresh and pure. Then, when you have to add more to
+that, clean that place with the palette-knife before squeezing out
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>
+the new color. In this way the palette will not look like a centre-table,
+but it will be practically clean, have a good clear mixing-surface, and
+you will neither waste paint nor be stingy with it.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Arm Palette.</b>&mdash;For painting large canvases,
+where the largest-sized brushes are used and paint
+must be mixed in greater quantities, the arm palette
+is a most convenient thing if it is well balanced.
+It is in the way rather than otherwise for
+small pictures, and is useful only as it is particularly
+called for.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<h3>OTHER TOOLS</h3>
+
+
+<p>It remains to speak of those tools which are not
+essentials, but conveniences, to painting. Even
+as conveniences, however, they are of importance
+enough to have an influence on your work. You
+can paint without them, but you will work more
+easily for the having of them; and something of
+the sort, although not necessarily of the same
+kind, you must have. You may improvise something,
+in other words, to take the place of these,
+but you would be wiser to get those which are
+made for the purpose.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Box.</b>&mdash;First, the box. You must keep
+your things together somehow, and it would be as
+well that you keep them in a box which is portable
+and suited to the purpose. When you sketch
+you must have a proper box, and why not have
+one which is equally serviceable in the house?
+Those most commonly sold to amateurs are of tin,
+and they are various in size and construction, and
+not too expensive. The only thing against them
+is the difficulty of adapting them to service different
+from that they were designed for; that is, if
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+you want to put in a different sort of panel, or if
+you want to fix it in the cover for convenience, or
+anything like that, you cannot readily do it, because
+you cannot use tacks in them. This counts
+for more than would seem on a sketching trip.
+But the tin box is light, and is not easily broken,
+and while it is in shape is practical.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus083" id="illus083"></a>
+<img src="images/illus083.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Color Box." title="The Color Box." />
+<span class="caption">The Color Box.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The box to be most recommended is the wooden
+one. It costs more than the tin one,&mdash;about twice
+as much; but you can always arrange it for an
+emergency very readily, and if it gets broken you
+can fix it yourself, or get any carpenter to do it for
+you, while you may be a good many miles from a
+tinner, who would be necessary to mend your tin
+box.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span>
+You had better not get too large a box. Get
+one long enough for the brushes; but if you are
+going to use it out-of-doors much, get a narrow one
+with a folding palette, so as to save weight. In
+this way you will get a larger palette than you
+could get in a smaller and wider box, which is an
+important consideration.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus084" id="illus084"></a>
+<img src="images/illus084.jpg" width="100%" alt="Palette Knife." title="Palette Knife." />
+<span class="caption">Palette Knife.</span>
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 12%;">
+<a name="illus085" id="illus085"></a>
+<img src="images/illus085.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Scraper." title="The Scraper." />
+<span class="caption">The Scraper.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>The Palette-Knife.</b>&mdash;Of more immediate necessity
+to your painting is the palette-knife. You
+cannot keep the palette clean without it. Now
+and again you may want to mix colors, or even
+paint with it. But you constantly get rid of the
+too much mixed color on your palette with it,
+and this is essential to good painting. Take some
+care to select a good knife; have the blade long
+enough to be springy and flexible, but not too
+long. About five inches from the wood of the
+handle to the end of the blade is a good length.
+And see that it bends in a true curve from one
+end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and
+weak in the middle. It should have the same even
+elasticity that a brush should have.</p>
+
+<p>For painting you need a "trowel palette-knife,"
+which has a bent shank, making the blade and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>
+handle on different levels, so that as you press
+the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away
+from the painted surface. The shank
+should be round, and the blade very fine
+and flexible. The knife should balance
+nicely in the hand, and turn freely in
+the fingers, so that you can paint with
+either face of the blade with equal balance.
+It takes some care to pick out a
+good trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse
+than none.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Scraper.</b>&mdash;You frequently need to
+scrape rough paint from a canvas or a
+picture, and you need to scrape strongly
+to get a dirty palette clean. You can
+use an old razor for the first purpose,
+or a piece of broken glass, if you use it
+carefully, and any old knife can be used
+to clean your palette. But a regular
+tool is better than either. The scraper
+here shown is the best.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Oil-Cup.</b>&mdash;Do not use oils and vehicles
+very much. But when you need
+them you must have something to keep
+them in, convenient to the brush when
+working. It should have a spring to
+hold it on to the palette, and of such
+form that the contents are not easily spilled by the
+movement of the hand or the body when painting.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>
+The form here illustrated is the best that has
+been brought out so far.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus086a" id="illus086a"></a>
+<img src="images/illus086a.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Oil-Cup." title="The Oil-Cup." />
+<span class="caption">The Oil-Cup.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>The Mahl-Stick.</b>&mdash;Sometimes you want to rest
+the hand when painting, for steadiness. The
+"mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which
+one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it
+can be placed against the canvas without injury,
+and the hand rested on it. It is so light that it
+can be held with the brushes in the palette hand,
+and stiff enough to support the brush-hand.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 60%;">
+<a name="illus086b" id="illus086b"></a>
+<img src="images/illus086b.jpg" width="100%" alt="Mahl-Sticks." title="Mahl-Sticks." />
+<span class="caption">Mahl-Sticks.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Sketching Adjuncts.</b>&mdash;Out-of-doors you must have
+a seat, and you should have an umbrella. The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span>
+best seat for a man, because it can be folded into so small a space,
+is the three-legged stool. This is not usually satisfactory for a
+woman, whose skirts tip it over. The better seat for her is shown
+below. The back is not very firm, but it does give support, and the
+whole is light and strong.</p>
+
+<div class="figright" style="width: 30%;">
+<a name="illus087a" id="illus087a"></a>
+<img src="images/illus087a.jpg" width="100%" alt="Three Legged-Stool." title="Three Legged-Stool." />
+</div>
+
+<div class="figleft" style="width: 25%;">
+<a name="illus087b" id="illus087b"></a>
+<img src="images/illus087b.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketching Chair." title="Sketching Chair." />
+</div>
+
+<p>The umbrella should be large and light, and one such as
+the illustration, with a valve in the top to let the wind
+and hot air through, will be found cooler and less easily
+blown over. You should have some strong rings sewed on to it,
+so that you can fasten it from four sides by strings, to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span>
+keep it steady if the wind blows hard. The umbrella
+should be of light-colored material, preferably
+white; but if it is lined with black, the
+shade will be better, and give no false glow to
+the color.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 35%;">
+<a name="illus088" id="illus088"></a>
+<img src="images/illus088.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketching Umbrella." title="Sketching Umbrella." />
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<h3>STUDIOS</h3>
+
+
+<p>A painting-room is always a matter of serious
+consideration, and to the beginner one of difficulty.
+The arrangement of light is not easy, and
+a special window is almost always out of the question;
+yet in some way the light must be so managed
+that the canvas is not covered with reflected
+lights which prevent one from seeing what the
+paint is really like.</p>
+
+<p><b>The North Light.</b>&mdash;The first thing to be looked
+for is a steady light which will be always about
+the same, and not be sunny part of the time and
+in the shade the rest. A window looking to the
+north for this reason is generally selected. The
+sun does not come into it, and the light is diffused
+and regular. The effect of the light in the
+studio is cool, but colors are justly seen in it, and
+the light that falls on any object or model in it
+will be always the same. If there is to be a skylight,
+this should be arranged in the same way.
+The sash must not be flat, but must be nearly
+enough to the vertical to prevent the sun's direct
+rays from entering, and it must for that purpose
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+face to the north. This makes the skylight practically
+a high north light in the roof or ceiling,
+and that is what it should be.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the sash is above the ceiling or just
+below it, in the roof or in the wall, is of no particular
+importance. The thing to be seen to is
+that it is high enough for the light to enter above
+the head of the painter, and that it be so directed
+that only north light can come in.</p>
+
+<p>The size of the window is also to be carefully
+considered. It should not be too large. Too
+much light will be sure to interfere with the
+proper control of light and shade on your model,
+and too little will make your painting too dark.
+The position of the window with reference to the
+shape of the room has to do with this. The most
+probable form of a room is long and narrow. For
+painting it is better that the window be in the
+middle of the end wall, high up, rather than in
+the middle of the side wall. You will find that
+you can more easily get distance from your model,
+and at the same time get the light both on him
+and on your canvas. But a painting-room should
+not be too narrow. About one-third longer than
+it is wide, with the window in one end, will give
+you a good light, and the further end of the room
+will not be too dark, as it would be apt to be if the
+room were longer. Preferably, too, the window
+should be to the left of the centre of the wall
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>
+rather than to the right, as you face it; so that
+when you are as near the side wall as you can get,
+with the light over your left shoulder (as it should
+be), the light will strike on the canvas well, and
+not too directly on the front of the model. It will
+give you a better lateral position to the window,
+in other words. If you have to accept a window
+in a side wall, this is even more to be looked for.
+If the window is to the right of the centre, you
+will have a strong side-light on your model; but
+you will either have no light on your canvas, or
+you will have to turn so that the light falls on
+your canvas from the right, which is awkward, as
+the paint is in the shadow of the hand and brush
+which puts it on.</p>
+
+<p>The height of the lower part of the window
+should be at least six feet from the floor, and for
+ordinary purposes the proportion of window space
+to floor space should be about one-tenth. It is
+impossible to give a rule; but if the floor is about
+twelve feet by sixteen, say, a window about five
+feet by four will be enough, or six and a half by
+three if it is placed horizontally. If you want
+intense light with strong contrast of light and
+shade on your model, have the window smaller
+and squarer, and place your easel just under it,
+where the light is good. The rest of the room
+will be dark. Better have the window large
+enough, and have it so curtained that you can cut
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span>
+off as much light as you need to. All this is if
+you are going to make yourself a window; in which
+case you will think well before you commit yourself.
+More probably you will have to get along
+as best you can with the ordinary room and the
+ordinary window. In which case get a high room
+with the window running up as close to the ceiling
+as possible, and facing north, then you can
+curtain it so as to control the light.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arrangement of Ordinary Windows.</b>&mdash;For a good
+working light you should have only one window in
+your room; for the light coming in from two openings
+will make a crossing of rays which will not
+only interfere with the simplicity of the effect of
+light and shade on your model, but will make a
+glare on your canvas. You can either close the
+light out of the right-hand window, or, better,
+arrange a curtain so the light from one window
+will not fall on the same place as that from the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>When you are working from still life or from a
+model this is often an advantage, for you can have
+a strong side-light on the model, and a second light
+on the canvas. To arrange this, have a sort of
+crane made of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square,
+which will swing at right angles with the wall, the
+arm reaching, say, six feet into the room. Swing
+this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so
+that the light cannot get over it, and near to the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>
+right-hand window. From this arm you can hang
+a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut out
+the light from the right-hand window when swung
+back over it. If you want to pose your model in
+the light of that window, while you paint in that
+of the other, swing the curtain out into the room
+at right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a
+cross light from the two windows; so that when
+the model is posed back of the curtain the light
+from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor
+the light from the other fall on the model.</p>
+
+<p>The light will be best on your picture coming
+from well above you as you work. There will
+then be no reflections on the paint. You may find
+it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the
+window which gives your painting-light. You will
+find it useful to have a shade of good solid holland,
+arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a string
+running up through a pulley at the top; so that
+you may pull the shade <i>up</i> from the bottom instead
+of <i>down</i> from the top, and so cut off as much
+of the lower part of the window as is necessary.</p>
+
+<p>If you need the light from the lower part of the
+window, you may make a thin curtain of muslin
+to cover the lower sash, which will let the light
+through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Size of the Studio.</b>&mdash;Of course a large studio
+is a good thing, but it is not always at one's command.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>
+But you should try to have the room large
+enough to let you work freely, and have distance
+enough from the model. The size that I have
+mentioned, twelve feet by sixteen, is as small as
+one should have, and one that you can almost
+always get. If the room is smaller than that, you
+cannot do much in it, and fifteen by twenty will
+give ample space.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p>
+
+<h1><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II<br /><br />
+GENERAL PRINCIPLES</h1>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2>
+<h3>MENTAL ATTITUDE</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is a theoretical and a practical side to
+art. The business of the student is with the
+practical. Theories are not a part of his work.
+Before any theoretical work is done there is the
+bald work of learning to see facts justly, in their
+proper degree of relative importance; and how to
+convey these facts visibly, so that they shall be
+recognizable to another person.</p>
+
+<p>The ideals of art are for the artist; not for the
+student. The student's ideal should be only to
+see quickly and justly, and to render directly and
+frankly.</p>
+
+<p>Technique is a word which includes all the
+material and educational resources of representation.
+The beginner need bother himself little
+with what is good and what is bad technique.
+Let him study facts and their representation only.
+Choice of means and materials implies a knowledge
+by which he can choose. The beginner can
+have no such knowledge. Choice, then, is not for
+him; but to work quite simply with whatever
+comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span>
+see, the brain to judge, and the hand to execute.
+Later, with the gaining of experience and of
+knowledge, for both will surely come, the determination
+of what is best suited for the individual
+temperament or purpose will work itself out naturally.</p>
+
+<p>The student should not allow the theoretical
+basis of art to interfere with the directness of his
+study of the material and the actual. Nevertheless,
+he should know the fact that there is something
+back of the material and the actual, as well
+as in a general way what that something is.</p>
+
+<p>Because the student's business is with the practical
+is no reason why he should remain ignorant
+of everything else. It is important that he should
+think as a painter as well as work as a painter.
+If he has no thought of what all this practical is
+for, he will get a false idea of his craft. He will
+see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the
+craftsmanship: that which every good workman
+respects as good and necessary, but which the
+wise workman knows is but the perfect means for
+the expression of thought.</p>
+
+<p>Some consideration, then, of the theoretical side
+of art is necessary in a book of this kind. A
+number of considerations arise at the outset,
+about which you must make up your mind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Is judgment of a picture based on individual
+liking?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>
+Can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only?</p>
+
+<p>Is it worth your while to try to do good work?</p>
+
+<p>Can you hope to do good work at all?</p>
+
+<p>You must decide these questions for yourself,
+but you must remember that it depends upon how
+you decide them whether your work will be good
+or bad.</p>
+
+<p>To take the last consideration first, you may
+be sure that it is worth while to try to do good
+work, and mainly because you may hope to do as
+good work as you want to do. That is, precisely
+as good work as you are willing to take the trouble
+to learn to do. Talent is only another name
+for love of a thing. If you love a thing enough to
+try to find out what is good, to train your judgment;
+and to train your abilities up to what that
+judgment tells you is good, the good work is only
+a matter of time.</p>
+
+<p>You will notice that you must train your judgment
+as well as your ability; not all at once, of
+course. But how can you hope to do good work
+if you do not know what good work is when you
+see it? If you have no point of view, how can
+you tell what you are working for, what you are
+aiming at? And if you do not know what you
+are aiming at, are you likely to hit anything?</p>
+
+<p><b>Train Your Judgment.</b>&mdash;Let us say, then, that you
+must train your critical judgment. How are you
+to set about it?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>
+In the first place, don't set up your own liking
+as a criterion. Make up your mind that when it
+comes to a choice between your personal taste
+and that of some one who may be supposed to
+know, between what you think and what has been
+consented to by all the men who have ever had an
+opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured
+that you are wrong. And when you have made
+up your mind to that, when you have reached
+that mental attitude, you have taken a long step
+towards training your judgment; for you have
+admitted a standard outside of mere opinion.</p>
+
+<p>Another attitude that you should place your
+mind in is one of catholicity&mdash;one of openness to
+the possibility of there being many ways of being
+right. Don't allow yourself to take it for granted
+that any one school or way of painting or looking
+at things is the only right one, and that all the
+other ways are wrong. That point of view may
+do for a man who has studied and thought, and
+finally arrived at that conclusion which suits his
+mind and his nature,&mdash;but it will not do for a student.
+Such an attitude is a sure bar to progress.
+It results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of
+perception, and narrowness of appreciation. You
+should try all things, and hold fast to that which
+is good. And having found what is good, and
+even while holding fast to it, you should remember
+that what is good and true for you is not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>
+necessarily the only good and true for some one
+else. You must not only hold to your own liberty
+of choice, but recognize the same right for others.
+If this is not recognized, what room has originality
+to work in?</p>
+
+<p>The range of subject, of style, and of technical
+methods among acknowledged masters, should
+alone be proof of the fact that there is no one
+way which is the only good way; and if you would
+know how to judge and like a good picture, the
+study of really great pictures, without regard to
+school, is the way to learn.</p>
+
+<p><b>How to Look at Pictures.</b>&mdash;The study of pictures
+means something more than merely looking at
+them and counting the figures in them. It implies
+the study of the treatment of the subject in
+every way. The management of light and shade;
+the color; the composition and drawing; and
+finally those technical processes of brush-work by
+means of which the canvas gets covered, and the
+idea of the artist becomes visible. All these
+things are important in some degree; they all go
+to the making of the complete work of art: and
+you do not understand the picture, you do not
+really and fully judge it, unless you know how to
+appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the
+means which were used to bring it about. All
+this adds to your own technical knowledge as
+well as to your critical judgment, both of which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+ends are important to your becoming a good
+painter.</p>
+
+<p><b>Why Paint Well.</b>&mdash;You see I am assuming that
+you wish to be a good painter. There is no reason
+why you should be a bad painter because you are
+not a professional one. The better you paint the
+better your appreciation will be of all good work,
+the keener your appreciation of what is beautiful
+in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and
+pleasure in your own work. There are better
+reasons for painting than the desire to "make a
+picture." Painting implies making a picture, it is
+true; but it means also seeing and representing
+charming things, and working out problems of
+beauty in the expression of color and form: and
+this is something more than what is commonly
+meant by a picture. The picture comes, and is
+the result; but the making of it carries with it a
+pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to
+the power of appreciation, perception, and expression
+of the painter. This is the real reason for
+painting, and it makes the desire and the attempt
+to paint well a matter of course.</p>
+
+<p><b>Craftsmanship.</b>&mdash;The mechanical side of painting
+naturally is an important part of your problem.
+You cannot be too catholic in your opinion with
+regard to it. It is vital that you be not narrowed
+by any prejudices as to the surface effect of paint.
+Whether the canvas be smooth or rough, the paint
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span>
+thick or thin, the details few or many,&mdash;the goodness
+or badness of the picture does not depend
+on any of these. They are or should be the result,
+the natural outcome because the natural
+means of expression, of the manner in which the
+picture is conceived. One picture may demand
+one way of painting and another demand a quite
+different way; and each way be the best possible
+for the thing expressed. It all depends on the
+man; the make-up of his mind; the way he sees
+things; the results he aims to attain,&mdash;all of them
+controlled more or less by temperament and idiosyncrasy.
+What would produce a perfect work
+for one man would not do at all for another.
+The works of the great masters offer the most
+marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and
+painters have varied greatly in their manner of
+some painting at different periods of their lives.
+Rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in
+his early years, with transparent shadows and
+carefully modelled, solidly loaded lights. Later
+in life he painted most roughly; and "The Syndics"
+was so heavily and roughly loaded that even
+now, after two hundred years, the paint stands out
+in lumps&mdash;and this is one of his masterpieces.
+So again, if you will compare the manipulation in
+the work of Raphael with that of Tintoretto, that
+of Rubens with that of Velasquez, or most markedly,
+the work of Frans Hals with that of Gerard
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span>
+Dou, you will see that the greatest extremes of
+handling are consistent with equal greatness of
+result.</p>
+
+<p><b>Finish.</b>&mdash;From this you may conclude that what
+is generally understood by the word "finish" is
+not necessarily a thing to be sought for. The
+tendency of great painters is rather away from
+excessive smoothness and detail than towards it.
+While a picture may be a good one and be very
+minute and smooth, it by no means follows that a
+picture is bad because it is rough. The truth is
+that the test of a picture does not lie in the character
+of the pigment surface <i>in itself</i> at all, nor in
+whether it be full of detail or the reverse, but in
+the conception and in the harmonious relation of
+the technique to the manner in which the whole is
+conceived. The true "finish" is whatever surface
+the picture happens to have when the idea which
+is the purpose of the picture is fully expressed,
+with nothing lacking to make that expression
+more complete, nor with anything present which
+is not needed to that completeness. This too is
+the truth about "breadth," that much misunderstood
+word. Breadth is not merely breadth
+of brush stroke. It is breadth of idea, breadth
+of perception; the power of conceiving the picture
+as a whole, and the power of not putting in any
+details which will interfere with the unity of effect.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>
+<b>Intent.</b>&mdash;In this connection it would be well to
+bear in mind the purpose of the work on which
+the painter may be engaged. A man would, and
+should, work very differently on canvases intended
+for a study, a sketch, and a picture. The study
+would contain many things which the other two
+would not need. It is the work in which and by
+which the painter informs himself. It is his way
+of acquiring facts, or of assuring himself of what
+he wants and how he wants it. And he may put
+into it all sorts of things for their value as facts
+which he may never care to use, but which he
+wishes to have at command in case he should
+want them.</p>
+
+<p>The sketch, on the other hand, is a note of
+an effect merely, or of a general idea, and calls
+for only those qualities which most successfully
+show the central idea, which might sometime become
+a picture, or which suggests a scheme. A
+carefully worked-up sketch is a contradiction in
+terms, just as a careless study would be.</p>
+
+<p>A picture might have more or less of the character
+of either of these two types, and yet belong
+to neither. It might have the sketch as its motive,
+and would use as much or as little of the material
+of the study as should be needed to make the
+result express exactly the idea the painter wished
+to impart, and no more and no less.</p>
+
+<p>All these things should be borne in mind, as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span>
+you study the characteristics of paintings to learn
+what they can mean to you beyond the surface
+which is obvious to any one; or as you work on
+your own canvas to attain such power or proficiency,
+such cleverness or facility, as you may
+conclude it is worth your while to try for.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<h3>TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY</h3>
+
+
+<p>A picture is made up of many elements. Certain
+of them are essentially abstract. They must
+be thought out by a sort of <i>mental vision without
+words</i>. This is the most subtle and intimate part
+of the picture. These are the means by which
+the ideal is brought into the picture.</p>
+
+<p><b>Line, Mass, and Color.</b>&mdash;Such are the qualities of
+<i>line</i>, dissociated from representation; of <i>mass</i>, not
+as representing external forms; and <i>color</i>, considered
+as a <i>quality</i>, not as yet expressed visibly in
+pigment, nor representing the color of any <i>thing</i>.
+When these elements are combined they may
+make up such conceptions as proportion, rhythm,
+repetition, and balance, with all the modifications
+that may come from still further combination.</p>
+
+<p>It is because these elements are qualities in
+themselves beautiful that actual objects not beautiful
+may be made so in a painting, by being
+treated as <i>color</i> or <i>line</i> or <i>mass</i>, and so given
+place on the canvas, rather than as being of themselves
+interesting. A face, for instance, may be
+ugly as a <i>face</i>, yet be beautiful as color or light
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+and shade in the picture. These qualities, I say,
+do not represent&mdash;they do not necessarily even
+exist, except in the mind to which they are the
+terms of its thought. Nevertheless, they are
+the soul of the picture. For whatever the subject,
+or the objects chosen for representation, it is
+by working out combinations of these elements,
+through and by means of those objects, that the
+picture really is made.</p>
+
+<p>The picture, <i>as a work of art</i>, is not the representation
+of objects making up a subject, but a
+fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of form,
+proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed
+through those actual objects in the picture
+which give it visible form.</p>
+
+<p>I do not purpose to go deeply into these matters
+here. Elsewhere, as they bear practically on the
+subject in hand, as in the chapters on "Composition"
+and on "Color," I shall speak of them more
+fully. But I wish here to call attention to this
+abstract side of painting in order to show the relation
+between the two classes of things, the one
+abstract and the other concrete, which together
+are needed to make up a picture.</p>
+
+<p>The concrete, or material, part of a picture includes
+all those things which you can look at or
+feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you can
+also see the abstract qualities, which do not <i>visibly</i>
+exist until made visible through the disposition of
+these tangible things, on the canvas.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>
+Beyond this is included all the technical qualities
+of expression; form, as <i>drawing</i>; all representations
+of objects; the pigment by means of
+which color is seen; and all those technical processes
+which produce the various kinds of surface
+in the putting on of paint, and bring about the
+different effects of light and shade and color,
+form or accent.</p>
+
+<p>In learning to paint, it is with these concrete
+things that you should concern yourself mainly.
+The science of painting consists in the knowledge
+of how to be the master of all the practical
+means of the craft. For it is with these that you
+must work, with these you must express yourself.
+These are the tools of your trade. They are the
+words of your art language&mdash;the language itself
+being the abstract elements&mdash;and the thoughts,
+the combinations which you may conceive in your
+brain by means of these abstract elements.</p>
+
+<p>You must have absolute command of these
+<i>materials</i> of painting. No matter how ideal your
+thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling
+for line and color and composition, if you do
+not know how to handle the gross material which
+is the only medium by which this can all be made
+visible and recognizable to another person, you
+will fail of either expressing yourself, or of representing
+anything else.</p>
+
+<p>Now you will see what I have been driving at
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>
+all this time; why I have been talking in terms
+which may well be called not practical. I want to
+fix your attention on the fact that there are two
+qualities in a picture: that one will be always
+within you, mainly, and will control the character
+of your picture, because it will be the expression
+of your mental self; and the other the practical
+part, which any one may, and all painters must
+learn, because it is the only means of getting the
+first into existence.</p>
+
+<p>The one, the abstract part, no one can tell you
+how to cultivate nor how to use. If I tried to
+do so, it would be my idea and not yours which
+would result. I can only tell you that it is the
+<i>thought of art</i>, and you must think your own
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>But the other, the material, the concrete, the
+practical, it is the purpose of this whole book to
+help you to understand and to acquire the mastery
+of, so far as may be done by words.</p>
+
+<p>Teaching by words is difficult, and never completely
+satisfactory. But much may be done. If
+you will use your own brains, so that what does
+not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning
+because of your thinking about it, we may accomplish
+a great deal. I cannot make you paint.
+I cannot make you understand. I can give you
+the principles, but you must apply them and think
+them out.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+Everything I say must be in a measure general;
+for the needs of every one are individual, and the
+requirement of each technical problem is individual.
+I must speak for all, and not to any one.
+Yet I shall state principles which can always be
+made to apply to each single need, and I will try
+to show how the application may be made.</p>
+
+<p><b>Technique.</b>&mdash;The science of painting consists of
+a variety of processes by means of which a canvas
+is covered with pigment, and various objects
+are represented thereon. The whole body of
+method and means is called technique; the several
+parts of technique are called by names of
+their own. That part which applies to the putting
+on of the paint may be generally called
+<i>handling</i>, although the word <i>painting</i> is sometimes
+restricted to this sense, and <i>brush-work</i> is
+often used for the same thing. The other technical
+means will be spoken of in their proper
+place. Let me say now a few words as to <i>handling</i>
+in general.</p>
+
+<p>Where did all this technique come from?</p>
+
+<p>From experiment.</p>
+
+<p>Ever since art began, men have been searching
+for means of fixing ideas upon surfaces. But it
+is only within the last four hundred years that the
+processes of oil painting have been in existence&mdash;simply
+because they are peculiar to the use of
+pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+medium was not invented until the middle of the
+fifteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>With the invention of this medium new possibilities
+came into the world, and a continual succession
+of painters have been inventing ways of
+putting on paint, the result being the stock of
+methods and processes of handling which are the
+groundwork of the art of painting to-day.</p>
+
+<p>From time to time there have been groups of
+artists who have used common methods, and who
+have developed expression through those methods
+which became characteristic of their epoch; and
+because the resulting pictures were of a high degree
+of perfection, their methods of handling acquired
+an authority which had a very determining
+effect on different periods of painting.</p>
+
+<p>In this way have come those ideas as to what
+kind of painting or what ways of putting paint on
+canvas should be accepted as "legitimate." And
+the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned
+as illegitimate have been varied from time to
+time&mdash;those condemned by one period being advocated
+by another; and the processes themselves
+have been almost as varied as the periods
+or groups of men using them.</p>
+
+<p>In the long run, methods and processes have
+received such authoritative sanction from having
+been each and all used by undoubted masters,
+that they have become the traditional property of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>
+all art, which any one is free to use as he finds
+need of them. They have become the stock in
+trade of the craft.</p>
+
+<p>The artist may use them as he will, provided
+only he will take the trouble to understand them.
+He must understand them, because the manipulations
+which make up these different processes
+accomplish different effects and different qualities;
+and as the painter aims at results, if he does
+not understand the result of a process when he
+uses it, he will get a different one from that which
+he intended.</p>
+
+<p>The painter should not be hampered by process;
+he should not be controlled in the expression of
+himself by tradition. He should feel free to use
+any or all means to bring about the result he
+aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point
+of view to prevent him from selecting whichever
+means will most surely or satisfactorily bring
+about his true purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there are many ways of using paint
+which are unsafe. Some pigments are unsafe to
+use because they either do not hold their own
+color, or tend to destroy the color of others.
+You should always bear this in mind; and if you
+care for the permanence of your work, you should
+not use such materials or such processes as work
+against it. But beyond this, the whole range of
+the experience and experiment of the workers
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+who have gone before you are at your command,
+to help you to express yourself most perfectly or
+completely; to represent whatever of visible beauty
+you may conceive or perceive.</p>
+
+<p>And this is the whole aim of the painter; to
+stand for this is the whole purpose of the picture.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<h3>ORIGINALITY</h3>
+
+
+<p>Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it
+comes, it is not through striving. The search for
+originality seldom results in anything worth having.
+It is a quality inherent in the man; and the
+best way of being original in your work is to be
+natural. Perhaps the most useful advice which
+you could receive is that you be always natural.
+Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another
+person's subject, manner, or method, with
+the intention of doing as he does. The most
+original things are often the most simple, because
+they have come naturally from a sincere desire to
+express what has been seen or felt, in the most
+direct way.</p>
+
+<p>If every one were content to be himself, there
+would be no dearth of originality. No two people
+are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they
+could not be. They do not look alike, nor see
+alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. How, then,
+should they paint alike? The attempt to do a
+thing because another has made a success of that
+sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the
+commonplace in painting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+Paint that which appeals to you most fully.
+Don't try to paint what appeals to some one else.
+If you like it, then do it; and do it in the most
+direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully
+and completely convey just what it is that <i>you</i>
+like, unaffected by anything else. And because
+you have seen or felt for yourself in your own
+way, and expressed that; and because you are not
+another, nor like any other that ever was, what
+you have done will not be like anything else that
+ever was&mdash;and that is originality.</p>
+
+<p>But never imitate yourself, either. Be open.
+Be ready to receive impressions and emotions.
+And if you have done one thing well, accept that
+in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There
+are always plenty of things&mdash;ideas, impressions,
+conceptions, appreciations&mdash;waiting to be painted;
+and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of
+freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing.</p>
+
+<p>That is what a painter is for, not to cover a
+canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it
+by a name. The painter is the eye of the people.
+He sees things which they have no time to look
+for, or looking, have not learned to see. The
+painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes
+the beautiful where it was not perceived
+before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized
+to be beautiful through his having seen it.</p>
+
+<p>There is the difference between the artist and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span>
+the photograph, which sees only facts as facts;
+which while often distorting them does so mindlessly,
+and at best, when accurate, gives the bad
+with the good in unconscious impartiality. But
+back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes
+is the painter's brain which selects and
+arranges, using facts as material for the expression
+of beauties more important than the facts.</p>
+
+<p>But what is a picture? I have met some strange
+though positive notions as to what is and what is
+not a picture. Some persons think that a certain
+(or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects
+are necessary to make canvas a picture; that
+it must contain some definite and tangible facts of
+the more obvious kind. I remember one man who
+asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a
+picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing
+in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To make
+a picture of it there was needed at least a moon,
+and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections.
+All this sort of thing is idle. A picture
+is not a picture because it has more of this or
+less of that; it is a picture because it is complete
+in the expression of the idea which is the
+cause of its existence. And that idea may be
+tangible or not. It may include many details or
+none. It is an idea which is best or only expressed
+by being made visible, and which is worthy
+of being expressed because of its beauty; and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>
+when that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas
+or other surface, that surface is a picture.
+What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter
+personal to the painter of it. The manner
+in which it is conceived and produced is determined
+by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.</p>
+
+<p>A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of
+color, form, and line. It is the product of perception
+plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus
+temperament, plus pigment. And as all these
+are differently proportioned in all persons, it is
+only a matter of being natural on the part of the
+painter that his picture should be original.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ARTIST AND THE STUDENT</h3>
+
+
+<p>It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The
+nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is
+a careful study, and he will be as successful with
+this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he
+made it for the sake of making a picture&mdash;better
+probably. The making of a picture for the picture's
+sake is dangerous to the student. His is
+less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize,"
+to make up something according to some notion
+of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge
+of how nature is. Real pictures grow from
+study of nature.</p>
+
+<p>They are the outcome of maturity, not of the
+student stage. This implies something deeper
+than superficial facts, and a power of selection,&mdash;of
+choice and of purpose which must rest on a
+very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always
+a student, of course; but he is not a student
+only. He is a student who knows what and why
+he wants to study; not one who is in process of
+finding out these things.</p>
+
+<p><b>Aims.</b>&mdash;It should be noted that the aim of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span>
+student and the aim of the artist are essentially
+different. The student's first aim is to learn to see
+and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly
+between relations. It is the training of the eye
+and the judgment. Imitation is not the highest
+art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate
+as a mere power of representation. The mind
+must not be hampered in its expression by lack of
+knowledge and control of materials, and the painter
+who is constantly occupied with the problems he
+should have worked out in his student days, is just
+so far from being a master. He must have all his
+means perfectly at his command before he can
+freely express himself.</p>
+
+<p>The acquirement of this mastery of means is
+the student's business. Everything he does which
+aids him in this makes him so much nearer to
+being a painter. But he must remember that he
+is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter,
+must have patience with himself; must not hurry
+himself, must work as a student for the ends of a
+student.</p>
+
+<p>All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses
+them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing,
+suppressing, combining as will best meet the
+necessities of the case in hand. All this requires
+the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance
+not only with laws of art, but with the
+laws of nature.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span>
+There are changes which can be made, and be
+right&mdash;made as nature might make them. Other
+changes which would be false to nature's ways,
+and so false to art also. For art works through
+nature always, and in accordance with her. This
+is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through
+nature, not to express notions about nature.</p>
+
+<p>The facts of nature are the material of art; the
+words of the language in which the ideas of art
+are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important
+than these facts. The underlying sentiment
+of which they are the external manifestation,
+and which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is
+the true fact of the picture.</p>
+
+<p>It is more important to give the sentiment of
+the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely
+because it is more truly represented so, but because
+the beauty is shown in showing the character.
+For the character of the fact is the beauty
+of the fact.</p>
+
+<p>To bring out the beauty which may lie in the
+fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability
+to do this is the aim of the student.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<h3>HOW TO STUDY</h3>
+
+
+<p>There is a right and a wrong way to study, and
+it all centres around the fact that what you aim to
+learn is perception and expression. What you are
+to express you do not learn; you grow to that.
+But you must learn how to use all possible means;
+all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics
+of pigments. All qualities, color and form
+and texture, are but the means of your expression,
+and you must know how they may be used.
+Your perception and appreciation must be trained,
+and your mind stored with facts and relativities.
+Then you are ready to recognize and to convey
+the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace
+to others.</p>
+
+<p>You are to see where others see not; for it is
+marvellous how little the average eye sees of the
+really interesting things, how little of the visual
+facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before
+it is painted. All is material to the painter. It
+is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but
+that everything that is has qualities and possibilities
+of beauty; and these, when expressed, make
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>
+the picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious
+ugliness. In one sense nothing is commonplace,
+for everything exists visibly by means of light and
+color, and light and color are of the fundamental
+beauties. So arrange or look upon the commonplace
+that light and color are the most obvious
+qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the
+background&mdash;is lost. There is nothing like painting
+to make life fascinating; for there is nothing
+which brings so many charming combinations into
+your perception, as the habit of looking to find the
+possibilities of beauty in everything that comes
+within your view.</p>
+
+<p>You must form the habit of looking always
+from the painter's point of view. The painter
+deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented
+with pigment; chiefly color and light in
+the broadest sense, including form and composition,
+as things which give bodily presence and
+action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or
+shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because
+it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes
+the element of relation.</p>
+
+<p><b>Methods.</b>&mdash;Two general methods are at the command
+of the student from the first,&mdash;to study at
+once from nature, or to copy. I think I may safely
+claim to speak for the great body of teachers who
+are also professional artists, in saying that copying
+is a means of study rather for the advanced
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span>
+student than for the beginner. You cannot begin
+too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and
+to accumulate your own facts and observations
+and deductions. The use of copying is not to
+find out how to paint, but to see how many ways
+there are of painting. The great end of all study
+in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to
+see them in nature. It is not to see that there are
+relations, but to see where they are; to recognize
+and to measure and to judge them. Painting is
+the art of perception before everything, and when
+you copy you only see, accept, what some one else
+has already perceived. Copying does not help you
+to <i>perceive</i>, it can only help to show you how something
+can be <i>expressed after</i> it has been perceived,
+and that is not the vital thing in the study of
+painting. Handling, composition, management of
+color, technique of the brush generally, may be
+studied by copying. These only&mdash;and for these
+things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is
+not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet,
+but the grammar of painting.</p>
+
+<p><b>Danger.</b>&mdash;The danger of too early copying is
+that the student learns to set too much value on
+surface qualities rather than those to which the
+surface is merely incidental. With this is the
+danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome
+the results of) that the student becomes clever as
+a producer of pictures before he has trained his
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span>
+power to see. He becomes a student of pictures
+rather than a student of nature, and when in
+doubt will go to art rather than to nature for
+help and suggestion. Could anything be more
+fatal? Consider the things that student will have
+to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms
+of nature&mdash;the only healthy, the only prolific
+way of thinking. He sees always through other
+people's eyes, and thinks with other people's
+brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is
+not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator,
+not for the painter.</p>
+
+<p>These things are all useful and good, but not
+for the beginner. Later, when you have found
+out something for yourself, when you have ground
+of your own to stand on, then you may not only
+without danger, but with benefit, go to the work
+of other men to see the range of possible point of
+view and expression, to see the scope of technical
+material and individual adaptation; and so broaden
+your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform
+or educate your taste, and perhaps get some
+hints which will help you in the solving of some
+future problem.</p>
+
+<p>But rather than the undue sophistication which
+can result from unwise copying,&mdash;the over-knowledge
+of process and surface, and under-knowledge
+of nature,&mdash;is to be preferred a frank crudeness
+of work which is the result of an honest going to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span>
+nature for study. You should not expect a perfect
+eye for color and form too soon. Better a
+healthily youthful crudity of perception based on
+nature, and standing for what you have yourself
+studied and worked out, which represents your own
+attainment, than a greater show of knowledge
+which is insincere and superficial because it represents
+a mere acceptance of the facts set down
+by others; and not only that, but even with it an
+acceptance also of the actual terms used by those
+others.</p>
+
+<p>Often copying is the most convenient way in
+which you can get help. There is really much to
+be learned from it, and you can make a picture
+serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly
+in the matter of color or tone, as something
+to recognize the achievement of for its own sake.
+If you can recognize good color as such, aside
+from what it represents, if you can appreciate
+tone in a picture which is the work of some one
+else, you are so much the more likely to notice
+the lack of those qualities in your own work. So,
+too, there are qualities of brush-work which are
+always good, and some which are always bad.
+You can study the former positively, and the
+latter negatively, in studying and copying other
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>I have mentioned the training of your critical
+judgment as a necessity in your education. You
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span>
+can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can
+facilitate that training by copying and studying
+really good pictures, if you do it in the right
+way.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Right Way.</b>&mdash;So if you do copy, do it in the
+right way, so as to get all the real help out of it,
+and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part
+of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't
+make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance
+to the original, but which on a more careful
+study shows none of the qualities which make the
+original what it is. Not only see to it that the
+same subtleties of perception and representation
+are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained
+in the same way. Use the same brush-work
+or other execution. Use the same pigments
+in the same places, with the same vehicles; study
+the original with your brain as well as with your
+eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter
+did a certain thing but why. So that as you
+work, you follow him in the working out of his
+problem, and make it your problem also. In this
+way you will get some real good from his picture,
+and not a mere canvas which has been of no use
+to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one
+else who knows a good picture (copy or original)
+when he sees it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Why Copy.</b>&mdash;There are only two good reasons
+for making a copy,&mdash;to study the original as a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span>
+problem, and to have something to serve as an
+example of the master on a work which you like.
+And in either case such a sincere manner of copying
+as I urge is the only possible way to get what
+you want. To "get a picture," regardless of
+whether it really does justice to the original, is
+the wrong way, and this leads always through
+bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate
+if you escape an entire perversion of your
+point of view.</p>
+
+<p>You may be able to make some money now and
+again by doing this sort of thing, but you will
+never learn anything from it. On the contrary,
+it is the surest way you could find of closing your
+eyes to all that is worth seeing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Get to Nature.</b>&mdash;If you would really learn to
+paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you
+see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too
+soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so
+long as it is nature herself. By nature I mean anything,
+absolutely anything which exists of itself,
+not painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a
+cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior&mdash;all
+things which actually exist must show themselves
+by the facts of light falling upon them: the
+relation of color, and the contrasts of light and
+dark. Whatever you see is useful to you in this
+way, for these bring about all the qualities and
+conditions which you most need to study. But
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>
+models are not always at command, interiors do
+not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and
+bits of landscape which interest you are not always
+easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either
+far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest
+in the first combination which falls under
+his eye. Therefore the most practically useful
+material for study, which is always "nature," is
+what we call "still life,"&mdash;<i>"morte" nature</i>, dead
+nature is the better or more descriptive name the
+French give to it. By this is meant any and all
+combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped
+arbitrarily for representation. Bottles and jugs
+and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of
+things lend themselves readily and interestingly
+to this use.</p>
+
+<p>The great value of still life for the student lies
+in the variety of combinations of color and form,
+of light and shade and texture, that he can always
+command. There is practically no problem possible
+to in-the-house light which may not be worked
+out by means of still life. The training in perception
+and representation, in composition and arrangement,
+and in technique, which it will give
+you is invaluable; and most important of all, while
+you can always make such arrangements as will
+interest you, because you need place only such
+things or colors as you like, you are really studying
+nature herself, you are looking at the things
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span>
+themselves, and the result you get is the product
+of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely
+your own, both in the stating and the solving,
+and what you learn is well learned, and
+represents a definite progress along the right
+line.</p>
+
+<p>You have worked for the sake of the working,
+and there is nothing which you have got from it
+that may not be applicable to any future work you
+may do, that does not directly lead to the great
+object you have in view,&mdash;to learn how to paint
+well.</p>
+
+<p><b>Be Sincere.</b>&mdash;But, above all, be sincere with yourself;
+don't do anything to be clever, nor because
+it pleases some one else. Painting is difficult
+enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination
+that the most charming thing can have
+for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the
+trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by
+insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me
+once that he believed that all really good pictures
+could be shown to be good by the sole criterion
+of conviction. Can you think of any painting
+being good without it? Can you think of any
+amount of cleverness and ability making a picture
+good without that. And it is quite as important
+in study as elsewhere. Never do anything except
+seriously; take yourself and your work seriously;
+only by serious work can serious results come.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+<b>Joy in Your Work.</b>&mdash;Do it because you like to.
+But like good work and hate bad work; and,
+above all, hate half-way work. Understand yourself:
+what you want to do and why you want to
+do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to
+work till you have honestly done what you wanted
+to do, and as you wanted to do it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span></p>
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+<h1><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III<br /><br />
+TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES</h1>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2>
+
+<h3>TECHNICAL PRELIMINARIES</h3>
+
+
+<p><b>Reasons.</b>&mdash;Painting is something more than laying
+on paint. It implies a certain amount of
+knowledge of necessary preliminaries&mdash;technical
+matters which are not strictly painting, but without
+which good painting is impossible.</p>
+
+<p>It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but
+there must be a knowledge on which to base the
+where and the why of laying it on, as well as
+the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything,
+the where and why are more important than the
+how. There are almost infinite methods and processes
+of getting the paint onto the surface.
+Every painter may select or invent his own way,
+and provided it accomplishes the main purpose&mdash;the
+bringing about of combinations of form, relative
+color and pitch, the expression of an idea&mdash;it
+is all right. But there are laws which govern
+the positions of the different spots of paint, and
+the reasons for placing them in certain relations.
+These laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy.
+They are a part of the laws which control all material
+things. The painter may no more go contrary
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+to them in painting than he may go contrary to
+physical laws in any of the practical matters of
+life. If pigments are not used in accordance with
+the laws governing their chemical composition,
+they will not stand. If the laws of proportion are
+not observed in composition, the picture will not
+balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically
+fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the
+relations of size, which give the impression of
+nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws
+of optics. You have infinite scope for individual
+expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go
+outside of them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.</b>&mdash;It is not necessary
+that you should have any special knowledge
+of all these laws nor even of the application of
+them; but you must recognize their existence,
+and have some practical notions about them and
+their effect on your work.</p>
+
+<p>You can of course carry the study as far as
+you are interested to go. The farther the better.
+The more you study them the more you will find
+them interesting, and the easier will it be for you
+to work freely within their limitations. But this
+is not the place for special study. There are
+books which treat particularly of these things, and
+you must go to them.</p>
+
+<p>But a superficial consideration of these subjects
+cannot be left out of any book which would be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+really helpful to the student of painting. I can go
+into the theory of things only so far as to give
+you that amount of practical knowledge which is
+absolutely necessary to you as a painter. What
+I shall give is given only because it cannot be
+wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the
+substance and quantity are determined by the
+same reason.</p>
+
+<p>As you hope to become a painter, then, do not
+neglect to study and think of this part of the
+book, not merely as a preliminary to the process
+of painting, but as containing matter which is continually
+essential to it&mdash;which is part and parcel
+of it.</p>
+
+<p>Another reason for the careful reading of these
+chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting
+necessarily demands the use of words or phrases
+which must be understood. To speak of technical
+things presupposes the use of technical phrases,
+and without a knowledge of the words there can
+be no comprehension of the thought.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2>
+
+<h3>DRAWING</h3>
+
+<p>Drawing is basic to painting. Good painting
+cannot exist without it. I do not mean that there
+must be always the outline felt or seen, but that
+the understanding of relative position, size, and
+form must be felt; and that is drawing. Drawing
+is not merely form, but implies these other things,
+and painting is not legible without them. They
+go to the completeness of expression. Movement,
+and action, as well as composition and all that it
+implies or includes, depend upon drawing, and
+they are vital to a painting.</p>
+
+<p><b>Importance of Drawing.</b>&mdash;Much has been said and
+written of drawing as being the most important
+thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse all
+sorts of shortcomings in other directions. This is
+a mistake. Drawing is essential because you cannot
+lay on color to express anything without the
+colors taking shape, and this is drawing. But still
+the color itself, and other characteristics which
+are not strictly a part of drawing, are quite as
+important to painting, simply because the thing
+without them could not be a painting at all: it
+would be a drawing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+All painters fall into two classes,&mdash;those who
+are most sensitive to the refinements of form, and
+those most sensitive to refinements of color and
+tone. But the great colorists, the painters <i>par
+excellence</i>, the workers in pigment before everything
+else, those who find their sentiment mainly
+there, these are the men who have made painting
+what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities.
+And looking at painting from their point of
+view, drawing cannot be more important than
+other qualities.</p>
+
+<p><b>Neglect of Drawing.</b>&mdash;Great artists have sometimes
+not been perfect draughtsmen. They have
+been careless of exactness of form. But they
+have always been strong in the great essentials of
+drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies
+as they showed, by their greatness in other
+directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let
+his temperament run him into carelessness of
+form in his hurry to express his temperamental
+richness of color. These things are superficial to
+the greater ends he had in view, but we have to
+distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. And
+a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up
+for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness
+for the student or the painter who is
+simply a poor draughtsman.</p>
+
+<p>The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a
+weak picture. A painter, who was also an exceptionally
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>
+fine draughtsman, once spoke of work
+weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey."
+Lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter
+who cannot draw. Those firm, simple, but
+effective touches which are evident somewhere in
+the work of all good painters, are impossible without
+draughtsmanship. They mean precision. Precision
+means position. Position means drawing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Proportions.</b>&mdash;All good work is from the general
+to the particular, from the mass to the detail.
+Keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in
+good work, whatever the kind. You should never
+place a detail till you have placed your larger
+masses. The relative importance of things depends
+on the consideration of those most important
+first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.</p>
+
+<p>Proportions next. Largest proportions, then
+exactness of relative proportions. Study first in
+masses. See nothing at first but the large planes.
+As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head,
+not the head on to the nose." In getting proportions
+of the great masses, let no small variations
+of line or form break into your study of the whole.
+Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and
+angles. If you cannot see them at first, study to
+find them; look at the long lines of movement;
+mass several curves into one line representing the
+general direction of them. Train yourself to look
+at things in this way. There is nothing which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span>
+will not fall into position so. This will not be
+easy at first. The training of a quick perception
+of these things is a part of your training in drawing&mdash;the
+first essential. It is not that the straight
+lines are to be sought for themselves, but that
+they simplify the first breaking up of the whole
+into its parts, and so makes more easy the study
+of proportion. The accuracy of the general masses
+makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser
+proportions which come within them.</p>
+
+<p>You see form more truly also, when the perception
+of it is founded on a mass or a line indicating
+the larger character of it. It saves time for you,
+too. You do not have to rub out so much. The
+great lines and planes once established, everything
+else falls naturally into place. Spend much time
+over this part of a drawing. Cut the time you
+give to a drawing into parts, and let the part
+given to the laying in of larger proportions be
+from a third to a half of the whole time, and study
+and correct these until they are right.</p>
+
+<p>Once these are right a very slight accent tells
+for twice what it would otherwise, and so you
+need much less detail to give the effect.</p>
+
+<p><b>Modelling.</b>&mdash;In the same way that you have laid
+out the proportions in mass, lay out your proportions
+of light and shade. Model your drawing by
+avoiding the small until the large variations of
+shade are in place. Avoid seeing curves in relief
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span>
+as you have avoided curves of outline. Try to
+analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one
+large enough to give a definite mass of relief.
+Don't be afraid of an edge in doing this. Let
+your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone
+and stop. This again is not for any effect in
+itself, but only for facility and exactness. Later
+you can loose it as much as you see fit in breaking
+up the drawing into the more delicate planes,
+and these again into the most subtle.</p>
+
+<p>Study first the outline and then the planes.
+Constantly compare them as to relation; you will
+find it suggestive. Remember that your aim is
+to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although
+a whole includes the parts, the parts are
+incidental.</p>
+
+<p><b>Measurements.</b>&mdash;You will always have to use
+measurements for the sake of accuracy. Probably
+you will never be able to dispense with them.
+The best way would be to take them as a matter
+of course, and get so that you make them almost
+mechanically, without thinking of it. You will
+save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble
+by accepting this at once; for accuracy is impossible
+without measurements, and the habit of
+accuracy is the greatest time-saver.</p>
+
+<p>Hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that
+your thumb can slip along it and mark off parts
+of the object when you sight at them across the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span>
+coal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions
+into themselves and into each other. Height and
+breadth are checks to each other. If the height
+is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the
+smaller proportions of height must have equivalent
+proportions to each other <i>as well as to breadth</i>.
+Measure these and you are sure of being right.</p>
+
+<p><b>Steps.</b>&mdash;Divide your drawing into steps or
+stages of work. You will find it a helpful thing
+in studying. You will do it quite naturally later.
+Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.</p>
+
+<p><i>First step.</i>&mdash;Measure the extreme height and
+breadth of the whole group or object of your
+drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.</p>
+
+<p><i>Second step.</i>&mdash;Outline the great mass of it with
+the simplest lines possible. Give the general shape
+of the whole. This blocks it in.</p>
+
+<p><i>Third step.</i>&mdash;Measure each of the objects in the
+group, or the parts most prominent, if it be a single
+object. Measure its height and breadth, both
+in its own proportion and in proportion to the
+dimensions of the other parts and of the whole.
+Enclose it in straight lines as you did with the
+whole mass.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fourth step.</i>&mdash;Find the more important of the
+lesser proportions in each object, and block them
+out also. This should map out your drawing exactly
+and with some completeness.</p>
+
+<p><i>Fifth step.</i>&mdash;Lay in simple flat tones to fill in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+these outlines, and keep the relations of light and
+dark very carefully as you do so.</p>
+
+<p><i>Sixth step.</i>&mdash;This should leave your paper with
+a few large masses of dark and light, which can
+now be cut into again with the next smaller
+masses, giving more refinement to the whole.
+This also should so break up the edges as to get
+rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.</p>
+
+<p><i>Seventh step.</i>&mdash;Put in such accents of dark, or
+take out such of light, as will give necessary character
+and force to the drawing.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say that this method produces the
+most finished drawing; but it is a most excellent
+way to study drawing, and, more or less modified,
+is practically the basis of all methods. In practised
+hands it allows of any amount of exactness
+or freedom of execution. I have seen most beautiful
+work done in this way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Home Study.</b>&mdash;It is not necessary to have a
+teacher in order to draw well; but it is necessary
+to find out what are the essentials of good drawing,
+and to work definitely and acquire them.</p>
+
+<p>Good drawing is a combination of exactness
+and freedom; and the exactness must come first.
+The structure of the thing must be shown without
+unnecessary detail. You should always look
+at any really good drawing you can come at, and try to
+see what there may be in it of helpful suggestion to you.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus147" id="illus147"></a>
+<img src="images/illus147.jpg" width="100%" alt="Drawing of Hands." title="Drawing of Hands." />
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span>
+<span class="caption">Drawing of Hands. <i>D&uuml;rer.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>
+<b>Study the Masters.</b>&mdash;Get photographs of drawings
+by the masters of drawing, and study them.
+See how they searched their model for form and
+character. Do not make so much of the actual
+stroke as the manner in which it is made to express
+and lend itself to the meaning.</p>
+
+<p>In this drawing by Albrecht D&uuml;rer you have
+a splendid example of exactness and feeling for
+character. You could have no better type of
+what to look for and how to express it. Although
+it is not important that you should lay
+on the lines of shading just as this is done, it
+is important to notice how naturally they follow,
+and conform to, the character of the surface&mdash;which
+is one of the ways in which the point helps
+to search out the modelling.</p>
+
+<p>This drawing is made with a black and a white
+chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to study.</p>
+
+<p>A good hint is also offered in this drawing, of
+the modesty of the old masters, in subject. A
+hand or part of any object is enough to study
+from. There is no need to always demand a
+picture in everything you do.</p>
+
+<p><b>Materials.</b>&mdash;For all purposes which come in the
+range of the painter you should use charcoal. For
+purposes of study it is the most satisfactory of
+materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and
+easily corrected. For sketching or preliminary
+drawing on the canvas it is equally good.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span>
+You should have also a plumb-line with which
+to test vertical positions of parts in relation to
+each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally
+for other relative positions, gives you all
+you need in that direction.</p>
+
+<p>In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary
+to do more than place the various objects
+and draw their outlines carefully and accurately.
+Sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures
+which include important figures, you will need a
+shaded drawing, and this can be done perfectly
+with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards.</p>
+
+<p><b>Imitation.</b>&mdash;Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact
+drawing, is not the most important thing. A
+drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer
+for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the
+greater character. So, too, the drawing may have
+to change an accidental fact which is not worth
+the trouble of expression or which will injure the
+whole. There is something more important than
+detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed
+sometimes only by a drawing which is
+deliberately false in certain things in order to
+be the more true to the larger fact.</p>
+
+<p>Then, too, there is an individuality which the
+artist has to express through his representation of
+the external; and he is justified in altering or
+slighting facts in order to bring about that more
+important self-expression. Of course the self must
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+be worth expressing. There is no excuse for mere
+falsification nor for mere inability. But a good
+workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete
+picture in its unity will be his justification
+for whatever means he has taken.</p>
+
+<p><b>Feeling.</b>&mdash;Drawing must be a matter of feeling.
+A perception of essential truth of a thing, as much
+as of trained observation of the facts. The good
+draughtsman becomes so by training his observation
+of facts first, always searching for those
+most important, and emphasizing those; and with
+the power which will come in time to his eye
+and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express
+facts, will come also the power of mind
+to grasp the essential characteristics. And the
+trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect
+freedom of expression. This is the desideratum
+of the student; this is the end to be aimed at,&mdash;the
+perfect union of the trained eye and hand to
+see and do, and the trained mind to feel and select,
+and the freedom of expression which comes of that
+perfect union.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2>
+
+<h3>VALUES</h3>
+
+
+<p><b>The Term.</b>&mdash;The word "values" is seldom understood
+by the average individual, yet it should
+not be difficult to take in. It means simply the
+relation between degrees of strength of light and
+dark, and of color considered as light and dark.
+Translate the word into "importance," and think
+what it means. The relative importance, strength,
+force, power, value, of a touch of color to make
+itself felt in the whole&mdash;that is its value. A weak
+value is a note which does not make itself felt;
+a strong value is one which does. A false value
+is a touch of color which has not its proper relation
+to the other spots or masses of color in the
+picture, <i>considered</i> as <i>light and dark</i>&mdash;<i>not as color
+per se</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Importance.</b>&mdash;As soon as you grasp this idea you
+see at once how important values must be to the
+whole picture. It is not possible to do any good
+work, either in black and white or color, without it.
+In one sense it is incidental to drawing. When
+you consider drawing as the expression of modelling,
+the relative roundness of parts, and of relief,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>
+as well as outline, values come into play to give
+the relations of planes of light and dark in black
+and white. In this it becomes part of drawing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Values and Color.</b>&mdash;As soon, however, as color becomes
+a part of the picture, values become the
+basis of modern painting as distinguished from the
+painting of previous centuries. Values, of course,
+always existed wherever good painting existed,
+because you cannot paint without recognizing the
+relations, the relative pitch and relative strength
+of tones. But the word is never heard in relation
+to old masters. It is apparently of quite modern
+coinage and use, and it probably was coined because
+of a new and greater importance of the fact
+which it represents.</p>
+
+<p>The older painters in painting a picture kept
+parts of a whole object&mdash;a head or a figure, say&mdash;in
+relation to itself; and that was values&mdash;but
+restricted values. The whole picture was arranged
+on the basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered
+into the scheme of composition of that picture.
+This is not values, but what is generally understood
+by the older writers when they speak of
+"chiaroscuro." The modern painter deals little
+with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as a
+technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light
+and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays,
+and consequently the word which expressed it
+has dropped somewhat into disuse.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>
+<b>Basis of Modern Painting.</b>&mdash;Instead of the old
+composition in arbitrary light and shade, the modern
+painter accepts the actual arrangement of light as
+the basis of his picture, and spreads the values
+over the whole canvas. In this way the quality
+of "value" becomes the very foundation of the
+modern picture. For you cannot accept the ordinary
+or actual condition of light, as governing the
+light and shade of your picture, without extending
+the same scheme of relations over the whole
+canvas. Every most insignificant spot of light and
+shade and color, as well as the most significant,
+must keep its place, must hold its true relation to
+every other spot and to all the rest. Each value
+must keep its place according to the laws of fact,
+or it is out of touch with the whole. The whole
+picture must be either on a scheme of general
+fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary arrangement.
+Any one piece of arbitrary arrangement
+in this connection must be backed up by other
+pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else there
+must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. The
+modern painter accepts the former; and the importance
+of "values" is the result.</p>
+
+<p><b>Absolute and Relative Values.</b>&mdash;We may speak of
+values as absolute or relative. This relates to the
+key or pitch of a painting. It is the contribution
+to the art of painting which was made by the
+French painter, Manet. You may paint a picture
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+in the same pitch as nature, or you may transpose
+it to a higher or a lower pitch.</p>
+
+<p>The relations of the different values of the picture
+will hold the same relation to each other as
+the values of nature do to each other. But the
+actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an
+absolute light or an absolute dark, will be higher
+or lower than in nature. This would be relative
+values.</p>
+
+<p>Or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark,
+of each value may be the same, value for value, as
+in nature. This would be absolute values.</p>
+
+<p>The attempt at absolute values was not made
+at all before Manet's time. A landscape was
+frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch
+of nature, and an <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'interor'">interior</ins> as frankly painted up,
+or lighter. In both cases the values had to be
+condensed,&mdash;telescoped, so to speak,&mdash;because
+pigment would not express the highest light nor
+the lowest dark in nature; and to have the same
+number of gradations between the highest and lowest
+notes in the picture, the amount of difference
+between each value had to be diminished&mdash;but
+<i>relatively</i> they were the same. The degree of variation
+from the actual was the same all through.</p>
+
+<p>With absolute values the painter aims at giving
+the <i>just note</i>,&mdash;the exact equivalent in value that
+he finds in nature. He tries to paint up to out-door
+light or paint down to in-door light.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>
+<b>Close Values.</b>&mdash;This naturally calls for a fine distinction
+of tones&mdash;the utmost subtlety of perception
+of values. To paint a picture in which the
+highest light may not be white nor the lowest
+dark black, and yet give a great range and
+variety to the values all through the picture, the
+values must be <i>close</i>; must be studied so closely
+as to take cognizance of the slightest possible
+distinction, and to justly express it. This sort
+of thing was not thought of by the older painters.
+It is the distinguishing characteristic of modern
+painting. It is a substitution of the study of <i>relation</i>
+for the study of <i>contrast</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Study of Values.</b>&mdash;You see at once how important,
+how vital, the study of values is to painting.
+Even if you paint with arbitrary lighting, as is still
+done by many painters, especially in portraits, you
+have to consider and study them as they apply to
+<i>parts</i> of your picture. You will find no good
+painter of old time who did not study relations.
+If you look at a Velasquez, you will find that he
+knew values, even though he did not use the word.</p>
+
+<p>But if you are in touch with your century, if
+you would paint to express the suggestion you receive
+from the nature you study, or if you would
+convey the idea of truth to the world around you,
+as that world exists, frankly accepting the conditions
+of it, you will have to make the study of
+values fundamental to your work.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span>
+<b>"The Fourth Dimension."</b>&mdash;You study values with
+your eyes only, but you cannot <i>measure</i> values.
+Length, breadth, and thickness you can measure;
+but values constitute what might be called a
+"<i>Fourth Dimension</i>," and you must measure it
+by your eye, and without any mechanical aid.
+Your eye must be trained to distinguish and
+judge differences of value.</p>
+
+<p><b>Helps.</b>&mdash;There are, however, several things
+which you can use to help you in training your
+eye to distinguish values. When you look for
+values you do not wish to see details nor things,
+you wish to see only masses and relations. You
+must <i>unfocus</i> your eye. The focussed eye sees
+the fact, and not the relation. Anything which
+will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly
+will help you to see the values more distinctly.</p>
+
+<p><b>Half-closed Eyes.</b>&mdash;The most common way is to
+half close the eyes, which shuts out details, but
+permits you to see the values. Some painters
+think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the
+eyes wide open, but to focus them on some point
+<i>beyond</i> the values they are studying. This is not
+so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but becomes
+less difficult with practice.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Blur Glass.</b>&mdash;An ordinary magnifying-glass
+of about 15-inch focus, which you can get at an
+optician's for fifteen or twenty cents, will blur the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+details, and help you to see the values, because
+it makes everything vague except the masses.
+You can frame it for use by putting it between
+two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or
+you can do the same with two pieces of leather
+sewed around the edge. Of course the glass itself
+is all you need, but it will be easily broken if
+unprotected.</p>
+
+<p>Do not try to look <i>through</i> the glass at your
+subject, but <i>at</i> the glass and the image on it.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Claude Loraine Mirror.</b>&mdash;This is a curved mirror
+with a black reflecting surface. The object
+is reflected on it, <i>reduced</i> both in size and pitch.
+It concentrates the masses and the color, and so
+helps to distinguish the relative values.</p>
+
+<p>You can make a mirror of this sort for yourself
+by painting the back of a piece of plate glass
+black. The real Claude Loraine mirror is expensive.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Common Mirror</b> is also very helpful in distinguishing
+values. It reduces the size of things,
+and reverses the drawing so that you see your
+subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye
+is the result. Place the group and your painting
+side by side, if you are painting still life, and look
+at both at the same time in the mirror. Do the
+same with a portrait and the sitter.</p>
+
+<p><b>Diminishing Glass.</b>&mdash;Much the same effect can be
+had by using a double concave lens. The picture
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+is not reversed, but it is reduced, and the details
+eliminated.</p>
+
+<p>In using any of these means you must remember
+that it is always the relations and not the things
+you are studying; and the most useful of these
+aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly
+see anything in it but the values and color masses,
+everything else being blurred.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>PERSPECTIVE</h3>
+
+
+<p>There are two kinds of perspective, linear and
+a&euml;rial. The former has to do with the manner in
+which horizontal lines appear to converge as they
+recede from the foreground, and so produce the
+effect of distance. The latter has to do with the
+effect of distance, which is due to the successive
+gradations of gray in color noticeable in objects
+farther and farther away from the observer.</p>
+
+<p><b>A&euml;rial Perspective.</b>&mdash;To the student, a&euml;rial is <i>color</i>
+perspective, because of the modifications which
+colors undergo when removed to a distance. Modifications
+of tone are largely due to varying distance,
+and so a&euml;rial perspective is largely a matter
+of <i>values</i>. That they are due to the greater or
+less thickness of the atmosphere is only a matter
+of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the
+important thing to him is that the careful study
+of values is necessary to relief, perspective, and
+particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>To the student, a&euml;rial perspective should be
+only a matter of observation and of the study of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+relations of color and value. There are no rules.
+The effect depends on greater or less density of
+atmosphere. Near objects are seen through a
+thin stratum of air, and farther objects through
+a thicker one. All you have to do to express it
+is to recognize the relative tones of color. Paint
+the colors as they are, as you see them in nature,
+and you need have no trouble with a&euml;rial
+perspective.</p>
+
+<p>But though I say "this is all you have to do,"
+don't imagine that I mean that it is always easy,
+or that it can be done without thought and study.
+You will have to use all your powers of perception
+if you wish to do good work in this direction.
+Especially on clear days, or in those climates
+where the air is so rare that objects at great distances
+seem near, you will find that atmospheric
+perspective is simply another name for close values.
+And close values, you remember, are the
+most subtle of relations of light and shade and
+color.</p>
+
+<p>The only rule for a&euml;rial perspective is to use
+your eyes, and do nothing without a previous
+careful study of nature.</p>
+
+<p><b>Linear Perspective.</b>&mdash;For most kinds of painting,
+a technical knowledge of linear perspective is not
+necessary, although every painter should understand
+the general principles of it. In most cases
+all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+all lines carefully with the pencil or brush
+handle held horizontally or vertically, and studying
+the angle any line makes with it. Apply to all
+objects in perspective the same observation that
+you do in any other kind of drawing, and you will
+have little trouble, as long as you are drawing
+from an object before you. But if you go into
+perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. A little
+perspective is a dangerous thing, and more likely
+to mix you up by suggesting all sorts of half-understood
+things than to be of any real help.</p>
+
+<p>There are some kinds of subjects, however,
+which require a complete knowledge of all the
+rules and processes of perspective. Whenever
+you have to construct a picture from details stated
+but not seen; when you have a complicated architectural
+interior or exterior; when figures are to
+be placed at certain distances or in definite positions,
+and they are too numerous or the conditions
+are otherwise such that you cannot pose
+your models for this purpose; then you may have
+to make most elaborate perspective plans, and
+lay out your picture with great exactness, or the
+drawing which is fundamental to such a picture
+will not be true.</p>
+
+<p>Such men as G&eacute;r&ocirc;me and Alma-Tadema plan
+their pictures most carefully, and so did Paul
+Veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical
+knowledge of perspective.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>
+But this is not the place to teach you perspective.
+It is a subject which requires special
+study, and whole volumes are given to the elucidation
+of it. In a work of this kind anything more
+than a mention of the bearings of perspective on
+painting would be out of place. If you do not
+care to take up seriously the study of perspective,
+avoid attempting to paint any subjects which call
+for it; or, if you do care to study it, get a special
+work on that subject, give plenty of time to it,
+and study it thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p><b>Foreshortening.</b>&mdash;In this connection I may speak
+of something which is akin to perspective, yet the
+very reverse of it. As its name implies, foreshortening
+means the way in which anything
+seems shortened or in modified drawing as it
+projects towards you; while perspective is the
+manner in which lines appear as they recede
+from you. Like a&euml;rial perspective, the best way
+to study foreshortening is to study nature, not
+rules.</p>
+
+<p>Perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening
+cannot. Pose your model, or if it be
+a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort, place
+yourself in the proper position with reference to
+it, and then study the drawing <i>as it appears</i>, thinking
+nothing of <i>how it is</i>; make your measurements,
+and place your lines as if there were no
+problem of foreshortening at all, but study the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>
+relations of lines, of size, and of values, and the
+foreshortening will take care of itself.</p>
+
+<p>After all, foreshortening is only good drawing,
+and a good draughtsman will foreshorten well,
+while a bad draughtsman will not. Therefore,
+learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2>
+
+<h3>LIGHT AND SHADE</h3>
+
+
+<p><b>Chiaroscuro.</b>&mdash;A few words about chiaroscuro
+will be useful. This is a term of great importance
+and frequent use with artists and writers up to
+within the last thirty or forty years. It has of late
+become almost unused. The reason for this was
+explained in the chapter on "Values." Nevertheless,
+it is well that the student should know
+what the word meant, and still means. Although
+he may hear and use it less frequently than if he
+had lived earlier in the century, the pictures, certain
+qualities of which no other word expresses,
+still exist, and are probably as immortal as anything
+in this world can be. He should know what
+those qualities are, and he should understand their
+relation to the work of to-day.</p>
+
+<p>Chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as
+suggesting "a theme which is the most interesting,
+perhaps, in the whole range of the art of
+painting. Of vast importance, great extent, and
+extreme intricacy. Chiaroscuro is an Italian compound
+word whose two parts, <i>chiar</i> and <i>oscuro</i>, signify
+simply <i>bright</i> and <i>obscure</i>, or <i>light</i> and <i>dark</i>.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span>
+Hence the art or branch of art that bears the
+name regards all the relations of light and shade,
+and this independently of coloring, notwithstanding
+that in painting, coloring and the clair-obscure
+are of their very nature inseparable. The art of
+clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the
+disposition and arrangement in general of his
+lights and darks, with all their degrees, extreme
+and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single
+objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination
+as one whole, so as to produce the best representation
+possible in the best manner possible;
+that is, <i>so as to produce the most desirable effect
+upon the senses and spirit of the observers</i>. In a
+word, its end and aim are fidelity and beauty of
+imitation; its means, every effect of light; chromatic
+harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values,
+reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective,
+etc." The italics are mine.</p>
+
+<p>You see at once that this covers a pretty wide
+field. But it is to be again noted that the use of
+chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not only the
+expression of the light and shade of nature, but
+the so arranging of the objects and the way that
+the light was permitted to fall on them, that certain
+parts of the picture became shadow, while
+the light was concentrated in some other part or
+parts. In this way the arrangement of the light
+and shade of a picture became a distinct element
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+of composition, and a very important one. The
+<i>quality</i> of "light" was something to be emphasized
+by contrast. It is stated (whether truly or
+not) that the proportion of light to dark was according
+to a definite rule or principle with certain
+painters, some permitting more, and some less,
+space of canvas to be proportioned to light and
+to dark. The gradations of light and dark were
+studied of course; but the quantity of light spread
+over the canvas was calculated upon, so that the
+less space of light and the greater the space of
+dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of
+light in the picture. They wrought with the <i>quality
+of light and shade</i> as an <i>element</i>, just as they
+would with the quality of line or of color, considered
+apart from objects or facts they might represent.</p>
+
+<p><b>Arbitrary Lighting.</b>&mdash;This is the arbitrary light
+and shade spoken of in the chapter on "Values";
+and although the older painters included what we
+now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this
+fact of arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting
+the light as it does fall, or selecting those places
+or times where it does naturally fall as we would
+like it to, that makes the difference between modern
+painting generally and the older method, and
+has made chiaroscuro as a word and as a quality
+of painting so much a thing of the past.</p>
+
+<p><b>Light and Shade.</b>&mdash;But we may use the old word
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>
+with a more restricted meaning. If we use it
+to mean literally light and shade, the way light
+falls on objects and the relief due to the light side
+and the shadow side of them, we get a use which
+implies a very important and practical matter for
+present study.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus167" id="illus167"></a>
+<img src="images/illus167.jpg" width="100%" alt="Eggs." title="Eggs." />
+<span class="caption">Eggs. White against White.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Objects Visible by Light and Shadow.</b>&mdash;If you will
+put a white egg on a piece of white paper, with
+another white paper back of it, you will see that
+it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the
+side of it towards the light preventing the light
+rays from touching the other side, and so casting
+a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg
+is visible. You will also see, if you manipulate the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>
+egg, that according as the light is concentrated
+or diffused, or according to the sharpness of the
+shadow and light, is the egg more or less distinct.</p>
+
+<p><b>Contrast.</b>&mdash;Apply these facts to other objects,
+and you will see how important the principle of
+contrast is to the representation of nature. Not
+only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of
+color. And you should make a study, both by
+setting up groups of objects in different lights,
+and by studying effects of lights wherever you
+are, of the possibilities and combinations of light
+and shadow.</p>
+
+<p><b>Constant Observation.</b>&mdash;The painter is constantly
+studying with his eyes. It is not necessary always
+to have the brush in your hand in order to be always
+studying. Keep your brain active in making
+observations and considering the relations in nature
+around you. The amount of material you
+can store up in this way is immense, to say nothing
+of the training it gives you in the use of your
+eyes, and in the practice of selection of motives
+for work. Schemes of color or composition are
+not usually deliberately invented within the painter's
+brain. They are in most cases the result
+of some suggestion from a chance effect noticed
+and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards
+worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is
+the artist's business to catch the suggestion and
+make it his own. For nature seldom works out
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>
+her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives
+it is either not complete, or is so evanescent as to
+be uncopyable. But the habit of constant receptivity
+on the part of the artist makes nature an
+infinite mine of possibilities to him.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus169" id="illus169"></a>
+<img src="images/illus169.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Canal." title="The Canal." />
+<span class="caption">The Canal. <i>Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">Effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect
+of studio light in "Bohemian Woman," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by Lamplight."</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Perception.</b>&mdash;Only by continually observing and
+judging of contrasts and relations can the eye
+be trained to perceive subtle distinctions; yet it
+must be so trained, for all good work is dependent
+on these distinctions.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>
+<b>Effects of Light.</b>&mdash;It is important to study the
+different qualities of light. Take, for instance,
+the difference of character on a sunny day and on
+a gray day. On the former, fine distinctions of
+color are less pronounced; they are lost in the
+contrasts of sunlight and shadow. On a gray
+day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the
+finer distinctions are more marked. For the study
+of the subtleties of color choose a gray day.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, is the difference marked between the
+general light of out-doors and the more concentrated
+light of the house. The pitch is different.
+Outside, even in a dark day, the general character
+of light is clearer, more full, than in-doors.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing possible under the open sky
+like the strong contrasts you get from a single
+window in an otherwise unlighted room.</p>
+
+<p>Compare, for instance, the character of the light
+and shade as shown in the illustrations on pages
+<a href="#Page_156">156</a> and <a href="#Page_159">159</a>.
+The one is the diffused, out-of-door
+light, the other that from a studio window.
+The character of the subject has nothing to do
+with this quality. The head would have less of
+sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more
+reflected light.</p>
+
+<p>Other differences to be studied as to quality of
+the light in the manner of its contrast, and also
+for its color quality, are to be seen in moonlight
+or nightlight as compared with daylight. Artificial
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>
+light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives
+marked effects also, which may be compared with
+daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in its more
+concentrated effects in the studio. Compare the
+picture of the "Woman Sewing by Lamplight," by
+Millet, with the "Canal" and the "Bohemian
+Woman" given above. The effects of gas and
+electric light also should be studied. Their characteristics
+both of contrast and, particularly, of
+color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch
+as the essence of some pictures lies in these
+qualities.</p>
+
+<p>Another matter of great importance to the student,
+and one which the same three illustrations
+just referred to may serve to show, is the effect
+on objects of the position of the point of entrance
+of the light with reference to them and to the
+observer. The simplest light is the side-light from
+a single window. This gives broad, sharp masses
+of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing
+and painting more simple. With the observer
+in the same relative position to the subject, as the
+light swings round towards a point back of him the
+contrasts become less, the relations more subtle
+and difficult of recognition, and naturally the
+study of them more difficult. In this position of
+light the values become "close." To make the
+object seen at all, it is necessary that the finest
+distinctions shall be observed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus172" id="illus172"></a>
+<img src="images/illus172.jpg" width="100%" alt="Bohemian Woman." title="Bohemian Woman." />
+<span class="caption">Bohemian Woman. <i>Frans Hals.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">Effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with diffused
+light of open air in the "Canal," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by Lamplight."</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus174" id="illus174"></a>
+<img src="images/illus174.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sewing by Lamplight." title="Sewing by Lamplight." />
+<span class="caption">Sewing by Lamplight. <i>Millet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">Effect of artificial light contrast to be compared
+with natural light in illustrations of "Canal" and "Bohemian Woman."</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus176" id="illus176"></a>
+<img src="images/illus176.jpg" width="100%" alt="Descent from the Cross." title="Descent from the Cross." />
+<span class="caption">Descent from the Cross.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>
+Portrait painters have always been fond of a top
+light, which gives a direct concentrated light descending
+on the sitter, very similar in character
+to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression
+and drawing of the face.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cross Lights.</b>&mdash;The most confusing and difficult
+of study and representation are the "<i>cross lights</i>."
+If there are several windows or other points for
+the admission of light, and the sitter or object
+painted is between them, the light comes from all
+sides, so that the rays cross each other and there
+is no single scheme of light and shade. The rays
+from one side modify the shadows cast from the
+other side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement
+of values is the result. This is a favorite
+technical problem with painters, and its solution
+is splendid training; but the student who can successfully
+solve it is not far from the end of his
+"student days."</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2>
+
+<h3>COMPOSITION</h3>
+
+
+<p><b>Importance.</b>&mdash;Composition is of the utmost importance.
+It is impossible that a picture should
+be good without it. You may define it as that
+study by means of which the balance of the picture
+comes about. But you must understand the
+word balance in its broadest sense. There is
+nothing in the planning of the picture which
+has not to be considered in making the picture
+balance.</p>
+
+<p>The arrangement of the lines, of the forms,
+of the masses, and of the colors must all be right
+if the composition be right. Composition is the
+planning of the picture; and it is more or less
+complicated, more or less to be carefully studied
+beforehand in exact accordance with the simplicity
+or complication of the scheme of the picture.
+You may not need more than the consideration of
+a few main facts. It may almost be done by a
+few moments' deliberation in some simple studies
+or even pictures. But even then there is possible
+the most subtle discrimination of selection, and a
+perfect gem of composition may be found in the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span>
+arrangement of a picture having the simplest and
+fewest elements. The more complicated the materials
+which are to be worked into a picture, the
+more careful must be the previous planning; but,
+for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost
+powers in a simple figure, just because the
+fewer the means, the more each single thing can
+interfere with the balance of the whole, and the
+more a fine choice will tell.</p>
+
+<p><b>The &AElig;sthetic.</b>&mdash;I have already mentioned briefly
+the &aelig;sthetic elements of a picture. I have called
+to your attention that back of the obvious facts of
+a subject and the objects in the picture, and the
+theme which the painter makes his picture represent;
+back of the technical processes and management
+of concrete material which make painting
+possible, is the &aelig;sthetic purpose of the work of
+art; without this it could not be a work of art at
+all: it would be merely a more or less exact representation
+of something, a mere prosaic description,
+the interest in which would lie wholly in the
+<i>fact</i>, and would perish whenever interest in the
+fact should cease. It is not the <i>fact</i>, nor even
+the able expression of the fact, which makes a
+work of art a thing of interest and delight centuries
+after the bearing of the fact has been forgotten.
+The perennial interest of a work of art
+lies in the way in which the artist has used his
+ostensible theme, and all the facts and objects
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span>
+appertaining to it, as a part of the material with
+which he expresses those ideas which are purely
+&aelig;sthetic; which do not rest on material things.
+These have to do with material things only by
+rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest
+which they themselves could not otherwise
+have.</p>
+
+<p><b>Theory.</b>&mdash;Does this sound unpractical? Well, it
+is unpractical. Does it seem mere theory? It is
+theory. I want to impress it on you that it is
+theory. For it is the theory which underlies art,
+and if you do not understand it, you only understand
+art from the outside. Consciously or unconsciously
+every artist works to express these
+purely &aelig;sthetic qualities, and to a greater or less
+extent he expresses himself through them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Art for Art's Sake.</b>&mdash;This is the real meaning
+of the much-debated phrase, "Art for art's sake."
+The mistake which leads to the misconception
+and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding
+"art for art's sake" with "technique for
+technique's sake," which is a very different thing.
+Certainly every painter will work to attain the most
+perfect technique he is capable of. But not for
+the sake of the technique, but for what it will do.
+The better the technique the better the control
+of all the means to expression. If you take technique
+to mean only the understanding and knowledge
+of all the manipulations of art, technique is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>
+only a means, and it is so that I mean it to be understood
+here. If you broaden its meaning to include
+all the <i>mental</i> conceptions and means, that
+is another thing, and one likely to lead to confusion
+of idea. So I use the word technique in
+its strictest sense.</p>
+
+<p><b>The &AElig;sthetic Elements.</b>&mdash;What, then, are these &aelig;sthetic
+qualities I have spoken of? Will you consider
+the quality of "line"? Not <i>a</i> line, but line
+as an element, excluding all the possible things
+which may be done with lines in different relations
+to themselves and to other elements. Now
+will you consider also the other elements, "mass"
+and "color"? Do you see that here are three
+terms which suggest possibilities of combination
+of infinite scope? and they are purely intellectual.
+What may be done with them may be done, primarily,
+without taking into consideration the representation
+of any material fact whatsoever. Take
+as the type, conventional ornament. You can
+make the most exquisite combinations, in which
+the only interest and charm lies in the fact of
+those combinations in line and mass and color.</p>
+
+<p>Take architecture. Quite aside from the use
+of the building is the &aelig;sthetic resultant from combinations
+of line and mass and color.</p>
+
+<p>And so in the picture the question of <i>art</i>, the
+question of &aelig;sthetic entity, lies in the intellectual
+qualities of combinations of line and mass and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+color which permeate through and through the
+technical and material structure that you call the
+picture, and give it whatever universal and permanent
+value it has, and which make it immortal,
+if immortal it ever can be.</p>
+
+<p><b>Composition.</b>&mdash;The bearing of all this on composition
+should be obvious, for composition is the
+technique of combination. In the composition of
+a picture all the elements come into play. It is
+in composition that the management of the abstract
+results in the concrete.</p>
+
+<p>Let us look at it from a more practical side.
+Frankly, there are qualities, which you always look
+for in a picture,&mdash;good drawing, of course, and
+good color. But there are such things as these:
+Harmony, Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness,
+Force, Dignity. Where do they come from?
+Must not every good picture have them, or some
+of them, to some extent? How are you going to
+get them? If you have fifteen or twenty square
+feet or square yards of surface, you will not get
+them onto it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration
+is, like any other intellectual quality, quite logical,
+only it acts more quickly and takes longer steps
+between conclusions perhaps. You will get these
+qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging
+all the objects which make up the body of your
+picture that these qualities shall be the result.
+It is arrangement then.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span>
+<b>Arrangement.</b>&mdash;But <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'arrangemen'">arrangement</ins> of what? how?
+The objects. But on some principle back of them.
+Consider another set of qualities: proportion, i.e.,
+relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast;
+accent,&mdash;these are what you manipulate
+your objects with, and your objects themselves
+are only line and mass and color in the concrete.
+Objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and
+trees, skies and mountains, and every and any
+other natural fact, you may consider as so many
+bits of form and color with which you may work
+out a scheme on canvas; and how you do it is to
+consider them as pawns in your game of &aelig;sthetics.</p>
+
+<p>With these as materials, what you really do is
+to combine mass and line and color by means of
+proportion, arrangement, contrast, and accent, that
+a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm,
+grace, dignity, and force may result. And this is
+composition.</p>
+
+<p><b>No Rules.</b>&mdash;Naturally in dealing with a thing
+like this, which is the very essence of art, rules
+are of very little use. Ability in composition may
+be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for
+a continuous training of the sense of proportion
+and arrangement, just as the development of any
+other ability calls for training.</p>
+
+<p>The best thing that you can do is to study good
+examples and try to appreciate, not only their
+beauty, but how and why they are beautiful. Cultivate
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+your taste in that direction; and with the
+taste to like good and dislike bad composition will
+come the feeling which tells you when it is good
+and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply
+to your own work, and by experiment you will
+gain knowledge and skill.</p>
+
+<p>Rules are not possible simply because they are
+limitations, and the true composer will always
+overstep a limitation of that kind, and with a successful
+result.</p>
+
+<p>Principles of composition, too, must be variously
+adapted, according to the kind of picture you have
+in hand. The principles are the same, of course;
+but as the materials differ in a figure painting and
+a landscape, for instance, you must apply them to
+meet that difference.</p>
+
+<p><b>Suggestions.</b>&mdash;The first suggestion that might
+be made as a help to the study of composition is
+to consider your picture as a whole always. No
+matter how many figures, no matter how many
+groups, they must all be considered as parts of
+a <i>whole</i>, which must have no effect of being too
+much broken up.</p>
+
+<p>If the figures are scattered, they must be scattered
+in such a way that they suggest a logical
+connection between them as individuals in each
+group, and groups in a whole. There should usually
+be a main mass, and the others subsidiary
+masses. There should be a centre of interest of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span>
+some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a
+thing; and this centre should be the point to
+which all the other parts balance.</p>
+
+<p><b>Simplicity</b> is a good word to have in mind.
+However complicated the composition may seem
+superficially, you may treat it simply. You will
+control it by not considering any part as of any importance
+in itself, but only as it helps the whole;
+and you may strengthen or weaken that part as
+you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much.
+Let a half a dozen objects count as one in the
+whole. Mass things, simplify the masses, and
+make the elements of the masses hold as only
+parts of those masses.</p>
+
+<p><b>Study placing</b> of things in different sizes relative
+to the size of the canvas. Make sketches which
+take no note of anything but the largest masses or
+the most important lines, and change them about
+till they seem right; then break them up in the
+same way into their details. Apply the <i>steps</i> suggested
+for drawing to the study of composition,
+searching for balance chiefly, or for some other
+quality which is proper to composition.</p>
+
+<p><b>Line.</b>&mdash;Each of the main elements of composition
+can be used as a problem of arrangement.
+You can study <i>composition</i> in line, in mass, or in
+color.</p>
+
+<p>"The Golden Stairs," by Burne-Jones, is almost
+purely an arrangement in <i>line</i>, and beautifully illustrates
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>
+the use of this element as the main &aelig;sthetic motive in a picture.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 40%;">
+<a name="illus187" id="illus187"></a>
+<img src="images/illus187.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Golden Stairs." title="The Golden Stairs." />
+</div>
+
+<p>Compare this composition in line with the "Descent from the Cross," in
+which the <i>line</i> is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in
+connection with <i>mass</i> to a much greater extent, and involved with
+interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. Consider the effect which each picture
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>
+derives as a whole from this management of these
+elements. The one emphasizing that of line, with
+the resultant of rhythm and grace; the other balancing
+the elements, and so gaining power and
+impressiveness.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus188" id="illus188"></a>
+<img src="images/illus188.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Sower." title="The Sower." />
+<span class="caption">The Sower. <i>Millet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight and
+dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>
+Often the whole composition should be a balancing
+of the elements, as in this case. But the
+emphasizing of one element will always emphasize
+the characteristics to which those elements tend
+as the main characteristic of the picture.</p>
+
+<p>Grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally
+from arrangement chiefly in <i>line</i>. If <i>mass</i> comes
+into the picture, the masses may be arranged to
+help the <i>line</i>, or to modify it. In "The Sower"
+the management of mass is such as to give great
+dignity, and almost solemnity, to the picture, yet
+not to take away from the rhythmic swing and
+action of the figure which comes from line, but
+even to emphasize it. Compare this in these respects
+with the lighter grace of "The Golden
+Stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater
+activity, of the "Descent from the Cross."</p>
+
+<p>Of course masses will come into the picture;
+but either the masses themselves can be arranged
+into line, or there can be emphasis given to lines
+which break up or modify the masses, so that the
+character of the picture is governed by them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Mass.</b>&mdash;In the arrangement of mass, light and
+shade and color are effective. Smaller groups may
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span>
+be made into a larger one, and individual objects
+also brought together, by grouping them in light
+or in shade, or by giving them a common color.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus191" id="illus191"></a>
+<img src="images/illus191.jpg" width="100%" alt="Return to the Farm." title="Return to the Farm." />
+<span class="caption">Return to the Farm. <i>Millet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the statuesque."</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics
+of <i>mass</i>. Line in this connection only
+takes from the brusqueness that mass alone would
+have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony.
+The "Return to the Farm," by Millet,
+shows this combination, the reverse of "The
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+Sower." In this, the <i>line</i> is used to enrich the
+repose and weight, the statuesque of the <i>mass</i>.
+In the other, the <i>mass</i> gives dignity and impressiveness
+to the grace and rhythm of the <i>line</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The color scheme of course will have an equal
+effect in the emphasizing or modifying of the
+motive of line or mass. Color will not only have
+an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it,
+or the balance will be lost.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color.</b>&mdash;This is mainly where composition in
+color will come in. Light and shade or chiaroscuro,
+as I explained in the last chapter, are necessarily
+intimately connected with composition here.
+And you never work in color or mass without
+working in light and shade also. Of color itself I
+shall speak in the next chapter. It is only necessary
+to point out the fact of connection here. Of
+course in painting, all the elements are most
+closely related. Although it is necessary to speak
+of them separately in the actual working out, you
+keep them all in mind together, and so make them
+continually help and modify each other.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Principle.</b>&mdash;There is a well-established principle
+in architecture, that you must never try to
+emphasize two proportions in one structure. A
+hall may be long and narrow, but not both long
+and wide; in which case the proportions would
+neutralize each other&mdash;you would have a simple
+square, characterless. You may emphasize height
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+or breadth&mdash;not both, or you get the same negative
+character.</p>
+
+<p>So you may apply this principle more or less
+exactly to the composition of a picture. Don't
+try to express too many things in one picture, or
+if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all
+the rest be subordinate to it. There is perhaps
+no law more rigid than the one which denies success
+to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and
+purpose. One main idea in each picture, and
+everything subordinated to lend itself to the
+strengthening of that.</p>
+
+<p>To a certain extent this will apply to line and
+mass, though not absolutely. As a rule, line or
+mass, one or the other, must be the main element.</p>
+
+<p><b>Leverage.</b>&mdash;I have often thought that much
+insight into the principles of balance of masses,
+and of mass and line, could be gained by thinking
+of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A
+small mass, or a simple line or accent, may be
+made to balance a very much greater mass. The
+greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be
+balanced by quite a small spot. But leverage
+must come in to help. Somewhere in the picture
+will be the point of support, the fulcrum. And
+the large mass and the small one will have an
+obvious relation with reference to that point. Or
+the element of apparent density will come in.
+The large mass will be the least dense, the small
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+one the most dense, and the equilibrium is established.
+For composition is but the equilibrium of
+the picture, and equilibrium the picture must
+have.</p>
+
+<p>There are many rules as to placing of mass and
+arrangement of line, but they are all more or less
+arbitrary and limiting in influence. Individuality
+must and will ignore such rules, just because composition
+deals chiefly with the abstract qualities
+rules will not help. A fine feeling or perception
+of what is right is the only law, and the trained eye
+is the only measure. As in values, so in composition
+you must study relations in nature, and results
+in the work of the masters, to train your eye
+to see; and you must sketch and block in all sorts
+of combinations with your own hand, to give you
+practical experience.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scale.</b>&mdash;One point of great importance should
+be noticed. That is the effect on the observer of
+the size of any main mass or object with reference
+to the size of the canvas. This is analogous
+to what is called <i>scale</i> in architecture.</p>
+
+<p>If the mass or object is justly proportioned to
+the whole surface of the canvas, and is treated in
+accordance with it, it will impose its own scale on
+all other objects. You can make a figure impress
+the observer as being life size, although it may
+really be only a few inches long. A house or
+castle coming into the picture may be made to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+give its scale to the surroundings, and make them
+seem small instead of itself seeming merely an
+object in a picture. This will be due to the
+<i>placing</i> of it on the canvas, largely, and more
+in this than in anything else. The manner of
+painting will also lend importantly to it; for an
+object to appear big must not be drawn nor
+painted in a little manner.</p>
+
+<p>The placing of objects of a known size near, to
+give scale, is a useless expedient in such a case.
+At times it may be successful, often of use; but
+if the scale of the main object is false, the other
+object of known size, instead of giving size to the
+main one, as it is intended to do, will be itself
+dwarfed by it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Placing.</b>&mdash;This matter of placing is one which
+you should constantly practise. Make it a regular
+study when you are sketching from nature. Try
+to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your
+study of composition. In making a sketch, look
+for one main effect, and often have that effect the
+importance of some object, studying to give it
+<i>scale</i> by the placing and the treatment of it, and
+its relation to the things surrounding it in nature
+and on the canvas. In this way you will be studying
+composition in a most practical way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Still Life.</b>&mdash;For practical study of composition,
+the most useful materials you can have are to be
+found in still life. Nowhere can you have so great
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span>
+freedom of arrangement in the concrete. You
+can take as many actual objects as you please, and
+place them in all sorts of relations to each other,
+studying their effect as to grouping; and so study
+most tangibly the principles as well as the practice
+of bringing together line and mass and color as
+elements, through the means of actual objects.
+This you should constantly do, till composition is
+no more an abstract thing, but a practical study in
+which you may work out freely and visibly intellectual
+&aelig;sthetic ideas almost unconsciously, and train
+your eye to see instinctively the possibilities of
+all sorts of compositions, and to correct the falsities
+of accidental combinations.</p>
+
+<p><b>Don't Attempt too much.</b>&mdash;Don't be too ambitious.
+Begin with simple arrangements, and add to them,
+studying the structure of each new combination
+and grouping. When you are going to paint,
+remember that too much of an undertaking will
+not give you any more beauty in the picture, and
+may lead to discouragement.</p>
+
+<p>In the Chapter on "Still Life" I will explain
+more practically the means you may take, and how
+you may take them, to the end of making composition
+a practical study to you.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2>
+
+<h3>COLOR</h3>
+
+
+<p>The subject of color naturally divides, for the
+painter, into two branches,&mdash;color as a <i>quality</i>,
+and color as <i>material</i>. Considered in the former
+class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and
+a scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is
+a material and technical one. The material and
+technical side has been treated of in the Chapter
+on "Pigments." In this chapter we will have to
+do with color considered as an &aelig;sthetic element.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Abstract.</b>&mdash;The quality of <i>color</i> is the third of
+the great elements or qualities, through the management
+of which the painter works &aelig;sthetically.</p>
+
+<p>Just as he uses all the material elements of his
+picture as the means of making concrete and visible
+those combinations of line and mass which
+go to the making of the &aelig;sthetic structure, so he
+uses these in the expression of the ideal in combinations
+of color. In this relation nothing stands
+to him for what it is, but for what it may be made
+to do for the color-scheme of his picture. If he
+wants a certain red in a certain place, he wants it
+because it is red, and it makes little difference to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>
+him, <i>thinking in color</i>, whether that red note is
+actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a
+scarlet ribbon, or by a lobster. The scarlet spot
+is what he is thinking of, and what object most
+naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to
+be decided by the demands of the subject of the
+picture; and its fitness as to that is the only thing
+which has any influence beyond the main fact that
+red color is needed at that point. If he were a
+designer of conventional ornament, the color problem
+would be the same. At that point a spot of
+red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do
+it. The painter thinks in color the same way, but
+he expresses himself in different materials.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Ideal.</b>&mdash;This is the reason that a still-life
+painting is as interesting to a painter as a subject
+which to another finds its great interest in the
+telling of a story. To the painter the story, or
+the objects which tell it, are of minor importance.
+That the picture is beautiful in color is what
+moves him. As composition and color the thing
+is an admirable piece of &aelig;sthetic thinking and
+&aelig;sthetic expression, and so gives him a purely
+&aelig;sthetic delight; and the technical process is secondary
+with him, interesting only because he is a
+technician. The representation of the objects
+incidental to the subject is as incidental to his
+interest, as it is to the picture considered as an
+&aelig;sthetic thought.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+This is what the layman finds it so impossible
+to take into his mental consciousness. And it is
+probable that many painters do not so distinguish
+their artistic point of view from their human point
+of view. But consciously or unconsciously the
+painter does think in these terms of color, line,
+and mass when he is working out his picture; and
+whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics
+are the great influencing facts in his
+judgment of pictures, as well as in the growth and
+permanency of his own fame. That is why a great
+popular reputation dies so rapidly in many instances.
+The &aelig;sthetic qualities of the man's work
+are the only ones which can insure a permanent
+reputation for that work; for the art of painting is
+fundamentally &aelig;sthetic, and nothing external to
+that can give it an artistic value. Without that
+its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental
+coincidence with popular taste.</p>
+
+<p>If a painter is really great in the power of
+conception and of expression of any of the great
+&aelig;sthetic elements, his work will be permanently
+great. It will be acknowledged to be so by the
+consensus of the world's opinion in the long run;
+nothing else can make it so, and nothing but obliteration
+can prevent it.</p>
+
+<p>I am explicit in stating these ideas, not because
+I expect that you will learn from this book to be
+a great master of the &aelig;sthetic, but because I am
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span>
+assured that you can never be a painter unless you
+understand a painter's true problems. You must
+be able to know a good picture in order to make a
+good picture, and however little you try for, your
+work will be the better for having a painter's way
+of looking at a painter's work. The technical problems
+are the control of the materials of expression.
+The painter must have that control. The student's
+business is to attain that control, and then
+he has the means to convey his ideas. But those
+ideas, if he be a true painter, are not ideas of history
+or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and
+color, and of their combinations.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Color Sense.</b>&mdash;Therefore color is a thing to
+be striven for for its own sake. Good color is a
+value in itself. You may not have the genius to
+be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one;
+for the color sense can be definitely acquired.
+I will not say that color initiative can always be
+acquired; but the power to perceive and to judge
+good color can be, and it will go far towards the
+making of a good painter, even of a great one.</p>
+
+<p>I knew one painter who came near to greatness,
+and near to greatness as a colorist, who in twelve
+years trained his eye and feeling from a very inferior
+perception of color to the power which, as
+I say, came near to greatness. He was an able
+painter and a well-trained one before that; but in
+this direction he was deficient, and he deliberately
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span>
+set about it to educate that side of himself, with
+the result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply
+by recognizing where he needed training, and
+working constantly from nature to perceive fine
+distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe
+self-criticism. Summer after summer he went out-doors
+and worked with colors and canvas to study
+out certain problems. Every year he set himself
+mainly one problem to solve. This year it might
+be luminosity; next it might be the domination of
+a certain color; another year the just discrimination
+of tones&mdash;and he became a most exquisite
+colorist.</p>
+
+<p>So, as I knew his work before and after this self-training,
+and as I know personally of the means he
+took to attain his purpose, I think I can speak positively
+of the fact that such development of the
+color sense is possible.</p>
+
+<p><b>Taste.</b>&mdash;It is well to remember that taste in
+color is not dependent on personal judgment alone;
+that what is good and what is bad in color does
+not rest on mere opinion. That a good colorist's
+idea of color does not agree with your own is not
+a matter of mere whim or liking, in which you
+have quite as good a right to your opinion as he
+has to his. The colorist, it is true, does not produce
+or judge of color by rule. He works from
+his feeling of what is right. But there is a law
+back of his taste and feeling. The laws of color
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span>
+harmony are definite, and have been definitely
+studied and definitely calculated. Color depends
+for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of
+light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color Waves.</b>&mdash;These waves of light give sensations
+of color which vary with the rapidity or length
+of the wave, and certain combinations of wave
+lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others
+will not be. This is a matter of scientific fact;
+it is not a notion. The mathematical relations of
+color waves have been calculated as accurately as
+the relations of sound waves have been. It is possible
+to make combinations of mathematical figures
+which shall represent a series of harmonious color
+waves. And it is possible to measure the waves
+radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove
+them, <i>mathematically</i>, to be bad color.</p>
+
+<p>It is a satisfaction to the artist to know that
+this is so; because although he will never compose
+color-schemes by the aid of mathematics, it gives
+him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes
+the assurance of the man who claims the right to
+assert his opinion on color because "one man's
+taste is as good as another's." It is also encouraging
+to the student to know it, because he then
+knows that there is a definite knowledge, and not
+a personal idiosyncrasy, on which he can found his
+attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic life.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color Composition.</b>&mdash;The artist's problem in color
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span>
+composition is <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'analagous'">analogous</ins> to that of line and mass,
+but is of course governed by conditions peculiar
+to it. The qualities which derive from line and
+mass are emphasized or modified by the management
+of color in relation to them. The painter
+in this direction uses the three elements together.
+Contrast and accent are attributes of color. Dignity
+and weight, as well as certain emotional qualities,
+such as vivacity and sombreness, may give
+the key to the picture in accordance with the arrangement
+of its color-scheme.</p>
+
+<p>The mass may be simplified and strengthened,
+or broken up and lightened, by the color of the
+forms in it. By massing groups of objects in the
+same color, or by introducing different colors in
+the different forms in the same group, the mass
+is emphasized or weakened. So in line, the same
+color in repetition will carry the line through a
+series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the
+emphasis of line. Masses can be strung into line,
+like beads, on a thread of color. In the great compositions
+of the old Venetian painters this marshalling
+of color groups constituted a principal
+element. The decorative unity of these great canvases
+could have been possible in no other way.</p>
+
+<p>As I have said, the key of the color-scheme has
+a direct emotional effect, so adding to the power
+and dignity or the grace and lightsomeness of
+the composition. The analogy between color and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>
+imagination is marked. Certain temperaments instinctively
+express their ideals through color. To
+the painter color may be an all-influencing power;
+it is the glory of painting.</p>
+
+<p>Drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks
+directly to the emotions, and conveys at a glance
+the idea which is re-enforced through the slower
+intellectual perception of the meaning of forms.
+In some unexplained way it expresses to the observer
+the temperamental mood; the joyousness,
+the severity or agitation which was the cause of
+its conception. In this strange but direct manner
+the color note aids the expression by line and
+mass of the &aelig;sthetic emotion which is the meaning
+of the painter's thought.</p>
+
+<p><b>Key.</b>&mdash;The key, then, is an important part of
+the picture. The very terms <i>warm</i> and <i>cold</i> applied
+to colors suggest what may be done by color
+arrangement. The <i>pitch</i> of the picture places it,
+in the emotional scale.</p>
+
+<p><b>Tone.</b>&mdash;Tone is harmony; the perfect balance
+of color in all parts of the picture. Fine color
+always means the presence, in all the color of the
+picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less
+proportion. Leave one color out in some proportion,
+and you have just so much less of a balance.
+I do not mean that some touch may not be pure
+color. On the contrary, the whole picture may be
+built up of touches of pure color. But the balance
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+of color must be made then by touches of the different
+colors balancing each other, not only all
+over the picture, but in each part of it, to avoid
+crudity or over-proportion of any color. Generally
+the color scheme is dominated by some one color:
+which means that every touch of color on the canvas
+is modified to some extent by the presence of
+that color, keeping the whole in key. Each color
+retains its personal quality, but the quality of the
+dominant color is felt in it.</p>
+
+<p><b>False Tone.</b>&mdash;This is not to be attained by painting
+the picture regardless of color relations, and
+then glazing or scumbling some color all over the
+whole. This is the false tone of some of the
+older historical painters, particularly of the English
+school of the earlier part of this century.
+They "painted" the picture, and then just before
+exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with
+a large brush and some transparent pigment, generally
+bitumen. This did, in fact, bring the picture
+in tone after a fashion. But it is not a colorist's
+method. It is the rule of thumb method of a
+false technique and a vicious color sense. True
+tone is not something put onto the picture after
+it is painted. It is an inherent part of its color
+conception, and is worked into it while the picture
+is being painted, and grows to perfection with the
+growth of the picture. It is of the very essence
+of the picture. It is the dominant balance of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+color qualities; the result of a perfect appreciation
+of the value of every color spot which goes to
+the expression of the artist's thought.</p>
+
+<p>In one sense it is the same as <i>atmosphere</i> in
+that the tonality of the picture is the atmosphere
+which pervades it. It may perhaps be best described
+by saying that it is that combination of
+color which gives to the picture the effect of every
+object and part in it having been seen under
+the same conditions of atmosphere; having been
+seen at the same time, with the same modification,
+and with the same degree and quality of light
+vibration. Tone is <i>color value</i> as distinguished
+from value as degree of power as light and shade;
+and in this is the perfection of subtlety of color
+feeling.</p>
+
+<p><b>Tone Painters and Colorists.</b>&mdash;Some painters have
+been called "tone painters," while others have
+been called "colorists;" not that tone painters are
+not colorists, but that there is a difference. It is
+a difference of aim, a difference of desire. Those
+painters who are usually called colorists, like Titian
+and Rubens, are in love with the richness and
+power of the color gamut. They are full of the
+splendor of color. They paint in full key, however
+balanced the canvas. Each note of color tells for
+its full power. Their stop is the open diapason,
+and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals
+and full chords.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>
+The tone painter deals with close intervals. He
+is in love with subtle harmonies. What he loves
+is the essence of the color quality, and not its
+splendor. With the closest range he can give all
+possible half-tones and shades and modulations of
+color, yet never exceed the gray note perhaps;
+never once go to the full extent of his palette-power.</p>
+
+<p>The utmost delicacy of perception and feeling,
+and the most perfect command of materials and of
+values, are necessary to such a painter. Above
+all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite
+subtlety and the exquisiteness of power are his.
+And yet this is the thing least appreciated by the
+lay mind, the most difficult to encompass, and requiring
+the most knowledge to appreciate.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scientific Color.</b>&mdash;To the scientist color is simply
+the irritation of the nerves of the retina of the eye
+by the waves of light. Different wave lengths
+give different color sensations. It is the generally
+accepted theory now that there are three primary
+sensations; that is, that the eye is sensitive
+to three kinds of color, and that all other shades
+and varieties of color are the results of mingling
+or overlapping of the waves which produce those
+three colors, and irritating more or less the nerves
+sensitive to each color simultaneously. These
+three primary colors are now stated to be red,
+blue, and <i>green</i>. The older idea was that they
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>
+were red, blue, and <i>yellow</i>; and was based on experiments
+with pigments. Pigments do give these
+results; for a mixture of blue and yellow <i>pigment</i>
+will give green, and a mixture of red and green
+<i>pigment</i> will not give yellow, while the reverse is
+the fact with <i>light</i>.</p>
+
+<p>White light is composed of all the colors. And
+the white light may be broken up (separated by
+refraction or the turning aside of light rays from
+their true course) into the colors of the rainbow,
+which is itself only this same decomposition of
+light by atmospheric refraction. Black is the absence
+of light, and consequently of color. This is
+not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has
+never been produced. The pigment simply reflects
+light rays which fall on it; that is, pigments
+have the power of absorbing, and so rendering invisible,
+certain of the rays which, combined, make
+up the white light which illumines them; and of
+transmitting others to the eye by reflection. We
+see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by,
+those rays which are not absorbed, but which are
+reflected.</p>
+
+<p>All pigment is more or less absorbent of color
+rays, and more or less reflective of them; certain
+color rays being absorbed by a pigment, and certain
+other rays being reflected by it. The pigment
+is named according to those rays which it
+reflects. As a color-producing substance, then,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color
+rays. But a true mirror would reflect all rays
+unmodified. If we could paint with mirrors, each
+of which would reflect its own color <i>unsullied</i>, we
+could do what the scientist does with light; but
+the painter deals with an imperfect mirror which
+gives no color rays back unsullied by rays of
+another class, and so our results cannot be the
+same as the scientist's. So that just in accordance
+with the degree of purity of transmitting power of
+a pigment will be the purity of the color which
+we get by its use. But absolute purity of pigment
+we cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do
+with light, and we deal with a practical fact rather
+than a scientific fact, as painters.</p>
+
+<p><b>Primaries and Secondaries.</b>&mdash;As all the other shades
+of color are produced by the combinations (over-lappings)
+of the waves or vibrations in the light
+rays from the primary colors, we have a series of
+colors called secondaries, because they are made
+up of the rays of any two of the three primaries:
+as purple, which is a combination of blue and red.
+When dealing with <i>light</i> the secondaries are:
+shades of violet and purple from red and blue;
+shades of orange red, orange, orange yellow, yellow,
+and yellowish green from red and green; and
+bluish green and greenish blue from blue and
+green&mdash;the character of the color being decided
+by the proportions of the primaries in the mixture.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>
+These conclusions have been reached mainly
+through experiments in white light. The primaries
+so obtained do not hold good with pigment, as
+I have stated, but the principles do. It will avoid
+confusion if I speak hereafter of the combinations
+as they occur with pigment, it being borne in mind
+that it is a practical fact that we are dealing with
+rather than a scientific one.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with <i>pigment</i> the primaries are red,
+blue, and <i>yellow</i>, not <i>green</i>. Of course the secondaries
+are also changed; and we have purple and
+violet shades from red and blue, orange from red
+and <i>yellow</i>, and green from blue and yellow&mdash;all
+of which vary in shade with the proportion of
+the mixture of the primaries, as is the case with
+light.</p>
+
+<p><b>Tertiaries.</b>&mdash;Another class of shades or colors
+is called <i>tertiary</i>, or third; for they are mixtures
+of all the three primaries, or of a primary with a
+secondary which does not result from mixture with
+that primary. Tertiaries are all <i>grays</i>, and grays
+are practically always tertiaries. If you keep this
+in mind as a technical fact, it will help you in
+management of color. Grays are, to the painter,
+always combinations of color which include the
+three primaries. The usual idea is that gray is
+more or less of a negation of color. This is not
+so. Gray is the balancing of all color, so that any
+true harmony of color, however rich it may be, is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>
+always quiet in effect as a whole; that is, grayish&mdash;good
+color is never garish. It is very important
+that the painter should understand this characteristic
+of color. You cannot be too familiar with
+the management of grays. If you try to make
+your grays with negative colors, you will not produce
+harmonious color, but negative color, and
+negative color is only a shirking of the true problem.
+Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings
+of primaries and secondaries, that is,
+modifications of the tertiaries, are quite as quiet
+in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they
+are also more luminous; they are <i>live</i> color instead
+of <i>dead</i> color. Grays made by mixing black with
+everything are the reverse, and should not be used
+except when you use black as a color (which it is
+in <i>pigment</i>), giving a certain color quality to the
+gray that results from it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Complementary Colors.</b>&mdash;Two colors are said to be
+complementary to each other when they together
+contain the three primaries in equal strength.
+Green, for instance, is the complementary of red,
+for it contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow
+and red) is complementary to blue; and purple
+(red and blue) is complementary to yellow.</p>
+
+<p>The knowledge of complements of colors is very
+important to the painter, for all the effects of color
+contrast and color harmony are due to this. Complementary
+colors, in mass, side by side, contrast.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>
+The greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries.</p>
+
+<p>Complementary colors mixed, or so placed that
+small portions of them are side by side, as in hatching
+or stippling, give the tertiaries or grays by
+the mixing of the rays.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Law of Color Contrast.</b>&mdash;"When two dissimilar
+colors are placed in contiguity, they are always
+modified in such a manner as to increase their
+dissimilarity."</p>
+
+<p><b>Warm and Cold Colors.</b>&mdash;Red and yellow are called
+warm colors, and blue is called a cold color. This
+is not that the color is really cold or warm, of
+course, but that they convey the impression of
+warmth and coldness. It is mainly due to association
+probably, for those things which are warm
+contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and
+those which are cold contain more blue. There is
+a predominance of cold color in winter and of the
+warm colors in summer.</p>
+
+<p>From the primaries various degrees of warmth
+and coldness characterize the secondaries and tertiaries,
+as they contain more or less proportionately
+of the warm or cold primaries.</p>
+
+<p>In contrasting colors these qualities have great
+effect.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color Juxtaposition.</b>&mdash;In studying the facts of
+color contrast and color juxtaposition you will find
+that two pigments, if mixed in the ordinary way,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span>
+will have one effect; and the same pigments in the
+same proportions, mixed not by stirring them into
+one mass, but by laying separate spots or lines of
+the pigment side by side, produce quite another.
+The gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing
+is great, because you have mixed the <i>color rays</i>,
+which are really light rays, instead of mixing the
+<i>pigment</i> as in the usual way. You have really
+mixed the color by mixing <i>light</i> as far as it is possible
+to do it with pigment. You have taken advantage
+of all the light reflecting power of the
+pigment on which the color effect depends. Each
+pigment, being nearly pure, reflects the rays of
+color peculiar to it, unaffected by the neutralizing
+effect of another color mixed with it; while the
+neutralizing power of the other color being side by
+side with it, the waves or vibrations of the color
+rays blend by overlapping as they come side by
+side to the eye; and so the color, made up of the
+two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant
+and full of life.</p>
+
+<p><b>"Yellow and Purple."</b>&mdash;It is this principle which
+is the cause of the peculiarity in the technique of
+certain "Impressionist" painters. The "yellow
+lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the
+side of a color that color which will be most
+effective in forcing its note.</p>
+
+<p>Brilliancy is what these men are after, and they
+get it by the study of the law of color contrast
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span>
+and color juxtaposition. The effect of complementaries
+in color contrast is what you must study
+for this, for the theory of it. For the practice of
+it, study carefully and faithfully the actual colors
+in nature, and try to see what are the real notes,
+what the really component colors, of any color
+contrast or light contrast which you see. Purple
+shadows and yellow light re-enforcing each other
+you will find to exist constantly in nature. Refine
+your color perception, and you will be able
+to get the result without the obviousness of the
+means which has brought down the condemnation
+on it. Closer study of the relations is the way to
+find the art of concealing art.</p>
+
+<p>But yellow and purple are not the only complementaries.
+All through the range of color, the
+secondaries and tertiaries as well as the primaries,
+this principle of complement plays a part. There
+is no color effect you can use in painting which
+does not have to do, more or less, with the placing
+of the complementary color in mass, to emphasize;
+or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it.
+Train your eyes to see what the color is which
+makes the effect. Analyze it, see the parts in
+the thing, so that you may get the thing in the
+same way, if you would get it of the same force as
+in nature.</p>
+
+<p><b>Practical Color.</b>&mdash;All these theoretical ideas as to
+color have their relation to the actual handling of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span>
+pigment, which is the craft of the painter. The
+facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation
+have a practical bearing on the painter's work,
+both in what he is to express and how he is to do
+it; as to his conception of a picture and his representation
+of facts. In his conception he must
+deal with the possibilities of effect of color on
+color. The power of one color to strengthen the
+personal hue of another, or its power to modify
+that hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color
+in the picture is the true image of the color he
+has seen in his mind. In the same degree must
+this possibility affect his representation of actual
+objects.</p>
+
+<p>The greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight
+or atmospheric effects come from the power
+to produce vibration by cool contrasted with warm
+color. You will find that a red is not so rich in
+any position as when you place its complementary
+near it. At times you will find it impossible to
+get the snap and sparkle to a scarlet&mdash;cannot
+make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture
+as you want it without placing a touch of purple,
+perhaps, just beside it; to place near by a darker
+note will not have the same effect. It is the contrast
+of color vibration, not the contrast of light
+and shade, which gives the life. And at the same
+time that you enhance the brilliancy of the several
+notes of color in the picture, you harmonize the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span>
+whole. For the mosaic of color spots all over
+the canvas brings about the balance of color in
+the composition, and harmony is the result.</p>
+
+<p><b>Study Relations.</b>&mdash;You must constantly study the
+actual relations of color in nature. You will find,
+if you look for it, that always, just where in art
+you would need a touch of the complementary for
+strength or for harmony, nature has put it there.
+She does it so subtly that only a close observer
+would suspect it. But the thing is there, and
+it is your business to be the close observer who
+sees it, both for your training as a colorist, and
+your use as an interpreter of nature's beauties.
+It is your business to see subtly, for nature uses
+colors subtly. The note sparkles in nature, but
+you do not notice the complementary color near
+it. Can you not also place the complementary
+color so that it is not seen, but its influence on
+the important color is felt? It is by searching
+out these <i>finesses</i> of nature that you train your
+eye. You must actually see these colors. At
+first you may only know that they must be there
+because the effect is there. But your eye is capable
+of actually recognizing them themselves, and
+you are no painter till it can. The theoretical
+knowledge is and should be a help to you, but
+the actual power of sight is most important. A
+painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his
+self-training, but power of eye he must have as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>
+the result of that training. The instantaneous
+recognition of facts and relations, the immediate
+and perfect union of eye and thought, are what
+make that intuitive perception which is the true
+feeling of the artist.</p>
+
+<p>Work this out with eye and palette. Study the
+color and its relation in nature, and study its analogy
+in the pigment touches on the canvas.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Palette.</b>&mdash;You try to attain nature's effects
+of light with pigment. Pigment is less pure than
+light. You cannot have the same scale, the same
+range, but you must do the best you can, and the
+arrangement of your palette will help you. As
+you have not a perfect blue, a perfect red, and a
+perfect yellow, you must have two colors for one.
+Your paints will always be more or less impurely
+primary. No one red will make a pure purple
+with blue, and an equally pure orange with yellow.
+Yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able
+to make. Have, then, both a yellowish or orange
+red and a bluish or purplish red on your palette.
+Do the same with blue and yellow. In this way
+you can not only get approximately pure secondaries
+when you need them, but the primaries themselves
+lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so
+that you can make very delicate combinations
+with pure colors. A bluish yellow and a yellowish
+blue, for instance, will make a rather positive
+green. By using a reddish yellow and a bluish or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span>
+purplish red, you practically bring in the red note,
+and make a grayer green while still using only
+two pigments.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, you get similar control of effects by the
+use of opaque or transparent pigments, the transparent
+ones tending to richness, the opaque to dulness
+of color. Various processes in the manner
+of laying on paint bring about these different
+qualities, and will be spoken of in the chapter on
+"Processes."</p>
+
+<p>Classify your pigments in your mind in accordance
+with these characteristics. Think of the
+ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque, and as
+yellows tending to the reddish. With any blue
+they make gray greens because of the latter quality,
+and they make gray oranges with red because
+of the dulness of their opacity and body. For
+richer greens think of the lighter chromes and
+cadmium yellows or citrons; and for the richer
+oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. With
+reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions
+for one side of the scale, and the Chinese
+or bluish vermilion on the other side. The deeper
+and heavier reds fall in line the same way. Indian
+red is bluish, light red and Venetian red are yellowish.</p>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+<h1><a name="PART_IV" id="PART_IV"></a>PART IV<br /><br />
+PRACTICAL APPLICATION</h1>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII</h2>
+
+<h3>REPRESENTATION</h3>
+
+
+<p>Although much has been said about the theoretical
+and abstract side of painting, and the importance
+of the &aelig;sthetic elements in art have
+been insisted upon, it is not to be supposed for a
+moment that painting does not deal with actual
+things. All painting which is not purely conventional
+must deal with and represent nature and
+natural facts. These are the body of the picture;
+the &aelig;sthetic elements are the heart of it. I believe
+that it is important that you should know
+that there is that side to painting, and should have
+some insight into it; that you should see that
+there is something else to think of than the imitation
+of natural objects. I would have you think
+more nobly of painting than to believe that "the
+greatest imitation is the greatest art." Beneath
+the imitation of the obvious facts of nature are
+the deeper facts and truths, and in and through
+these may you express those qualities of intellectual
+creation by means of which only, painting is
+not a craft, but an art.</p>
+
+<p>But for all that, painting does, and always must,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span>
+deal with those obvious facts; and however much
+you may give your mind to the problems of composition
+and color, you must base it on a foundation
+of ability to represent what you see. Represent
+well the external objects, and you are in a position
+to interpret the spirit of them. For as nature
+only manifests her inner spirit through her
+outward forms and facts, you must be able to
+paint these well before you can do anything else.</p>
+
+<p>The intellectual action which perceives and constructs
+is the art, the skill which represents and
+reproduces is the science, of painting.</p>
+
+<p>Painting is the art of expression in color. The
+fact of color rather than form is the fundamental
+characteristic of it. The use of pigment rather
+than other materials is implied in its name.
+Therefore the science of painting deals with the
+materials with which to produce on canvas all
+manner of visible color combinations; and those
+processes of manipulation which make possible
+the representation of all the facts of color and
+light, of substance and texture, through which
+nature manifests herself.</p>
+
+<p>It is not enough to have the pigment, nor even
+that it should get itself onto the canvas. Different
+characteristics call for different management
+of paint. Luminosity of light and sombreness of
+shadow will not be expressed by the same color,
+put on in the same way. Different forms and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span>
+surfaces and objects demand different treatment.
+The science of painting must deal with all these.</p>
+
+<p>It has been said that there are as many ways
+of painting as there are painters. Certainly there
+are as many ways as there are men of any originality.
+For however a painter has been trained,
+whatever the methods which he has been taught
+to use, he will always change them, more or less,
+in adapting them to his own purposes. And as
+the main intent of the art of an epoch or period
+differs from that of a previous one, so the manner
+of laying on paint will change to meet the needs
+of that difference. The manner of painting to-day
+is very different from that of other times. Some
+of the old processes are looked upon by the modern
+man as quite beneath his recognition. Yet
+these same methods are necessary to certain qualities,
+and if the modern man does not use or approve
+of those methods, it is because he is not
+especially interested in the qualities which they
+are necessary to.</p>
+
+<p>There is probably no one statement which all
+fair-minded painters will more willingly acquiesce
+in, than one which affirms that the method by
+which the result is attained is unimportant, provided
+that the result <i>is</i> attained, and that it is one
+worth attaining. Every man will, whether it is
+right or not, use those methods which most surely
+and completely bring about the expression of the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+thing he wishes to express. In the face of this
+fact, and of the many acknowledged masterpieces,
+every one of which was painted in defiance of
+some rule some time or other alleged to be the
+only right one, it is not possible to prescribe or
+proscribe anything in the direction of the manipulation
+of colors. The result <i>must</i> be right, and
+if it is, it justifies the means. If it be not right,
+the thing is worthless, no matter how perfectly
+according to rule the process may be. As Hunt
+said, "What do I care about the grammar if
+you've got something to say?" The important
+thing is to say something, and if you do really
+say something, and do really completely and precisely
+express it, as far as a painter is concerned it
+will be grammatical. If not to-day, the grammar
+will come round to it to-morrow. Henry Ward
+Beecher is reported to have answered to a criticism
+on grammatical slips in the heat of eloquence,
+"Young man, if the English language
+gets in the way of the expression of my thought,
+so much the worse for the English language!"
+In painting, at any rate, the <i>complete</i> expression of
+thought <i>is</i> grammatical, and if not, so much the
+worse for the grammarians.</p>
+
+<p><b>Try Everything.</b>&mdash;Know, then, all you can about
+all the ways of manipulating paint that have
+ever been used. Use any or all of those ways as
+you find them needful or helpful. There is none
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span>
+which has not the authority of a master behind
+it, and though another master may decry it, it is
+because, being a master, he claims the very right
+he denies to you.</p>
+
+<p>Experiment with all; but never use any method
+for the sake of the method, but only for what it is
+capable of doing for you in helping expression.</p>
+
+<p><b>Safety.</b>&mdash;The only real rule as to what to use
+and what not, applies to the effect on the permanence
+of your canvas. Never use pigments which
+will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause
+others to fade. Avoid all such using of materials
+as you know will make your picture crack, or in
+any other way bring about its deterioration.</p>
+
+<p><b>Good Painting.</b>&mdash;But for all I have just said,
+there is an acknowledged basis of what is good
+painting. If any man or school lays on paint in a
+frank, direct way, getting the effect by sheer force
+of putting on the right color in just the right
+place, with no tricks nor affectations, that is good
+painting; and the more simple, direct, and frank
+the manner of handling, the better the painting.</p>
+
+<p>Let us understand what direct painting is first,
+and then consider varieties of handling. For whatever
+may be the subsequent manipulations, the
+picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct
+possible manner of laying on paint, and the other
+processes are mainly to modify or to further and
+strengthen the effect suggested in the first painting.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span>
+And generally, also, in all sketches and
+studies which are preliminary preparations for the
+picture, the most direct painting is used, and the
+various processes are reserved for working out
+more subtle effects on the final canvas.</p>
+
+<p><b>Old Dutch Painting.</b>&mdash;Probably there are no better
+examples of frank painting than the works of the
+old Dutchmen. You should study them whenever
+you have a chance. Waiving all discussion as to
+the &aelig;sthetic qualities of their work,&mdash;as <i>painters</i>,
+as masters of the craft of laying on paint, they are
+unexcelled. And in most cases, too, they possessed
+the art of concealing their art. You will have to
+use the closest observation to discover the exact
+means they used to get the subtle tones and atmospheric
+effects.</p>
+
+<p>The only obvious quality is the perfect understanding
+and skill of their brush-work. In the
+smoothest as well as in the roughest of their work,
+you can note how perfectly the brush searches the
+modelling, and with the most exquisite expressiveness
+and perfect frankness, follows the structural
+lines. No doubt there were often paintings, glazings,
+and scumblings; but they always furthered
+the meaning of the first painting, and never in
+the least interfered with or obscured the effect of
+<i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i>, of candor of workmanship.</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work
+that you should strive to attain as the basis
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span>
+of your painting. Learn to express drawing with
+your brush, and to place at once and without indecision
+or timidity the exact tone and value of the
+color you see in nature at that point. Until you
+are enough of a master of your brush to get an effect
+in this way, do not meddle with the more complex
+methods of after-painting. You will never do
+good work by subsequent manipulation, if you have
+a groundwork of feebleness and indecision. Direct
+painting is the fundamental process of all good
+painting.</p>
+
+<p>Let me take the type of old Dutch painting to
+represent to you this quality of direct painting.
+First of all notice a basis of perfect drawing,&mdash;a
+knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits
+of no fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise
+and direct recognition of structure. Note that this
+drawing is as characteristic of the brush-work as
+of the drawing which is under it. Observe that
+the handling of the whole school, from the least to
+the greatest, is founded on a similar and perfect
+craftsmanship,&mdash;the same use of materials; the
+same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample
+palette; the same use of solid color candidly expressing
+the planes of modelling, freely following
+the lines of structure; the absence of affectation
+or invention of individual means. Whatever the
+individuality of the artist, it rests on something
+else than difference of technique. From the freest
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>
+and most direct of painters, Frans Hals, to the most
+smooth and detailed, Gerard Dou, the directness
+and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same,
+and founded on the same technical basis of color
+manipulation. The one is more eager, terse, the
+other more deliberate and complete; but both use
+the same pigments, both use the same solid color,
+are simple, lucid, both occupied solely with the
+thing to be expressed, and the least degree in the
+world with the manner of it. That manner comes
+from the same previous technical training which
+each uses in the most matter-of-course way, with
+only such change from the type, as his temperament
+unconsciously imposes on him.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus230" id="illus230"></a>
+<img src="images/illus230.jpg" width="100%" alt="The Fisher Boy." title="The Fisher Boy." />
+<span class="caption">The Fisher Boy. <i>Frans Hals.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and simplicity
+of means, always present in Dutch work, though never so free as with Hals.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span>
+There is nothing like it elsewhere. Study it;
+notice the unaffectedness of brush-stroke in Rembrandt.
+See how it is the same as Hals, but less
+perfunctory. See how the brush piles up paint
+again and again along the same ridge of flesh, taking
+no notice of its revelation of the insistence of
+attempt at the right value, nor of its roughness
+of surface. To get that drawing and that color in
+the <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'freeest'">freest</ins>, frankest, most direct way: that is the
+aim. The absolute conviction of it: that is the
+essence of this technique of the old Dutch masters.
+And whatever else it may have or may not
+have, you will find in it all that you can find anywhere
+of suggestion of direct and frank and sincere
+painting, and nothing I can say will give you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span>
+any such clear idea of what you should strive for
+as the basis of all the different sorts of brush-work
+necessary or useful in the production of an oil
+painting.</p>
+
+<p><b>Detail.</b>&mdash;The question of detail may well come
+in here. How far are you to carry detail in your
+painting? The Dutch painters went to both extremes.
+Gerard Dou worked two weeks on a
+broom-handle, and hoped to finish it in a few days
+more. Frans Hals would paint a head in an hour.
+The French painter Meissonier paints the high
+light on every button of a trooper's coat, and De
+Neuville barely paints the button at all. What
+way are you to turn? Which are you to choose?
+We have a great deal said nowadays against detail
+in painting. Much is said of breadth and broad
+painting. Which is right?</p>
+
+<p><b>True Breadth.</b>&mdash;The answer lies in the central
+idea of the picture. There are times when detail
+may be very minute, and times when the greatest
+freedom is essential. True breadth is compatible
+with much even minute detail in the same canvas.
+For breadth does not mean merely a large brush.
+It never means slap-dash. It is the just conception
+of the amount of detail necessary (and the
+amount necessary to be left out) in order that the
+idea of the picture may be best expressed.</p>
+
+<p>Detail is out of place in a large canvas always,
+and in proportion to its size it is allowable. A<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span>
+decorative canvas, a picture which is to be seen
+from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants
+effect, much justness of composition and color.
+Largeness of conception and execution, and only
+so much detail as shall be necessary to the best
+expression compatible with that largeness. On
+the other hand, a "cabinet picture," a small
+panel, will admit of microscopic detail if it be
+not so painted that the detail is all you can see.
+And just here is the heart of the whole matter.
+Whether you use much or little detail, it is not for
+the sake of the detail, not for any interest which
+lies in the detail itself, but for what power of
+expression may lie in it. If the picture, large or
+small, be largely conceived, and its main idea as
+to subject and those qualities of &aelig;sthetic meaning
+I have spoken of are always kept in view, and
+never allowed to lose themselves in the search for
+minuteness, then any amount of detail will take
+its place in true relation to the whole picture. If
+it does not do this it is bad.</p>
+
+<p>The relations of parts to the whole are the key
+to the situation always.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus234" id="illus234"></a>
+<img src="images/illus234.jpg" width="100%" alt="Boar-Hunt." title="Boar-Hunt." />
+<span class="caption">Boar-Hunt. <i>Snyders.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show relation of detail to the whole picture. The detail is carried far, yet does not interfere with emphasis
+of action and life. The picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span>
+Nothing is right which interferes with the true
+relations in the picture. This is where the working
+for detail is most likely to lead you astray. It
+takes great ability and power to keep detail where
+it belongs. Detail is always the search for small
+things, and they are almost sure to obtrude themselves
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span>
+to the neglecting of the more important
+things. Details which do not stay in their places
+had better be left out of the picture. There is
+such a thing as <i>values</i> in <i>facts</i> as well as other
+parts of your work. And this applies to breadth
+as well as to detail.</p>
+
+<p>Gerard Dou remains a great painter, and even
+a broad painter, strange as it may sound, in spite
+of his microscopic work. But only because of his
+breadth of eye. The detail is not the most important
+thing with him. It is in the picture, and
+you can see it when you look for it. But as you
+look at the picture it is not peppered all over with
+pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot
+be seen. Every detail stays back as it would in
+nature; loses itself in the part to which it belongs;
+modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen
+until it is looked for. This is broad painting, because
+the main things are emphasized; and if the
+details are painted they are seen in their true
+relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>With much or little detail, this is what is to
+be aimed at. Whether with big brushes or little
+ones, the expression of the main idea, of the important,
+the vital things,&mdash;this is broad painting,
+and this only.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>MANIPULATION</h3>
+
+
+<p><b>Premier Coup.</b>&mdash;Something similar to what I
+have spoken of as "direct painting" has long been
+a much-advocated manner of painting in France,
+under the name of <i>Premier Coup</i>; which means,
+translated literally, "first stroke."</p>
+
+<p>It is taught that the painter should use no after
+or overworkings at all; but that he should carefully
+and deliberately select the color for his brush-stroke,
+and then lay it on the canvas at one stroke,
+each after-stroke being laid beside some previous
+one, until the canvas has been covered by a mosaic
+of color each shade representing a single "first-stroke,"
+with no after-stroke laid over it to modify
+its effect. Such a process tends to great deliberation
+of work and exactness of study. Probably
+no better thing was ever devised for the training
+of the eye and hand. But it has its limits, and is
+not often rigidly adhered to in the painting of
+pictures; although the fresh, direct effect of this
+sort of work is preserved as far as possible in
+much modern French work, and that quality is
+held in great esteem.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>
+This manner of painting is especially useful in
+the making of sketches and studies, and leads to
+a strong control of the brush and the resources
+of the palette.</p>
+
+<p>In all painting of this character the color should
+have body. Transparent color should not be used
+alone, but only to modify the tint of the more solid
+pigments; for the transparent colors used indiscriminately
+are apt to crack, which characteristic
+is avoided when the heavier color forms the body
+of the paint.</p>
+
+<p><b>Solid Painting.</b>&mdash;In most cases solid painting is
+the safest,&mdash;the least likely to crack, and the
+most safely cleaned from varnish and dirt without
+injury to the paint itself. It is firmer in character
+too, and gives more solidity of effect to the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p><b>Mixing.</b>&mdash;In mixing colors you should be careful
+not to over mix. Don't stir your paint. Too
+much mixing takes the life out of the color. Particles
+of the pure color not too much broken
+up by mixing are valuable to your work, giving
+vibration and brilliancy to it. The reverse is muddiness,
+which is sure to come from too much fussing
+and overworking of wet paint. Don't use
+more than three pigments in one tint if you can
+help it, and mix them loosely. If you must use
+more colors, mix still more loosely. Put all the
+colors together, one beside the other, drag them
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>
+together with the brush, scoop them up loosely on
+the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly.
+Never muddle the color on the canvas. Don't put
+one color over another more than you can help;
+you will only get a thick mass of paint of one kind
+mixing with a mass of another, and the result will
+be dirty color, which of all things in painting is
+most useless.</p>
+
+<p>Keep the color clean and fresh, and have your
+brush-strokes firm and free. Never tap, tap, tap,
+your paint; make up your mind what the color is,
+and mix it as you want it. Decide just where
+the touch is to go, and lay it on frankly and fairly,
+and leave it. If it isn't right, daubing into it or
+pat-patting it won't help it. Either leave it, or
+mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped
+this one off.</p>
+
+<p>Don't try to economize on your mixing. A color
+mixed for one place will never do for another, so
+don't try to paint another place with it. Have
+the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color
+specially for each brush-stroke. On the other
+hand, don't be niggardly with your paint. Don't
+use less paint than you need. Mix an ample
+brushful and put it on; then mix another, and use
+judgment as to how much you should use each
+time. The variety of tone and value which comes
+of mixing new color for every touch of the brush
+is in itself a charm in a painting, aside from the
+greater truth you are likely to get by it.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus240" id="illus240"></a>
+<img src="images/illus240.jpg" width="100%" alt="Good Bock." title="Good Bock." />
+<span class="caption">Good Bock. <i>Manet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To illustrate direct and solid painting.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span>
+<b>Corrections.</b>&mdash;As far as you can, make corrections
+by over-painting when the paint is dry, or
+nearly so. When I say don't work into wet color
+to correct, I do not mean that you are never to do
+so, but that to do it too much is likely to get your
+work muddy and pasty. Of course it is almost
+impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when
+you do, do it with deliberation. Don't lose your
+head and pile wet paint on wet paint in the vain
+hope of getting the color by force of piling it on.
+You will only get it worse and worse. Get it as
+nearly right as you can. If it is hopeless, scrape
+it off clean, and mix a fresh tint. If it is as near
+right as you can see to mix it now, go ahead; and
+put a better color on that place to-morrow when it
+is dry, if you can.</p>
+
+<p><b>Keep at it.</b>&mdash;But above all don't be permanently
+satisfied with the almost. Don't be afraid to put
+paint over dry paint till it is right. Work at it
+day after day. Let the paint get thick if it will, if
+only you get the thing right. The secret of getting
+it right is to keep at it, and be satisfied with
+nothing less than the best you can do. When
+you can see nothing wrong you can do no better.
+But as long as your eye will recognize a difference
+between what is on the canvas and what ought to
+be there, you have not done your best, and you are
+shirking if you stop. Never call a thing done as
+long as you can see something wrong about it. No
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span>
+matter what any one else says, your work must
+come up <i>at least</i> to the standard of what you
+yourself can see.</p>
+
+<p><b>Loose Painting.</b>&mdash;Sometimes it is necessary to
+lay on paint very loosely in order to get vibration
+of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the
+same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show
+somewhat through the loose texture of the paint
+over it. Too much of this sort of thing is not to
+be desired, but its effect in the right place is not
+to be obtained in any other way. The paint may
+be dragged over the canvas with a long brush
+charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed,
+as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into
+its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel
+strokes. All these ways will be spoken of as they
+suggest themselves in other chapters. Solid color,
+generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of
+body is rather strengthened by it than the reverse.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scumbling.</b>&mdash;Another means of modifying the
+color and effect of a painting has perhaps always
+been more or less commonly in use. This is called
+<i>scumbling</i>, and may be considered under the head
+of solid painting, as it is always done with body,
+and never with transparent, color. The process
+consists of rubbing a mixture of body color, without
+thinning, over a surface previously painted and
+dried. Generally this <i>scumble</i> is of a lighter color
+than the under-painting, and is rubbed on with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span>
+a stubby brush slightly charged with the paint.
+As much surface as is desired may be covered in
+this way, and the result is to give a hazy effect
+to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color
+or of drawing. Often the effect is very successfully
+obtained. Distant effects may be painted
+solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into
+a general indefiniteness by scumbling. Too much
+scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and
+after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm
+color to avoid this.</p>
+
+<p>The scumble may be used with the richer and
+darker colors, too, to modify towards richness the
+tone of parts of the picture, or to darken the value.
+Most often, however, its value lies in its use to
+bring harsher and sharper parts together, and to
+give the hazy effect when it is needed.</p>
+
+<p>Scumbling will not have a good effect when it
+is not intended to varnish the picture afterwards;
+for the oil in the paint is absorbed immediately,
+and the rubbing of color gives a dead look to the
+canvas which is very unpleasant, and decidedly
+the reverse of artistic.</p>
+
+<p><b>Glazing.</b>&mdash;A very valuable process, the reverse
+of scumbling, is glazing. It has always been in
+use since the invention of the oil medium. All
+the Italian painters used it; it is an essential part
+of their system of coloring. The rich, deep color
+of Titian, the warm flesh of Raphael, and the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span>
+jewel-like quality of the early German painters are
+impossible without some form of glaze. The Germans
+perhaps made glazes with white of egg before
+oil was used as a vehicle. But to glaze is the
+only way to get the fullest effect of the quality
+characteristic of the transparent paints.</p>
+
+<p>A glaze is a thin wash of transparent color
+flowed over an under-painting to modify its tone
+or to add to its effect. It is not always transparent
+color, but usually it is. Sometimes opaque
+or semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze
+by virtue of the fact that it is thinned with a vehicle
+either oil or varnish, and <i>flowed</i> on. A scumble
+is <i>rubbed</i> on, and is never pure transparent
+color.</p>
+
+<p><b>Advantages of Glazing.</b>&mdash;The advantages are the
+gain in harmony, in force, in brilliancy; you may
+correct a color when it is wrong, or perfect it
+when it is not possible to get the force or richness
+required without it. These are the qualities which
+have made it used by all schools more or less.</p>
+
+<p><b>Disadvantages.</b>&mdash;There are, however, quite as
+evident and marked disadvantages. The free use
+of oil as a thinning vehicle, although it makes possible
+a greater degree of richness of color, is very
+likely to turn the picture brown in time. Oil
+will always eventually have a browning effect on
+all paints, even when mixed with them as little
+as is absolutely necessary. If you make a tinted
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span>
+varnish of oil (which is practically what a glaze is),
+you add so much, to the surely darkening action
+of the oil on the picture.</p>
+
+<p>If, again, you depend upon a glaze for the richness
+of color for your picture, and you use a color
+which is not permanent, your glaze fades, and
+your color is not there. A glaze is particularly
+liable to be injured by the cleaner if it ever gets
+into his hands. He works down to fresh color,
+and what with the browning of the glaze and the
+fact that the cleaner is more anxious that the picture
+should be cleaned than that its color should
+be fine, he will, in nine cases out of ten, <i>clean</i>
+off the glaze which may be the final and most
+expensive color the painter has put on it.</p>
+
+<p>Glazing is little used nowadays, compared with
+what it once was. But there are times when you
+cannot get what you want in any other way, and
+when you are sure that glazing is the only thing
+which will give you your result, the only law for
+the painter comes in,&mdash;get your result.</p>
+
+<p><b>Precautions.</b>&mdash;If you do glaze, however, there is
+a right and a wrong way. You should not use a
+glaze as a last resort. It is better to calculate
+on it beforehand; for you always glaze with a
+darker tint upon a lighter one, so that if you have
+not allowed for this, you will get your picture
+too low in tone before you know it.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to make your picture, or a part of it,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span>
+brighter and lighter, bring it up in pitch with body
+color first, with solid painting, and then glaze it.</p>
+
+<p>Do not glaze on color which is not well dried.
+The drying of the under color and the drying of
+the glaze are apt to be different in point of time,
+and the picture will crack. If the vehicle is the
+same as was used in the under-painting, and the
+drying qualities of both paintings are the same,
+there is no danger. But when color dries, it shrinks
+and flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking
+differently are sure to pull apart, and that causes
+cracking. If the under-painting is well dry, but
+not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable
+of still absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle
+to bind the coats together, your glaze will
+stand. But rather than have it too soft, have the
+under-painting too hard, and then before you
+glaze go over it with a little thin, quick-drying
+varnish, and glaze into that. The varnish will
+hold the two coats of paint together.</p>
+
+<p>Glazing, as well as scumbling, implies the obligation
+to varnish your picture. Whenever you
+use oil freely you will have to varnish your picture
+to keep it bright and fresh in color.</p>
+
+<p>It would be wise never to use a glaze as a final
+process. Glaze to get the tone or to modify it,
+but paint into the glaze with body color, and you
+keep the advantage of the glaze without many of
+the disadvantages of it, and the picture has a more
+solid effect of painting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span>
+<b>Frott&eacute;e.</b>&mdash;Closely akin to the glaze in manner,
+but very different in use, is the <i>frott&eacute;e</i>, or "rubbing."
+This is generally used on the fresh surface
+of the canvas, to "rub in" the light and shade or
+the first coloring of the picture after the drawing
+is done. It is one of the safest and wisest ways
+of beginning your picture. You can either rub in
+the picture with a <i>frott&eacute;e</i> of one color, as sienna or
+umber, or you can use all the colors in their proper
+places, only using very little vehicle, and making
+something very thin in tint, somewhat between a
+glaze and a scumble. You can make a complete
+drawing in monochrome in this way, or you can
+lay in all the ground colors of the picture till it
+has much the effect of a complete painting. Then,
+as you paint and carry the picture forward, every
+color you put on will be surrounded with approximately
+the true relations, instead of being contrasted
+by a glare of white canvas.</p>
+
+<p>A <i>frott&eacute;e</i> is a most sympathetic ground to paint
+over.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>COPYING</h3>
+
+
+<p>Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is
+in a sense a kind of manipulation. It is a means
+of study to the student, and a useful, sometimes
+necessary process to the painter. In the transferring
+of the results of his sketches and studies to
+the final canvas, the painter must be able to copy,
+and to know all the conveniences of it. Before
+the painting begins on a picture, the main figures
+in it must be placed and drawn on the canvas with
+reference to the plan of it, and their relation to that
+plan. This calls for some method of exact reproduction
+of the facts stored in the artist's studies
+for that purpose. The process of copying is that
+method.</p>
+
+<p>From the side of study, the copy gives the student
+the most practical means of understanding
+the intent and the expression of the painter whose
+work he wishes to know. There is no way of
+understanding the why and the how of technical
+expression so sure and complete as to study with
+the brush and paint, following the same method
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span>
+and processes as the master you copy, and trying
+to comprehend the meaning and the expression at
+the same time.</p>
+
+<p>This is not the best means of study for a beginner,
+as I have said before. It trains the understanding
+of processes rather than the eye; and
+the training of the power of perception rather
+than the understanding of methods is what the
+young student needs. The processes with which
+he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature
+are secondary matters to him. Let him really see
+the thing and find his own way of expressing it,
+clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best
+thing for him. He may take such help as he can
+find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the
+work of good painters can give to him, when he
+cannot see his own way. But the searching of
+nature should come first. The <i>seeing</i> of what is
+must precede the <i>stating</i> of it.</p>
+
+<p>But when you do undertake to make a copy,
+there is something more to be tried for than an
+approximation of the right colors in the right
+places.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly to get out of copying all there is to
+get, one must try for something more than a recognizable
+picture. When a serious student makes a
+copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and
+drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities
+of technique, and whatever there may be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span>
+that goes to make up the "manner" of the original.</p>
+
+<p>This is not only for the sake of the copy, for
+the sake of really having a picture which is more
+than superficially like the original; but in this
+way can be gained much real knowledge of technique
+which cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.</p>
+
+<p>Study your original carefully before and while
+working on your own canvas. See how it was
+done if you can (and you can), and do it in the
+same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color
+for color. Use a large brush when he used a large
+brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife,
+use yours; and particularly never use a
+smaller brush than the painter used on the picture
+you are copying.</p>
+
+<p>The same thing holds as to processes. If your
+original was painted solidly, with full body of color,
+do so on your copy. Never glaze nor scumble
+because <i>you</i> can't get the colors without. Your
+business is to try to get the same qualities <i>in the
+same way</i>. And any other manipulation is not
+only getting a different thing, but shirking the
+problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in
+the way he did, you certainly won't get the <i>same
+one</i> any other way. You are not originating, you
+are not painting a picture, you are copying another
+man's work; and common honesty to him, as well
+as what you are trying to learn, demands that you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span>
+shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly,
+that he did the thing one way, when as
+a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it
+another way.</p>
+
+<p>This may seem commonplace, because one would
+think that as a matter of course any one would
+naturally make a copy this way. But this is precisely
+what the average person does not do when
+copying, and I have found it constantly necessary
+to insist upon these very points even to advanced
+students.</p>
+
+<p>So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and
+even the canvas if you can, as well as in the
+handling of the paint and the processes used, follow
+absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the
+workmanship of the picture you copy, if it is
+worth your while to do it at all.</p>
+
+<p>In making copies it is not usual to make the
+preliminary drawing freehand. It takes time
+that may better be given to something else, and
+often it is not exact enough. When a painter has
+made careful studies which he wishes to transfer
+to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or
+movement, or of emphasis or character which the
+model may not have had. These studies, probably,
+are much smaller than they will be in the
+picture. The same things may be true of the
+characteristics of the sketches. These are problems
+which have been worked out, and to copy
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span>
+them freehand makes the work to be done over
+again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture.
+This would not only take too much time,
+but the same result might not follow. For this
+purpose a more mechanical process is commonly
+made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness
+with a certain freedom of hand, without
+which the work would be too rigid and hard.</p>
+
+<p><b>"Squaring up."</b>&mdash;This process is called "squaring-up,"
+and consists of making a network of
+squares which cut up the study, and map out its
+lines and proportions, and make it possible to be
+sure that any part of the original will come in the
+same relative place in the copy no matter what
+the size may be, and at the same time leaves the
+actual laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.</p>
+
+<p>The process is a very simple one. You mark
+off a number of points horizontally and vertically
+on the study. Make as many as you think best&mdash;if
+there are too few, you will have too much of
+the study in one part; if too many, it makes you
+more trouble. It is not necessary that there be
+as many points one way as the other; make the
+number to suit the lines of the study.</p>
+
+<p>Draw straight lines across the study from each
+of the points, keeping them carefully parallel, and
+seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the
+vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines
+cut the study into right-angled parallelograms,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span>
+which may be squares or not according as the
+vertical lines are the same distance from each
+other that the horizontal ones are, or not.</p>
+
+<p>Number the spaces between the lines at the
+top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at one side the same.</p>
+
+<p>Now if you square off a part of your canvas
+with the same number of spaces at the top and
+the same number at the side as you have done
+with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces
+the same, you can make it as large or as small as
+you please, and you can draw the outlines within
+those squares as they fall in the study, and they
+will be the same in proportion without your having
+the trouble of working to scale. The squares
+furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is
+not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical
+spaces are to the horizontal, in both the study and
+the picture.</p>
+
+<p>By numbering the squares on the canvas to
+correspond with those on the study, and noticing
+in which square, and in what part of it, any line
+or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that
+line in the same part of the corresponding square
+on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation
+and with exactness, while still leaving the
+hand free to modify it, or correct it.</p>
+
+<p>In this way the simplest or the most complex,
+the largest or the smallest study sketch or drawing
+may be accurately transferred to any surface
+you please.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV</h2>
+
+<h3>KINDS OF PAINTING</h3>
+
+
+<p>Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal
+attraction to a certain sort of thing is the
+life of all art. How else can life get into art than
+through the love of what you paint? A man may
+understand what he does not love, but he will
+never infuse with life that which he does not
+love. Understand it he should, if he would express
+it; but love it he must, if he would have
+others love it.</p>
+
+<p>You see it is not the thing, but the manner;
+not the fact, but what you can find in it; not
+the object, but what you can express by it. "<i>Un
+chef d'&#339;uvre vaut un chef d'&#339;uvre</i>" because perfect
+delight in loveliness found in a small thing is
+as perfect as perfect delight in loveliness found in
+a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a
+fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the
+medium of a temperament."</p>
+
+<p>Don't let the idea get into your head that one
+thing is easier to do than another thing. Perhaps
+it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to think so.
+And even then, you may find that when you have
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span>
+worked out all that its easiness shows you, some
+one with better knowledge or insight may come
+along and point out undreamed-of beauties and
+subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express
+the possibilities in easy things is the hardest
+of all.</p>
+
+<p><b>Classification.</b>&mdash;Divide paintings into two classes,&mdash;those
+representing objects seen out-of-doors,
+and those representing objects in-doors. This is
+the most fundamental of all classifications, and it
+is one which belongs practically to this century.
+Before this century it was hardly thought of to
+distinguish out-door light from in-door light.</p>
+
+<p>Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only
+in this century that the principle has made itself
+felt. It is this which makes the difference of
+pitch or key so marked between the modern and
+the ancient pictures. It has changed the whole
+color-scheme.</p>
+
+<p>An out-door picture may be still painted in the
+studio, but it must be painted from studies made
+out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose a model
+in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape.
+It was right to do it when it was done frankly,
+when the world had not waked up to the fact that
+things look different in diffused and in concentrated
+lights. It is not right now. You cannot
+go back of your century. To be born too late is
+more fatal than to be born too soon.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>
+Whatever kind of picture you take in hand,
+remember that what distinguishes the treatment
+of it from that of other pictures depends on the
+inherent character of it. That the difficulties as
+well as the facilities in the working of it are due
+to the fact that it demands a different application
+of the universal principles. Don't think that landscape
+drawing is easier than that of the figure
+because smudges of green and blue and brown
+can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of
+pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is
+only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious,
+and variations from the more obvious right
+are more easily seen.</p>
+
+<p>You must study the necessities, the demands of
+treatment of the different sorts of subjects&mdash;see
+what is peculiar to each, and what common to all.
+You must find to what &aelig;sthetic qualities each
+most readily lends itself, what are the subtleties
+to be sought for, and what are the problems they
+offer.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVI" id="CHAPTER_XXVI"></a>CHAPTER XXVI</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SKETCH</h3>
+
+
+<p>The sketch is the germ of the picture. It contains
+the idea which may later become the finished
+work. In your sketches you gather effects and
+suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. You do
+not work long over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily.
+You do not make it because you
+ought to, but because you see something in nature
+which charms you; or because you have found an
+idea you wish to make a note of.</p>
+
+<p>Understand thoroughly the use and meaning
+of sketches, and you will get more good from the
+making of them. For your sketching is an important
+matter to your painting. You do not learn
+how to paint by sketching; but you can learn a
+great many things, and some of them you can learn
+no other way. A sketch is not a picture; neither
+is it a study. Each of these things has its special
+purpose and function, and its proper character.</p>
+
+<p>A sketch is always a note of an idea&mdash;an idea
+seen or conceived. Everything is sacrificed in
+the sketch to the noting of that idea. One idea
+only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span>
+There are two kinds of sketches: those made
+from nature to seize an effect of some sort; and
+those made to work out or express tersely some
+composition or scheme of color which you have
+in your mind. Both are of great use to the student
+as well as essential to the work of the artist.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus259" id="illus259"></a>
+<img src="images/illus259.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketch of a Hillside." title="Sketch of a Hillside." />
+<span class="caption">Sketch of a Hillside blocked in from Nature, First Suggestion of Composition, etc.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The first conception of a picture is always embodied
+in the form of a sketch, and the artist will
+make as many sketches as he thinks of changes
+in his original idea. It is in this form that he
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span>
+works out his picture problem. He is troubled
+here by nothing but the one thing he has in mind
+at this time. It may be an arrangement of line
+or of mass. He changes and rearranges it as he
+pleases, not troubling himself in the least with
+exactness of drawing, of modelling, of color, nor
+of anything but that one of composition. It may
+be a scheme of color, and here again the spots of
+pigment only vaguely resemble the things they
+will later represent; now they are only composition
+of color to the painter, and everything bends
+to that. When this has been decided on, has
+been successfully worked out, then it is time
+enough to think of other things. And think of
+other things he does, before he makes his picture;
+but not in this sketch; in another sketch or
+other sketches, each with its own problem, or in
+studies which will furnish more material to be
+used later; or in the picture itself, where the
+problem is the unity of the various ideas within
+the great whole in the completed painting.</p>
+
+<p>It is the sketch on which the picture rests for
+its singleness of purpose. No picture but begins
+in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on
+the same canvas or not. The sketch points the
+way. But all the preliminary sketches of a painting
+are not problems of composition or color; are
+not conceptions of the brain. There are suggestions
+received from nature which the painter perceives
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span>
+rather than conceives. Possibilities show
+themselves in these, but it is in the sketch that
+they first become tangible and stable. This is the
+sketch from nature, always the record of an impression,
+the note of an idea hinted by one fact or
+condition seen more sharply or clearly than any
+or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>The painter must always sketch from nature.
+Only by so doing can he be constantly in touch
+with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected
+by multitudinous facts. The sketch preserves for
+him the evanescent effects of nature, which the
+study would not so entirely, because not so simply,
+grasp. The sudden storm approaches; the
+fleeting cloud shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow;
+these, as well as the more permanent, but
+equally charming effects of mass against mass
+of wood and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can
+only store up for future use or reference in his
+sketches.</p>
+
+<p><b>Main Idea Only.</b>&mdash;In the making of the sketch,
+then, no problem should come in but that of the
+expression of the main idea,&mdash;no problem of
+drawing or of manipulation of color. To get the
+idea expressed in the most direct and immediate
+and convenient way, anything will do to sketch on
+or with; that which presents the least difficulty is
+the best. The matter of temperament, of course,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span>
+comes in largely, and technical facility. That
+which you can use most freely, use in your sketching,
+and keep for other occasions the new means
+or medium. Use freely, if you can, black and
+white for whatever black and white will express,
+and pigment for all color effects. Oil for greatest
+certainty and facility of correction.</p>
+
+<p><b>Quick Work.</b>&mdash;Make your sketch at one sitting,
+or you will have something which is not a sketch.
+Work long enough, and it may be a study; but
+more than one sitting makes it neither one thing
+nor the other. To say nothing of the fact that
+the conditions are unlikely to be exactly the same
+again, you are almost sure on the second working
+to have lost the first impression,&mdash;the freshness
+and directness of purpose which the first impress
+gives; and this is the very heart of a sketch.
+You must never lose sight of what was the original
+purpose of it; never forget what it was which
+first made you want to paint it. No matter what
+else you get or do not get, if you lose this you
+lose all that can give it life or reality.</p>
+
+<p>The very fact that you have limited yourself to
+one working makes you concentrate on that which
+first caught your attention, and that is what you
+want to seize.</p>
+
+<p>Overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere
+with the directness and force with which
+this is expressed.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+Remember that nature is never at rest. You
+must catch her on the wing, and the more quickly
+you do it the more vivid will be the effect.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus263" id="illus263"></a>
+<img src="images/illus263.jpg" width="100%" alt="The River Bank." title="The River Bank." />
+<span class="caption">The River Bank. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">Half-hour sunset sketch.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>"Nature is economical. She puts her lights
+and darks only where she needs them." Do the
+same, and use no more effort than will suffice to
+express that which is most important. The rest
+will come another time.</p>
+
+<p>Try to keep things simple. Keep the impression
+of unity; have the sketch one thing only.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>
+Express things as they look. As they look to
+<i>you</i> and at <i>this time</i>. How they seem to some
+one else, or seemed at some other time, is not to
+the point. What you know they are or may be
+will not help you, but only hinder you in a sketch.
+The more facts the worse, in sketching. Remember
+always what a sketch is for. Don't be
+beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a
+study of it. Above all, don't try to make a clever
+thing of it. Make something sincere and purposeful
+of it, and have it as concise, as terse, as
+direct, and as expressive of one thing as you can.</p>
+
+<p><b>Keep Looking.</b>&mdash;Always keep your eyes open
+and your mind receptive; do not be always looking
+for reasons. Accept the charm as it presents
+itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express
+it with; if not, study it, and get something
+into your mind and memory from it. The simplest
+way of expressing it, and the simplest elements
+which cause it, you can study without the
+materials to preserve it, and you so keep your receptivity
+and quicken your power of observation.</p>
+
+<p>Your sketch will be more quickly done, directly
+and more forcefully, if you map out the thing
+rather deliberately first with a few very exact
+lines and masses in some way: then you have a
+free mind to concentrate on the effect. A few
+values and masses well placed are the things you
+most want; you can almost always spare time to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span>
+ensure their exactness by a few measurements and
+two or three rubs of color first. Of course if the
+sketch is of a passing gleam you can do nothing
+but get a few smudges of color. But get them
+true in value and in color relation; get the glow
+of it, or you will get nothing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Canvases of a Size.</b>&mdash;In sketching from nature,
+have the habit of using always the same sized canvases
+or panels. They pack better, and you learn
+to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and
+better work. Make them big enough to do free
+work on, yet small enough to cover easily, so that
+you lose no time in mere covering of surface.
+Ten inches by fourteen is plenty small enough,
+and fifteen by twenty large enough, for most persons.
+Suit yourself as to the size, but settle on a
+size, and stick to it. Nothing is more awkward
+and inconvenient than to have stacks of canvases
+of all sizes and shapes.</p>
+
+<p>Always have plenty of sketching materials on
+hand. You will lose many a good effect which
+will pass while you are getting your kit ready.</p>
+
+<p>In sketching, avoid details. When you want
+them, make a study of them. In a sketch they
+only interfere with frankness of expression. One
+or two details for the sake of accent only, may be
+admitted.</p>
+
+<p>Make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut
+a square hole in a card, and look through it.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span>
+Decide what is the essence of it, what is vital to
+the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. Put
+in what you need for the conveying of that, and
+leave out everything else.</p>
+
+<p><b>Work Solidly.</b>&mdash;Work in body color, and lay on
+your paint fully and freely. In getting an effect
+of light, don't be afraid of contrast either of value
+or of color. Paint loosely; get the vibration
+which results from half-mixed color. Don't flatten
+out the tone. Load the color if you want to. In
+twenty years you will wonder to see how smooth
+it has become.</p>
+
+<p>Freedom and breadth give life to a sketch.
+Don't work close to your work. Don't bend over
+it. Use plenty of color, large brushes, and strike
+from the shoulder.</p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVII" id="CHAPTER_XXVII"></a>CHAPTER XXVII</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STUDY</h3>
+
+
+<p>The qualities which make a good study are the
+reverse of those which make a good sketch. In
+the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or to the
+one thing which is its purpose. The study is
+what its name implies, and its purpose is not one
+thing, but many. In a study you put in everything
+which may be valuable. You store it with
+facts. You leave out nothing which you wish
+to put in. It is all material. You can take and
+leave in using it afterwards, as you could from
+nature. Of course every study has some main
+intention, but you must take the trouble to give
+everything that goes to the making of that.</p>
+
+<p>A study is less of a picture than a sketch is.
+For unity of effect is vital to both a sketch and a
+picture. But this quality is of no essential value
+in a study&mdash;unless it be a study of unity. For
+you can make a <i>study</i> of anything, from a foreground
+weed to a detailed interior, from a bit of
+pebble to a cavalry charge.</p>
+
+<p>But in a study of one thing you concentrate on
+that thing, you deliberately and carefully study
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span>
+everything in it, while in a sketch you work only
+for general effect. The study is the storehouse
+of facts to the painter. By it he assures himself
+of the literal truths he needs, collecting them as
+material in color or black and white, and as mental
+material by his mental understanding of them,
+only to be gained in this way.</p>
+
+<p>In making a study you may work as long as you
+please, timing yourself by the difficulty and size
+of the thing you are studying. A study of an interior
+or a landscape may occupy a week or two;
+one of a simple object for some detail in a picture
+may be a matter of only a few hours. But in
+any work of this kind you should be deliberate,
+and remember that what you are doing is neither
+a sketch nor a picture, but the gathering of material
+which is to be useful, but which can be useful
+only so far as it is accurate.</p>
+
+<p>In making studies, don't try for surface finish;
+get the facts, and leave all other qualities for the
+picture. Don't glaze and scumble, but work as
+directly as you can. Study the structure and texture
+of whatever you are doing. Understand it
+thoroughly as you go on, and search out whatever
+is not clear to you. This is no place for effects;
+nor for slighting or shirking. If you do not do
+work of this kind thoroughly, you might as well
+not do it at all&mdash;better; for you are at least not
+training yourself to be careless.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span>
+There are places where you may be careless,
+but the making of a study is not that place.</p>
+
+<p>Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get
+all your foundation work true. Have a good drawing,
+get the groundwork well laid in, and then
+build your superstructure of careful study.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness
+and edginess here. All that is only an excess
+of precision, and it is just as well to have it. You
+can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but
+a groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.</p>
+
+<p>Be exact also with your values. If your study
+is not sure of its values, it will weaken the results
+you should get from it later.</p>
+
+<p>Make your studies in the same light as that
+which the picture will represent. You can paint
+a picture under any light you please if your studies
+give you the facts as to light and shade that
+the truth to nature requires; but studies made in
+one light for a picture representing another are
+useless to that picture.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus270" id="illus270"></a>
+<img src="images/illus270.jpg" width="100%" alt="Study of a Blooming-Mill." title="Study of a Blooming-Mill." />
+<span class="caption">Study of a Blooming-Mill. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>No good painting was ever made without preliminary
+studies. When you are to make a picture,
+therefore, take plenty of time to prepare
+yourself with all the material in the form of facts
+that you may require. Don't trust to building up
+a picture from a sketch or two and your "general
+knowledge." That sort of thing is something
+which a painter of experience may do after storing
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span>
+his mind for years with all sorts of knowledge;
+but it will not do for most people&mdash;least of all
+for a student. And it is a dangerous way for any
+one to work. Even the experienced painter is apt
+to do the worse work for it, and if he does so
+constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. Take
+time to be right.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be afraid of taking measurements. Every
+one who did anything worth looking at took measurements.
+Leonardo laid down a complete system
+of proportions. You can't get your proportions
+right without measurements, and if your proportions
+are not right, nothing will be right. Use a
+plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals
+and verticals. If you are in doubt about
+anything, stop a minute and measure. It takes
+less time than correcting.</p>
+
+<p>Whatever you do, get the character first, then
+the details. Character is not a conglomeration of
+details. The detail is the incident of character.
+See what the vital things are first, then search
+farther.</p>
+
+<p>Use your intelligence as well as your eye and
+hand. Think as you work. Don't for a moment
+let your hand get ahead of your brain. Don't
+work absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. If
+your mind is tired, if your eye won't see, stop and
+rest a while. Tired work runs your picture down
+hill.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXVIII" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII"></a>CHAPTER XXVIII</h2>
+
+<h3>STILL LIFE</h3>
+
+
+<p>The name of still life is used in English for all
+sorts of pictures which represent groupings of inanimate
+objects except flowers. The French word
+for it is better than ours. They call it "<i>nature
+morte</i>" or dead nature.</p>
+
+<p>There is no kind of painting which is more universally
+useful&mdash;to the student as well as to the
+painter. It furnishes the means for constant,
+regular, and convenient study and practice. You
+need never lack for something interesting to paint,
+nor for a model who will sit quietly and steadily
+without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery,
+and a few articles, of whatever shape or form,
+which you can group in a convenient light.</p>
+
+<p>You can make the group as simple or as difficult
+as you wish, and make it include any phase
+of study. The advantage of its possible variety,
+scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness
+and manageableness, make it the fundamental
+work for the beginner.</p>
+
+<p><b>Materials.</b>&mdash;Practically anything and everything
+is available for still life. You should be constantly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span>
+on the lookout for interesting objects of all kinds.
+Try to get a collection which has as much variety
+in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things
+are generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose
+old and broken things the best. An object is not
+intrinsically better because of its being more or
+less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting
+qualities, as of color or history, because of its
+age.</p>
+
+<p>What you should avoid is bad proportion, line,
+and color in the things you get. The cost is not
+of any importance at all. You can pick up things
+for a few cents which will be most useful. Have
+all sorts of things, tall slim vases, and short fat
+jugs. Have metals and glass, and books and
+plaques. They all come in, and they add to the
+variety and interest of your compositions.</p>
+
+<p><b>Draperies.</b>&mdash;The study of drapery particularly is
+facilitated by still-life study. You can arrange
+your draperies so that they are an essential part
+of your study, and will stay as long as you care to
+paint from them, and need not be moved at all.
+This fact of "staying power" in still life is one of
+importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum
+the movement and change which add to the difficulties
+in any other kinds of work. The value of
+the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness
+of qualities from day to day. In still life you
+have the same, with color added. You can give
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span>
+all your attention and time unhurriedly, with the
+assurance that you can work day after day if you
+want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning
+as you left it to-day. This as it applies to
+drapery is only the more useful. You can hardly
+have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost.
+To study drapery on a model carefully and long, is
+out of the question, because it is disarranged every
+time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into
+exactly the same lines again.</p>
+
+<p>Still life steps in and gives you the power to
+make the drapery into any form of study, and to
+have it by itself or as a part of a picture.</p>
+
+<p>In draperies you should try to have a considerable
+variety just as you have of the more massive
+objects,&mdash;variety of surface, of color, and of texture.
+Do not have all velvet and silk. These are
+very useful and beautiful, but you will not always
+paint a model in velvet and silk. Satins and laces
+are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by
+men, and so you should study them. Sometimes
+you want the drapery as a background, to give
+color or line; and yet to have also marked surface
+qualities (texture), would take from the effect of
+those qualities in the other objects of the group.</p>
+
+<p>As to color, in the same way you should have
+all sorts of colors; but see to it that the colors are
+good,&mdash;in themselves "good color," not harsh nor
+crude. It does you no good as a student to learn
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span>
+how to express bad color. Neither is it good training
+for you, in studying how to represent what you
+see, to have to change bad color in your group into
+good color in your picture.</p>
+
+<p>Good useful drapery does not mean either large
+pieces, or pieces with much variety of color in one
+piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or
+prominent design in it. Still, the more kinds you
+have, the more you can vary your work.</p>
+
+<p>If your drapery is a little strong in color, you
+can always make it more quiet by washing or fading
+it to any extent. There is very little material
+which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so,
+and the color is too strong, don't use it.</p>
+
+<p>Don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk
+and velvet, or plush. The fact that it would look
+out of place on furniture or as a dress does not
+imply that it may not be beautiful as a background
+or as a foreground color. These old and faded
+materials furnish some of the most useful things
+you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in
+general of other still-life things.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Use of Still Life.</b>&mdash;There is no way in which
+you can better study the principles of composition
+than by the use of still life. The fact that you
+can bring together a large number of objects of
+any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange
+them, study the effect and result before painting,
+and be working with actual objects and not by
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span>
+merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality
+to composition that is of the greatest service
+to you. You can use (and should at times)
+the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise
+composition on the large scale, or you can
+make a small group on a table. That you are
+using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and
+books, instead of men and women, does not affect
+the seriousness and usefulness of the problem;
+for the principles of composition and color do not
+have to do with the materials which you use to
+bring about the effect, but the effect itself.</p>
+
+<p>It is practically impossible for the student and
+the amateur to make very advanced study of composition
+in line and mass with more than one or
+two living models; but with still life he may and
+should get all the practical knowledge possible.</p>
+
+<p><b>Practical Composition.</b>&mdash;Suppose you were going
+to work with still life, how would you begin? In
+the first place, get a good composition. Never
+work from a bad one. You must learn composition
+some time, so you might as well study it every
+time you have occasion to start a still-life study.
+Take any number of things and put them on a
+table, get a simple background to group them
+against. Consider your things, and eliminate those
+which are not necessary, or will not tell in the
+composition. It is a law that whatever does not
+help your picture (or composition) tells against
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span>
+it; so get rid of anything which will not help the
+composition.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus278" id="illus278"></a>
+<img src="images/illus278.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 1." title="Still Life, No. 1." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 1.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>For instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately
+grouped on a table.  You might paint
+them, but they are not arranged. There is no
+composition. They would lack one commanding
+characteristic of a good picture if you were to
+paint them so. What do they lack as they are?
+They have no logical connection with each other,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>
+either in arrangement or in the placing, to begin
+with. They do not help each other either in line
+or mass. They are crowded, huddled together.
+You could do with less of them; or, if you want
+them all, you can place them better. But suppose
+we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange
+the rest.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus279" id="illus279"></a>
+<img src="images/illus279.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 2." title="Still Life, No. 2." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 2.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here are some of the things, with others taken
+away. The combination is simpler, but still it is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span>
+not satisfactory. There is some logical connection
+among the objects, but none in the grouping.
+They are still huddled; there is no line; it is too
+square; no attempt at balance; they are simply
+things. If you change them about a little, having
+regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you
+can get something better out of these same objects.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus280" id="illus280"></a>
+<img src="images/illus280.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 3." title="Still Life, No. 3." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 3.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre,
+to give height and mass, and to break up the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span>
+round of the plaque; the handle turned around to
+give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is
+placed where it will break the line of the plaque,
+yet not too obviously or awkwardly; the handle is
+placed at a good angle with that of the coffee-pot,
+and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in
+balancing the whole is considered. The drapery is
+spread out so as to have some probability. It does
+not help much in line, but it does in mass and in
+color (in the original). It could be bettered, but
+it will do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable
+position, and helps to balance and to give
+weight to the main mass, which is the coffee-pot.
+There is not much light and shade in this composition,
+nor much distinction. But it does balance,
+and would make a good study, and is a very respectable
+piece of composition,&mdash;simple, modest, and
+dignified.</p>
+
+<p>Now if you wanted to add some of those things
+which were eliminated, and make a more complicated
+composition, you would look for the same
+things in it when completed. We have simply
+the same group, with the bottle and glass added.
+The stout jug in the first group is left out because
+it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest
+easily. The tall glass vase is left out because it
+is too transparent to count either as line, mass, or
+color, and does not in any way help, and therefore
+counts against, because it does not count for, our
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>
+composition. The things we have here are enough,
+but they are not right as they are now. They
+injure rather than help the last arrangement. The
+bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of
+it; a composition must be <i>one thing</i>, no matter
+how many objects go to the making of it. This is
+two things. Draw a line down between the bottle
+and glass and the other things, and you get two
+compositions, both good, instead of one, which we
+must have for good arrangement.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus282" id="illus282"></a>
+<img src="images/illus282.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 4." title="Still Life, No. 4." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 4.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span>
+Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything.
+We have now got two groups and a thing.
+The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the bottle
+and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries
+to pull them together, but can't. The plaque has
+no connection with anything. They are all pulled
+apart. In the last group at least there was some
+chief mass, the first complete composition. Now
+every one is for himself; three up and down lines
+and a circle&mdash;that's about what it amounts to.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus283" id="illus283"></a>
+<img src="images/illus283.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 5." title="Still Life, No. 5." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 5.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Let's group them,&mdash;push them together. Place
+the bottle near the coffee-pot. Because they are
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+about the same height, one cannot dominate the
+other in height; then make them pull together as
+a mass.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus284" id="illus284"></a>
+<img src="images/illus284.jpg" width="100%" alt="Still Life, No. 6." title="Still Life, No. 6." />
+<span class="caption">Still Life, No. 6.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Place the cup about as before, and the mass
+pretty well towards the centre of the plaque.
+Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the
+glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help
+break the line of the bottoms of the objects. The
+drapery now helps in line also, and gives more
+unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to
+the whole. This group is about as well placed as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span>
+these objects will come. There is balance, mass,
+proportion, dignity, unity.</p>
+
+<p>Of course you may make a paintable and interesting
+composition with only two things. But
+you must give them some relation both as to fact
+and as to position. The same elements of unity
+and balance and line come in, no matter how many
+or how few are the objects which enter as elements
+in your group.</p>
+
+<p>In this way study composition with still life.
+Move things about and see how they look; use
+your eye and judgment. Get to see things together,
+and apply the principles spoken of in the
+chapter on "Composition" to all sorts of things
+in nature.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scope of Study.</b>&mdash;Drawing is always drawing,
+whatever the objects to which it is applied, and
+you can study all the problems of drawing and
+values with still life. The drawing is not so
+severe as that of the antique, nor so difficult as
+study from the life, but you can learn to draw and
+then apply it to other things, and advance as far
+as you please; and as I said at first, you need
+never lack an amiable model.</p>
+
+<p>All sorts of effects of lighting you can study
+easily with still life; and of color and texture also.
+The study of surface and texture is most important
+to you. If you were to undertake to paint
+a sheep or a cow the first time; if you were to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span>
+paint without previous experience a background
+which contained metal and glass, or a model with
+a velvet or satin dress, you would not succeed.
+These all involve problems of skill and facility
+of representation. When you paint a portrait or
+figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you
+should not have to deal with, as new, problems of
+this sort. You should have arrived at some understanding
+of this sort of thing in studies which are
+not complicated by other problems of greater difficulty.
+This is where still life comes in again to
+make the study of painting easier.</p>
+
+<p><b>Interest.</b>&mdash;But the use of this sort of painting is
+not only its practical <i>use</i>. You need not feel that
+it is all drudgery&mdash;which is something that most
+students do not love! You may make pictures
+with a much clearer conscience along this line;
+for the better the picture, and the more interesting
+and charming it is, the more successful is
+your work as study. You can be as interested in
+the beauty and the picture of it as you please, and
+it will only make you work the better. To see
+the picture in a group of bottles and books is to
+be the more able to see the picture in a tree and
+sky. An artist's eye is sensitive to beauty of
+color and line and form wherever he sees it. The
+student's should be also. No artist but has found
+delight in painting still life. No student should
+think it beneath his serious study.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span>
+<b>Procedure.</b>&mdash;Study painting first in still-life
+compositions. When you set up your canvas first,
+and set your palette, let it be in front of a few
+simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better,
+set up a single jar or a book, with a simply arranged
+background for color contrast. All the
+problems of manipulation are there for you to
+study. No processes of handling, no manner of
+color effect, which you cannot use in this study.</p>
+
+<p>Learn here what you will need in other lines
+of work.</p>
+
+<p><b>Beginning.</b>&mdash;The best way to make a study from
+still life is to begin with a careful charcoal drawing
+on the canvas. You may shade it more or
+less as you please, but be most careful about proportions
+and forms. The shading means the modelling
+and the values in black and white; and you
+can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it
+can be put in with monochrome when you begin
+with paint. But you must have the drawing sure
+and true first; for drawing is position, locality.
+You must know <i>where</i> a value is to go before you
+can justly place it. The value is the <i>how much</i>.
+You must have the <i>where</i> before the <i>how much</i>
+can mean anything in drawing. It would be well
+to lay in some of the planes of light and shade,
+because you feel proportion more naturally and
+truly so than with mere outline. The outline
+encloses the form, but with nothing but outline
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span>
+you are less apt to feel the reality of the form.
+The planes of values fill in the outline and give
+substance to it. They map it out so that it takes
+thickness and proportion; it is more real. And
+any fault of outline is more quickly seen, because
+you cannot get your masses of shade of the right
+form and proportion if the outline enclosing them
+is not right.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Frott&eacute;e.</b>&mdash;Make, then, a careful light-and-shade
+drawing with charcoal directly on the canvas,
+working in the background where it tells
+against the group, but without carrying it out
+to the edges of the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Be accurate with your modelling and values,
+and keep the planes simple and well defined.
+Draw all characteristic details, but only the most
+important, nearly as if it were not to be painted,
+but were to remain a drawing.</p>
+
+<p>Fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer.</p>
+
+<p>In beginning with paint go over the drawing
+with a thin <i>frott&eacute;e</i> which shall re-enforce the drawing
+with color. You may do this with one color,
+making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving
+the canvas bare for the lights. Many of the best
+painters lay in all pictures this way. What color
+is to be used is a matter for consideration. It
+should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of
+the whole picture that if it is left without any
+other paint over it in places it will still look all
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span>
+right. Raw umber is a good color, or raw umber
+modified with burnt sienna and black. You can
+make a mixture that seems right. This establishes
+your larger values, and gives you something
+better than a bare canvas, and something with
+which you can have a more just idea of the effect
+of each touch of color you put on.</p>
+
+<p>If there is much variety of color in the various
+objects of your composition, it is better to make
+your <i>frott&eacute;e</i> suggest the different colors. Instead
+of making a monochrome <i>frott&eacute;e</i>, rub in each object
+with a thin mixture, approximating the color and
+value, but not solid, nor as strong as it will become
+when painted, of course. Nevertheless, you can
+get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which
+at a distance has a very solid look, though the relations
+are not so carefully studied. When you
+come to put on solid color with this sort of an
+under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of
+color as well as light-and-shade relations, and you
+can work more frankly into it.</p>
+
+<p>Into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin
+to paint with body color, beginning with the true
+color and value of the lights, and working down
+through the half darks into the darks. Paint the
+background pretty carefully as to color and value,
+but loosely as to handling. Paint slowly, deliberately,
+and thoughtfully. There is no need to pile
+up masses of wrong color. You should try to be
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span>
+sure of the color before you lay it on. Study the
+color in the group, mix on the palette, and compare
+them. Think at least two minutes for every
+one minute of actually laying on paint. You save
+time in the end by being deliberate and by working
+thoughtfully. Put on color firmly and with a
+full brush, but there is no need to load color for
+the sake of the body of it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Loaded Lights.</b>&mdash;It was a principle with the older
+painters to paint the shadows thinly and with
+transparent color, and to load the lights. It gave
+a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the
+lights which was much valued. But don't think
+about this; don't let it influence the frankness
+of your painting. The theory is in itself largely
+obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by
+almost every able painter who ever lived, in practice,
+no matter what he said about it. I only speak
+of it because almost all books on painting have
+laid it down as a rule, and you had better know
+its true relation to painting. Like all other traditional
+methods of painting it has been used by the
+greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded
+by the greatest of painters; and as far as you are
+concerned, you may use it or not as suits your
+purpose. The main thing is to get the right
+color and value in the right place, in the most
+direct and natural, in the least affected, manner
+possible.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span>
+You may work into your <i>frott&eacute;e</i>, then, more or
+less solidly as you feel will give you the best representation
+of the color you see.</p>
+
+<p><b>Solid Painting.</b>&mdash;Don't paint always in the same
+way. It is a mistake to get too accustomed to
+one manner of procedure. Different things require
+different handling. Let the thing suggest how
+you shall paint it. If you want to paint directly,
+paint solidly from first to last instead of rubbing
+in thinly first. But always have an accurate drawing
+underneath.</p>
+
+<p>In working solidly without previous laying in,
+begin where each brush-stroke will have the greatest
+effect toward establishing the appearance of
+reality. If the canvas is light, begin by putting in
+the main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the
+reverse. You get the most immediate effect of
+reality by the <i>relief</i>; the relief you get most directly
+by putting in first those values which contrast
+with what is already there. Establish your
+most telling values first, then work from them towards
+less immediately effective things.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color and Values.</b>&mdash;Study the color at the same
+time you do the value. Put on no touch of paint
+as a value or a color alone. If you do, you will
+have to paint that spot twice,&mdash;once for the value,
+and again for the color. You might as well paint
+for the two qualities in one stroke. It takes more
+thought, but it gives you more command of your
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span>
+work. It doesn't load your canvas with useless
+paint, and it saves time in the long run.</p>
+
+<p><b>Relations and Directness.</b>&mdash;Study to give the true
+relations of things. Try to get the just color quality.
+Give it at once. Don't get it half way and
+trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct
+it. You will never learn to paint that way. Paint
+intensely while you paint. Use all the energy you
+have. Paint with your whole strength for a half
+or a whole hour, and then rest. You will accomplish
+more so than by painting all day in a languid,
+half-hearted way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Directness.</b>&mdash;Directness comes from making up
+your mind just what tint of color and value is
+needed, and just where it is to go, first, then putting
+it there with no coaxing. Get the right color
+on your brush and plenty of it; then put the brush
+deliberately and firmly down in the right place,
+and take it directly away, and look at the result
+without touching it again till you have made up
+your mind that it needs something else, and what
+it is that it needs. Then do that and stop.</p>
+
+<p>Directness and justness of relation are the most
+important things in painting. They tell for most,
+result in most, both to the picture and to the student.
+Whatever you do, work for that. Try to
+have no vagueness in your mind as to what you
+will do or why you do it, and the effect of it will
+show on your canvas.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIX" id="CHAPTER_XXIX"></a>CHAPTER XXIX</h2>
+
+<h3>FLOWERS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Flower painting is the refinement of still life.
+You have the same control of combination, but
+you have not the same control of time. Flowers
+will change, and change more rapidly than any
+other models you can have; and at the same time
+they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth
+and justness are necessary to paint them well.</p>
+
+<p>People seem to think that any one can paint
+flowers. On the contrary, almost no one can paint
+them well. There are not a dozen painters in the
+world who can really paint flowers as they ought
+to be painted. Why? Because while they are so
+exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely
+delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely
+subtle in substance and sentiment.</p>
+
+<p>When you have got the drawing and the color
+and the value, you have not got the <i>quality</i>.</p>
+
+<p>What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper,
+and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of
+the most exquisite kind. All these are gross as
+substance compared to the tender firmness of the
+flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is
+made up of petals.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span>
+Yet you cannot paint the <i>petals</i> either, else you
+lose the <i>flower</i>. You must paint the <i>quality</i> of the
+petal, and the <i>character</i> of the flower.</p>
+
+<p>All these things make the mere perception of
+facts most difficult, and it must be done with full
+knowledge that in an hour it will be something
+else, and you can never get it back to its original
+form again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of
+flowers in an hour. What will you do?</p>
+
+<p><b>Mass and Value.</b>&mdash;There is something besides
+the flower and the petal; there is the <i>mass</i>. The
+mass is <i>one thing</i>, and it is surrounded with air,
+and air goes through the interstices of it. You
+must make this visible. The difference in value
+in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a
+great flower painter said to me once. Yet the difference
+is there. The bunch has its nearer and its
+farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is
+the most obvious expression of it.</p>
+
+<p>When you begin a group of flowers, get the
+<i>whole</i> first. Make up your mind that you cannot
+complete your work from the flower you have
+in front of you, and that you must constantly
+change your models. Do not paint the little
+things, the personal things first then. Paint what
+is common to all the flowers in the group first.
+Paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express
+most vaguely the <i>forms</i> of the accents,
+and of the darks which fall between the flowers,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span>
+but get their values. For you will have to
+change these, and you should have nothing there
+which will influence you to shirk. In this way
+only can you get the larger things without hampering
+your future work by what may be wrong.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus295" id="illus295"></a>
+<img src="images/illus295.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sweet Peas." title="Sweet Peas." />
+<span class="caption">Sweet Peas.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Get the large values, and as little as possible of
+the expression of the individual flowers; then as
+the flowers fade and change, substitute one or
+two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of
+the partially wilted group, using the same kind
+of flower as that which was in that place before;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span>
+then work more closely from these new flowers,
+letting the whole bunch preserve for you the
+mass and general relation. As you work, the
+bunch will be gradually changing and constantly
+renewed from part to part, and you can work
+slowly from general to particular. Finally, from
+new flowers, put in those more individual touches
+which give the personal flowers.</p>
+
+<p>This is the only way you can work a long time,
+and it is not easy. But it should not discourage
+you. Nothing takes the place of the flower picture,
+and the only way to learn to paint flowers is
+to paint flowers.</p>
+
+<p><b>General Principles Hold Always.</b>&mdash;Still, the principles
+of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and
+what is said of painting in general will have its
+application to flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Paint flowers because you love them; and if you
+love them, love them enough to study patiently
+to express the qualities most worth painting, even
+if there be difficulties.</p>
+
+<p><b>Details Again.</b>&mdash;Don't make too much of unimportant
+things. The whole is more than the part;
+the flower than the petal. Of course you can't
+paint a flower without painting the petals, but you
+need not paint the petals so that you can't see
+anything else. If the character of the flower as a
+whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis
+of any special petal, suggest the petals
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span>
+only. If the petal is important to the expression
+of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it
+well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive
+of the greater, or do not paint it at all.</p>
+
+<p><b>Colors.</b>&mdash;Colors and tints in flowers are always
+more rather than less subtle than you think them.
+If you have a doubt, make it more delicate&mdash;give
+delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers
+are never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is
+the very subtlety of strength. Black will be the
+most useless color of your palette. Make your
+grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a
+flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be
+painted by negation of color, but by refinement of
+color.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sketches.</b>&mdash;Make sketches of flowers constantly.
+Try to carry the painting of a single flower or of
+a group as far as you can in an hour. Practise
+getting as much of the effect of detail as possible
+with as little actual painting of it, and then apply
+this to your picture.</p>
+
+<p>Get to know your work in studies and sketches,
+and you will work better in more difficult combinations.</p>
+
+<p>When you have, as you generally will have, still-life
+accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the
+color and values of the vase or what not first, but
+leave the painting of it till the flowers are done.
+It will be a more patient sitter than they.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span>
+Apply the ways of painting spoken of with
+reference to still life to the sketching of flowers.
+Either rub in quickly a <i>frott&eacute;e</i> and then paint solidly
+into that, or work frankly and solidly but
+deliberately to render the characteristic qualities.
+When you sketch flowers don't take too
+many at a time; calculate to work not more than
+an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more
+flowers in your sketch than you can complete in
+that time.</p>
+
+<p>When you sketch, quite as much as when you
+work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass
+first, especially if the group is large. Then put
+in the accents which do most to give the character
+or type of the flower. Make studies of single
+flowers and sketches of groups. In the study
+search detail and modelling; in the sketch search
+relations and relief, effect and large accent.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXX" id="CHAPTER_XXX"></a>CHAPTER XXX</h2>
+
+<h3>PORTRAITS</h3>
+
+
+<p>Don't look upon portraits as something any one
+can do. A portrait is more than a likeness, and
+the painting of it gives scope for all of the great
+qualities possible in art. Only a great painter
+can paint a great portrait. Some great painters
+rest their fame on work in this field, and others
+have added by this to the fame derived from other
+kinds of work.</p>
+
+<p>You must not think it easy to paint a portrait,
+or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. Likeness
+is a very commonplace thing, which almost
+any one can get. If there were no other qualities
+to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while
+to paint a portrait. Back of the likeness, which
+a few superficial lines may give, is the character,
+which needs not only skill and power to express
+but great perception to see, and judgment to make
+use of to the best advantage.</p>
+
+<p><b>Character.</b>&mdash;The first requisite in a good portrait
+is character,&mdash;more than likeness, more than
+color or grace, before everything else, it needs
+this; nothing can take the place of it and make
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span>
+a portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything
+else may be added to this, and the picture
+be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental
+beauty of the portrait. Some of the
+greatest painters made pictures which were very
+beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception
+and expression of character. Holbein's wonderful
+work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple,
+sincere expression of character in the most frank
+and unaffected rectitude of drawing. There are
+masterpieces of Albrecht D&uuml;rer which rest on the
+same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of
+Himself by D&uuml;rer. Likeness is incidental to character;
+get that, and the likeness will be there in
+spite of you.</p>
+
+<p>Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try
+for likeness; if only he got the right values in the
+right places, the likeness had to be there. The
+same can hardly be said of character, for this depends
+on the selection from the phases of expression
+which are constantly passing on the face, those
+which speak most of the personality of the man;
+and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others.
+The painting of character is interpretation of individuality
+through the painting of the features,
+and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight
+and selection than on representation. Try
+for this always. Search for it in the manner, in
+the pose and occupation, of your sitter. Get likeness
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>
+if you will, of course; but remember that
+there is a petty likeness, which may be accident
+or not, which you can always get by a little care
+in drawing; and that there is a larger character
+which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration
+of feature or emphasis of accidental lines,
+but on the large expressiveness of the individual.
+You may find it elsewhere than in the face. The
+character affects the whole movement of the man.
+The set of the head and the great lines of the
+face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to
+you even if the features were left out. Study to
+see this, and to express it first, and then put in as
+much detail as you see fit, only taking care never
+to lose the main thing in getting those details.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus302" id="illus302"></a>
+<img src="images/illus302.jpg" width="100%" alt="D&uuml;rer, by Himself." title="D&uuml;rer, by Himself." />
+<span class="caption">D&uuml;rer, <i>by Himself.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To be studied as an example of directness and <ins class="correction" title="original reads 'n&auml;ivet&eacute;'">na&iuml;vet&eacute;</ins> of painting.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Qualities.</b>&mdash;There are other great qualities also
+which you can get in a portrait. All the qualities
+of color and tone, of course. But the simplicity of
+a single figure does not preclude the qualities of
+line and mass. The great things to be done with
+composition may as well be done in portrait as elsewhere.
+If you would see what may be done with
+a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by
+Whistler. You could not have a better example.
+It is one of the greatest portraits of the world.
+Notice the character which is shown in every line
+and plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of
+the individuality. Notice the grace and repose of
+line, and the relations of mass to mass and space&mdash;the
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>
+proportion. See how quiet it is and simple,
+yet how just and true. Of the color you cannot
+judge in a black and white, but you can see the
+relations of tones, the values and the drawing. It
+is these things which make a picture; not only a
+portrait, but a great work of art as well.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus304" id="illus304"></a>
+<img src="images/illus304.jpg" width="100%" alt="Portrait of his Mother." title="Portrait of his Mother." />
+<span class="caption">Portrait of his Mother. <i>Whistler.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Drawing.</b>&mdash;Good work in portraiture depends
+on good drawing, just as other work does. Don't
+think that because it is only a head you can make
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+it more easily than anything else. As in other
+kinds of work, the drawing you should try for is
+the drawing of the proportions and characteristic
+lines. Get the masses and the more important
+planes, and don't try for details. You can get
+these afterwards, or leave them out altogether, and
+they will not be missed if your work has been well
+done.</p>
+
+<p>Don't undertake too much in your work. Make
+up your mind how much you can do well, and
+don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever
+lived have been content to work on a head and
+shoulders, and have made masterpieces of such
+paintings. You may be content also. See how little
+Velasquez could make a picture of! and notice
+also the placing of the head, and the simplicity of
+mass, and of light and shade.</p>
+
+<p><b>Painting.</b>&mdash;Of course you can help your color
+with glazing and scumbling, but work for simplicity
+first. It is not necessary to use all sorts of
+processes; you can get fine results and admirable
+training from portrait studies, and the more
+directly you do it, the better the training will be.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus306" id="illus306"></a>
+<img src="images/illus306.jpg" width="100%" alt="Portrait of Himself." title="Portrait of Himself." />
+<span class="caption">Portrait of Himself. <i>Velasquez.</i></span>
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Study the Portrait of Himself, by Albrecht
+D&uuml;rer. You will find no affectation here; the
+most simple and direct brush-work only. You will
+not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is
+no reason why you should not try for it. It will
+depend on the brush-stroke. It implies a precision
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>
+of eye as well as of hand. It means drawing quite
+as much as painting,&mdash;drawing in the painting.
+You will not get this great precision; nevertheless,
+try for it, and get as near it as you can. Don't
+try for too much cleverness; be content with good
+sincere study, and the most direct expression of
+planes that you can give.</p>
+
+<p>Let your brush follow lines of structure. Don't
+lay on paint across a cheek, for instance. Notice
+the direction of the muscle fibre. It is the line of
+contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical
+structure to a face. If your brush follows
+those, you will find that it takes the most natural
+course of direction.</p>
+
+<p>Do the same with the planes of the body and
+of the clothing. Note the lines of action, and the
+brush-stroke will naturally follow them.</p>
+
+<p>See that the whole form, and particularly the
+head, "constructs." The head is round, more or
+less; it is not flat. The planes of it cross the plane
+of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and
+return. This in all directions. You must make
+your painting express this. It is not enough that
+there be features, the features must be part of
+a whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in
+front, by the atmosphere. The hair is not just
+hair, it is the outer covering of the skull, and of
+necessity follows the curves of the skull; and
+there is a back part to the skull which you cannot
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span>
+see, but which you can feel&mdash;can know the
+presence of, because of the way it is connected
+with the front part by the sides. All this you
+must make evident in your painting, as well as
+the facts which are on the side of the skull turned
+toward you. How make it evident? By values
+and directness of brush-stroke.</p>
+
+<p><b>Background.</b>&mdash;Never treat the background as
+something different from the head. The whole
+thing must go together. The slightest change in
+the background is equivalent to that much change
+of the head itself. For the change means necessarily
+a different contrast, either of color or light
+and shade, and it will have its effect on the color
+or relief of the head.</p>
+
+<p>Paint the two together, then. Make the head
+and all that goes with it or around it as equally
+parts of the picture, which all tend to affect each
+other. Your background is not something which
+can be laid in after the head is finished. True
+you can paint the background immediately around
+the head first, and then, after painting the head,
+extend the background to the edge of the canvas;
+but the color, tone, and character of the background
+must be decided upon at the time the
+head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus310" id="illus310"></a>
+<img src="images/illus310.jpg" width="100%" alt="Portrait." title="Portrait." />
+<span class="caption">Portrait. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>It is never good work to paint the head and
+then paint a background behind it. Particularly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>
+is this true when there are windows or any objects
+whatever in the background. It is most important
+that the whole thing shall be seen in the
+same kind of light, and in the same relation of
+light. This is hardly to be done when the head
+is one painting and the background another.</p>
+
+<p>This is not rigidly true, however, in cases when
+the whole thing is planned beforehand, and studies
+made for each part, as in elaborate portraits
+and compositions which include several figures
+or special surroundings. But the principle holds
+good here also. The relation must be kept of the
+head to the surroundings, and the effect of the one
+upon the other always kept in mind.</p>
+
+<p><b>Complex Portraits.</b>&mdash;It is often possible to pose
+your model so as to bring out some characteristic
+occupation. This is often done in portraits of
+distinguished men. Such a treatment gives opportunity
+for composition both of the figure and
+of the various objects which may make up the
+background.</p>
+
+<p>In such pictures you should study arrangement
+of line and mass, to make the thing &aelig;sthetically
+interesting as well as interesting as a portrait.
+Composition in mass,&mdash;the consideration of the
+head and shoulders in relation to the space of the
+canvas,&mdash;is necessary in the simplest head; but
+as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of
+action on the part of the figure, line and movement
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span>
+must be considered, as was done so beautifully
+in Whistler's portrait. In this the study of
+composition is your problem. You may study it
+all the time and in every picture you do, but it
+should be worked out before you begin to paint.</p>
+
+<p>Plan your canvas carefully always. Know just
+where everything is coming. When you leave
+things to chance, you are pretty sure to have
+trouble later.</p>
+
+<p><b>Portraits Good Training.</b>&mdash;I would not have you
+undertake to paint a portrait rashly. You should
+know what you are to expect. If you are not
+pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles
+of seeing color in nature, and of representing
+it on canvas, you are likely to get discouraged.
+Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may
+expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing
+a head from the life is a very different thing from
+drawing an inanimate object which will stay in
+one position as long as you can pay the rent. So
+in the painting of it, too, the color itself is alive.
+Flesh is something very elusive to see the color
+of. And when you find that just as you begin to
+get things well under way, or are in a particularly
+tight place, just at that moment your model must
+rest, you must stop while the position is changed
+and gotten back to again; then you will begin to
+realize that "<i>la nature ne s'arr&ecirc;te pas</i>."</p>
+
+<p>I would have you know all this, I say, before
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span>
+you begin on your first portrait; but, nevertheless,
+if you can get a start at it you will find it extremely
+good practice. The very difficulties bring
+more definitely to you the real problems of painting.
+The fact that it is really the representation
+of something which has life has an interest quite
+of its own. The constant change of position on
+the part of the model will make you more observant,
+and less regardful of details; or if you do
+regard the details, and forget the other things, it
+will show you how inadequate those details are
+to real expression, unless there is something larger
+to place them on.</p>
+
+<p>Don't undertake the painting of a head without
+considering well that you are likely to have trouble,
+and that the trouble you will have is most likely to
+be of a kind that you don't expect. But, having
+begun, keep your head and your grit, and do the
+best you can. Remember that you learn by mistakes,
+and failures are a part of every man's work,
+and of every painter's experience, and not only of
+your own.</p>
+
+<p>You will save your self-esteem from considerable
+bruising if you make it a point never to let
+your sitter see your work till you are pretty well
+over the worst of it. The knowledge that it is to
+be seen will make you work less unconsciously,
+and you will find yourself trying for likeness, and
+all that sort of thing, when that is not what you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+should be thinking about; and if, after all, the
+thing is a failure, it is a great consolation to know
+that no one but yourself has seen it!</p>
+
+<p><b>Beginning a Portrait.</b>&mdash;The ways of beginning
+portraits are innumerable. There is no one right
+way. Some are right for one painter or subject,
+and some for others; but there are some methods
+which are more advisable for the beginner.</p>
+
+<p>You can begin and carry through your painting
+entirely with body color, or you can begin it with
+<i>frott&eacute;es</i>, and paint solidly into that. Take these
+two methods as types, and work in one or the
+other, according to what are the special qualities
+you want your work to have.</p>
+
+<p>If you have never painted a head, and have
+some knowledge of the use of paint and of drawing,
+I would suggest that you make a few studies
+of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color,
+and on a not too large canvas, say sixteen by
+twenty inches. This will leave you no extra space,
+and you can devote your whole attention to the
+study of the head, with only a few inches of background
+around it. You will probably make the
+head too large. A head looks larger than it really
+is, especially when you are putting it on canvas.
+If you measure them you will find that few heads
+will be longer than nine inches from the top of the
+hair to the bottom of the chin. Take this as the
+regular size in drawing it on your canvas, and
+make the other proportions according to that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span>
+Make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines,
+which shall give only the main proportions of the
+head, neck, and shoulders. Within this, block out
+the features largely. Don't draw the eyes, but
+only the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but
+only the mass of light and shade of the nose.</p>
+
+<p><b>Construction.</b>&mdash;In these studies avoid trying to
+get anything more than what will be suggested
+by this simple drawing. Use body color. Don't
+think of anything but what you have to represent.
+Never mind how the paint goes on, nor what
+colors you use, except that it is right in value,
+and as near the color as you can get. Put it on
+with the full brush, and try to get first the large
+masses and planes. Get it light where it is light,
+and dark where it is dark, and have contrast
+enough to give some relief. Don't try for any
+problems. Set your model in a simple, strong
+light and go ahead.</p>
+
+<p>No details, no eyes, only the great structural
+masses. Try to feel the skull under these planes
+of light and dark. Have the edges of them pronounced
+and firm.</p>
+
+<p>Do a lot of these studies; learn structure first.
+You will never be able to put an eye in its place
+in the orbit till you can make the plane of dark
+which expresses the bony structure of the orbit.
+You will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone,
+and where the light falls on the temple and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span>
+on the side of the nose. Inside of this is the
+dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only
+by the light on the upper lid. Lay these in. Do
+the same with the other planes, and put your
+brush down firmly where you want the color, with
+no consideration but the simplest and most direct
+expression of value and color.</p>
+
+<p>Now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so
+that you can express the likeness with nothing
+but these dozen or so of simple planes, you have
+got some idea of what are the main things which
+give character to a head. You will begin to understand
+how it should "construct." Into this
+you can put all the detail you want, and if the
+detail is in value with this beginning it will keep
+its proper relation to the whole.</p>
+
+<p>Always when painting a head solidly, work this
+way. Get the action and character of the head as
+a whole. Block in the planes of the face and the
+features; and then go ahead to give the details
+which express the lesser characteristics. But
+always get the character, even the first look of
+resemblance, with this blocking in. Details and
+features will not give you the likeness, to say
+nothing of the character, if you have not gotten
+the character first by the representation of those
+proportions which mean the structure which underlies
+all the accidental positions of the detail of
+feature.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span>
+<b>The Frott&eacute;e.</b>&mdash;If you want to be more exact with
+your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in
+your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in
+charcoal. Then make a <i>frott&eacute;e</i> in one color, and
+paint into and over that, as was described in the
+Chapter on "Still Life."</p>
+
+<p>By careful and studious use of these two
+methods of work you can learn the main principles
+of painting portraits, and modify the handling
+as you have need; for all the various methods
+of manipulation are modifications of one or the
+other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally
+different ways of working.</p>
+
+<p>If you paint more than one sitting, get as good
+a drawing as you can the first day. Put in your
+<i>frott&eacute;e</i> the next, or make your blocking in; then
+after that do your painting into the <i>frott&eacute;e</i>, or the
+working out of such details as you decide to put in.</p>
+
+<p>Titian painted solidly, probably with no details;
+then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich
+colors into the glaze.</p>
+
+<p>But you had better not bother with all these
+ways of painting. When you can work well in
+the simplest way, you will find yourself making all
+sorts of experiments without any suggestions from
+me. Work first for facts of utmost importance,
+and technical methods are not such facts. Perception
+and representation by any most convenient
+means are the first things to be thought of,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span>
+and nothing else is of importance until a certain
+amount of advance is made along this line.</p>
+
+<p>Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the
+thing at once, not the details, but the <i>fact</i> of it.
+Try to lay in things so that you have a solid
+ground to work onto and into later.</p>
+
+<p>Look for the vital things. Don't try for "finish."
+Finish is not worked for nor painted into
+a picture; finish <i>occurs</i> when you have represented
+all you have to express. When you have got
+character and values and true representation of
+color, you will find that the "finish" is there without
+your having bothered about it.</p>
+
+<p>The masses you are to look for and emphasize
+are the great spaces where the light strikes and
+the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The lines
+disappear. You only see large planes of values;
+express these at once and simply.</p>
+
+<p>Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling
+or of color, at first. Don't try for finesse. All
+these delicacies will come later. But you must
+get the important things first. Learn to be strong
+<i>first</i>, or you never will be. Delicacy comes after
+strength, not before.</p>
+
+<p>So, too, freedom comes after knowledge&mdash;is
+the result of knowledge. So paint to learn. If
+it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the
+understanding and the representation as well as
+you can, and try for other things later.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus320" id="illus320"></a>
+<img src="images/illus320.jpg" width="100%" alt="Haystacks in Sunshine." title="Haystacks in Sunshine." />
+<span class="caption">Haystacks in Sunshine. <i>Monet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show certain characteristics of handling in "Impressionist" work.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXI" id="CHAPTER_XXXI"></a>CHAPTER XXXI</h2>
+
+<h3>LANDSCAPE</h3>
+
+
+<p>From the usual rating of figures as the most
+important branch of painting, it would be natural
+to speak of that kind of work first. But work
+from the head must come before you attempt the
+figure, and there are a good many things that you
+can learn from landscape which will help you in
+figure-work. The manner of painting figures has
+been much modified, too, of late years, owing to
+certain qualities and points of view which are due
+to the study of landscape and the important position
+that it has come to occupy.</p>
+
+<p>In the old days landscape was only a secondary
+thing, not only as a branch of art in itself, but particularly
+as it was used by figure painters. In this
+century it has so broadened in its scope that it is
+now recognized to be as important a field of work
+as any. But further than this, it has become the
+most influential study in the whole range of painting.
+From the development of the study of outdoor
+nature, and particularly outdoor light, it has
+come about that certain facts of nature have been
+recognized which were before neglected, ignored,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>
+or unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as
+much on the painting of the figure as on the
+painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible
+to paint the figure, in some respects, as it
+was painted as a matter of course a hundred years
+ago, while other ways of painting the figure, which
+were undreamed of at that time, are the matters
+of course now.</p>
+
+<p>The whole problem of light has taken a new
+phase, and the treatment of color in that relation
+is modified in the painting of figures as well as in
+the other branches of work.</p>
+
+<p><b>Pitch.</b>&mdash;In no direction is this more marked
+than in the matter of <i>pitch</i>, or <i>key</i>. With the
+study of landscape, the range of gradation from
+light to dark has broadened. A picture may now
+be painted in a "high key;" the picture may be,
+from the highest to the lowest note in it, far
+lighter than would have been thought possible
+even thirty years ago.</p>
+
+<p>This question of "bright pictures" is one which
+demands consideration. One has only to go into
+any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck with
+the fact that the key of almost every picture in it,
+of whatever kind, has changed from what it would
+have been in the last generation. This is not
+merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist"
+idea. That influence has only been
+strongly felt in this country within the last ten
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+years. It is not that which I am speaking of now.
+I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures&mdash;those
+which do not in any ordinary sense of the
+word belong to Impressionist work&mdash;are light in
+color, where they would once have been dark, or
+at least darker. The impressionists have had a
+definite influence, it is true; but the work of the
+earlier "<i>plein air</i>" men&mdash;the men who posed
+their models out-of-doors as a matter of principle,
+who studied landscape out-of-doors&mdash;was the
+first and most powerful influence, and that of the
+impressionists, coming along after it, has simply
+emphasized and carried it farther.</p>
+
+<p><b>Bright Pictures.</b>&mdash;Whatever may be thought of
+the work of those painters who are called "impressionists,"
+it must be recognized that they have
+taught us how some things may be possible. And
+the present quality of brightness will necessarily
+be to a certain extent a permanent one in art.
+For like it or not as we may, it is true&mdash;true to a
+certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature.
+For outdoor light <i>is bright</i>, even on a gray day.
+The luminosity of color is too great to be represented
+with dark paint or lifeless color. And
+once this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will
+inevitably influence all kinds of work. What is
+possible and right at a certain stage of knowledge
+or recognition may be impossible when other
+points of view have once been accepted. We see
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span>
+only what we look for, and we look for only what
+we expect to see or are interested to see. You
+cannot go out-of-doors now and paint as you would
+have painted a hundred years ago. Then you
+would have painted what you saw then; but you
+would not have seen nor looked for things which
+you cannot help seeing now. For our eyes have
+been opened to new qualities and new facts, and
+once the eyes have been opened to them they can
+never be closed to them again.</p>
+
+<p><b>Average Observation.</b>&mdash;I say we see only what we
+look for, what we expect to find; anything out of
+the ordinary is hard to believe at first. In looking
+at nature the average observer does not even see
+the obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in
+the general, but as a rule there is no real recognition
+of what is there; no perception of the relations
+of things; no analysis; no real <i>seeing</i>, only a conventional
+acceptance of a thing as a <i>thing</i>. Men
+look at nature with one idea, and at a picture of
+nature with an entirely different idea. Nature in
+the picture is to most people just what they have
+been accustomed to see in other pictures. They
+get their idea of how nature looks from those pictures,
+and if you show them a picture differently
+conceived they have difficulty in taking it in.</p>
+
+<p>For this reason the "bright picture" does not
+"look right." I remember being asked by a man
+in a modern exhibition what I thought of "these
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span>
+bright pictures." When I asked which pictures
+he had reference to, I found that he meant the
+work of a man whose whole aim in painting landscape
+was, as he once said to me, to get "the just
+note" in color and value. One would think that
+the fact that the whole force of an extremely able
+and sincere mind was directed to that purpose,
+would produce a picture with at least truth of
+observation. Yet this was not what my passing
+acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked,
+which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out
+to me, was an extremely commonplace landscape
+with a black tree against a garish sky, reflected in
+a pool of water. The "bright picture" seemed to
+me exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key,
+and the one with "nature in it," harsh and crude,
+but conventional; and that was just the point.
+The average observer wants to see, and does see,
+in nature what he is accustomed to accept in a
+picture as nature.</p>
+
+<p>But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He
+may paint a dark picture, but he must find a subject
+which is dark to do so. He may not paint
+daylight with false pitch and false relations, and
+say he sees it so. With every liberty for personal
+seeing, there are still certain facts so established
+and obvious that personality must take them and
+deal with them, must use them and not ignore
+them, in its self-expression.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus327" id="illus327"></a>
+<img src="images/illus327.jpg" width="100%" alt="On the Race Track." title="On the Race Track." />
+<span class="caption">On the Race Track. <i>Degas.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>The pitch of daylight is one of these facts.
+Light and luminosity may not be qualities which
+appeal to your temperament. You may therefore
+not make them the main theme of your painting
+of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture
+without in some way making it obvious that
+luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day
+light. There is no other quality so universally
+present and pervasive. In sunlight it is the most
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span>
+vital quality. You might as well paint water without
+recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to
+paint daylight without recognizing the fact that
+diffused sunlight is brilliant.</p>
+
+<p><b>A Help.</b>&mdash;You will find it very useful as a help
+in seeing pitch as well as color to have a card
+with a square hole cut in it to look through at
+your landscape. Have one side covered with
+black velvet and the other left white. Compare
+darks with the black, and the lights with the
+white, and make the picture compose in the opening
+as in a frame.</p>
+
+<p><b>Key and Harmony.</b>&mdash;But you should remember
+that the high key for out-of-door work does not
+mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does
+it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and
+shadow. Your picture may be as high as you
+please in pitch, and yet be harmonious and pleasing.
+I have seen impressionist pictures of most
+pronounced type hung in the same room with old
+pictures and in perfect harmony with them. It
+means that good color is always good color, and
+will always be harmonious with other good color,
+whatever the pitch of either. One picture is simply
+a different note from the other, that is all.
+The color in nature is not crude in not being
+dark. The relations of spots of color are just;
+you have only to be as just in observing them,
+and your picture will be harmonious.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>
+Make your notes just <i>all over</i> your canvas.
+Have some of them just and the rest false, and
+of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to make
+crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not
+get harmony. The harmony which comes from
+the presence in just relation of all the colors is
+none the less beautiful because more alive. You
+need not try for the most contrasting and most
+sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you
+should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.</p>
+
+<p>The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the
+largeness and movement, vibration and life,&mdash;these
+are the things which the modern painter
+has discovered in landscape and has emphasized;
+and this is what has made modern landscape a
+vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or
+do not see, feel, and express in your painting,
+these you must see, feel, and express; for once
+these qualities are recognized and accepted they
+are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be
+as little ignored.</p>
+
+<p><b>Landscape Drawing.</b>&mdash;Landscape is more difficult
+to draw than is generally thought; not only is the
+character affected by the <i>scale</i> of the main masses,
+but there is great probability of overdrawing. The
+curves that mark the modelling of the ground
+are very difficult to give justly. The altitude and
+slope of mountains are almost invariably exaggerated.
+The twists and windings of roadways and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span>
+fences are seldom carefully drawn; yet the most
+exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just
+representation of them. To give the character of
+a tree, too, without making out too much of the
+detail of it, needs more precise observation than
+it generally gets.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus330" id="illus330"></a>
+<img src="images/illus330.jpg" width="100%" alt="Willow Road." title="Willow Road." />
+<span class="caption">Willow Road. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>Get the character; get the sentiment of it.
+Search for the important things here first, and
+be more particular about the placing of each line
+than about the number of lines.</p>
+
+<p>Don't draw too many lines in a landscape;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span>
+don't draw too many objects. Carefully study the
+scene before you till you have decided what parts
+are most essential in giving the character that you
+want to express, and then draw most carefully
+those parts. See which are the <i>most expressive
+lines</i> in it. Get the swing and movement of those
+lines in the large; then study the more subtle
+movement of them. Get these things on the canvas
+first, and put everything else in as subsidiary
+to them. Have all this well placed before you
+begin to paint, and allow for little things being
+painted on to this.</p>
+
+<p>Don't get too many things into one landscape.
+The spirit of the time and place is what will make
+the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere
+facts. This spirit you will find in a few things,
+not in many. Having found which lines and
+forms, which masses and relations of color and
+value, express this, the more carefully you avoid
+putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize
+the quality which is the real reason of
+existence of your picture.</p>
+
+<p>In studying landscape, work for one thing at
+a time. What has been said of sketching and
+studies applies here. Landscape is the most bewildering
+of subjects in its multiplicity of facts
+and objects and colors and contrasts. If you cannot
+find a way to simplify it you will neither
+know where to begin nor where to leave off. I
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span>
+cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because
+no two landscapes are alike. Recipes will
+do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is
+the general principle which you may follow, and I
+try to keep it before you even at the risk of over-repetition.
+In no kind of picture can you drag in
+unimportant things simply because they exist in
+nature. In landscape more than elsewhere, because
+you cannot arrange it, but must select in
+the actual presence of everything, you must learn
+to concentrate on the things which mean most,
+and to refuse to recognize those which will not
+lend themselves to the central idea.</p>
+
+<p><b>Selection.</b>&mdash;When you select your subject, or
+"<i>motif</i>," as the French call it, select it for something
+definite. There is always something which
+makes you think this particular view will make a
+good picture. State to yourself what it is that
+you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. Is
+it the general color effect of the whole, or a contrast?
+Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a
+beautiful combination of line in the track of a road,
+or row of trees, or a river? Perhaps it is the mass
+and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees.
+Something definite or definable catches you&mdash;else
+you had better not do it at all; and what that
+something is you must know quite precisely, or
+you will not have a well-understood picture.</p>
+
+<p>When you have distinctly in your mind what
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span>
+you want to paint it for, then see that the composition
+is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic
+is the main thing in evidence. With
+this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on
+that characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends
+to break it up or distract from it. This is the only
+way you can simplify your subject. First by a
+distinct conception of <i>what</i> you paint it for, then
+by so much analysis of the whole field of vision as
+will show you what does and what does not help
+in the expression of it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Detail.</b>&mdash;Much detail in landscape is never good
+painting. Whether big or little, your canvas must
+express something larger and more important than
+detail. Give detail when it is needed to express
+character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much
+detail <i>where the emphasis lies</i> as will insure the
+completeness of representation&mdash;not a touch more.</p>
+
+<p><b>Structure.</b>&mdash;Have your foreground details well
+understood in drawing and value. This does not
+require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does
+require <i>structure</i>. Everything requires structure.
+<i>Structure is fundamental to character.</i> If you will
+not take the trouble to study the character of any
+least thing you put in, don't put it in at all.
+Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not
+important enough to have its character and its purpose
+in the picture understood.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke of structure in speaking of the head.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span>
+If I said nothing but "structure, structure, structure"
+to the end of the section, you would get the
+impression of what is the most important thing in
+drawing. If you will look for and find the line and
+proportion expressing the anatomy which makes
+the thing fulfil its particular function in the world,
+you will understand its character, and that is what
+is important, everywhere.</p>
+
+<p><b>Work in Season.</b>&mdash;Make your picture in the season
+which it represents. I don't say that a good
+summer picture may not be made in winter; but I
+do say that you are more likely to express the
+summer quality while the summer is around you.
+There is too much half painting of pictures, and
+then leaving them to be "finished up" afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>Of course you can make all your studies and
+sketches, and then begin and finish the picture
+from them. If you are careful to have plenty of
+material, to accumulate all your facts with the
+intention of working from those facts, all right;
+but it would be better if you were to work your
+picture in the season of it, as long as you are a
+student at least. For until you have had a great
+deal of experience, you will find when you come
+to paint your picture that some very much needed
+material you have neglected to collect, and you
+cannot safely supply it from memory. If this occurs
+in the time of year represented in the picture,
+you can just go out and study it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span>
+<b>Out-of-door Landscapes.</b>&mdash;The most important
+movement in modern art, the most important in
+its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have
+mentioned as the <i>plein air</i> movement. It was
+thought by some clear-headed men that the best
+way to paint an out-door picture was to take their
+canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working
+from a few color sketches and many pencil
+studies, they painted the whole picture from first
+to last in the open air. Working in this way, certain
+qualities got into the pictures unavoidably.
+Necessarily the color was fresher and truer. Necessarily
+there was more breadth and frankness,
+and less conventionality and mere picture-making.
+The spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and
+the whole type of picture was changed. For the
+first time out-of-door values were studied as things
+in themselves interesting and important. The
+result on landscape pictures was that pictures
+painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere,
+and that men looked and studied less for the making
+of pictures, and more for what nature had to
+reveal.</p>
+
+<p>It would be a good thing for you as a student
+if you would do as these men did whenever you
+want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself,
+or for background. If you wish to pose any
+kind of figure with landscape background, pose and
+paint your figure out-of-doors. Make sketches as
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span>
+much as you please, make studies as much as you
+please; but make them for the suggestions and
+knowledge they will give you, and not for material
+to be used in painting a picture at home. For
+your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it
+out-doors; you will get a feeling of freshness and
+truth in your work which you cannot get any other
+way. You will also acquire a power of concentration
+and of selection and rejection in the presence
+of nature which is of the utmost importance to you.</p>
+
+<p><b>Impressionism.</b>&mdash;It is not possible to speak of
+landscape and <i>plein air</i> without mention of the
+"Impressionists." You should understand what
+"impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and
+what the impressionist stands for. Whether we
+like it or not, this work is not to be ignored. It
+has tried for certain things, and has shown that
+they can be much more justly represented than
+had before been believed to be possible, and fad
+or no fad, that result stands.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, impressionism does not mean
+"purple and yellow." Any one who says "purple
+and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside, is
+a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow
+are incidental to the impressionist, not essential.
+It is only one of the ways of handling color by
+means of which it was found possible to express
+certain qualities of light.</p>
+
+<p>Before everything else the real impressionist
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span>
+stands for the representation of the personal conception
+and method as against the traditional.
+He believes that if a man has anything of his
+own to say, he must say it in his own way; and
+that if he cannot find that nature has anything
+to say to him personally, if nature cannot give
+him a personal message, if he can only paint by
+giving another man's ideas and another man's
+method, then he had better not paint at all; so
+that whatever he may see to paint, and however
+he finds a way to express it, the value of it and
+the truth of it lie in the fact that it is <i>his</i>, his
+way of seeing, and his way of expressing,&mdash;that
+it is "personal."</p>
+
+<p><b>Luminosity.</b>&mdash;The impressionist is imbued with
+the fact that all the light by means of which
+things are at all visible is luminous&mdash;that it
+vibrates. He does not think that living light can
+be represented by dead color. He strives to make
+his color live also. This is the secret of the purple
+and yellow. By the contrast of these two
+colors, by the combination and contrast and juxtaposition
+of the complementary colors and the
+use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more
+vibrant, and so give more of the pitch of real sunlight.
+He actually applies on his canvas the laws
+which are known to hold with light and color
+scientifically. He applies practically in his work
+those laws which the scientist furnishes him with
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>
+theoretically. The result in some hands is garish,
+crude. But the best men have shown that it is
+possible to use the means so as make a subtle
+harmony and a luminous brilliancy that have never
+before been attained. The crudity is the result
+of the man, not of the method.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Application.</b>&mdash;The application of all this to
+your own work is that when you want pitch and
+sunlight you can get it through the observance of
+the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on
+of pigment as will bring this about. Try to study
+the actual contrasts of color, not as they seem,
+but as they are in nature. Study the facts which
+have been observed as to colors in their effects
+on each other, and then try to see these in nature
+and to paint the results.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Luminists.</b>&mdash;This is the principle of all "loose
+painting" carried out scientifically. It is the cause
+of the peculiar technique of those impressionists
+who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The
+manner of putting on paint does interfere with
+the continuity of outline in the drawing necessarily,
+but there is a marked gain in the quality
+of light; and as these men are "luminists," and
+light is what they want primarily, the sacrifice
+is justifiable, or at any rate explicable.</p>
+
+<p>Now if you understand the scientific principle,
+and the practical application and its result on
+canvas, you have in your hands one of the main
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+instrumentalities in the rendering of one great
+quality of out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is
+a matter for you to decide for yourself. If the
+complete adoption of it implies too much of a
+sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value
+to you, then modify it, or take advantage of it as
+much as will give you the balance of qualities you
+most want. There is one way to get light and
+brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to
+your purpose if you need it.</p>
+
+<p>This is the application of color juxtaposition to
+mixing. The placing of complementaries so as
+to increase contrast is another way of adding to
+the brilliancy of light. You will find this most
+useful when you want to give the greatest possible
+emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow.
+If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will
+be the richer and more sparkling because of that
+contrast. If you want more strength in a note
+of color, get its complement as near it as you can.
+Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and
+of the contours of objects. You will get greater
+relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and
+cool than contrast of light and dark.</p>
+
+<p>Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising
+you to be an impressionist. I wish only that you
+shall see what there is in this way of looking at
+nature and of representation of certain effects of
+nature, which will be of use to you in the painting
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>
+of landscape. I would have you know what means
+are at your command, what is possible to accomplish
+in certain directions, and how it is possible
+to accomplish it; then I would have you make
+use of whatever will most directly and completely
+serve your purpose.</p>
+
+<p>Do not use any color or colors, any method or
+point of view, because of any advocacy whatsoever.
+Know first what you want to paint and
+why. Let nature speak to you. Go out and look
+at landscape. Study and observe; see the effect
+which makes you want to paint it, and then use
+the means and method which seem most entirely
+adapted to it. Don't ask yourself, nor let any
+one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method? or,
+Does this belong to this or that school? Don't
+bother about schools or methods at all. Look
+frankly to see, accept frankly, and then work to
+render and convey as frankly as you have seen.
+Be sincere&mdash;sincere with yourself and with your
+painting: then you will surely work at whatever
+you do from conviction, and not from fad; and
+whether it makes you paint as an impressionist
+or not is a very minor matter, because sincerity
+of purpose is the most important thing in painting,
+and method of representation one of the least.</p>
+
+<p><b>Atmosphere.</b>&mdash;A universal characteristic of nature
+will be a fundamental one in landscape. A
+landscape which you cannot breathe in is not a
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span>
+perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere,
+and the expression of atmosphere will go far to
+make your landscape true. But atmosphere is not
+haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness
+of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness
+of relation will do most in getting it. You had
+better not try for atmosphere as a thing, but as a
+result. Anything so universal and so indefinite
+can be expressed by no one thing. If you try to
+get it by any one means you will miss it. Study,
+then, the subtlety of color relation and justness of
+value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety
+of tone, and be satisfied with no least falsity of
+rendering, and you will find that your picture will
+not lack atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color of Contour.</b>&mdash;An important thing for you
+to look for and to study is the color of contours.
+You will not find it easy; not easy even to know
+what it is that you are looking for. But consider
+it as a combination of contiguous values and color
+vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you.</p>
+
+<p>No form is composed of unvarying color. No
+combination of color surrounding it lacks variety.
+All along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever
+kind, the value and color relation constantly
+change. The outline is not constant. Here and
+there it becomes lost from identity of value and
+color with what surrounds it, and again defines
+itself. The edge is not sharp. The color rays
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span>
+vibrate across each other. The inevitable variety
+of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness,
+gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings.
+These are qualities which go to the harmonizing
+of color, to the expression of light, and
+particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This
+constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant
+movement and play of the visual rays, and
+the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture,
+and all the objects represented in it.</p>
+
+<p>Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused
+light and the movement of all the objects is continually
+felt, either through their own elasticity or
+because of the heat and light waves, this study
+is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of
+freedom, space, and air.</p>
+
+<p><b>Skies.</b>&mdash;In the painting of the sky there are
+several points to be kept in mind. The sky, even
+on the quietest day, is full of movement. Cloud
+masses change continually. If there are no clouds
+there is constant vibration in the blue; constant
+variety in the plane of color,&mdash;a throb of color
+sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead,
+flat tint.</p>
+
+<p>Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you
+will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy
+handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or
+with criss-cross touches, but never make it a lifeless
+tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span>
+between the warm and cool color. You can work
+in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm
+and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole
+tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead.
+So far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere
+is essential, and is to be represented not by dense
+color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.</p>
+
+<p><b>Clouds.</b>&mdash;If you have clouds to paint, do not
+draw them rigidly. Get the effect of the mass
+and movement, and the lightness of them. As
+they constantly change in form, any one form they
+may assume cannot be characteristic. The type
+form is what you must get, and the suggestion
+of the motion and lightness. You can suggest,
+too, the direction of the wind by the way they
+mass and sway and flow. The direction of the
+sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The
+outline of a cloud mass is never hard, never rigid.
+The pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what
+give you most of the effect of it.</p>
+
+<p>Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a <i>cumulus</i>,
+<i>cirrus</i>, <i>stratus</i>, or what not. This character
+is important; but the character lies in the whole
+body of the cloud form, not in the accidental outlines
+or the special position of it for the moment.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sky Composition.</b>&mdash;The massing of cloud forms
+is a very useful factor in the composition of the
+landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is capable
+of giving accent or balance to the picture.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span>
+As it is not constant in position any more than
+in form, you can place it with truth to nature
+pretty nearly always where it will do the most
+good as an element in the composition. Make
+use of them, then, and study the forms and the
+possible phases of them so as to make the best
+use of them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Diffused Light.</b>&mdash;Much of the characteristic quality
+of out-door light is the result of the diffusion
+of light due to both the refraction and the reflection
+of the sky. The light which bathes the
+landscape comes in all directions from the sky.
+Necessarily, then, the sky will be in most cases
+far higher in value than anything under it. Even
+the blue of the sky, which looks darker than
+some bit of light in the landscape, you will find, if
+you can manage to get them to tell against each
+other, will be the more luminous of the two, and
+will look lighter. There are times when the sun
+glares on a white building or a piece of white
+sand, when the white tells light against the blue.
+But these are exceptions, and if we could get a
+blue paint which would give the intensity of color,
+and also the brilliancy of the light, even these
+cases would be most truly represented with the
+sky as the higher value. It is a case of whether
+to sacrifice value to color, or the reverse, as we
+cannot have both.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span>
+of the storm sky is really lower in value than
+some white object against it, especially if there
+be a bit of sun breaking through on it.</p>
+
+<p>But in general, nevertheless, you should consider
+the sky as always lighter and more luminous
+than anything under it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Three Planes.</b>&mdash;It will help you in understanding
+the way the light falls on landscape to consider
+everything as in one of three planes, and these
+planes taking greater or less proportions of light
+according to the position of the sun with reference
+to them.</p>
+
+<p>The position of the sun changes from a point
+immediately over, to a point practically at right
+angles to all objects in nature. Everything that
+can exist under the sun will come in one of these
+planes, and at some time in the day in each. The
+vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique
+between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly,
+the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses,
+will get the full amount of sunlight. The vertical
+planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will
+get the least, some of them being lighted only
+by diffused and reflected light. The planes lying
+between these two extremes will get more or less,
+according as they are more or less at right angles
+to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun
+declines from the zenith, the vertical planes get
+more and more and the horizontal planes less and
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span>
+less of the light, till in the late afternoon the
+banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses
+are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal
+plains of land and water are in shadow.</p>
+
+<p>However obscured the sun may be, this principle
+holds more or less; and it makes clear and helps
+you to observe and notice many facts in landscape
+light and shade which it is necessary to know.</p>
+
+<p>Millet said that all the beauty of color and
+value, and the whole art of painting, rested on the
+comprehension and observance of these facts.</p>
+
+<p>He said that as the planes of any form turned
+towards or away from the light and so got more
+or less of it, and as one form stood more or less
+far back of another and the atmosphere came
+between, the color and value changed; and in the
+observance of this, and its representation as applied
+to any and every object or group of objects,
+lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties
+of the art rested on it. He showed a painting
+of a single pear in which these things were most
+subtly observed, and said that that painting was
+as complete and perfect as any painting he could
+do simply because in the observance of these relations
+was implied the observance of everything
+which was vital to painting.</p>
+
+<p><b>Short Sittings.</b>&mdash;This characteristic, and the
+steady change of position of the sun and its effects
+on all the objects which are directly lighted
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span>
+by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting
+from nature out-of-doors, that you should not
+paint at one thing very long at a time. The light
+changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only takes
+a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is
+seldom that you can do any just study for more
+than an hour or an hour and a half at a sitting.
+Some men do work two or three hours, but they
+are not studying justly all that time; for that
+which was light is dark three hours later, and any
+true study of value and color is impossible under
+these conditions. Of course on gray days this is
+less marked, but you must suit your sittings to
+the time and facts.</p>
+
+<p>It would be better if you had more canvases,
+and worked a short time on each, and many days
+on all. You would have the truest work.</p>
+
+<p>Monet works never more than a half-hour on
+one canvas; but when he starts out he takes a
+half-dozen or more different canvases, and paints
+on each till the light has changed. Theodore
+Robinson seldom worked more than three-quarters
+of an hour, or at most an hour, on one canvas; but,
+he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas,
+and sometimes had a single canvas under way
+for successive seasons.</p>
+
+<p>Any man who would truly study for the just
+value and note of color must work more or less in
+this way when he works out-of-doors.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXII" id="CHAPTER_XXXII"></a>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
+
+<h3>MARINES</h3>
+
+
+<p>All that has been said on landscape painting
+applies to marines. You have the same open-air
+feeling and vibration of light and color. There is
+no need to say the same things over again. It is
+only necessary to take all these things for granted,
+and emphasize certain other things which are peculiar
+to the sea.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sea and Sky.</b>&mdash;To begin with, the relation of
+the sky to what is under it is markedly different
+in color from any other relations in painting.
+The sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting
+surface, and always strongly influenced in
+color, value, and key by the reflections of the sky
+on its surface. The sky color is always modifying
+the water&mdash;when and how depends on the
+condition of the weather, and the degree of quiet
+or movement of the water. Sometimes the water
+is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality
+is almost lost, but the influence is there.</p>
+
+<p>This relation is the most important thing, because
+the sea and the sky is always the main part
+of your picture; and no matter what else is there,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span>
+or how well painted it may be, if these things are
+not recognized, if they are not justly observed,
+your picture is bad.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot tell you all about these things. The
+variety of effects and relations is infinite. You
+must study them, paint them in the presence of
+nature, and use your eyes; only remember the
+general principles of air and atmosphere and light
+and color that I have spoken of elsewhere&mdash;all
+have most vital importance on marine painting.
+You must study these, and think of them, and in
+the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings,
+and apply them as well as you can.</p>
+
+<p><b>Movement.</b>&mdash;If "<i>la nature ne s'arr&ecirc;te pas</i>" ordinarily,
+the fact is even more marked in marines;
+for the water is the very type of ceaseless motion.
+Somehow, you must not only study in spite of the
+continual motion, but you must manage to make
+that motion itself felt. This you will find is in
+the larger modelling of the whole surface&mdash;the
+"heave" of it as distinguished from the waves
+themselves. The waves are a part of that motion
+of course; but give the wave-drawing only, without
+their relation to the great swing of the whole
+body of water, and you get rigidity rather than
+movement. The wave movement is in and because
+of this larger motion. See that first, and
+make it most evident, then let the waves themselves
+cut it up and help to express it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus350" id="illus350"></a>
+<img src="images/illus350.jpg" width="100%" alt="Entrance to Zuyder Zee." title="Entrance to Zuyder Zee." />
+<span class="caption">Entrance to Zuyder Zee. <i>Clarkson Stanfield.</i></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span>
+<b>Wave Drawing.</b>&mdash;How shall you "draw" so
+changeable a thing as a wave? Every wave has a
+type of form, has a characteristic movement and
+shape; and as it changes it comes into a new
+position and shape in logical and practically identical
+sequence of movement. You can only study
+this by constant watching. You look at the wave,
+and then turn your eyes away to fix it on your
+canvas; as you look back, the wave is not there.
+Well, you can only not try to make a portrait of
+each wave; it isn't possible. Don't expect to.
+Study the movement and type forms; think of
+it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and
+suggestive relation of it to other masses, and put
+that down.</p>
+
+<p>There is never a recurrence of the same thing
+either in exact form or color, but fix your eyes on
+one place, and over and over again you will see a
+succession of waves of similar kind. Or look at
+a wave and follow it as it drives on; changes come
+and go, but the wave form in the main keeps itself
+for some time.</p>
+
+<p>Look over a large field of the water without
+too sharply focussing the eyes, you will see the
+great lines and planes of modelled surface over
+and over again taking the same or similar shapes,
+positions, and relations. And as you look your
+eye will follow the movement in spite of yourself.
+Your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer;
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span>
+but meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have
+felt that the wave was the same in shape, but
+only varied in position.</p>
+
+<p>In this way you will come to know the wave
+forms. Jot them down, either in color or with
+charcoal; but do not look for outline too much.
+Try to study the forms and relations, mainly by
+the broad touch, with a characteristic direction
+and movement. No amount of explanation will
+tell you anything. You must sit and look, think,
+analyze, and suggest, then generalize as well as
+you can.</p>
+
+<p><b>Open Sea and Coast.</b>&mdash;The open sea is all movement.
+Even a ship, the most rigid thing on it,
+moves with it. But you do not have to study
+these things from the standpoint of invariable
+movement. You can start from a stable base.
+Study coast things first. You have then the relation
+of the movement of the water to the rock
+or land, and you can simplify the thing somewhat.
+What has been said of motion holds good
+still; but you can get something definite in a rock
+mass, and study the changes near it, and then extend
+your study as you feel strong enough.</p>
+
+<p>The study of coast scenery is quite as full of
+changing beauty as the open sea, and it has certain
+types that belong to it alone. Breakers and
+surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and
+forms, give great variety of subject and problem.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span>
+In the drawing of rocks the study of character is
+quite as important, but not so evasive, as the study
+of wave forms. You must try to give the feeling
+of weight to them. The mass and immovability
+add to the charm and character of the water about
+them.</p>
+
+<p><b>Subject.</b>&mdash;Don't undertake too much expanse on
+one canvas. Of course there are times when expanse
+is itself the main theme; but aside from
+that, too much expanse will make too little of other
+things which you should study. Whether your
+canvas be big or little, to get expanse everything
+in the way of detail and form must be relatively
+small, otherwise there is no room on the canvas
+for the expanse. So if you would paint some surf,
+or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the main
+thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let
+the expanse take care of itself, making the main
+thing large enough to study it adequately. If it is
+too small on the canvas, you cannot do this.</p>
+
+<p><b>Ships.</b>&mdash;The painting of the sea necessarily
+involves more or less the painting of vessels of
+different kinds. You may put the ship in so insignificant
+a relation to the picture that a very
+vague representation of it will do, but you must
+have a thorough knowledge of all the details of
+structure and type if you give any prominence to
+the ship in your picture.</p>
+
+<p><b>Detail.</b>&mdash;You do not need to put in every rope
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span>
+in a vessel. You do not need to follow out every
+line in the standing rigging even, in order to paint
+a ship properly. To do this would miss the spirit
+of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But
+ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all
+that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar
+structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own
+peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether
+you are complete or not in the detailing of the
+masts and rigging, you must know and represent
+the true character of the craft you are painting.
+You must take the trouble to know how, why, and
+when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number,
+and proportion of them, and their arrangement on
+any kind of vessel or boat you may paint. There
+is again only one way to know this. If you are
+not especially a painter of marines, you may find
+that the study of some particular vessel in its present
+condition and relation to surrounding things
+will serve your turn; but if you go in for the
+painting of marine pictures generally, you can only
+get to know vessels by being on and about them
+at all seasons and places. Your regular marine
+painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books
+with pencilled notes of details and positions and
+accidents and incidents of all sorts and conditions
+of ships. Ships under full sail and under reefed
+canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm&mdash;he
+can never have too many of these facts to
+refer to.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span>
+The true marine painter is nine parts a sailor.
+If he does not take, or has not taken a voyage at
+sea, at least has passed and does pass a large part
+of his time among vessels and sailors. He knows
+them both; his details are facts that he understands.
+And what he puts in or leaves out of a
+painting is done with the full knowledge of its
+relative importance to his picture and to the significance
+of the ship.</p>
+
+<p>All this sounds like a good deal to undertake;
+but to the man who loves the water and what sails
+upon it, it is only following his liking, and any one
+who does not love all this should content himself
+with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea
+pictures are not to be painted from recipes any
+more than any other thing, and ships particularly
+cannot be represented without an understanding
+of them. And after all, you do not have to do all
+this study at once. If you will only study well
+each thing that you do, and never paint one vessel
+or boat without understanding that one; if you
+will study the one you are doing now, and will
+do the same every time,&mdash;eventually you will have
+piled up a vast deal of knowledge without having
+realized how much you were doing.</p>
+
+<p><b>Color of Water.</b>&mdash;You must study the color of
+water in the large when you paint it. Remember
+that its color depends on other things than what
+it is itself. The character of the bottom, whether
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span>
+it be rocky or sandy, and the depth of the water,
+will affect its color; and to one accustomed to see
+these things, the picture betrays its truth or falsity
+at a glance, especially as the character of the wave
+and the great movement of the whole surface are
+influenced by the same things.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus358" id="illus358"></a>
+<img src="images/illus358.jpg" width="100%" alt="Girl Spinning." title="Girl Spinning." />
+<span class="caption">Girl Spinning. <i>Millet.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">Example of "<i>contre jour</i>" and out-of-door contrast of light and shade.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXXIII</h2>
+
+<h3>FIGURES</h3>
+
+
+<p>The broadest classification of figure pictures is
+to consider them as of two kinds,&mdash;those painted
+in an out-door or diffused light, and those painted
+in an in-door or concentrated light. The painting
+of figures out-of-doors you will find more difficult
+if you have had no experience in painting them in
+the studio. The problems of light and shade and
+color are more complex in the diffused light, and
+the knowledge of structure and modelling, as well
+as of special values gained by studio study, will be
+most helpful to you when you paint out-of-doors.
+I should say, then, don't attempt any serious painting
+of the human figure in the open air till you
+have had some experience with its special problems
+in the house.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Nude.</b>&mdash;No good figure-work has ever been
+done which was not founded on a knowledge of
+the nude. Whether the figure is draped or not,
+the nude is the basis of form. The best painters
+have always made their studies of pose and action
+in the nude, and then drawn the draperies over
+that. This insures the truth of action and structure,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span>
+which is almost sure to be lost when the
+drawing of the form is made through drapery or
+clothing. The underlying structure is as essential
+here as in portrait. It is the more imperative
+that the body be felt within the clothes from the
+fact that it cannot be seen. There must be no
+ambiguity; no doubt as to the anatomy underneath;
+for without this there can be no sense of
+actuality.</p>
+
+<p>I do not say paint the nude. On the contrary,
+if you want to go so far as that in the study of
+the figure, you must not attempt to do it with the
+aid of a book. Go to a good life class. But I
+wish to emphasize the principle that when you
+undertake to paint anything involving the figure,
+you must know something of the structure of
+what is more or less hidden, and must make allowance
+for the disguising of form which the
+draping of it will inevitably cause.</p>
+
+<p>And when you draw your figure, you should lay
+in your main lines, at any rate, from the nude
+figure if you can. If you cannot command a professional
+model for this purpose, you can only
+be more careful about your study of the underlying
+lines and forms as they are suggested by the
+saliencies of the draperies.</p>
+
+<p>If this is the case, be most accurate in those
+measurements which place the proportions of the
+parts which show through the covering, and try to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span>
+trace out by the modelling where the lines would
+run. By mapping out these proportions, and
+drawing the lines over the drapery masses wherever
+you can make them out, you can judge to a
+certain extent of the truth of action in your
+drawing.</p>
+
+<p>The use of a lay figure will help you somewhat
+if you can get one which is true in proportion. It
+will not help you much in the finer modelling, but
+it will at least insure your structural lines being
+in the right place, and that is as much as you can
+hope for without the special study of the nude.</p>
+
+<p>A lay figure is expensive, costing about three
+hundred dollars in this country. You will hardly
+be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only professional
+painters can afford to pay so much for accessories.
+But small wooden ones are within the
+means of most people, and will be found useful
+for the purpose I have mentioned, and one should
+be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>When you have assured yourself, as far as you
+can by its use with and without special draperies,
+of the right action of your drawing, you must do
+your painting from the draped model.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Model.</b>&mdash;Never paint without nature before
+you. If you paint the figure, never paint without
+the model. For the sake of the study of it, it
+goes without saying that you can learn to paint
+the figure only by studying from the figure. But
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span>
+beyond that, for the sake of your picture, you can
+have no hope of doing good work without working
+from the actual object represented. The greatest
+masters have never done pictures "out of their
+heads." The compositions and &aelig;sthetic qualities
+came from their heads it is true, but they never
+worked these things out on canvas without the
+aid of nature. And the greater the master, the
+more humble was he in his dependence on nature
+for the truth of his facts.</p>
+
+<p>Much more, then, the student needs to keep
+himself rigidly to the guidance of nature; and
+this he can only do by the constant use of the
+model.</p>
+
+<p><b>One Figure or Many.</b>&mdash;Whether you have one or
+more figures, the problem may be kept the same.
+The canvas must balance in mass and line and in
+color. When you decide to make a picture with
+several figures, study the composition first as if
+they were not <i>figures</i>, but groups of masses and
+line. Get the whole to balance and compose, then
+decide your color composition. Simplify rather
+than make complex. The more you have of number,
+the more you should consider them as parts
+of a whole. Keep the idea of grouping; combine
+the figures, rather than divide them. Have every
+figure in some logical relation to its group, and
+then the group in relation to the other parts.
+Don't string them out or spot them about. Study
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span>
+the spaces between as well as the spaces they
+occupy. And don't fill up these spaces with background
+objects. That will not bind the group
+together, but will separate it. Fill the spaces
+with air and with values&mdash;even more important!</p>
+
+<p>All this arranged, paint each group and each
+figure as if it were one thing instead of many.
+As you treat the head, the body, the dress, and
+the chair as all parts of a whole in a single sitting
+figure, so treat the various heads, bodies, dresses,
+etc., in a group as parts of a whole, by studying
+always the relations of each to each. And then
+study to keep the different groups as parts of
+whole canvas in the same way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Simplicity of Subject.</b>&mdash;But do not be too ambitious
+in your attempts. Keep your subjects simple.
+Don't be in a hurry to paint many figures.
+Paint one figure well before you try several.</p>
+
+<p>You will find plenty of scope for your knowledge
+and skill in single figures. Practise with
+sketches and compositions, if you will, in grouping
+several figures, and try to manage them so
+that the whole shall be simple in mass and effect;
+but do not attempt, as a student, without experience
+and skill in the painting of one figure, to
+paint pictures containing several. By the time
+you can really paint a single figure well, you can
+dispense with a manual of painting, and branch
+out as ambitiously as you please. In the meantime,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span>
+everything that you have knowledge enough
+to express well, you can express with the single
+figure.</p>
+
+<p>With the model, the background, the pose and
+occupation, the clothing and draperies, and whatever
+accessories may be natural to the thing as
+elements, it is possible to work out all the problems
+of line and mass and color. If a really fine
+thing cannot be made with one figure, more figures
+will only make it worse.</p>
+
+<p>Look again at Whistler's portrait of his mother.
+Consider it now, not as a portrait, but as a single
+figure. What are the qualities of it which would
+be helped if there were more in it? The very
+simplicity of it makes the handling of it more
+masterly.</p>
+
+<p>Look also at the one simple figure of Millet's
+"Sower;" all the great qualities of painting that
+are likely to get themselves onto one canvas you
+will find in this.</p>
+
+<p>See what movement and dignity there are in
+it. How statuesque it is! It is monumental. It
+has scale; it imposes its own standard of measurement.
+There are air and envelopment and light
+and breadth. Are these not qualities enough for
+one canvas?</p>
+
+<p><b>Nature the Suggester.</b>&mdash;Take your suggestions,
+your ideas, for pictures from nature. Keep your
+eyes open. Observe all poses which may hint of
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span>
+possible schemes of light and shade, of composition,
+or of color. It is marvellous how constantly
+groupings and poses and effects of all kinds occur
+in every-day life. Humanity is kaleidoscopic in its
+succession of changes; one after another giving
+a phase new and different, but equally suggestive
+of a picture if you will take the hint. The picture
+which originates in a natural occurrence is
+always true if it is sincerely and frankly painted.
+Truth is more various than fiction. It is easier to
+see than to invent. And in the arrangement of
+the material which nature freely and constantly
+furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention
+of man.</p>
+
+<p><b>Action and Character.</b>&mdash;The picture comes from
+the action&mdash;resides in it. The action comes
+from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of
+it. Any gesture or position which is the natural
+and unaffected result of an essential action will
+be true and vital, suggestive of nature, and beautiful
+because it will inevitably have character&mdash;be
+characteristic. The beauty of the picture is not
+something external to the costumes, occupations,
+and life which surround you, but is to be found,
+contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made
+visible, by the mere logical working out of the
+need, the custom, or the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>Emphasis is only the salience of the most natural
+movement.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span>
+Daily life swarms with pictures. You do not
+need to go to other places and other times for
+subjects. If you are awake to what is going on
+around you, if you see the essential line of the
+occupation, or the mass and color which is incidental
+to every least activity, you will have more
+suggested to you than you have time to do justice
+to. And it is your business to see the beautiful
+in the commonplace. Everything is commonplace
+till you see the charm in it. The artistic possibility
+does not lie in the unusual in any subject,
+but in the fact that the thing cannot get done
+without action and grouping and color and contrast;
+and these are the artist's opportunities.
+Keep your eyes open for them; learn to recognize
+them when you see them; look for these rather
+than for the details of the accidental fact which
+brings them out. See the movement of it, and
+the relation of it to what surrounds it, and you
+will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a composition which is an almost literal
+rendering of the movement and light and shade
+effect of a position quite accidentally seen.</p>
+
+<p>The whole effect of lighting and of line, the
+grouping and the pose, resulted purely from the
+musician's desire to get a good light on his music.
+There was no need to add to it. It was simply
+necessary to recognize the charm of it, and to
+represent that charm through it as frankly as it
+could be done.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p>
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus368" id="illus368"></a>
+<img src="images/illus368.jpg" width="100%" alt="Sketch of a Flute Player." title="Sketch of a Flute Player." />
+<span class="caption">Sketch of a Flute Player. <i>D. Burleigh Parkhurst.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Posing the Model.</b>&mdash;Let the character of the model
+suggest the pose. If you have a scheme for a picture,
+choose a model whose personality will lend
+itself naturally to the occupation or action natural
+to that scheme. Then follow the suggestion which
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span>
+you find in the model. Some rearrangement will
+always be necessary if you do not use as a model
+the same person who originally gave you the idea
+for the picture. Every human being has a different
+manner. You cannot hope for exactly the
+same expression in one person that you found in
+another. But put the model as nearly as you can
+in the same situation and pose, and then when
+the model eases from the unnatural muscular balance
+into the one natural to him, you will find
+the idea taken from your first observation translated
+into the characteristics of your present
+model.</p>
+
+<p>Never try to place a model in a pose which he
+can only hold by an unnatural strain. You will
+not get a satisfactory result from it. Study your
+model; see what poses he most naturally falls into,
+and then take advantage of one of these, and
+arrange your picture with reference to it.</p>
+
+<p>Never attempt to represent a character in your
+picture by using a model of a different class or
+type from it; you will not be successful either in
+painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor
+in painting a peasant from a model who is a lady.
+The life and occupation and thought common to
+your model will get into your painting of her; and
+if that is not in accordance to the idea in the picture,
+your picture will be false. The dress, no
+less than the pose and occupation, must be such
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span>
+as is natural to your model. The accessories of
+your picture must befit the character you wish to
+paint; otherwise your model becomes no more
+than a lay figure.</p>
+
+<p>Take note of the characteristics which are peculiar
+to your model, and use them; do not change
+them nor idealize them. Rather paint them as
+they are, and make them a vital part of your study
+of the subject. This is the best you can do with
+these characteristics. They may be the most expressive
+thing in your picture. If they are of such
+a nature that you cannot use them in this way, then
+do not use this model at all; you cannot get rid
+of these things. In trying to obscure or idealize
+them, you only lose character, or paint a character
+into your model which is unnatural to him; the
+result will not be satisfactory.</p>
+
+<p><b>Quiet Sitters.</b>&mdash;An inexperienced painter should
+not use a model with too much vivacity of body
+or of expression. The quiet, reposeful, thoughtful
+model, who will change little in position or manner,
+will simplify the problem. A model too wide
+awake or too sleepy will either of them give you
+trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Avoid very young children as models, and particularly
+babies. They are never quiet, and the
+problems you will have even with the best of
+models will be made enormously more difficult by
+their restlessness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span>
+For your first work choose models with well-marked
+faces, and pose them in a direct light
+which will give you the simplest and strongest
+effect of light and shade.</p>
+
+<p>See that your sitter is in as comfortable a position
+as you can get him into, so that the pose can
+be held easily. Don't attempt difficult and unusual
+attitudes. Such things require much skill
+and knowledge to take advantage of, and to use
+successfully. Make your effect more in the study
+of composition and color than in fanciful poses.
+Later, when you have gained experience, you may
+do this sort of thing.</p>
+
+<p>If you are painting a face, see that the eyes are
+in at a restful angle with the head, and that they
+are not facing a too strong light, nor are obliged
+to look at a blank space. Give them room to have
+a restful focus, and perhaps something pleasant or
+interesting to look at.</p>
+
+<p><b>Length of Pose.</b>&mdash;No sitter can hold a pose in
+perfect motionlessness. Do not expect it. You
+must learn to make allowance for certain slight
+changes which are always occurring. You must
+give your model plenty of rest, too, especially if
+he be not a professional model. A half-hour pose
+to ten minutes' rest is as much as a regular model
+expects to do as a rule. If you have a friend posing
+for you, particularly if it be a woman, twenty
+minutes' pose and ten minutes' rest, for a couple
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span>
+of hours, is all you should expect; and if the pose
+is a standing one, this will probably be more than
+she can hold&mdash;make the rests longer.</p>
+
+<p>An inexperienced model&mdash;and sometimes even
+a trained one&mdash;is likely to faint while posing, particularly
+if the room be close. Look out for this;
+watch your sitter, and see that she is not looking
+tired. The minute that you see the least sign of
+fatigue, if she shows pallor&mdash;rest. Do not get so
+absorbed in your canvas that you do not notice
+your model's condition. If you are observing and
+studying your model as closely as you should, you
+can hardly fail to notice any change that may
+occur, and you should at once give her relief.</p>
+
+<p><b>Distance.</b>&mdash;Don't work too near your model, nor
+too near your canvas. As regards the first, be
+far enough away to see the whole of the figure
+you are painting, or of that part which you are
+doing, entirely at one focus of the eye, and yet
+near enough to see the detail clearly. If you are
+too near, you see parts at a time, and do not see
+it as a whole. If you are too far, you see too generally
+for good study. You might make it a rule
+to be away from your subject a distance of about
+three or four times the extreme measurement of
+it. If it is a full length, say fifteen to twenty feet,
+if you can get so large a room. If it is a head
+and shoulders, about six or eight feet. Never get
+closer than six feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span>
+As to your canvas, work at arm's length. Don't
+bend over&mdash;again you see parts, and you must
+treat your canvas as a whole. Never rest your
+hand or arm on the canvas. Train your arm to
+be steady. Sit up straight, hold your brush well
+out at the end of the handle, and your arm extended;
+now and then, if you need closer work,
+lean forward, and if necessary use a rest-stick; but
+as a rule your work will be stronger and hang together
+better if you work as I have suggested.
+Of course you will often get up, and walk away
+from your work. Set your easel alongside the
+model, and go away to a distance, and compare
+them. Too intense application to the canvas forgets
+that relations, effect, and wholeness of impression
+are of the greatest importance, and are
+only to be judged of when seen at some distance.</p>
+
+<p><b>Background.</b>&mdash;Under the general title of background
+you may place everything which will come
+in as accessory to the figure, and against or alongside
+of which it stands. The picture must "hang
+together"; must have envelopment; must be a
+whole, not an aggregation of parts. Everything
+that goes to the making up of this whole must
+have a natural and logical connection with it.
+From the first conception of the picture you must
+consider the background as an essential part of it,
+and as something which will have a vital effect
+upon the figure. The color of the background
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span>
+must be thought of as a part of, because affecting,
+the figure itself. The simplicity or variety in
+the background, the number of objects in it, must
+be considered as to the effect on the figure also.
+You cannot make the background a patchwork of
+objects and colors without interfering with the
+effect of the main thing in the picture.</p>
+
+<p>If your figure is simple and quiet, keep the
+background the same. Make it a principle to treat
+the background simply always. If the character
+of the case demands some detail, and a variety of
+objects, then treat them so that their effect is
+as simple as possible; and the figure must be made
+stronger, in order that the variety in the background
+shall not overpower it. Control it by the
+way the light or the color masses, or simplify the
+painting of them. Keep the background in value
+as regards prominence and relief of objects as well
+as in the matter of color.</p>
+
+<p><b>Composition of Backgrounds.</b>&mdash;You can make the
+background help the figure, not merely by the
+painting of objects which help to explain,&mdash;that
+is of course,&mdash;but in the placing and arranging
+of them you may emphasize the composition.
+Whether the background be a curtain with its
+folds, or an interior with its furniture, you can and
+must make every object, every fold of the drapery,
+every mass of wall or object, distinctly help out in
+the composition as line and mass. Your composition
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span>
+must balance; the line and movement of the
+figure must have its true relation. The way you
+use whatever goes into the picture, the objects
+which make up the background, the way they
+group, and the spaces between them, must have
+a helpful reference to that movement, and to the
+balance of the whole.</p>
+
+<p><b>Simplicity.</b>&mdash;Lean always towards simplicity
+in composition as against complexity. In backgrounds
+particularly, avoid detail and over-variety.
+Don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted
+with <i>things</i>. If it is necessary, put it in; if it is
+not necessary, leave it out; and if there is the
+slightest doubt which it is, leave it out.</p>
+
+<p>The most common and the most fatal mistake
+is to make the picture too "interesting." The
+interest in a picture does not lie in the quantity of
+things expressed, but in the character of them, and
+in the quality of their representation. If you cannot
+treat a simple composition well, if you cannot
+make a picture balance well, and make it interesting
+with a quiet background, be sure a multitude
+of objects will not help it. The more you put
+into it the worse it will be. Learn to be master
+of the less before you try to be master of the
+more.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+<a name="illus376" id="illus376"></a>
+<img src="images/illus376.jpg" width="100%" alt="Milton Dictating Paradise Lost." title="Milton Dictating Paradise Lost." />
+<span class="caption">Milton Dictating "Paradise Lost." <i>Munkacsy.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">To show use of background. Notice also the composition.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Lighting.</b>&mdash;I have spoken of lighting in general
+in other chapters. You must apply the principles
+to your use of figures. Study the different effects
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span>
+which you can get on the model by the different
+ways of placing in reference to the window.
+Whatever lighting will be difficult in one kind of
+painting will be no less so in another. Avoid
+cross-lights, and do not be ambitious to try unusual
+and exceptional effects. If one should occur
+to you as charming, of course do it, if it is not
+too difficult, but don't go around hunting for the
+strange and weird. There is beauty enough for
+all occasions in such effects as are constantly coming
+under your observation. What was said about
+simplicity of subject will apply here as well, for
+the light and color effect is naturally a part of
+the subject. The most practical lights are those
+which fall from one side, so as to give simple
+masses of light and dark; they should come from
+above the level of the head, so as to throw the
+shadow somewhat downwards.</p>
+
+<p><b>"Contre Jour."</b>&mdash;One kind of posing with reference
+to lighting, gives very beautiful effect, but
+calls for close study of values, and is very difficult.
+It is called in French, <i>contre jour</i>; that is, literally,
+"against the day," or, against the light. It is a
+placing of the model so that the light comes from
+behind, and the figure is dark against the light.
+From its difficulty it should not be taken as a
+study by a beginner, for modelling and color are
+difficult enough at best. When they are to be
+gotten in the low key that the light behind necessitates,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span>
+and with the close values which this implies,
+the difficulty is enormously increased. But
+before you attempt the human figure in the open
+air, you will find it very good study to work in the
+house <i>contre jour</i>. The effect of a figure out-doors
+has many of the qualities of <i>contre jour</i>. The diffusion
+of light and the many reflections make the
+problem more complex; but the contrast, the close
+values, and the subtle modelling which you must
+study in <i>contre jour</i> will be good previous training
+before going out-doors with a model.</p>
+
+<p>Look at Millet's "Shepherdess Spinning," at the
+head of this chapter, as an example of <i>contre jour</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Figures Out-of-doors.</b>&mdash;In painting, an object is
+always a part of its environment. So a figure
+must partake of the characteristics of its surroundings.
+Out-of-doors it is part of the landscape,
+characterized by the qualities which are
+peculiar to landscape. The diffusion of light,
+the vibration and the movement of it, the brilliancy
+and pitch, the cross-reflections and the
+envelopment,&mdash;all these give to the figure a
+quality quite different from that which it has in
+the house. There is no such definiteness either
+of drawing, or of light and shade, or of color. The
+problem is a different one. You must treat your
+figure no more as something which you can control
+the effect of, but as something which, place
+it in what position, in what surroundings, you will,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span>
+it will still be affected by conditions over which
+you have no control.</p>
+
+<p>Textures and surface qualities, local or personal
+colors, lose their significance to the figure out-of-doors.
+They become lost in other things. The
+pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or
+value,&mdash;these are what are of importance. The
+more you search for the qualities which would be
+a matter of course in the house, the more you will
+lose the essential quality,&mdash;the quality of the fact
+of out-doors.</p>
+
+<p>When in the house, you can have things as definite
+as you wish; out-doors you will find a continual
+play of varying color and light. The shadows
+do not fall where you expect them to. The values
+are less marked. The stillness of the pose is interfered
+with by the constant movement of nature.
+The color is influenced by the diffused color of the
+atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass,
+the trees, and the sky. The light does not fall
+<i>on</i> the face so much as it falls <i>around</i> it. The
+modelling is less, the planes are not precise. The
+expression is as much due to the influence of
+what is around it as to the face itself.</p>
+
+<p>All this means that you must study and paint
+the figure from a new point of view. You do not
+make so much of what the model is as how the
+model looks in these surroundings. You must
+not look for so much decision, and you must study
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span>
+values closely. Look more for the modelling of
+the mass than for the modelling of surface. Look
+more for the vibration of light and air on the flesh
+and drapery colors than for these colors in themselves.
+Look for color of contours in the model.
+Study the subtleties of values of contours, and
+make your figure relieve by the contrast of value
+in mass rather than by the modelling within the
+outline. See how the figure "tells" as a whole
+against what is behind it first, and keep all within
+that first relation.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus381" id="illus381"></a>
+<img src="images/illus381.jpg" width="100%" alt="Buckwheat Harvest." title="Buckwheat Harvest." />
+<span class="caption">Buckwheat Harvest. <i>Millet.</i></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span>
+It is possible to look for and to find many of
+the qualities which distinguish the figure in the
+studio light; sometimes you may want to do so.
+The telling of a story, the literary side of the
+picture, if you want that side, sometimes needs
+help that way. But in this you lose larger characteristics,
+and the picture as a whole will not have
+the spirit of open air in it.</p>
+
+<p>What has been said of the painting of landscape
+applies to the painting of figures in landscapes.
+Pose your figure out-of-doors if you
+would represent it out-of-doors. Then paint it
+as if it were any other out-door object. If the
+figure is more important to the composition than
+anything else in the landscape, as it often will be,
+then study that mainly, and treat the rest as
+background, but as background which has an influence
+which must be constantly recognized.</p>
+
+<p>Never finish a figure begun out-doors by painting
+afterwards from a model posed in the house.
+Leave the figure as you bring it in. If it is not
+finished, at least it will be in keeping with itself;
+and this will surely be lost if you try to work it
+from a model in different conditions.</p>
+
+<p><b>Animals.</b>&mdash;Animals should be considered as
+"figures out-of-doors." There is no essential difference
+in the handling one sort of a figure or another.
+The anatomy is different, and the light
+falls on different textures, but the principle is not
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span>
+changed. You must consider them as forms influenced
+by diffused light and diffused color, and
+paint them so. You will find that often, especially
+in full sunlight, the color peculiar to the
+thing itself is not to be seen at all. The character
+of the light which falls on it gives the note,
+and controls. In the shade the effect is less
+marked, but the constant flicker makes the same
+sort of variation, though not to the same extent.</p>
+
+<p>There is no secret of painting animals either in
+the house or out-of-doors which is not the same as
+the secret of painting the human figure. If you
+would paint an animal, get one for a model and
+study it. Work in some sort of a house-light
+first, in a barn or shed, or, if it be a small animal,
+in your studio. Study as you would any other
+thing, from a chair to a man. The principles of
+drawing do not change with the character of anatomy.
+The animal may be less amiable a poser,
+but you must make allowance for that.</p>
+
+<p>When you have got a knowledge of the form,
+and the character of color and surface, take the
+animal out-doors, get some one to help hold him,
+and apply the same principles that would govern
+your study of a rock or a tree in the open air.</p>
+
+<p>As for fur, and all that sort of thing, treat it as
+you would any other texture-problem in still life.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXXIV</h2>
+
+<h3>PROCEDURE IN A PICTURE</h3>
+
+
+<p>Some pictures, particularly those begun and
+finished in the open air, may be frankly commenced
+immediately on the canvas from nature
+as she is before the painter, and without any
+special processes or methods of procedure carried
+on to completion. But many pictures are of a
+sort which renders this manner of work unwise
+or impossible. There may be too many figures
+involved. The composition, the drawing, or other
+arrangement may be too complicated for it, and
+then the painter has to have some methodical
+and systematic way of bringing his picture into
+existence. He must take preliminary measures to
+ensure his work coming out as he intends, and
+must proceed in an orderly and regular manner in
+accordance with the planning of the work. It is
+in this sort of thing that he finds sketches and
+studies essential to the painting of the picture
+as distinguished from their more common use as
+training for him, or accumulation of general facts.</p>
+
+<p><b>Preliminaries.</b>&mdash;There must be made numbers
+of sketches, first of the slightest and merely suggestive,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span>
+and then of a more complete, kind, to develop
+the general idea of composition from the first
+and perhaps crude conception of the picture. All
+the great painters have left examples of work in
+these various stages. It is a part of the training
+of every student in art schools to make these
+composition sketches, and to develop them more
+or less fully in larger work. In the French
+schools there are monthly <i>concours</i>, when men
+compete for prizes with work, and their success
+is influenced by a previous <i>concour</i> of these composition
+sketches.</p>
+
+<p>This preliminary sketch in its completed stage
+gives the number and position and movement of
+the figures and accessories, with the arrangement
+of light and shade and color. There is no attempt
+to give anything more than the most general kind
+of drawing, such details as the features, fingers,
+etc., being neglected. The light and shade on the
+single figures also is not expressed, but the light
+and shade effect of the whole picture is carefully
+shown, and the same with the color-scheme. It is
+this first sketch that establishes the character of
+the future picture in everything but the details.
+Sometimes this work is done on a quite large
+canvas, but usually is not more than a foot or two
+long, and of corresponding width.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus386" id="illus386"></a>
+<img src="images/illus386.jpg" width="100%" alt="Study of Fortune." title="Study of Fortune." />
+<span class="caption">Study of Fortune. <i>Michael Angelo.</i></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p><b>Studies.</b>&mdash;After this there must be studies made
+for the drawing of the single figures, and for more
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span>
+exactness of line and action in the bringing of all
+together into the whole. This work is usually
+done in charcoal, from the life, and sometimes on
+a piece of drawing-paper stretched over the same
+canvas that the picture will be painted on, or
+otherwise arranged, but of the same size. Often,
+however, this work, too, is done on a smaller scale
+than that of the picture, especially when the picture
+is to be very large. This is based on the
+preliminary sketch as composition, and is intended
+to carry that idea out more in full, and perfect
+the drawing of the different figures, and to harmonize
+the composition. The composition and
+relation of figures both as to size and position on
+the final canvas depend on this study.</p>
+
+<p><b>Corrections.</b>&mdash;In making these studies and in
+transferring them to the canvas, corrections are
+of course often necessary. The correction may or
+may not be satisfactory. To avoid too great confusion
+from the number of corrections in the same
+place, they are not made always directly on the
+study or canvas, but on a curtain of tissue paper
+dropped over it. The figure may be completely
+drawn, and is to be modified in whole or in part.
+The tissue paper receives the new drawing, and
+the old drawing shows through it, and the effect
+of the correction can be compared with that of
+the first idea. The study itself need not then be
+changed until the alteration which is satisfactory
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span>
+is found, as the process may be repeated as many
+times as necessary on the tissue paper, and the alterations
+finally embodied in the completed study.</p>
+
+<p><b>Figure Studies.</b>&mdash;The studies for the various single
+figures are now made in the nude from the
+model, generally a quarter or half life size&mdash;a careful,
+accurate light and shade drawing of every
+figure in the picture, the model being posed in the
+position determined on in the study just spoken
+of. Sometimes further single studies are made
+with the same models draped, and generally special
+studies of drapery are made as well; these studies
+are afterwards used to place the figures in position
+on the canvas before the painting begins.</p>
+
+<p><b>Transferring.</b>&mdash;The composition study must now
+be transferred to the canvas, to give the general
+arrangement and relative position, size, and action
+of the figures, etc. If the drawing is the same
+size as the canvas it is done by tracing, if not,
+then it is "squared up." In this stage of the
+process mechanical exactness of proportion is the
+thing required, as well as the saving of time; all
+things having been planned beforehand, and freedom
+of execution coming in later. This establishes
+the proportions, the sizes, and positions of
+the several figures on the final canvas. The drawing
+is not at this stage complete. The more general
+relations only are the purpose of this.</p>
+
+<p>Onto this preparation the studies drawn from
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span>
+the nude model are "squared up," and the drawing
+corrected again from the nude model. This
+drawing is now covered with its drapery, which is
+drawn from the life in charcoal, or a <i>frott&eacute;e</i> of
+some sort. At this stage the canvas should represent,
+in monochrome, very justly, what the finished
+picture will be in composition, drawing, and light
+and shade. If the <i>frott&eacute;e</i> of various colors (as suggested
+in the chapter on "Still Life") has been
+used, the general color scheme will show also.
+This completes the preliminary process of the picture,
+and when the painting is begun with a <i>frott&eacute;e</i>,
+this stage includes also the <i>first painting</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>"The &Eacute;bouch."</b>&mdash;An <i>&eacute;bouch</i> is a painting which,
+mainly with body color, blocks in broadly and
+simply the main masses of a composition. Sometimes
+an <i>&eacute;bouch</i> is used as one of the preliminary
+color studies for a picture, especially if there is
+some problem of drapery massing to be determined,
+or other motive purely of color and mass.
+Or if there is some piece of landscape detail such
+as a building or what not to come in, <i>&eacute;bouches</i> for
+it will be made to be used in completing the picture.
+But more commonly the <i>&eacute;bouch</i> is the first
+blocking-in painting of the picture, by means of
+which the greater masses of color and value are
+laid onto the canvas, somewhat rudely, but strongly,
+so as to give a strong, firm impression of the picture,
+and a solid under-painting on which future
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span>
+work may be done. Whether this <i>&eacute;bouch</i> is rough
+or smooth, just how much of it will be body or
+solid color and how much transparent, just what
+degree of finish this painting will have,&mdash;these
+depend on the man who does it. No two men
+work precisely the same way.</p>
+
+<p>Some men make what is practically a large and
+very complete sketch. Some paint quite smoothly
+or frankly, with more or less of an effect of being
+finished as they go, working from one side of the
+picture gradually across the whole canvas. Others
+work a bit here and a bit there, and fill in between
+as they feel inclined. Another way is to patch in
+little spots of rather pure color, so that the <i>&eacute;bouch</i>
+looks like a sort of mosaic of paint.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 65%;">
+<a name="illus392" id="illus392"></a>
+<img src="images/illus392.jpg" width="100%" alt="&Eacute;bouch of Portrait." title="&Eacute;bouch of Portrait." />
+<span class="caption">&Eacute;bouch of Portrait. <i>Th. Robinson.</i></span><br />
+<span class="center">One sitting of one hour and a half.</span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span>
+</div>
+
+<p>In the matter of color, too, there is great difference
+of method. Some men lay in the picture
+with stronger color than they intend the finished
+picture to have, and gray it and bring it together
+with after-painting. Others go to the other extreme,
+and paint grayer and lighter, depending on
+glazings and full touches of color later on to richen
+and deepen the color. All the way between these
+two are modifications of method. The main difference
+between these extremes is that when
+stronger color is used in the first painting, the
+process is to paint with solid color all through;
+while if glazings are to be much used, the <i>&eacute;bouch</i>
+must be lighter and quieter in color, to allow for
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span>
+the results of after-painting. For you cannot
+glaze <i>up</i>. You always glaze <i>down</i>. The glaze
+being a transparent color, used without white, will
+naturally make the color under it more brilliant in
+color, but darker in value, just as it would if you
+laid a piece of colored glass over it. And this
+result must be calculated on beforehand.</p>
+
+
+<p>Which of all these methods is best to use depends
+altogether on which best suits the man
+and his purpose in the picture or his temperament.
+A rough <i>&eacute;bouch</i> will not make a smooth picture.
+A mosaic gives a pure, clear basis of color to gray
+down and work over, and may be scraped for a
+good surface. It is a deliberate method, and will
+be successful only with a thoughtful, deliberate
+painter. If a man is a timid colorist, a strong,
+even crude, under-painting will help to strengthen
+his color. A good colorist will get color any way.
+For a student, the more directly he puts down what
+he sees, the less he calculates on the effect of future
+after-painting, the better.</p>
+
+<p>But whichever way a man works as to these various
+beginnings, the chief thing is, that he understand
+beforehand what are the peculiar advantages
+and qualities of each, and that he consider before
+he begins what he expects to do, and how he purposes
+to do it.</p>
+
+<p><b>Further Painting.</b>&mdash;The first painting may be put
+in from nature with the help of the several models
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span>
+in succession. More probably it will be put in
+from the color sketch which furnishes the general
+scheme, and from a number of studies and <i>&eacute;bouches</i>
+which will give the principal material for each part
+of the canvas. With the next painting comes the
+more exact study from models and accessories
+themselves. The under-painting is in, the color
+relations and the contrasts of masses, but all is
+more or less crude and undeveloped. Every one
+thing in the picture must be gradually brought to
+a further stage of completion. The background is
+not as yet to be carried farther as a whole. If the
+canvas is all covered, so that the background effect
+is there, it is all that is needed as yet. The most
+important figures are to be painted, beginning with
+the heads and hands, and at the same time painting
+the parts next to them, the background and drapery
+close around them, so that the immediate
+values shall all be true as far as it has gone.</p>
+
+<p>No small details are painted yet. The whole
+canvas is carried forward by painting all over it,
+no one thing being entirely finished; for the same
+degree of progress should be kept up for the whole
+picture. To finish any one part long before the
+rest is done, would be to run the risk of over-painting
+that part.</p>
+
+<p>After the heads and other flesh parts, the draperies
+should be brought up, and the background
+and all objects in it painted, to bring the whole
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span>
+picture to the same degree of completion. This
+finishes the second painting. It is all done from
+nature direct, and is painted solidly as a rule.
+Even if the first painting has been a <i>frott&eacute;e</i> this
+one will have been solidly painted into that <i>frott&eacute;e</i>,
+although the transparent rubbing may have been
+left showing, whenever it was true in effect; most
+probably in the shadows and broader dark masses
+of the backgrounds. In this second painting no
+glazings or scumblings come in. The canvas is
+brought forward as far as possible with direct
+frank brush-work with body color before these
+other processes can be used. Glazes and such
+manipulations require a solid under-painting, and
+a comparative completion of the picture for safe
+work. These processes are for the modifying of
+color mainly; you do not draw nor represent the
+more important and fundamental facts of the
+picture with them. All these things are painted
+first, in the most frank and direct way, and then
+you can do anything you want to on a sure basis
+of well-understood representation. There will be
+structure underneath your future processes.</p>
+
+<p><b>The Third Painting.</b>&mdash;The third painting simply
+goes over the picture in the same manner as the
+second, but marking out more carefully the important
+details and enforcing the accuracy of features,
+or strengthening the accents of dark and
+bringing up those of the lights. The procedure
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span>
+will, of course, be different, according as the picture
+was begun with an <i>&eacute;bouch</i> of body color or a
+<i>frott&eacute;e</i> of transparent color. The third painting
+will, in either case, carry the picture as a whole
+further toward being finished.</p>
+
+<p><b>Rough and Smooth.</b>&mdash;If body color has been used
+pretty freely in the two first paintings, the surface
+of paint will be pretty rough in places by the time
+it is ready for the third painting. Whether that
+roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something
+for the painter to decide for himself. Among
+the greatest of painters there have always been
+men who painted smoothly and men who painted
+roughly. I have considered elsewhere the subject
+of detail, but the question of detail bears on that
+of the roughness of the painting; for minute detail
+is not possible with much roughness of surface;
+the fineness of the stroke which secures
+the detail is lost in the corrugations of the heavier
+brush-strokes. The effect of color, and especially
+luminosity, has much to do with the way the paint
+is put on also, and all these things are to be considered.
+As a rule, it might be well to look upon
+either extreme as something not of importance in
+itself. The mere quality of smoothness on the
+canvas is of no consequence or value, any more
+than the mere quality of roughness is. If these
+things are necessary to or consequent upon the
+getting of certain other qualities which are justly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span>
+to be considered worth striving for, then these
+qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all
+right. The painter will do well to look on them
+as something incidental merely to the picture. If
+he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the
+expression of what is true and vital to his picture,
+the question of the surface quality of his canvas
+will not bother him beyond the effect that it has
+upon his attaining of that expression.</p>
+
+<p><b>Scraping.</b>&mdash;The second painting will be well
+dry before the third begins, especially if the paint
+be more rough and uneven than is for any reason
+desirable. Almost every painter scrapes his pictures
+more or less. There is pretty sure to be
+some part of it in which there is roughness just
+where he doesn't want it. For the third painting,
+that is to say, after the main things in the
+picture are practically entirely finished, there remains
+to be done the strengthening and richening
+and modifying of the colors, values, and
+accents, and the bringing of the whole picture
+together by a general overworking. Before this
+begins, the picture may need scraping more or less
+all over. If it does need it, you may use a regular
+tool made for that purpose; or the blade of a
+razor may be used, it being held firmly in such
+a position that there is no danger of its cutting
+the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>It is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth,
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span>
+but only to take off such projections and unevenness
+of paint as would interfere with the proper
+over-painting.</p>
+
+<p>The third painting represents any and all processes
+that may be used to complete the picture.
+There is no rule as to the number of processes or
+"paintings." You may have a dozen paintings if
+you want them, and after the first two they are
+all modifications and subdivisions of the third
+painting; for they all add to furthering the completion
+of the picture. They are all done more
+or less from nature, as the second painting was.
+There should be very little done to any picture
+without constant reference to nature.</p>
+
+<p>If you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a
+time. Don't "tone" it with a general wash of
+some color. That is not the way pictures are
+"brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of
+the glaze. The glaze, like any other application
+of paint, is put on just where it is needed to modify
+the color of that place where the color goes. The
+use of a scumble is the same; and both the glaze
+and the scumble will be painted into and over
+with solid color, and that again modified as much
+as is called for. The thing which is to be carefully
+avoided is not the use of any special process,
+but the ceasing from the use of some process or
+other before the thing is as it should be,&mdash;don't
+stop before the picture represents the best, the
+completest expression of the idea of the picture.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span>
+This completeness of expression may even go
+to the elimination of what is ordinarily looked upon
+as "finish." Finish is not surface, but expression;
+and completeness of expression may demand
+roughness and avoidance of detail and surface at
+one time quite as positively as it demands more
+detail and consequent smoothness at another.</p>
+
+<p>And this final completeness comes from the last
+paintings which I group together as the "third."
+Scumble and glaze and paint into them, and
+glaze and scumble again. Use any process which
+will help your picture to have those qualities
+which are always essential to any picture being
+a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition
+that is, you get from the first, or you
+never can get it at all. Those qualities of character,
+and truth of representation, and exactness
+of meaning, you get in the first paintings, together
+with the more general qualities of color and tone.
+Emphasis and force of accent, such detail as you
+want, and the final and more delicate perceptions
+of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting,
+which may be divided into several paintings.</p>
+
+<p><b>Between Paintings.</b>&mdash;When a painting is dry and
+you begin to work on it again, you will probably
+find parts of its surface covered with a kind of
+bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures
+the work altogether. It is "dried in." In
+drying, some of the oil of the last painting is
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_388" id="Page_388">[Pg 388]</a></span>
+absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze
+is the result. You cannot paint on it without in
+some way bringing it back to its original color.
+You cannot varnish it out at this stage, for this
+will not have a good effect on your picture.</p>
+
+<p><b>"Oiling Out."</b>&mdash;You can oil it all over, and then
+rub all the oil off that you can. This will bring
+it out. But the oil will tend to darken the picture;
+too much oil should be avoided. Turpentine
+with a little oil in it will bring it out also,
+but it will not stay out so long, but perhaps long
+enough for you to work on it. If you put a little
+siccative de Harlem in it, or use any picture varnish
+thinned with turpentine, it will serve well
+enough. There is a retouching varnish, <i>vernis &agrave;
+retoucher</i>, which is made for this purpose, and is
+perfectly safe and good.</p>
+
+<p>The picture must be well dried before it is
+finally varnished.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_389" id="Page_389">[Pg 389]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXXV" id="CHAPTER_XXXV"></a>CHAPTER XXXV</h2>
+
+<h3>DIFFICULTIES OF BEGINNERS</h3>
+
+
+<p>All painters have difficulty with their pictures,
+but the trouble with the beginner is that he has
+not experience enough to know how to meet it.
+The solving of all difficulties is a matter of application
+of fundamental principles to them; but it
+is necessary to know these principles, and to have
+applied them to simple problems, before one can
+know how to apply them to less simple ones.</p>
+
+<p>I have tried to deal fully with these principles
+rather than to tell how to do any one thing, and to
+point out the application whenever it could be done.</p>
+
+<p>There are, however, some things that almost
+always bother the beginner, and it may be helpful
+to speak of them particularly.</p>
+
+<p><b>Selection of Subject.</b>&mdash;One of the chief objections
+to copying as a method of beginning study is
+that while it teaches a good deal about surface-work,
+it gives no practical training just when it is
+most needed. The student who has only copied
+has no idea how to look for a composition, how to
+place it on his canvas, or how to translate into
+line and color the actual forms which he sees in
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_390" id="Page_390">[Pg 390]</a></span>
+nature. These things are all done for him in the
+picture he is copying, yet these are the very first
+things he should have practised in. The making
+of a picture begins before the drawing and painting
+begins. You see something out-doors, or you
+see a group of people or a single person in an interesting
+position. It is one thing to see it; how
+are you practically to grasp it so as to get it on
+canvas? That is quite a different thing. How
+much shall you take in? How much leave out?
+What proportion of the canvas shall the main object
+or figure take up? All these are questions
+which need some experience to answer.</p>
+
+<p>In dealing with figures experience comes somewhat
+naturally, because you will of course not
+undertake more than a head and shoulders, with a
+plain background, for your first work. The selecting
+of subject in this is chiefly the choice of lighting
+and position of head, which have been spoken
+of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the
+canvas should be reduced to the making of the
+head as large as it will come conveniently. The
+old rule was that the point of the nose should be
+about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases
+on the ordinary canvas this brings the head in
+the right place. As you paint more you will put
+in more and more of the figure, and so progress
+comes very naturally.</p>
+
+<p>But in landscape you are more than likely to
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_391" id="Page_391">[Pg 391]</a></span>
+be almost helpless at first. There is so much all
+around you, and so little saliency, that it is hard to
+say where to begin and where to leave off. Practice
+in still life will help you somewhat, but still
+things in nature are seldom arranged with that
+centralization which makes a subject easy to see.
+Even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious
+is, when you come to paint it, only the more difficult
+to handle because of its simplicity. The simplicity
+which you should look for to make your
+selection of a subject easy is not the lack of
+something to draw, but the definiteness of some
+marked object or effect. What is good as a
+"view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for
+a picture. You want something tangible, and you
+do not want too much or too little of it. A long
+line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance,
+is simple enough, but what is there for
+you to take hold of? In an ordinary light it is
+only a few broad planes of value and color without
+an accent object to emphasize or centre on.
+It can be painted, of course, and can be made a
+beautiful picture, but it is a subject for a master,
+not for a student. But suppose there were a tree
+or a group of trees in the field; suppose a mass
+of cloud obscured the sky, and a ray of sunlight
+fell on and around the tree through a rift in the
+clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose
+all was in broad light, and the tree was strongly
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_392" id="Page_392">[Pg 392]</a></span>
+lighted on one side, on the other shadowed, and
+that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one
+side of it. Immediately there is something which
+you can take hold of and make your picture around.
+The field and hill alone will make a study of distance
+and middle distance and foreground, but it
+would not make an effective sketch. The two
+effects I have supposed give the possibility for a
+sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests
+a picture.</p>
+
+<p>This central object or effect which I have supposed
+also clears up the matter of the placing of
+your subject on the canvas. With merely the
+hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a
+mile or two one side or the other would make
+little or no difference to your picture. But the
+tree and the effect of light decide the thing for
+you. The tree and the lighting are the central
+idea of the picture. Very well, then, make them
+large enough on your canvas to be of that importance.
+Then what is around them is only so much
+more as the canvas will hold, and you will place
+the tree where, having the proper proportionate
+size, it will also "compose well" and make the
+canvas balance, being neither in the middle exactly
+nor too much to one side.</p>
+
+<p>Here are two photographs taken in the same
+field and of the same view, with the camera
+pointed in the same direction in both. One shows
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_393" id="Page_393">[Pg 393]</a></span>
+the lack of saliency, although the tree is there.
+In the other the camera was simply carried forward
+a hundred yards or so, until the tree became
+large enough to be of importance in the composition.
+The placing is simply a better position with
+reference to the tree in this case.</p>
+
+<p><b>Centralize.</b>&mdash;Now, as you go about looking for
+things to sketch, look always for some central object
+or effect. If you find that what seems very
+beautiful will not give you anything definite and
+graspable,&mdash;some contrast of form, or light and
+shade, or color,&mdash;don't attempt it. The thing is
+beautiful, and has doubtless a picture in it, but not
+for you. You are learning how to look for and to
+find a subject, and you must begin with what is
+readily sketched, without too much subtlety either
+of form or color or value.</p>
+
+<p><b>Placing.</b>&mdash;Having found your subject with something
+definite in it, you must place it on your canvas
+so that it "tells." It will not do to put it in
+haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere
+as it happens. You will not be satisfied with the
+effect of this. The object of a picture is to make
+visible something which you wish to call attention
+to; to show something that seems to you worth
+looking at. Then you must arrange it so that that
+particular something is sure to be seen whether
+anything else is seen or not. This is the first
+thing to be thought of in placing your subject.
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_394" id="Page_394">[Pg 394]</a></span>
+<i>Where</i> is it to come on the canvas? How much
+room is it to take up? If it is too large, there is
+not enough surrounding it to make an interesting
+whole. If it is to be emphasized, it must have
+something to be emphasized with reference to.
+On the other hand, if it is too small, its very size
+makes it insignificant.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus407" id="illus407"></a>
+<img src="images/illus407.jpg" width="100%" alt="Landscape Photo. No. 1." title="Landscape Photo. No. 1." />
+<span class="caption">Landscape Photo. No. 1.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p>If it is a landscape, decide first the proportions
+of land and sky,&mdash;where your horizon line will
+come. Then, having drawn that line, make three
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_395" id="Page_395">[Pg 395]</a></span>
+or four lines which will give the mass of the main
+effect or object&mdash;a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or
+whatever it be, get merely its simplest suggestion
+of outline. These two things will show you, on
+considering their relation to each other and to the
+rest of the canvas, about what its emphasis will
+be. If it isn't right, rub it out and do it again, a
+little larger or smaller, a little more to one side or
+the other, higher or lower, as you find needed.
+When you have done this to your satisfaction, you
+have done the first important thing.</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 70%;">
+<a name="illus408" id="illus408"></a>
+<img src="images/illus408.jpg" width="100%" alt="Landscape Photo. No. 2." title="Landscape Photo. No. 2." />
+<span class="caption">Landscape Photo. No. 2.</span>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_396" id="Page_396">[Pg 396]</a></span>
+<b>Still Life, etc.</b>&mdash;If your subject be still life,
+flowers, or an animal or other figure, go about it in
+the same way. Look at it well. Try to get an
+idea of its general shape, and block that out with
+a few lines. You will almost always find a horizontal
+line which by cutting across the mass will
+help you to decide where the mass will best come.
+First, the mass must be about the right size, and
+then it must balance well on the canvas. Any of
+the things suggested as helping about drawing and
+values will of course help you here. The reducing-glass
+will help you to get the size and position
+of things. The card with a square hole in it will
+do the same. Even a sort of little frame made
+with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands
+will cut off the surrounding objects, and help you
+see your group as a whole with other things out
+of the way.</p>
+
+<p><b>Walk About.</b>&mdash;A change of position of a very
+few feet sometimes makes a great difference in
+the looks of a subject. The first view of it is not
+always the best. Walk around a little; look at it
+from one point and from another. Take your
+time. Better begin a little later than stop because
+you don't like it and feel discouraged. Time taken
+to consider well beforehand is never lost. "Well
+begun is half done."</p>
+
+<p><b>Relief.</b>&mdash;In beginning a thing you want to have
+the first few minutes' work to do the most possible
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_397" id="Page_397">[Pg 397]</a></span>
+towards giving you something to judge by. You
+want from the very first to get something recognizable.
+Then every subsequent touch, having reference
+to that, will be so much the more sure and
+effective. Look, then, first for what will count
+most.</p>
+
+<p><b>What to look for.</b>&mdash;Whether you lay your work
+out first with black-and-white or with paint, look
+to see where the greatest contrast is. Where is
+there a strong light against dark and a strong dark
+against light? Not the little accents, but that
+which marks the contact of two great planes. Find
+this first, and represent it as soon as you have got
+the main values, in this way the whole thing will
+tell as an actuality. It will not yet carry much
+expression, but it will look like a <i>fact</i>, and it will
+have established certain relations from which you
+can work forward.</p>
+
+<p><b>Colors.</b>&mdash;It ought to go without saying that the
+colors as they come from the tube are not right
+for any color you see in nature however you think
+they look. But beginners are very apt to think
+that if they cannot get the color they want, they
+can get it in another kind of tube. This is a mistake.
+The tubes of color that are actually necessary
+for almost every possible tint or combination
+in nature are very few. But they must be used
+to advantage. Now and then one finds his palette
+lacking, and must add to it; but after one has experimented
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_398" id="Page_398">[Pg 398]</a></span>
+a while he settles down to some eight
+or ten colors which will do almost everything, and
+two or three more that will do what remains.
+When you work out-of-doors you may find that
+more variety will help you and gain time for you;
+that several blues and some secondaries it is well
+to have in tubes besides the regular outfit. Still
+even then, when you have got beyond the first
+frantic gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself
+constantly using certain colors and neglecting
+others. These others, then, you do not need, and
+you may leave them out of your box.</p>
+
+<p><b>Too Many Tubes.</b>&mdash;If you have too many colors,
+they are a trouble rather than a help to you. You
+must carry them all in your mind, and you do not
+so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and
+taking up the paint from different parts of your
+palette instinctively&mdash;which means that you are
+gaining command of it. Never put a new color on
+your palette unless you feel the actual need of it,
+or have a special reason for it. Better get well
+acquainted with the regular colors you have, and
+have only as many as you can handle well.</p>
+
+<p><b>Mixing.</b>&mdash;Use some system in mixing your paint.
+Have your palette set the same way always, so that
+your brush can find the color without having to
+hunt for it. Have a reasonable way too of taking
+up your color before you mix it. Don't always
+begin with the same one. Is the tint light or
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_399" id="Page_399">[Pg 399]</a></span>
+dark? strong or delicate? What is the prevailing
+color in it? Let these things affect the sequence
+of bringing the colors together for mixing.
+Let these things have to do also with the proportionate
+quantity of each. Suppose you have a
+heavy dark green to mix, what will you take first?
+Make a dash at the white, put it in the middle of
+the palette, and then tone it down to the green?
+How much paint would you have to take before
+you got your color? Yet I've seen this very thing
+done, and others equally senseless. What is the
+green? Dark. Bluish or warm? Will reddish or
+yellowish blue do it best? How much space do
+you want that brushful to cover? Take enough
+blue, add to it a yellow of the sort that will make
+approximately the color. Don't stir them up; drag
+one into the other a little&mdash;very little. The color
+is crude? Another color or two will bring it into
+tone. Don't mix it much. Don't smear it all
+over your palette. Make a smallish dab of it, keeping
+it well piled up. If you get any one color too
+great in quantity, then you will have to take more
+of the others again to keep it in balance. Be
+careful to take as nearly the right proportions of
+each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few
+times; for every time you add and mix you flatten
+out the tone more, and lose its vibration and
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Now, if the color is too dark, what will you
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_400" id="Page_400">[Pg 400]</a></span>
+lighten it with? White? Wait a minute. Think.
+Will white take away the richness of it? White
+always grays and flattens the color. Don't put it
+into a warm, rich color unless it belongs there.
+Then only as much as is needed.</p>
+
+<p>Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value
+on a forehead in full light? White first, then a
+little modifying color, yellow first, then red; perhaps
+no red: the kind of yellow may do it. When
+you have a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you
+can first. Then gray it as much as you need to,
+never the reverse. But when you want a delicate
+color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen
+it cautiously.</p>
+
+<p>These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary
+to take the trouble to write it down? But
+common-sense is not always attributed to artists,
+and the beginner does not seem able always to
+apply his common-sense to his painting at first.
+To say it to him opens his eyes. Best be on the
+safe side.</p>
+
+<p><b>Crude Color.</b>&mdash;The beginner is sure to get crude
+color, either from lack of perception of color qualities,
+or inability to mix the tints he knows he
+wants. In the latter case crude color either comes
+from too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious
+colors brought together, which is only
+another form of the same, for an added complementary
+would make it right. For instance, Prussian
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_401" id="Page_401">[Pg 401]</a></span>
+blue and chrome yellow mixed will make a
+powerful green which you could hardly put anywhere&mdash;a
+strong, crude green. Well, what is the
+complementary? Red? And what does a complementary
+do to a color? Neutralizes, grays.
+Then add a very little red, enough to gray the
+green, not enough to kill its quality.</p>
+
+<p>Or if you don't want the color that makes, take
+a little reddish yellow, ochre say, and possibly a
+little reddish blue, new blue or ultramarine; add
+these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the
+same kind of green. This is the principle in extreme.
+Still, the best way would be not to try
+to make a green of Prussian blue and chrome yellow.
+It is better to know the qualities of each
+tube color on your palette. Know which two
+colors mix to make a crude color, and which will
+be gray, more or less, without a third.</p>
+
+<p><b>Muddy Color.</b>&mdash;Dirty or muddy color comes
+from lack of this last. You do not know how
+your colors are going to affect each other. You
+mix, and the color looks right on the palette, but
+on the canvas it is not right. You mix again and
+put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first tint
+and you get&mdash;mud. Why? Both wrong. Scrape
+the whole thing off. With a clean spot of canvas
+mix a fresh color. Put it on frankly and freshly
+and let it alone&mdash;don't dabble it. The chances
+are it will be at least fresh, clean color.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_402" id="Page_402">[Pg 402]</a></span>
+Over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially
+when more than three colors are used.
+When you don't get the right tint with three
+colors, the chances are that you have got the
+wrong three. If that is not so, and you must add
+a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or you
+will have to mix the tint again.</p>
+
+<p><b>Dirty Brushes and Palette.</b>&mdash;Using dirty brushes
+causes muddy color. Don't be too economical
+about the number of brushes you use. Keep a
+good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out
+of your brush often. If the color is getting muddy,
+clean your palette and take a clean brush. Your
+palette is sure to get covered with paint of all
+colors when you have painted a little while. You
+can't mix colors with any degree of certainty if
+the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints. Use
+your palette-knife&mdash;that's what it's for. Scrape
+the palette clean every once in a while as it gets
+crowded. Wipe it off. Take some fresh brushes.
+Then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the
+fault of your tools.</p>
+
+<p><b>Out-door and In-door Colors.</b>&mdash;There is one source
+of discouragement and difficulty that every one
+has to contend against; that is, the difference in
+the apparent key of paint when, having been put
+on out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. Out-of-doors
+the color looked bright and light, and when
+you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray, and perhaps
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_403" id="Page_403">[Pg 403]</a></span>
+muddy and dead. This is something you
+must expect, and must learn how to control.</p>
+
+<p>As everything that the out-door light falls upon
+looks the brighter for it, so will your paint look
+brighter than it really is because of the brilliancy
+of the light which you see it in. You must learn
+to make allowance for that. You must learn by
+experience how much the color will go down when
+you take it into the house.</p>
+
+<p>Of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary
+thing in working out-of-doors, and if it
+is lined with black so much the better for you;
+for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming
+through the cloth, and while it shades your
+canvas, it does to some extent give a false glow to
+your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances.</p>
+
+<p>Mere experience will give you that knowledge
+more or less; but there are ways in which you can
+help yourself.</p>
+
+<p>When you first begin to work out-doors try to
+find a good solid shade in which to place your
+easel, and then try to paint up to the full key,
+even at the risk of a little crudeness of color.
+Use colors that seem rather pure than otherwise.
+You may be sure that the color will "come down"
+a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. Then,
+if the shade has been pretty even, and your canvas
+has had a fair light, you will get a fairly good
+color-key.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_404" id="Page_404">[Pg 404]</a></span>
+<b>Predetermined Pitch.</b>&mdash;Another way is to determine
+the pitch of the painting in some way before
+you take the canvas out-of-doors. There are various
+ways of doing this. The most practical is,
+perhaps, to know the relative value, in the house
+and out-doors, of the priming of your canvas. Have
+a definite knowledge of how near to the highest
+light you will want that priming is. Then, when
+you put on the light paint, if you keep it light
+with reference to the known pitch of the priming,
+you will keep the whole painting light.</p>
+
+<p><b>Discouragement.</b>&mdash;We all get discouraged sometimes,
+but it is something to know that the case
+is not hopeless because we are. That what we
+are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason
+that it may not get done eventually. Often
+the discouragement is not even a sign that what
+we are doing is not going well. The discouragement
+may be one way that fatigue shows itself,
+and we may feel discouraged after a particularly
+successful day's work&mdash;in consequence of it very
+probably. Make it a rule not to judge of a day's
+work at the end of that day. Wait till next morning,
+when fresh and rested, and you will have a
+much more just notion of what you have done.</p>
+
+<p>When you begin to get blue about your work
+is the time to stop and rest. If the blues are the
+result of tire, working longer will only make your
+picture worse. A tired brain and eye never improved
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_405" id="Page_405">[Pg 405]</a></span>
+a piece of painting. And in the same
+spirit rest often while you are painting. If your
+model rests, it is as well that you rest also. Turn
+away from your work, and when you get to work
+again you will look at it with a fresh eye.</p>
+
+<p><b>Change Your Work Often.</b>&mdash;Too continued and
+concentrated work on the same picture also will
+lead to discouragement. Change your work, keep
+several things going at the same time, and when
+you are tired of one you may work with fresh perceptions
+and interest on another.</p>
+
+<p>Stop often to walk away from your work. Lay
+down your palette and brushes, and put the canvas
+at the other end of the room. Straighten
+your back and look at the picture at a distance.
+You get an impression of the thing as a whole.
+What you have been doing will be judged of less
+by itself and more in relation to the rest of the
+picture, and so more justly.</p>
+
+<p>When things are going wrong, stop work for
+the day. Take a rest. Then, before you begin
+again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look
+the picture over&mdash;consider it, compare it with
+nature, and make up your mind just what it lacks,
+just what it needs, just what you will do first to
+make it as it should be. It is marvellous how it
+drives off the blues to know just what you are
+going to do next.</p>
+
+<table border="0" cellpadding="5" cellspacing="0" summary="Specimen Tints">
+<tr>
+  <td align="center">
+    <div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+    <a name="illus419" id="illus419"></a>
+    <img src="images/illus419.jpg" width="100%" alt="SPECIMEN TINTS OF ARTISTS' OIL COLOURS NO. 1." title="SPECIMEN TINTS OF ARTISTS' OIL COLOURS NO. 1." />
+    </div>
+  </td>
+  <td align="center">
+    <div class="figcenter" style="width: 80%;">
+    <a name="illus420" id="illus420"></a>
+    <img src="images/illus420.jpg" width="100%" alt="SPECIMEN TINTS OF ARTISTS' OIL COLOURS NO. 2." title="SPECIMEN TINTS OF ARTISTS' OIL COLOURS NO. 2." />
+    </div>
+  </td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td colspan="2" align="center"><span class="caption">SPECIMEN TINTS OF ARTISTS' OIL COLOURS</span></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES</h4>
+<p>1. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the closest
+paragraph break.</p>
+
+<p>2. A few typographical errors have been corrected. They have been marked
+in the text with <ins class="correction" title="like this">popups</ins>.
+Position mouse over the line to see an explanation.</p>
+
+<p>3. In the List of Illustrations, the page number for "Descent from Cross"
+is corrected to 163 (original text is 165).</p>
+
+<p>4. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in
+spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Painter in Oil
+       A complete treatise on the principles and technique
+       necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors
+
+Author: Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
+
+Release Date: January 6, 2010 [EBook #30877]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PAINTER IN OIL ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Ritu Aggarwal and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: =November Beechwood.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+
+
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+                          A COMPLETE TREATISE
+                                  ON
+                     THE PRINCIPLES AND TECHNIQUE
+                             NECESSARY TO
+                THE PAINTING OF PICTURES IN OIL COLORS
+
+                                  BY
+                      DANIEL BURLEIGH PARKHURST
+
+    PUPIL OF WILLIAM SARTAIN, OF BOUGUEREAU AND TONY-FLEURY, AND OF
+         AIMEE MOROT; MEMBER OF THE NEW YORK WATER COLOR CLUB;
+            FORMERLY LECTURER ON ART IN DICKINSON COLLEGE;
+                AUTHOR OF "SKETCHING FROM NATURE," ETC.
+
+
+        "_La peinture a l'huile est bien difficile;
+        Mais beaucoup plus beau que la peinture a l'eau._"
+
+
+                                BOSTON:
+                      LOTHROP, LEE & SHEPARD CO.
+
+
+                 COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEE AND SHEPARD
+
+                        _All Rights Reserved_
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+
+                   TYPOGRAPHY BY C. J. PETERS & SON
+
+              PRESSWORK BY BERWICK & SMITH, NORWOOD PRESS
+                             NORWOOD MASS.
+
+
+
+
+                                  TO
+                               A. M. P.
+                THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED.
+
+  _September 4th, 1897._
+
+
+
+
+                               PREFACE
+
+
+Books of instruction in the practice of painting have rarely been
+successful. Chiefly because they have been too narrow in their point
+of view, and have dealt more with recipes than with principles. It is
+not possible to give any one manner of painting that shall be right
+for all men and all subjects. To say "do thus and so" will not teach
+any one to paint. But there are certain principles which underlie all
+painting, and all schools of painting; and to state clearly the most
+important of these will surely be helpful, and may accomplish
+something.
+
+It is the purpose of this book to deal practically with the problems
+which are the study of the painter, and to make clear, as far as may
+be, the principles which are involved in them. I believe that this is
+the only way in which written instruction on painting can be of any
+use.
+
+It is impossible to understand principles without some statement of
+theory; and a book in order to be practical must therefore be to some
+extent theoretical. I have been as concise and brief in the
+theoretical parts as clearness would permit of, and I trust they are
+not out of proportion to the practical parts. Either to paint well, or
+to judge well of a painting, requires an understanding of the same
+things: namely, the theoretical standpoint of the painter; the
+technical problems of color, composition, etc.; and the practical
+means, processes, and materials through which and with which these are
+worked out.
+
+It is obvious that one cannot become a good painter without the
+ability to know what is good painting, and to prefer it to bad
+painting. Therefore, I have taken space to cover, in some sort, the
+whole ground, as the best way to help the student towards becoming a
+good painter. If, also, the student of pictures should find in this
+book what will help him to appreciate more truly and more critically,
+I shall be gratified.
+
+                                                         D. B. P.
+
+  _December 4, 1897_
+
+
+
+
+                               CONTENTS
+
+
+                          PART I.--MATERIALS
+    CHAPTER                                                   PAGE
+         I. Observations                                         3
+        II. Canvases and Panels                                  6
+       III. Easels                                              15
+        IV. Brushes                                             20
+         V. Paints                                              33
+        VI. Vehicles and Varnishes                              61
+       VII. Palettes                                            65
+      VIII. Other Tools                                         69
+        IX. Studios                                             76
+
+
+                       PART II.--GENERAL PRINCIPLES
+
+         X. Mental Attitude                                     85
+        XI. Tradition and Individuality                         95
+       XII. Originality                                        103
+      XIII. The Artist and the Student                         107
+       XIV. How to Study                                       110
+
+
+                     PART III.--TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES
+
+        XV. Technical Preliminaries                            123
+       XVI. Drawing                                            126
+      XVII. Values                                             138
+     XVIII. Perspective                                        146
+       XIX. Light and Shade                                    151
+        XX. Composition                                        166
+       XXI. Color                                              184
+
+
+                     PART IV.--PRACTICAL APPLICATION
+
+      XXII. Representation                                     209
+     XXIII. Manipulation                                       224
+      XXIV. Copying                                            236
+       XXV. Kinds of Painting                                  242
+      XXVI. The Sketch                                         245
+     XXVII. The Study                                          254
+    XXVIII. Still Life                                         260
+      XXIX. Flowers                                            280
+       XXX. Portraits                                          286
+      XXXI. Landscape                                          309
+     XXXII. Marines                                            335
+    XXXIII. Figures                                            347
+     XXXIV. Procedure in a Picture                             371
+      XXXV. Difficulties of Beginners                          389
+
+
+
+
+                        LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+                                                              PAGE
+  NOVEMBER BEECHWOOD                    _Parkhurst_ _Frontispiece_
+  STRETCHERS                                                    11
+  CANVAS PLIERS                                                 13
+  DOUBLE-POINTED TACK                                           13
+  EASEL                                                         16
+  EASEL                                                         17
+  SKETCHING EASEL                                               18
+  SKETCHING EASEL                                               19
+  BRUSHES.--Red Sable, Round                                    22
+            Red Sable                                           23
+            Red Sable, Flat                                     24
+            Round Bristle                                       26
+            Flat Bristle                                        28
+            Flat pointed                                        29
+            Fan                                                 30
+  BRUSH CLEANER                                                 31
+  OIL COLORS                                                    54
+  OVAL PALETTE                                                  65
+  ARM PALETTE                                                   67
+  THE COLOR BOX                                                 70
+  PALETTE KNIFE                                                 71
+  THE SCRAPER                                                   72
+  THE OIL-CUP                                                   73
+  MAHL-STICKS                                                   73
+  THREE-LEGGED STOOL                                            74
+  SKETCHING CHAIR                                               74
+  SKETCHING UMBRELLA                                            75
+  DRAWING OF HANDS                      _Duerer_                134
+  EGGS. WHITE AGAINST WHITE                                    154
+  THE CANAL                             _Parkhurst_            156
+  BOHEMIAN WOMAN                        _Franz Hals_           159
+  SEWING BY LAMPLIGHT                   _Millet_               161
+  DESCENT FROM THE CROSS                                       163
+  THE GOLDEN STAIRS                                            174
+  THE SOWER                             _Millet_               175
+  RETURN TO THE FARM                    _Millet_               178
+  THE FISHER BOY                        _Franz Hals_           217
+  BOAR-HUNT                             _Snyders_              221
+  GOOD BOCK                             _Manet_                227
+  SKETCH OF A HILLSIDE                                         246
+  THE RIVER BANK                        _Parkhurst_            250
+  STUDY OF A BLOOMING-MILL              _Parkhurst_            257
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 1                                            265
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 2                                            266
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 3                                            267
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 4                                            269
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 5                                            270
+  STILL LIFE, NO. 6                                            271
+  SWEET PEAS                                                   282
+  DUeRER                                 _by Himself_           289
+  PORTRAIT OF HIS MOTHER                _Whistler_             291
+  PORTRAIT OF HIMSELF                   _Valasquez_            293
+  PORTRAIT                              _Parkhurst_            297
+  HAYSTACKS IN SUNSHINE                 _Monet_                307
+  ON THE RACE TRACK                     _Degas_                314
+  WILLOW ROAD                           _Parkhurst_            317
+  ENTRANCE TO ZUYDER ZEE                _Clarkson Stanfield_   337
+  GIRL SPINNING                         _Millet_               345
+  SKETCH OF A FLUTE PLAYER              _Parkhurst_            355
+  MILTON DICTATING "PARADISE LOST"      _Munkacsy_             363
+  BUCKWHEAT HARVEST                     _Millet_               368
+  STUDY OF FORTUNE                      _Angelo_               373
+  EBOUCH OF PORTRAIT                    _Th. Robinson_         379
+  LANDSCAPE PHOTO. NO. 1                                       394
+  LANDSCAPE PHOTO. NO. 2                                       395
+
+
+
+
+                                PART I
+
+                              MATERIALS
+
+
+
+
+                          THE PAINTER IN OIL
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER I
+
+                         GENERAL OBSERVATIONS
+
+
+There is a false implication in the saying that "a poor workman blames
+his tools." It is not true that a good workman can do good work with
+bad tools. On the contrary, the good workman sees to it that he has
+good tools, and makes it a part of his good workmanship that they are
+in good condition.
+
+In painting there is nothing that will cause you more trouble than bad
+materials. You can get along with few materials, but you cannot get
+along with bad ones. That is not the place to economize. To do good
+work is difficult at best. Economize where it will not be a hindrance
+to you. Your tools can make your work harder or easier according to
+your selection of them. The relative cost of good and bad materials is
+of slight importance compared with the relative effect on your work.
+
+The way to economize is not to get anything which you do not need.
+Save on the non-essentials, and get as good a quality as you can of
+the essentials.
+
+Save on the number of things you get, not on the quantity you use. You
+must feel free in your use of material. There is nothing which hampers
+you more than parsimony in the use of things needful to your painting.
+If it is worth your while to paint at all, it is worth your while to
+be generous enough with yourself to insure ordinary freedom of use of
+material.
+
+The essentials of painting are few, but these cannot be dispensed
+with. Put it out of your mind that any one of these five things can be
+got along without:--
+
+You must have something to paint _on_, canvas or panel. Have plenty of
+these.
+
+You must have something to set this canvas on--something to hold it up
+and in position. Your knees won't do, and you can't hold it in one
+hand. The lack of a practical easel will cost you far more in trouble
+and discouragement than the saving will make up for.
+
+You must have something to paint with. The brushes are most important;
+in kind, variety, and number. You cannot economize safely here.
+
+You must have paints. And you must have good ones. The best are none
+too good. Get the best. Pay a good price for them, use them freely,
+but don't waste them.
+
+And you must have something to hold them, and to mix them on; but here
+the quality and kind has less effect on your work than any other of
+your tools. But as the cost of the best of palettes is slight, you may
+as well get a good one.
+
+Now, if you will be economical, the way to do it is to take proper
+care of your tools _after you have got them_. Form the habit of using
+good tools as they should be used, and that will save you a great deal
+of money.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II
+
+                         CANVASES AND PANELS
+
+
+You should have plenty of canvas on hand, and it would be well if you
+had it all stretched ready for use. Many a good day's work is lost
+because of the time wasted in getting a canvas ready. It is not
+necessary to have many kinds or sizes. It is better in fact to settle
+on one kind of surface which suits you, and to have a few practical
+sizes of stretchers which will pack together well, and work always on
+these. You will find that by getting accustomed to these sizes you
+work more freely on them. You can pack them better, and you can frame
+them more conveniently, because one frame will always do for many
+pictures. Perhaps there is no one piece of advice which I can give you
+which will be of more practical use outside of the principles of
+painting, than this of keeping to a few well-chosen sizes of canvas,
+and the keeping of a number of each always on hand.
+
+It is all well enough to talk about not showing one's work too soon.
+But we all do, and always will like to see our work under as favorable
+conditions as possible. And a good frame is one of the favorable
+conditions. But good frames are expensive, and it is a great advantage
+to be able to have a frame always at hand which you can see your work
+in from time to time; and if you only work on four sizes of canvas,
+say, then four frames, one for each size, will suit all your pictures
+and sketches. Use the same sizes for all kinds of work too, and the
+freedom will come, as I say, in the working on those sizes.
+
+Don't have odd sizes about. You can just as well as not use the
+regular sizes and proportions which colormen keep in stock, and there
+is an advantage in being able to get a canvas at short notice, and it
+will be one of your own sizes, and will fit your frame. All artists
+have gone through the experience of eliminating odd sizes from their
+stock, and it is one of the practical things that we all have to come
+down to sooner or later, and the sooner the better,--to have the sizes
+which we find we like best, not too many, and stick to them. I would
+have you take advantage of this, and decide early in your work, and so
+get rid of one source of bother.
+
+=Rough and Smooth.=--The best canvas is of linen. Cotton is used for
+sketching canvas. But you would do well always to use good grounds to
+work on. You can never tell beforehand how your work will turn out;
+and if you should want to keep your work, or find it worth while to go
+on with it, you would be glad that you had begun it on a good linen
+canvas. The linen is stronger and firmer, and when it has a "grain,"
+the grain is better.
+
+=Grain.=--The question of grain is not easy to speak about without the
+canvas, yet it is often a matter of importance. There are many kinds
+of surface, from the most smooth to the most rugged. Some grain it is
+well the canvas should have; too great smoothness will tend to make
+the painting "slick," which is not a pleasant quality. A grain gives
+the canvas a "tooth," and takes the paint better. Just what grain is
+best depends on the work. If you are going to have very fine detail in
+the picture use a smoothish canvas; but whenever you are going to
+paint heavily, roughly, or loosely, the rough canvas takes the paint
+better. The grain of the canvas takes up the paint, helps to hold it,
+and to disguise, in a way, the body of it. For large pictures, too,
+the canvas must necessarily be strong, and the mere weight of the
+fabric will give it a rough surface.
+
+=Knots.=--For ordinary work do not be afraid of a canvas which has
+some irregularities and knots on it. If they are not too marked they
+will not be unpleasantly noticeable in the picture, and may even give
+a relief to too great evenness.
+
+=Twilled Canvas.=--The diagonal twill which some canvases have has
+always been a favorite surface with painters, particularly the
+portrait painters. This grain is a sympathetic one to work on, takes
+paint well, and is not in any way objectionable in the finished
+picture.
+
+=The best.=--The best way is to try several kinds, and when you find
+one which has a sympathetic working quality, and which has a good
+effect in the finished picture, note the quality and use it. You will
+find such a canvas among both the rough and smooth kinds, and so you
+can use either, as the character of your work suggests. It is well to
+have both rough and smooth ready at hand.
+
+=Absorbent.=--Some canvases are primed so as to absorb the oil during
+the process of painting. They are very useful for some kinds of work,
+and many painters choose them; but unless you have some experience
+with the working of them, they are apt to add another source of
+perplexity to the difficulties of painting, so you had better not
+experiment with them, but use the regular non-absorbent kinds.
+
+=Old and New.=--The canvas you work on should not be too freshly
+primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well
+dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is
+old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and
+keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had it in your own possession a
+long while, you know it is not fresh. Canvas is all the better if it
+is a year old.
+
+=Grounds.=--The color of the grounds should be of interest to you.
+Canvases are prepared for the market usually in three colors,--a sort
+of cool gray, a warm light ochrish yellow, and a cool pinkish gray.
+Which is best is a matter of personal liking. It would be well to
+consider what the effect of the ground will be on the future condition
+of the picture when the colors begin to effect each other, as they
+inevitably will sooner or later.
+
+Vibert in his "_La Science de la Peinture_" advocates a white ground.
+He says that as the color will be sure to darken somewhat with time,
+it is well that the ground should have as little to do with it as
+possible. If the ground is white there is so much the less dark
+pigment to influence your painting. He is right in this; but white is
+a most unsympathetic color to work over, and if you do not want to lay
+in your work with _frottees_, a tint is pleasanter. For most work the
+light ochrish ground will be found best; but you may be helped in
+deciding by the general tone of your picture. If the picture is to be
+bright and lively, use a light canvas, and if it is to be sombre, use
+a dark one. Remember, too, that the color of your ground will
+influence the appearance of every touch of paint you put on it by
+contrast, until the priming is covered and out of sight.
+
+=Stretchers.=--The keyed stretcher, with wedges to force the corners
+open and so tighten the canvas when necessary, is the only proper one
+to use. For convenience of use many kinds have been invented, but you
+will find the one here illustrated the best for general purposes. The
+sides may be used for ends, and _vice versa_. If you arrange your
+sizes well, you will have the sides of one size the right length for
+the ends of another. Then you need fewer sizes, and they are surer to
+pack evenly.
+
+[Illustration: =Stretchers.=]
+
+=Stretching.=--You will often have to stretch your own canvases, so
+you should know how to do it. There is only one way to make the canvas
+lay smoothly without wrinkles: Cut the canvas about two inches longer
+and wider than the stretcher, so that it will easily turn down over
+the edges. Begin by putting in _one tack_ to hold the _middle_ of one
+end. Then turn the whole thing round, and stretch tightly lengthwise,
+and put a tack to hold it into the _middle_ of the other end. Do the
+same way with the two sides. Only four tacks so far, which have
+stretched the canvas in the middle two ways. As you do this, you must
+see that the canvas is on square. Don't drive the tacks all the way in
+at first till you know that this is so. Then give each another blow,
+so that the head binds the canvas more than the body of the tack does;
+for the pull of the canvas against the side of the tack will tear,
+while the head will hold more strands. This first two ways stretching
+must be as tight as any after stretching will be or you will have
+wrinkles in the middle, while the purpose is to pull out the wrinkles
+towards the corners. Now go back to the ends: stretch, and place one
+tack each side of the first one. In a large canvas you may put two
+each side, but not more, and you must be sure that the strain is even
+on both sides. Don't pull too much; for next you must do the same with
+the other end which should bear _half_ of the whole stretch. Do just
+the same now with the two sides. Now continue stretching and
+tacking,--each side of the middle tacks on each end, then on each
+side, then to the ends again, and so gradually working towards the
+corners, when as you put in the last tacks the wrinkles will
+disappear, if you have done your work well. Don't hurry and try to
+drive too many tacks into a side at a time, for to have to do it all
+over again would take more time than to have worked slowly and done it
+properly. You may of course stretch a small canvas with your hands,
+but it will make your fingers sore, and you cannot get large canvases
+tight without help. You will do well to have a pair of "canvas pliers"
+which are specially shaped to pull the canvas and hold it strongly
+without tearing it, as other pliers are sure to do.
+
+[Illustration: =Canvas Pliers.=]
+
+When you take canvases out-doors to work, you will find it useful to
+strap two together, face inwards, with a double-pointed tack like this
+in each corner to keep them apart. You will not have any trouble with
+the fresh paint, as each canvas will then protect the other. You can
+pack freshly painted canvases for shipping in the same way.
+
+[Illustration: =Double-pointed Tack.=]
+
+=Panels.=--For small pictures panels are very useful, and when great
+detail is desirable, and fine, smooth work would make an accidental
+tear impossible to mend well, they are most valuable. They are made of
+mahogany and oak generally.
+
+Panels are useful, too, for sketching, as you can easily pack them.
+They are light, and the sun does not shine through the backs. You can
+get them for about the same cost as canvas for small sizes, which are
+what you would be likely to use, and they are often more convenient,
+particularly for use in the sketch-box.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER III
+
+                                EASELS
+
+
+The important thing in an easel is that it should be steady and firm;
+that it should hold the canvas without trembling, and so that it will
+not fall as you paint out towards the edges. You often paint with a
+heavy hand, and you must not have to hold on to your picture with one
+hand and paint with the other. Nothing is more annoying than a poor
+easel, and nothing will give you more solid satisfaction, than the
+result of a little generosity in paying for a good one. The ideal
+thing for the studio is, of course, the great "screw easel," which is
+heavy, safe, convenient, and expensive. We would like to have one, but
+we can't afford it, so we won't speak of it. The next best thing is an
+ordinary easel which doesn't cost a great deal, but which is firm and
+solid and practical. Don't get one of the various three-legged folding
+easels which cost about seventy-five cents or a dollar. They tumble
+down too often and too easily. The wear and tear on the temper they
+cause is more than they are worth. It is true that they fold up out of
+the way. But they fold up when you don't expect them to; and you
+ought to be able to afford room enough for an easel anyway, if you
+paint at all.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The illustration shows one of the firmest of the inexpensive easels,
+and one which will fold up into as small a compass as any practical
+easel will. It will hold perfectly well a good-sized canvas, even with
+its frame, and will not tumble over on slight provocation.
+
+Another good easel is shown on p. 17. It is more lightly made, not so
+well braced, but is more convenient for raising and lowering the
+picture, as the catch allows the whole thing to be raised and lowered
+at once.
+
+If you are to save money on your easel, don't save on the construction
+and strength of it, but on the finish. Let the polish and varnish go,
+but get a well-made easel with solid wood. The heavier it is, the less
+easily it packs away, to be sure, but the more steadily it will hold
+your picture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Sketching Easels.=--The same things are of importance in an easel for
+out-of-door work that are needed in a studio easel, except that it
+must also be portable. So if you must have a folding easel, get a
+_good_ sketching easel; or if you can't have one for in-doors and one
+for out-doors, then pay a good price for a sketching easel, and use it
+in doors and out also. There are two things which are absolutely
+essential in a sketching easel. It _must_ have legs which may be made
+longer and shorter, and it _must hold_ the canvas firmly. It is not
+enough to lean the canvas on it. The wind blows it over just when you
+are putting on an interesting touch, or the touch itself upsets it,
+either of which is most aggravating, and does not tend to
+satisfactory work. You must not be obliged to sit down to work just
+where you don't want to, a little this side or a little that side of
+the chosen spot, because the ground isn't even there and the easel
+will not stand straight. You must be able to make a leg longer or
+shorter as the unevenness of the ground necessitates. It is impossible
+to work among rocks or on hillsides if you cannot make your easel
+stand as you want it. These things are not to be got round. You might
+as well not work as to sketch with a poor sketching easel. And you
+must pay a good price for it. The sketching easel that is good for
+anything has never been made to sell for a dollar and a half. Pay
+three or four dollars for it, at any rate, and use it the rest of your
+life. I use an easel every day that I have worked on every summer for
+twelve years. Most artists are doing much the same. The easel is not
+expensive _per year_ at that rate! It is such an easel as that shown
+on the opposite page, and is satisfactory for all sorts of work.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+If you are working in a strong wind, or if you have a large canvas,
+such an easel as this illustration shows is the best and safest yet
+invented, and it is as good for other work, and particularly when you
+want to stand up. And either of these easels will be perfectly
+satisfactory to use in the house.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV
+
+                               BRUSHES
+
+
+An old brush that has been properly cared for is generally better than
+a new one. It seems to have accommodated itself to your way of
+painting, and falls in with your peculiarities. It is astonishing how
+attached you get to your favorite brushes, and how loath you are to
+finally give them up. What if you have no others to take their places?
+
+Don't look upon your brushes as something to get as few of as
+possible, and which you would not get at all if you could help it.
+There is nothing which comes nearer to yourself than the brush which
+carries out your idea in paint. You should be always on the lookout
+for a good brush; and whenever you run across one, buy it, no matter
+how many you have already. Don't look twice at a bad brush, and don't
+begrudge an extra ten cents in the buying of a good one. If you are
+sorry to have to pay so much for your brushes, then take the more care
+of them. Use them well and they will last a long while; then don't
+always use the same handful. Break in new ones now and again. Keep a
+dozen or two in use, and lay some aside before they are worn out, and
+use newer ones. So when at last you cannot use one any more, you have
+others of the same kind which will fill its place.
+
+Have all kinds and sizes of brushes. Have a couple of dozen in use,
+and a couple of dozen which you are not using, and a couple of dozen
+more that have never been used.
+
+What! six dozen?
+
+Well, why not? Every time you paint you look over your brushes and
+pick out those which look friendly to what you are going to do. You
+want all sorts of brushes. You can't paint all sorts of pictures with
+the same kind of brush. Your brush represents your hand. You must give
+every kind of touch with it. You want to change sometimes, and you
+want a clean brush from time to time. You don't want to feel that you
+are limited; that whether you want to or not these four brushes you
+must use because they are all you have! You can't paint that way. That
+six dozen you will not buy all at once. When you get your first
+outfit, get at least a dozen brushes. As you look over the stock and
+pick out two or three of this kind, and two or three of that, you will
+be astonished to see how many you have--yet you don't know which to
+discard. Don't discard any. Buy them all. Then, if you don't paint, it
+will not be the fault of your brushes. And from time to time get a
+half a dozen which have just struck you as especially good ones, and
+quite unconsciously you acquire your six dozen--and even more, I hope!
+
+=Bristle and Sable.=--The brushes suitable for oil painting are of two
+kinds,--bristle and sable hair. Of the latter, _red_ sable are the
+only ones you should get. They are expensive, but they have a spring
+and firmness that the black sable does not have. Camel's hair is out
+of the question. Don't get any, if you can only have camel's hair. It
+is soft and flabby when used in oil and you can't work well with such
+brushes. The same is true of the black sable. But though the red
+sables are expensive, you do not need many of them, nor large ones, so
+the cost of those you will need is slight.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The only sables which are in any degree indispensable to you are the
+smaller sizes of _riggers_. These are thin, long brushes which are
+useful for outlining, and all sorts of fine, sharp touches. You use
+them to go over a drawing with paint in laying in a picture, and for
+branches, twigs, etc. As their name implies, you must have them for
+the rigging of vessels in marine painting also. The three sizes shown
+in the cut on the opposite page are those you should have, and if you
+get two of each, you will find them useful in all sorts of places.
+When you buy them, see that they are elastic and firm, that they come
+naturally and easily to a good point, without any scraggy hairs. Test
+them by moistening them, and then pressing the point on the
+thumb-nail. They should bend evenly through the whole length of the
+hair. Reject any which seem "weak in the back." If it lays flat toward
+the point and bends all in one place near the ferrule, it is a poor
+brush.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+These three larger and thicker sizes come in very useful often and it
+would be well if you were to have these too. Sometimes a thick, long
+sable brush will serve better than another for heavy lines, etc.
+
+All these brushes are round. One largish flat sable like this it would
+be well to have; but these are all the sables necessary.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Bristle Brushes.=--The sable brush or pencil is often necessary; but
+oil painting is practically always done with the bristle, or "hog
+hair," brush. These are the ones which will make up the variety of
+kinds in your six dozen. A good bristle brush is not to be bought
+merely by taking the first which comes to hand. Good brushes have very
+definite qualities, and you should have no trouble in picking them
+out. Nevertheless, you will take the trouble to select them, if you
+care to have any satisfaction in using them.
+
+=The Bristle.=--You want your brush to be made of the hair just as it
+grew on the hog. All hair, in its natural state, has what is called
+the "flag." That is the fine, smooth taper towards the natural end of
+it, and generally the division into two parts. This gives the bristle,
+no matter how thick it may be, a silky fineness towards the end; and
+when this part only of the bristle is used in the brush, you will have
+all the firmness and elasticity of the bristle, and also a delicacy
+and smoothness and softness quite equal to a sable. But this, in the
+short hair of an artist's brush, wastes all the rest of the length of
+the hair; for it is only by cutting off the "flag," and using that,
+which is only an inch or so long, that you can make the brush. Yet the
+bristle may be several inches long, and all this is sacrificed for
+that little inch of "flag." Naturally the "flag" is expensive, and
+naturally also the manufacturer uses the rest of the hair for inferior
+brushes. These latter you should avoid. These inferior brushes are
+made from the part of the bristle remaining, by sandpapering, or
+otherwise making the ends fine again after they are cut off. But it is
+impossible to make a brush which has the right quality in this way.
+
+=Selection.=--Never buy a brush without testing its evenness, as has
+been advised in the care of sables. Feel carefully the end of the
+bristles also, and see that the "flag" is there. All brushes are kept
+together for packing by paste in the bristles. See that this is soaked
+off before you test your brush.
+
+=Round or Flat.=--It will make little difference whether you use round
+or flat brushes. The flat brush is most commonly preferred now, and
+most brushes are made that way. So you had better get that kind,
+unless you have some special reason for preferring the round ones.
+
+=Handles.=--Whether the handles are nicely polished, also, is of no
+importance. What you are to look to is the quality of the bristles and
+of the making; the best brushes are likely to be nicely finished all
+over. But if you do find a really good brush which is cheaper because
+of the plain handle, and you wish to save money, do it by buying the
+plain-handled one.
+
+=Sizes and Shapes.=--You will need some quite large brushes and some
+smaller ones, some square ones and some pointed.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Here are three round brushes which, for all sorts of painting, will be
+of very general utility. For most of your brushes select the long and
+thin, rather than the short and thick ones. The stubby brush is a
+useless sort of thing for most work. There are men who use them and
+like them, but most painters prefer the more flexible and springy
+brush, if it is not weak. So, too, the brush should not be too thick.
+A thick brush takes up too much paint into itself, and does not
+change its tint so readily. For rubbing over large surfaces where a
+good deal of the same color is thickly spread on the canvas, the
+thick, strong brush is a very proper tool. But where there is to be
+any delicacy of tone, it is too clumsy; you want a more delicate
+instrument. The same proportions hold with large and small brushes, so
+these remarks apply to all.
+
+=Flat Brushes.=--This is particularly applicable to the flat brushes,
+and the more that most of your brushes will be flat.
+
+You should have both broad-ended and pointed brushes among your flat
+ones. For broad surfaces, such as backgrounds and skies, the broad
+ends come in well; and for the small ones there are many square
+touches where they are useful. The most practical sizes are those
+shown on page 28. But you will often need much larger brushes than the
+largest of these.
+
+For the smaller brushes you will have to be very careful in your
+selections. For only the silkiest of bristle will do good work in a
+very small brush, and then the temptation is to use a sable, which
+should be resisted. Why you should avoid using the sable as a rule is
+that it will make the painting too "slick" and edgy. There is a
+looseness that is a quality to prize. All the hardness, flatness, and
+rigidity that are desirable you can get with the bristle brush. When
+you work too much with sables, the overworking brings a waxy and
+woodeny surface, which is against all the qualities of atmosphere and
+luminosity, and of freshness and freedom of touch.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Some of the most useful sizes of the more pointed brushes are shown on
+opposite page. There are, of course, sizes between these, and many
+larger; but these are what you will find the best. It would be better
+to have more of each size than to have more sizes. You should try to
+work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a rule, work more with
+the larger than with the smaller brush, even for fine work. You will
+work with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you learn to put
+in small touches with the largest brush that will do it. Breadth is
+not painting with a large brush; but the man who works always with a
+small brush instinctively looks for the things a small brush is
+adapted to, and will unconsciously drift into a little way of working.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The fan brush, such as here illustrated, is a useful brush, not to
+paint with, but to flick or drag across an outline or other part of a
+painting when it is getting too hard and liney. You may not want it
+once a month, but it is very useful when you do want it.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Care of Brushes.=--The best of economy in brushes lies in your care
+of them. You should never let the paint dry on them nor go too long
+without careful washing. It is not necessary to wash them every day
+with soap and water, but they would be the better for such treatment.
+
+Quite often, once a week, say, you should wash your brushes carefully
+with soap and water. You may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as
+that may melt the glue which holds the bristles together in the
+ferrule. Use strong soap with plenty of lye in it--common bar soap, or
+better, the old-fashioned soft soap. Hold several brushes together in
+one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into
+or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of
+the other hand. When the paint is well worked into the lather, do the
+same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap,
+but not in the water. Then rinse them, and carefully work them clean
+one by one, with the fingers. When you lay them aside to dry, see that
+the bristles are all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect
+condition for next painting.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+=Cleaning.=--But from day to day you need not take quite so much
+trouble as this. True, the brushes will keep in better condition if
+washed in soap and water every day, but it is not always convenient to
+do this. You may then use the brush-cleaner. This is a tin box with a
+false bottom of perforated tin or of wire netting about half-way down,
+which allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above it; so that
+when you put your brush in and rub it around, the paint is rinsed from
+it, and settles through the perforations to the bottom, leaving the
+liquid clear again above it. If you use this carefully, cleaning one
+brush at a time, not rubbing it too hard, and pulling the hairs
+straight by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep your brushes in
+good condition quite easily. But they will need a careful
+soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. The liquid best
+for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. Never use
+turpentine to rinse your brushes. It will make them brittle and harsh;
+but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not affect the
+brush.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER V
+
+                                PAINTS
+
+
+Of all your materials, it is on your paints that quality has the most
+vital effect. With bad paint your work is hopeless. You may get an
+effect that looks all right, but how long will it stand, and how much
+better may it not have been if your colors had been good? You can tell
+nothing about it. You may have luck, and your work hold; or you may
+not have luck, and in a month your picture is ruined. Don't trust to
+luck. Keep that element out as much as you can, always. But in the
+matter of paints, if you count on luck at all, remember that the
+chances are altogether against you. Don't let yourself be persuaded to
+indulge in experiments with colors which you have reason to think are
+of doubtful quality. Keep on the safe side, and use colors you are
+sure of, even if they do cost a little more--at first; for they are
+cheaper in the long-run. And even in the time of using of one tube,
+generally the good paint does enough more work to cover the difference
+of cost.
+
+=Bad Paints.=--Suspect colors which are too cheap. Good work is
+expensive. Ability and skill and experience count in making artists'
+colors, and must be paid for. If you would get around the cost of
+first-class material you must mix it with inferior material.
+
+The first effect you will notice in using poor colors is a certain
+hindrance to your facility, due to the fact that the color is
+weak--does not have the snap and strength in it that you expect. The
+paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead and flat. This you
+will find particularly in the finer and lighter yellows. You need not
+fear much adulteration in those paints which are naturally cheap, of
+course. It is in those higher-priced colors, on which you must largely
+depend for the more sparkling qualities, that you will have most
+trouble.
+
+Unevenness of working, and lack of covering or mixing power, you will
+find in poor paints also. They have no strength, and you must keep
+adding them more and more to other colors to get them to do their
+work. All these things are bothersome. They make you give more
+attention to the pigments while working than you ought to, and when
+all is done, your picture is weak and negative in color.
+
+Another effect to be feared from bad colors is that your work will not
+stand; the colors fade or change, and the paint cracks. The former
+effect is from bad material, or bad combinations of them in the
+working, and the latter mainly from bad vehicles used in grinding
+them.
+
+I have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their
+painting--bad paint and bad combinations. Of course you can use good
+colors so that the picture will not stand. But that will be your own
+fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no
+possibility do good work with.
+
+=Good Paints.=--The three things on which the quality of good paint
+depends are good pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation.
+
+The pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. The
+term _pigment_ technically means the powdered substance which, when
+mixed with a vehicle, as oil, becomes _paint_. The most important
+pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly chemical compounds,
+including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths.
+
+As a rule, the colors made from earths may be classed as all
+permanent; those from chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be;
+and those of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions. Some
+colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when used in oil.
+Further on I will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors
+in detail. I wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the
+material of which the pigment is made has much to do with the sort of
+work that that pigment will do, and with the permanency of the effect
+which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look like
+another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different.
+
+=The Vehicles.=--The vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and
+plastic are quite as important in their effects. They not only have to
+do with the business of drying, owing to the substances used as
+dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action of one
+pigment on another.
+
+=The Preparation.=--Finally, the preparation of the pigment demands
+the utmost skill and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. The
+paints used by the old masters were few and simple, and the fact that
+they prepared them themselves had much to do with the manner in which
+they kept their color. The paints used now are less simple. We do not
+prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we
+wished to, so we are the more dependent on the integrity of the
+colorman who does it for us.
+
+The preparation of the paint begins with the chemical or physical
+preparation of each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to
+produce any particular color; and finally the mechanical process of
+grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the proper fineness
+and smoothness.
+
+=Grinding.=--The color which the artist uses must be most evenly and
+perfectly ground. The grinding which will do for ordinary house paints
+will not do for the artist's colors. Neither will the chemical
+processes suitable for the one serve for the other. Not only must the
+machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for
+artist's colors. Therefore it is that the specialization of
+color-making is most important to good colors for the use of the
+artist.
+
+=Reliable Makers.=--If you would work to the best advantage as far as
+your colors are concerned, both as to getting the best effects which
+pure pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give you, and as to
+the permanency of those effects when you have gotten them, see to it
+that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman.
+
+It is not my province to say whose colors you should use; doubtless
+there are many colormen who make artists' materials honestly and well.
+Nevertheless, I may mention that there are no colors which have been
+more thoroughly tested, both by the length of time they have been in
+the possession of painters, and by the number of painters who have
+used them, than those of Winsor and Newton of London. No colors have
+been so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly in this
+country, as these, and none are so well known for their evenness and
+excellence of quality.
+
+I do not say that these manufacturers do not make any colors which
+should not go on the palette of the cautious artist--I believe that
+they do not make that claim themselves; but such colors as they do
+assert to be good, pure, and permanent, you may feel perfectly safe in
+using, and be sure that they are as well made as colors can be. This
+is as much as can be said of any paints, and more than can be said of
+most. I have used these colors for many years, and my own experience
+is that they have always been all that a painter need ask.
+
+The fact that Winsor and Newton's colors can be found in any town
+where colors can be had at all, makes me the more free to recommend
+them, as you can always command them. This fact also speaks for the
+general approval of them.
+
+Inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to be permanent and others
+are, it is for you to compose your palette of those which will combine
+safely. This you can do with a little care. Some colors are permanent
+by themselves or with some colors, but not in combination with certain
+others. You should then take the trouble to consider these chemical
+relationships.
+
+It is not necessary for you to study the chemistry of paints, but you
+may read what has been ascertained as to the effects of combinations,
+and act accordingly. There are practically duplications of
+color-quality in pigments which are bad, and in pigments which are
+good; so that you can use the good color instead of the bad one to do
+the same work. The good color will cost more, but there is no way of
+making the bad color good, so you must pay the difference due to the
+cost of the better material, or put up with the result of using bad
+colors.
+
+=Chemical Changes.=--The causes of change of color in pigments are of
+four kinds, all of them chemical effects. 1, the action of light; 2,
+the action of the atmosphere; 3, the action of the medium; and 4, the
+action of the pigments themselves on each other. The action of light
+is to bring about or to assist in the decomposition of the pigment. It
+is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a
+sort of sheath for the color particles. The manner in which light does
+its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. The action
+of light is very slow, but it seems to do the same thing in a long
+time that heat would do in a short time.
+
+Some colors are unaffected or little affected by light, and of course
+you will use them in preference to all others. The atmosphere affects
+the paint because of certain chemical elements contained in it, which
+tend to cause new combinations with the materials which are already
+in combination in the pigment. The action of the oxygen in the air is
+the chief agent in affecting the pigment, and it is here particularly
+that light, and especially sunlight, assists in decomposition. The air
+of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric and sulphurous acids
+and sulphuretted hydrogen. This latter gas is most effective in
+changing oil paintings, because of its action in turning white lead
+dark; and as white lead is the basis of many qualities in painting,
+this gas may have a very general action.
+
+Moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of change, but there is
+little to be dreaded from this, as the oil protects the colors.
+
+Oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to have an effect on
+colors liable to change from that element, and many vehicles contain
+materials to hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration
+of the pigment. Bad oil will tend to crack the picture also. The
+greatest care should be used in this direction, as the most permanent
+colors may be ruined by bad vehicles.
+
+Pigments will not have a deteriorating effect on each other as long as
+they are solid. But if one of them is soluble in the medium, then
+chemical action commences; but as most pigments are somewhat soluble,
+there is always some danger in mixing them. The best we can do is, as
+I said before, to try to have on the palette, as far as possible,
+only colors which are friendly to each other.
+
+As a student you should not be much occupied, however, with all this.
+You must expect that all color will change somewhat. But you need not
+use those which change immediately or markedly, and you may use them
+in a way which will tend to make them change as little as may be.
+Colors have stood for years, and what is practical permanence, not
+perfect permanence, is all you need look for. If you think too much of
+the permanence of your colors, it will interfere with the directness
+of your study. Therefore, decide on a palette which is as complete and
+safe as you can make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and think
+no more about it.
+
+When you need to add a new color to your palette, choose it with
+reference to those already on it, and go ahead. This is what the whole
+subject resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student.
+
+=Opaque and Transparent Colors.=--Some colors, like the madders, have
+a jelly-like consistency when mixed with oil, others, the earths among
+them, are dense and opaque. We speak of them respectively as
+"transparent" and "solid" colors. These qualities, which divide the
+paints into two classes, have no relation to their permanency. As far
+as that is concerned you use them in the same way, as some
+transparent colors are safe and some fugitive; and the same with the
+opaque colors.
+
+The only difference is in the fact that, as a rule, the solid colors
+are better dryers. But you will notice that while you may mix these
+colors together as though this difference between them did not exist,
+in certain processes you use them differently. So you will see,
+farther on, that for a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or
+semi-opaque colors, for a scumble you naturally use the solid ones.
+You should know, however, for the sake of clearness, just what is
+meant when "solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken of, and what
+is meant by "transparent" color.
+
+=Safe and Unsafe Colors.=--Beyond what has been said of the causes of
+change in colors it is not necessary that you should know the chemical
+constituents of them. If you want to look into the matter further
+there are books, such as "Field's Chromatography," which treat fully
+of the subject, and which you may study.
+
+But practically you should know which colors are to be depended on and
+which not. Let us consider the principal colors in detail then, merely
+as to their actual stability. I will speak of them in connection with
+the plates of colors at the end of this book. I would like you to
+compare what is said of each color with the corresponding color in the
+plates. Those colors in the plates which are not spoken of here, you
+may consider as useful in showing you the character of different
+colors which are made, but which may or may not be used, according as
+you may need them. I shall not attempt to mention all the pigments
+that are in the market. You need never use more than fifteen or twenty
+all told. Many painters use more, it is true; but if you know how to
+make the best use of that number, you may safely wait till you "grow
+to them" before you bother with more. And I shall speak only of those
+which you will find essential or most generally useful, and those
+which should be particularly avoided.
+
+=Permanency.=--It should be stated what is meant by a permanent color.
+There is no color which is not to be influenced in some way. The most
+sound of pigments will change if the conditions favor the change. When
+we speak of a permanent color, we mean only one which under the usual
+conditions will stand for an indefinite time. By which is meant
+ordinary diffused daylight, not direct sunlight, and the ordinary air
+under normal conditions. If there be direct sunlight, you may expect
+your picture to change sooner or later. But one does not hang his
+pictures where the sun's rays will fall on them. If there is any
+exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer.
+Or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the
+picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother
+for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which
+depends on normal conditions of atmosphere would do.
+
+Let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent color is one which
+will stand unchanged for an indefinite length of time in a room which
+is of the usual condition of temperature and freedom from moisture,
+and where the light is diffused, and such that the direct rays of the
+sun are not on the picture often, or to any great extent. Cold will
+not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed in that condition,
+but to bend or roll it while it is very cold will of course crack it,
+and sudden and extreme changes of temperature may have the same
+effect. In other words, some care must be used with all pictures as a
+matter of course.
+
+
+                              COLOR LIST
+
+=Whites.=--_Zinc white_ is the only permanent white, but it lacks body
+and is little used. The lead whites, _flake_, _silver_, _cremnitz_,
+will darken in time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change
+with or affect change in other pigments. The zinc white is liable to
+crack. We have no perfect white, so practically you may consider the
+lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do.
+
+=Yellows.=--_Cadmium_ is permanent in all three of its forms. It is a
+color the permanence of which is of great importance; for its
+brilliancy is quite essential to modern painting, and if it were not
+permanent, the picture would soon lose the very quality for which the
+color was used. _The chromes_, which are of similar color-quality, are
+less permanent, and are almost sure to turn to a horny sort of yellow;
+and a green, which by their use was bright and sparkling, will, in a
+few months, lose its freshness--this cadmium will not do. Cadmium is
+also to be preferred to chrome, because it is of a much finer
+tonality. Greens and yellows made by the admixture of chrome are apt
+to be crude as compared with those in which cadmium was used.
+
+_Strontian yellow_ is a permanent and most useful light yellow, much
+to be preferred to all other citron yellows except the pale cadmium,
+and can be used in place of that if necessary. They are both expensive
+colors of about the same cost.
+
+_Naples yellow_ was a very prominent pigment with the older painters.
+It is still very much used, but in the simplification of your palette
+you may as well leave it out, as you can get the same qualities with
+cadmium and white. It is durable and safe, but adds another tube to
+your palette which you can well dispense with.
+
+_The ochres_ are among the oldest and safest of pigments. You can use
+them with any colors which are themselves permanent. There are several
+of them,--_yellow ochre_, _Roman ochre_, _transparent gold ochre_, and
+others. They are all native earths, and though they contain iron, they
+are sufficiently inert to be thoroughly sound colors.
+
+_The siennas_, burnt and raw, are like the ochres, native earths, very
+old and permanent colors, and may be used anywhere.
+
+_The umbers_ are in the same class with the siennas and ochres. They
+should all rank among the yellows. The browns of umber and sienna will
+make greens with blues.
+
+_Indian yellow and yellow lake_ should both be avoided as fugitive.
+
+_Aureolin_ is a rich, warm golden yellow of the greatest permanence,
+and should be used when Indian yellow and yellow lake would be used if
+they were permanent.
+
+=Reds.=--The _vermilions_ are permanent when well made. They are of
+great body and power, as well as delicacy. They are of two
+kinds,--_Chinese_, which is bluish in tone, and _scarlet_ and _orange
+vermilion_, which have the yellow quality. Both kinds are useful to
+the palette because of the practical necessities of mixing.
+
+_Light red_ is a deep, warm red earth, made by calcining ochre, and
+has the same permanence as the other ochres. It is a fine color, of
+especial value in painting flesh, and mixes with everything safely.
+
+_The madders_--_rose_, _pink_, _purple_, and _madder carmine_--are the
+only transparent reds which are permanent. Whatever the name given
+them, they should not be confounded with the _lakes_, which are
+absolutely untrustworthy. By reference to the plates you will see that
+the madders are practically the same as the lakes in color when first
+used. But the lakes fade and the madders do not. The madders cost
+about twice as much as the lakes; but you must pay the difference, for
+the lakes cannot be made to stand, and you must have the color. There
+is nothing for it but to pay twice as much and buy the madders.
+
+_The lakes_--_scarlet_, _geranium_, _crimson_, and _purple_--are all
+bad. The madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly
+used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad
+effect on the picture from cracking.
+
+Distinguish the so-called _madder lakes_ and the _lakes_; and between
+_carmine_, which is a lake, and _madder carmine_, which is a madder.
+
+=Blues.=--The _ultramarine_ of the old masters is practically unused
+to-day because of its cost. But the artificial ultramarines, while not
+quite of the same purity of color, are equally permanent, and are in
+every respect worthy to be used. Of these the _brilliant ultramarine_
+is the nearest in color to the real lapis lazuli. The _French
+ultramarine_ is less clear and vivid, but is a splendid deep blue, and
+most useful. The so-called _permanent blue_ is not quite so permanent
+as its name implies, but permanent enough for practical purposes.
+
+_Cobalt blue_ and _cerulean blue_ are two pigments, one very light and
+clear, the other darker, which are made of the oxide of the metal
+cobalt. In oil they are permanent, and do not change when mixed with
+other colors. For delicate tints, when the tones are to be subtly gray
+yet full of the primary colors, the cobalts are indispensable. You
+should always have them on hand, and generally on your palette.
+Cerulean blue is of less importance than the other, but in very clear,
+delicate blue skies it is often the only color which will get the
+effect.
+
+_Prussian blue_ possesses a depth and power and a quality of color
+which make it unique. The greenish tone gives it great value in
+certain combinations _as far as its tinting effect is concerned_. But
+it is not reliable as a pigment. It changes under various conditions,
+and fades with the light. It is not to be depended upon. _Antwerp
+blue_, a weaker kind of Prussian blue, is even more fugitive. It is a
+pity that these colors will not stand, but as they will not, we must
+get along without them.
+
+_Indigo_ has a certain grayish quality which is useful sometimes, but
+it cannot be placed among the even moderately permanent colors.
+
+_The blacks_ may be classed as blues, because they will make green if
+mixed with yellow. Considered as blues, they are, of course, dense and
+negative, and should not be too freely used. But they are all
+permanent. The only ones we need speak of are _ivory black_, which has
+a reddish cast, and _blue black_, which is weaker, but lacks the
+purplish note, which is often an advantage.
+
+=Greens.=--We need mention only a few greens. There are numerous
+greens, of various degrees of permanence, but it is not necessary to
+speak of all the colors on the market. You could not use them all if
+you had them, and we may as well confine ourselves to those we really
+need.
+
+_Veridian_, or _emeraude green_, is the deepest and coldest of our
+greens, and is permanent. It is too cold, and looks even more so at
+night. In use it needs the addition of some yellow which holds its own
+at night, such as yellow ochre, or the painting will be impossible in
+gaslight, and even worse under electric light.
+
+_Emerald green_ is the same as the French _Veronese_ green, and is
+generally permanent. It is said to turn dark, and does lose some of
+its brilliancy with time and the effect of impure air. But there are
+places where one needs it, especially in sketching, and it is well to
+use it sometimes. But bear in mind that it is not absolutely
+permanent, and as the quality that it gives, brilliant light green, is
+the very one it will lose should it change, don't expect too much of
+it.
+
+_Terre verte_ is a very weak color. But it is most tender in its
+quality, and is permanent to all intents and purposes. It may get
+slightly darker in time, but will not lose the qualities for which it
+will be used. It is very useful to use with ivory black or elsewhere,
+to slightly modify a reddish tendency, and is a fine glazing color.
+
+_The chrome greens_, by whatever name, Brunswick green, or the
+better-known Cinnabar or Zinnober greens, are all bad. They are useful
+colors as color, but they will not stand, and you will even get better
+color by mixing certain yellows and blues than these will give you, so
+you had better lay them aside, tempting as they are.
+
+=Other Colors.=--You will notice that I have said nothing about the
+various browns and olives and purples. It is simply because it is
+better for you to make all these colors than to get them in the tubes.
+The earths and the browns of madder are all good, and the mixing of
+madders and good blues will make all the shades of violet and purple
+you can possibly want in their purity.
+
+=Palettes.=--We have, then, a number of pigments which are solid and
+safe, of each of the primary colors, and of such variety of qualities
+that the whole range of possible color is practicable with them in
+combination. To recapitulate, let us make a list of them.
+
+
+                        THE PERMANENT COLORS.
+
+  ZINC WHITE. (LEAD WHITE ENOUGH SO.)
+  CADMIUM YELLOW.
+  CADMIUM ORANGE.
+  CADMIUM YELLOW, PALE.
+  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+  YELLOW OCHRE.
+  ROMAN OCHRE.
+  TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+  RAW SIENNA.
+  BURNT SIENNA.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  AUREOLIN.
+  CHINESE VERMILION.
+  SCARLET VERMILION.
+  ORANGE VERMILION.
+  LIGHT RED.
+  ROSE MADDER.
+  PINK MADDER.
+  PURPLE MADDER.
+  MADDER CARMINE.
+  RUBENS MADDER.
+  ULTRAMARINE BLUE BRILLIANT.
+  ULTRAMARINE BLUE FRENCH.
+  PERMANENT BLUE.
+  COBALT.
+  CERULEAN BLUE.
+  IVORY BLACK.
+  BLUE BLACK.
+  VERIDIAN.
+  EMERALD GREEN.
+  TERRE VERTE.
+
+Here is a list of colors which will work well together, and with which
+you can do as much as is possible with colors as far as our present
+materials go.
+
+Most of these colors, I am aware, are among the more expensive ones.
+This I am sorry for, but cannot help. The good colors are at times the
+expensive ones, but as there are no cheaper ones which are permanent
+to take their places, it would be the falsest of economy to use
+others.
+
+=Palette Principles.=--In making up your palette, you must so arrange
+it that you can get pure color when you want it. There is never any
+trouble to get the color negative; to get richness and balance is
+another matter. If you will refer to the color plates, you will see
+that in each of the three primary colors there are pigments which lean
+towards one or the other of the other two. The scarlet red is a yellow
+red. The Chinese vermilion and the rose madder are blue reds. The same
+holds with yellows and blues, as orange cadmium is a red yellow, and
+strontian yellow is a greenish yellow. This is, in practice, of the
+utmost importance in the absence of the ideal color, for when we deal
+with the practical side of pigment, we deal with very imperfect
+materials which will not follow in the lines of the scientific theory
+of color. If we would have the purest and richest secondary color, we
+must take two primaries, each of which partakes of the quality of the
+other. To make a pure orange, for instance, we must use a yellow red
+and a red yellow. If we used a bluish red and a bluish (greenish)
+yellow, the blue in both would give us a sort of tertiary in the form
+of a negative secondary instead of the pure rich orange we wanted.
+This latter fact is quite as useful in keeping colors gray without too
+much mixing when we want them so, but nevertheless we must know how to
+get pure color also.
+
+These characteristics have a bearing on the setting of our palette,
+for we must have at least two of each of the three primary
+colors--red, yellow, and blue--and white. There may be as many more as
+you want, but there must be at least that number.
+
+But the character of the work you are doing will also have an
+influence on the colors you use. You may not need the same palette for
+one sort of picture that is essential to another. You can have a
+palette which will do all sorts of work, but a change in the
+combinations may often be called for in accordance with the different
+color characteristics of your picture.
+
+I will suggest several palettes of different combinations which will
+give you an idea of how you may compose a palette to suit an occasion.
+I do not say that you should confine yourself to any or all of these
+palettes, nor that they are the best possible. But they are safe and
+practical, and you may use them until you can find or compose one
+better suited to your purposes. They will all be made up from the
+colors we have in our list, and will all have the arrangement I called
+your attention to as to the use of two of each primary.
+
+It would be well if you were to compare each of the colors with the
+corresponding one in the plates at the end of the book, and get
+acquainted with its characteristic look.
+
+[Illustration: =No. 1.= =No. 2.= =No. 3.=]
+
+=Expense.=--I have several times referred to the relative expense of
+colors, and stated that when the good color was of greater cost than
+others, there was nothing for it but to get the best. I cannot modify
+that statement, but it is well to say that as a rule the expensive
+colors are not those that you use the most of, although some are used
+constantly. Vermilion is so strong a color that the cost hardly
+matters. Of the deep blues the same is true. But the light yellows,
+and the madders and cobalt, will often make you groan at the rapidity
+of their disappearance. But you can get more tubes of them, and their
+work remains, while were you to use the cheaper paints, the flight of
+the color from the canvas would make you groan more, and that
+disappearance could never be made good except by doing the work all
+over.
+
+=Sizes.=--The cheapest colors come in the largest tubes. In the
+illustration, No. 3 represents the full size of the ordinary tube of
+the average cost. Some of the most commonly used colors come in larger
+tubes at corresponding price. Only professionals get these large sizes
+except in the case of white. You use so much of this color that it
+hardly pays to bother at all with the ordinary tube of it. Get the
+quadruple tube, which is nominally four times as large, but contains
+nearly five times as much.
+
+No. 2 represents the actual size of the second size of tubes in which
+a few regular-priced colors come; while the smallest tube is the size
+of No. 1. In this sized tube all the high-priced colors are put up;
+the cadmiums, the madders, vermilions, and ultramarines and cobalts.
+The cheap colors are the ordinary earths, such as the ochres, umbers,
+siennas, the blacks and whites, and all sorts of greens and blues and
+lakes, which you had better have nothing to do with.
+
+=Arrangement.=--In the following palettes I shall give the names of
+the colors, as you would look down upon them on your palette. The
+arrangement is that of a good many painters, and is a convenient one.
+It is as well to arrange them with white at the right, then the
+yellows, then the reds, the browns, blues, blacks, and greens. But I
+have found this as I give it, to be the best for use, simply because
+it keeps the proper colors together, and the white, which you use
+most, where it is most easily got at, and I think you will find it a
+good arrangement.
+
+=A Cheap Palette.=--This palette I give so that you may see the range
+possible with absolutely sound colors which are all of the least
+price. You can get no high key with it. All the colors are low in
+tone. You could not paint the bright pitch of landscape with it, yet
+it is practically what they tried to paint landscape with a hundred
+years ago, and it accounts largely for the lack of bright greens in
+the landscapes of that date. But for all sorts of indoor work and for
+portraits you will find it possible to get most beautiful results. You
+will notice there is no bright yellow. That is because cadmium is
+expensive and chrome is not permanent. Vermilion is left out for the
+same reason. Add orange vermilion and cadmium yellow and orange
+cadmium, and you have a powerful palette of great range and absolute
+permanency.
+
+                    WHITE.  NAPLES YELLOW.
+          VENETIAN RED.             YELLOW OCHRE.
+        LIGHT RED.                     ROMAN OCHRE.
+      INDIAN RED.             TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+    BURNT SIENNA.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  PERMANENT BLUE.
+    IVORY BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+=An All-Round Palette=:--
+
+                         WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+          ORANGE VERMILION.        CADMIUM YELLOW.
+        ROSE MADDER.                 ORANGE CADMIUM.
+      BURNT SIENNA.                      YELLOW OCHRE.
+    RAW UMBER.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    IVORY BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+This palette is a pretty large one, and you can do almost anything
+with it. But for many things it is better to have more of certain
+kinds of colors and less of others. This is a good palette for all
+sorts of in-the-house work, and if you call it a still-life palette,
+it will name it very well. For a student it will do anything he is apt
+to be capable of for a good while.
+
+=A Rich Low-Keyed Portrait and Figure Palette=:--
+
+                        WHITE.  CADMIUM.
+        CHINESE VERMILION.          ORANGE CADMIUM.
+      LIGHT RED.                        YELLOW OCHRE.
+    ROSE MADDER.               TRANSPARENT GOLD OCHRE.
+  RAW UMBER.
+  COBALT.
+    BLUE BLACK.
+      TERRE VERTE.
+
+=A Landscape Palette.=--Landscape calls for pitch and vibration. You
+must have pure color and great luminosity, yet a range of color which
+will permit of all sorts of effects. The following will serve for
+everything out-of-doors, and I have seen it with practically no change
+in the hands of very powerful and exquisite painters. There are no
+browns and blacks in it because the colors which they would give are
+to be made by mixing the purer pigments, so as to give more life and
+vibration to the color. The blackest note may be gotten with
+ultramarine and rose madder with a little veridian if too purple; the
+result will be blacker than black, and have daylight in it. The ochre
+is needed more particularly to warm the veridian.
+
+                        WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+        ORANGE VERMILION.           CADMIUM YELLOW.
+      PINK MADDER.                    ORANGE CADMIUM.
+    ROSE MADDER.                        YELLOW OCHRE.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    VERIDIAN.
+      EMERALD GREEN.
+
+If you paint figures out-of-doors you will need this same palette.
+Madder carmine or purple madder, and cerulean blue may also usefully
+added to this list.
+
+=A Flower Palette.=--For painting flowers the colors should be capable
+of the most exquisite and delicate of tints. There should be no color
+on the palette which cannot be used in any part of the picture. The
+range need not be so great in some respects as in others, but the
+richness should be unlimited. In the matter of greens, it is true
+though hard to convince the amateur of, that if there were no green
+tube in your box, and you mixed all your greens from the yellows and
+blues, the picture would be the better. As to the browns, they will
+put your whole picture out of key. In this palette I am sure you will
+find every color which is needed. There are few greens, but those
+given can be used to gray a petal as well as to paint a leaf;
+therefore there is no likelihood of your using a color in a leaf which
+is not in tone with the flower.
+
+I am calculating on your using all your ability in studying the
+influence of color on color, and in mixing pure colors to make gray.
+Here as elsewhere in these palettes I have in mind their use according
+to the principles of color and light and effect as laid down in the
+other parts of the book, which deal specially with those principles.
+If you do not understand just why I arrange these palettes as I do,
+turn to the chapters on color, and on the different kinds of painting,
+and I think you will see what I mean, and understand better what I
+say, about these combinations.
+
+Of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the
+same time. Some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and
+depth you could hardly get without them. The colors you should have as
+a rule on your palette are these:--
+
+                         WHITE.  STRONTIAN YELLOW.
+        ORANGE VERMILION.            CADMIUM YELLOW.
+      PINK MADDER.                       YELLOW OCHRE.
+    ROSE MADDER.
+  COBALT.
+  ULTRAMARINE.
+    VERIDIAN.
+      EMERALD GREEN.
+
+To add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and
+deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI
+
+                        VEHICLES AND VARNISHES
+
+
+A vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it
+fluent. The vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on
+the palette, or both. Oil colors are of course ground in oil as a
+vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in
+working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better.
+Those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits;
+those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives."
+
+All vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the
+pigments. Bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve
+them.
+
+=Oils.=--The most commonly used oils are linseed and poppy oil. They
+are neither of them quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar of
+lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying. These have a tendency to
+affect the colors; but if one will have recourse to none but the pure
+oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture. For this
+reason it would be well to use vehicles with the colors on the palette
+as little as possible--and that is against thin and smooth painting.
+
+Oil has the tendency to turn dark with time, thus turning the color
+dark also. The only way to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil
+by long exposure to the sunlight. The early German painters used oil
+so clarified, and their pictures are the best preserved as to color of
+any that we have. But the drying is even slower with purified oil than
+with the ordinary oil.
+
+It would be best, then, to use oil as little as may be in painting,
+and if you need a dryer, use it only as you actually need it in bad
+drying colors, and then very little of it.
+
+The essences of turpentine and of petroleum may be used to thin the
+paint, and are preferable to oil, because they have less darkening
+tendency. They do not, however, bind the color so well, and the paint
+should not be put on too thinly with them. Usually there is enough oil
+ground with the pigment as it comes in the tubes to overcome any
+probability of the paint scaling or rubbing when thinned with
+turpentine, but in the slow-drying, transparent colors there will be a
+liability to crack. Moderation in the use of any and all vehicles is
+the best means of avoiding difficulty. Use vehicles only when you need
+them, not habitually, and then only as much as there is real need of.
+If you use oil, use the lighter oils, and expect some darkening in
+time. Prefer turpentine to oil, and expect your color to dry rather
+"dead," or without gloss, by its use. If you intend to varnish, this
+is all right. If you do not intend to varnish the picture, keep the
+color as near the pure tones as you can. The grayer the color, the
+more the "dead" or "flat" drying will make it look colorless.
+
+=Varnishes.=--When the picture is done, after it is dry, varnishes are
+used to bring out the freshness of color, and to preserve the surface
+from outside influences of all sorts. A picture must be well dried
+before it is varnished, or it is likely to crack; six months is not
+too long to be safe. If you are in a hurry to varnish, use a temporary
+or retouching varnish.
+
+The best varnish is necessary for use on pictures. Never use any
+except a varnish especially made for the purpose by a reliable
+colorman. Those made by Winsor and Newton may all be depended upon.
+Pay a good price for it, and don't use too much.
+
+Mastic varnish is that which is most favorably known. Be sure you get
+a good and pure quality.
+
+Varnishes are made from various gums or resins dissolved in a solvent
+such as alcohol, turpentine, or oil, as the case may be. The lighter
+gums are the best for pictures, because they do not affect the color
+of the picture. Much care should be used in putting on the
+varnish--that it is even and as thinly distributed as will serve the
+purpose. It should not be flowed on, but carefully worked out with a
+clean brush, and then kept from dirt and dust until dry.
+
+The finer varnishes in oil or turpentine are best for ordinary use.
+Those in alcohol do not hold their freshness so well.
+
+Varnishes are sometimes used as siccatives, and to mix with colors
+which are liable to affect other colors, or to lack consistency.
+Usually, however, they are not needed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VII
+
+                               PALETTES
+
+
+The most important qualities in a palette are that it should be large
+enough, and that it should balance well on the thumb. Whether it is
+round or square is a slight matter. The oval palette is usually best
+for the studio because the corners are seldom of use, and add weight.
+But for sketching, the square palette fits the box best.
+
+[Illustration: =Oval Palette.=]
+
+Get a palette much larger than you think you want. When you get it on
+your thumb the mixing-surface is much less than there seemed to be
+before it was set, for all the actual surface is between the row of
+colors and the thumb. If the palette is polished it is not essentially
+better; it is easier to keep clean, as far as looks go, but of no
+greater real service. If the choice is between a larger unpolished and
+a smaller polished one, the price being the consideration, get the
+larger one.
+
+Get a light wood in preference to a dark wood for a choice of color,
+but not if there is better grain or lighter weight in the darker
+palette. It is an assistance in painting not to have to compare the
+tint you are mixing with too dark a surface, for the color looks
+lighter than it is; so the light wood will help you to judge justly of
+the color while the palette is new. When it has been worked on a while
+it will come to have a sympathetic color anyway.
+
+This bears on the cleanliness of your palette. It is a mistake to
+consider that cleanliness demands that the palette should be cleaned
+to the wood and polished after every painting. On the contrary, if a
+little of the paint is rubbed out over the palette every time it is
+cleaned, after a few weeks there will come a fine smooth polish of
+paint, which will have a delicate light gray color, which is a most
+friendly mixing surface.
+
+=Adapting.=--When you get a new palette, before you use it take a
+little trouble to carve out the thumb-hole to fit your thumb. Make it
+large enough to go over the ball of the thumb, and set easily on the
+top of the hand. When the hole is too small the thumb gets numb after
+working a little while, which this will obviate.
+
+=Cleanliness.=--The cleanliness of a palette consists in its being
+always in such a condition that you can handle it without getting
+dirty; that the mixing-surface will not foul the freshly mixed paint;
+and that the paint around the edge is always so that you can pick up a
+fresh, clean brushful. If you try to clean off all your color every
+day and polish your palette nicely, you will not only take up more
+time with your palette than you do with your painting, but the fact
+that some left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy
+in putting on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner
+can fall into. You cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on
+your palette to use freely when you need it. It is all well enough to
+put on more, but nothing is more vexing than to have to squeeze out
+new paint at almost every brushful. You must have paint enough when
+you begin, to work with, or you waste too much time with these
+details.
+
+[Illustration: =Arm Palette.=]
+
+If you are painting every day, leave the good paint where it is at the
+end of your work, and scrape off all the muddy or half-used piles, and
+clean carefully all the palette except those places where the paint is
+still fresh and pure. Then, when you have to add more to that, clean
+that place with the palette-knife before squeezing out the new color.
+In this way the palette will not look like a centre-table, but it will
+be practically clean, have a good clear mixing-surface, and you will
+neither waste paint nor be stingy with it.
+
+=The Arm Palette.=--For painting large canvases, where the
+largest-sized brushes are used and paint must be mixed in greater
+quantities, the arm palette is a most convenient thing if it is well
+balanced. It is in the way rather than otherwise for small pictures,
+and is useful only as it is particularly called for.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII
+
+                             OTHER TOOLS
+
+
+It remains to speak of those tools which are not essentials, but
+conveniences, to painting. Even as conveniences, however, they are of
+importance enough to have an influence on your work. You can paint
+without them, but you will work more easily for the having of them;
+and something of the sort, although not necessarily of the same kind,
+you must have. You may improvise something, in other words, to take
+the place of these, but you would be wiser to get those which are made
+for the purpose.
+
+=The Box.=--First, the box. You must keep your things together
+somehow, and it would be as well that you keep them in a box which is
+portable and suited to the purpose. When you sketch you must have a
+proper box, and why not have one which is equally serviceable in the
+house? Those most commonly sold to amateurs are of tin, and they are
+various in size and construction, and not too expensive. The only
+thing against them is the difficulty of adapting them to service
+different from that they were designed for; that is, if you want to
+put in a different sort of panel, or if you want to fix it in the
+cover for convenience, or anything like that, you cannot readily do
+it, because you cannot use tacks in them. This counts for more than
+would seem on a sketching trip. But the tin box is light, and is not
+easily broken, and while it is in shape is practical.
+
+[Illustration: =The Color Box.=]
+
+The box to be most recommended is the wooden one. It costs more than
+the tin one,--about twice as much; but you can always arrange it for
+an emergency very readily, and if it gets broken you can fix it
+yourself, or get any carpenter to do it for you, while you may be a
+good many miles from a tinner, who would be necessary to mend your tin
+box.
+
+You had better not get too large a box. Get one long enough for the
+brushes; but if you are going to use it out-of-doors much, get a
+narrow one with a folding palette, so as to save weight. In this way
+you will get a larger palette than you could get in a smaller and
+wider box, which is an important consideration.
+
+[Illustration: =Palette Knife.=]
+
+=The Palette-Knife.=--Of more immediate necessity to your painting is
+the palette-knife. You cannot keep the palette clean without it. Now
+and again you may want to mix colors, or even paint with it. But you
+constantly get rid of the too much mixed color on your palette with
+it, and this is essential to good painting. Take some care to select a
+good knife; have the blade long enough to be springy and flexible, but
+not too long. About five inches from the wood of the handle to the end
+of the blade is a good length. And see that it bends in a true curve
+from one end to the other, and is not stiff at the end and weak in the
+middle. It should have the same even elasticity that a brush should
+have.
+
+For painting you need a "trowel palette-knife," which has a bent
+shank, making the blade and the handle on different levels, so that as
+you press the blade to the canvas, the fingers are kept away from the
+painted surface. The shank should be round, and the blade very fine
+and flexible. The knife should balance nicely in the hand, and turn
+freely in the fingers, so that you can paint with either face of the
+blade with equal balance. It takes some care to pick out a good
+trowel-knife, as a poor one is worse than none.
+
+=The Scraper.=--You frequently need to scrape rough paint from a
+canvas or a picture, and you need to scrape strongly to get a dirty
+palette clean. You can use an old razor for the first purpose, or a
+piece of broken glass, if you use it carefully, and any old knife can
+be used to clean your palette. But a regular tool is better than
+either. The scraper here shown is the best.
+
+[Illustration: =The Scraper.=]
+
+=The Oil-Cup.=--Do not use oils and vehicles very much. But when you
+need them you must have something to keep them in, convenient to the
+brush when working. It should have a spring to hold it on to the
+palette, and of such form that the contents are not easily spilled by
+the movement of the hand or the body when painting. The form here
+illustrated is the best that has been brought out so far.
+
+[Illustration: =The Oil-Cup.=]
+
+=The Mahl-Stick.=--Sometimes you want to rest the hand when painting,
+for steadiness. The "mahl-" or rest-stick has a ball on the end, which
+one usually covers with a wad of rag, so that it can be placed against
+the canvas without injury, and the hand rested on it. It is so light
+that it can be held with the brushes in the palette hand, and stiff
+enough to support the brush-hand.
+
+[Illustration: =Mahl-Sticks.=]
+
+=Sketching Adjuncts.=--Out-of-doors you must have a seat, and you
+should have an umbrella. The best seat for a man, because it can be
+folded into so small a space, is the three-legged stool. This is not
+usually satisfactory for a woman, whose skirts tip it over. The better
+seat for her is shown below. The back is not very firm, but it does
+give support, and the whole is light and strong.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The umbrella should be large and light, and one such as the
+illustration, with a valve in the top to let the wind and hot air
+through, will be found cooler and less easily blown over. You should
+have some strong rings sewed on to it, so that you can fasten it from
+four sides by strings, to keep it steady if the wind blows hard. The
+umbrella should be of light-colored material, preferably white; but if
+it is lined with black, the shade will be better, and give no false
+glow to the color.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX
+
+                               STUDIOS
+
+
+A painting-room is always a matter of serious consideration, and to
+the beginner one of difficulty. The arrangement of light is not easy,
+and a special window is almost always out of the question; yet in some
+way the light must be so managed that the canvas is not covered with
+reflected lights which prevent one from seeing what the paint is
+really like.
+
+=The North Light.=--The first thing to be looked for is a steady light
+which will be always about the same, and not be sunny part of the time
+and in the shade the rest. A window looking to the north for this
+reason is generally selected. The sun does not come into it, and the
+light is diffused and regular. The effect of the light in the studio
+is cool, but colors are justly seen in it, and the light that falls on
+any object or model in it will be always the same. If there is to be a
+skylight, this should be arranged in the same way. The sash must not
+be flat, but must be nearly enough to the vertical to prevent the
+sun's direct rays from entering, and it must for that purpose face to
+the north. This makes the skylight practically a high north light in
+the roof or ceiling, and that is what it should be.
+
+Whether the sash is above the ceiling or just below it, in the roof or
+in the wall, is of no particular importance. The thing to be seen to
+is that it is high enough for the light to enter above the head of the
+painter, and that it be so directed that only north light can come in.
+
+The size of the window is also to be carefully considered. It should
+not be too large. Too much light will be sure to interfere with the
+proper control of light and shade on your model, and too little will
+make your painting too dark. The position of the window with reference
+to the shape of the room has to do with this. The most probable form
+of a room is long and narrow. For painting it is better that the
+window be in the middle of the end wall, high up, rather than in the
+middle of the side wall. You will find that you can more easily get
+distance from your model, and at the same time get the light both on
+him and on your canvas. But a painting-room should not be too narrow.
+About one-third longer than it is wide, with the window in one end,
+will give you a good light, and the further end of the room will not
+be too dark, as it would be apt to be if the room were longer.
+Preferably, too, the window should be to the left of the centre of the
+wall rather than to the right, as you face it; so that when you are
+as near the side wall as you can get, with the light over your left
+shoulder (as it should be), the light will strike on the canvas well,
+and not too directly on the front of the model. It will give you a
+better lateral position to the window, in other words. If you have to
+accept a window in a side wall, this is even more to be looked for. If
+the window is to the right of the centre, you will have a strong
+side-light on your model; but you will either have no light on your
+canvas, or you will have to turn so that the light falls on your
+canvas from the right, which is awkward, as the paint is in the shadow
+of the hand and brush which puts it on.
+
+The height of the lower part of the window should be at least six feet
+from the floor, and for ordinary purposes the proportion of window
+space to floor space should be about one-tenth. It is impossible to
+give a rule; but if the floor is about twelve feet by sixteen, say, a
+window about five feet by four will be enough, or six and a half by
+three if it is placed horizontally. If you want intense light with
+strong contrast of light and shade on your model, have the window
+smaller and squarer, and place your easel just under it, where the
+light is good. The rest of the room will be dark. Better have the
+window large enough, and have it so curtained that you can cut off as
+much light as you need to. All this is if you are going to make
+yourself a window; in which case you will think well before you commit
+yourself. More probably you will have to get along as best you can
+with the ordinary room and the ordinary window. In which case get a
+high room with the window running up as close to the ceiling as
+possible, and facing north, then you can curtain it so as to control
+the light.
+
+=Arrangement of Ordinary Windows.=--For a good working light you
+should have only one window in your room; for the light coming in from
+two openings will make a crossing of rays which will not only
+interfere with the simplicity of the effect of light and shade on your
+model, but will make a glare on your canvas. You can either close the
+light out of the right-hand window, or, better, arrange a curtain so
+the light from one window will not fall on the same place as that from
+the other.
+
+When you are working from still life or from a model this is often an
+advantage, for you can have a strong side-light on the model, and a
+second light on the canvas. To arrange this, have a sort of crane made
+of iron, shaped like a carpenter's square, which will swing at right
+angles with the wall, the arm reaching, say, six feet into the room.
+Swing this by means of staples well up to the ceiling, so that the
+light cannot get over it, and near to the right-hand window. From
+this arm you can hang a thick, dark curtain, which will cover and shut
+out the light from the right-hand window when swung back over it. If
+you want to pose your model in the light of that window, while you
+paint in that of the other, swing the curtain out into the room at
+right angles to the wall, and it will prevent a cross light from the
+two windows; so that when the model is posed back of the curtain the
+light from that window will not fall on the canvas, nor the light from
+the other fall on the model.
+
+The light will be best on your picture coming from well above you as
+you work. There will then be no reflections on the paint. You may find
+it necessary to cover entirely the lower half of the window which
+gives your painting-light. You will find it useful to have a shade of
+good solid holland, arranged with the roller at the bottom, and a
+string running up through a pulley at the top; so that you may pull
+the shade _up_ from the bottom instead of _down_ from the top, and so
+cut off as much of the lower part of the window as is necessary.
+
+If you need the light from the lower part of the window, you may make
+a thin curtain of muslin to cover the lower sash, which will let the
+light through, but diffuse the rays and prevent reflection.
+
+=The Size of the Studio.=--Of course a large studio is a good thing,
+but it is not always at one's command. But you should try to have the
+room large enough to let you work freely, and have distance enough
+from the model. The size that I have mentioned, twelve feet by
+sixteen, is as small as one should have, and one that you can almost
+always get. If the room is smaller than that, you cannot do much in
+it, and fifteen by twenty will give ample space.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART II
+
+                          GENERAL PRINCIPLES
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER X
+
+                           MENTAL ATTITUDE
+
+
+There is a theoretical and a practical side to art. The business of
+the student is with the practical. Theories are not a part of his
+work. Before any theoretical work is done there is the bald work of
+learning to see facts justly, in their proper degree of relative
+importance; and how to convey these facts visibly, so that they shall
+be recognizable to another person.
+
+The ideals of art are for the artist; not for the student. The
+student's ideal should be only to see quickly and justly, and to
+render directly and frankly.
+
+Technique is a word which includes all the material and educational
+resources of representation. The beginner need bother himself little
+with what is good and what is bad technique. Let him study facts and
+their representation only. Choice of means and materials implies a
+knowledge by which he can choose. The beginner can have no such
+knowledge. Choice, then, is not for him; but to work quite simply with
+whatever comes to hand, intent only on training the eye to see, the
+brain to judge, and the hand to execute. Later, with the gaining of
+experience and of knowledge, for both will surely come, the
+determination of what is best suited for the individual temperament or
+purpose will work itself out naturally.
+
+The student should not allow the theoretical basis of art to interfere
+with the directness of his study of the material and the actual.
+Nevertheless, he should know the fact that there is something back of
+the material and the actual, as well as in a general way what that
+something is.
+
+Because the student's business is with the practical is no reason why
+he should remain ignorant of everything else. It is important that he
+should think as a painter as well as work as a painter. If he has no
+thought of what all this practical is for, he will get a false idea of
+his craft. He will see, and think of, and believe in, nothing but the
+craftsmanship: that which every good workman respects as good and
+necessary, but which the wise workman knows is but the perfect means
+for the expression of thought.
+
+Some consideration, then, of the theoretical side of art is necessary
+in a book of this kind. A number of considerations arise at the
+outset, about which you must make up your mind:--
+
+Is judgment of a picture based on individual liking?
+
+Can you hope to paint well by following your own liking only?
+
+Is it worth your while to try to do good work?
+
+Can you hope to do good work at all?
+
+You must decide these questions for yourself, but you must remember
+that it depends upon how you decide them whether your work will be
+good or bad.
+
+To take the last consideration first, you may be sure that it is worth
+while to try to do good work, and mainly because you may hope to do as
+good work as you want to do. That is, precisely as good work as you
+are willing to take the trouble to learn to do. Talent is only another
+name for love of a thing. If you love a thing enough to try to find
+out what is good, to train your judgment; and to train your abilities
+up to what that judgment tells you is good, the good work is only a
+matter of time.
+
+You will notice that you must train your judgment as well as your
+ability; not all at once, of course. But how can you hope to do good
+work if you do not know what good work is when you see it? If you have
+no point of view, how can you tell what you are working for, what you
+are aiming at? And if you do not know what you are aiming at, are you
+likely to hit anything?
+
+=Train Your Judgment.=--Let us say, then, that you must train your
+critical judgment. How are you to set about it?
+
+In the first place, don't set up your own liking as a criterion. Make
+up your mind that when it comes to a choice between your personal
+taste and that of some one who may be supposed to know, between what
+you think and what has been consented to by all the men who have ever
+had an opinion worthy of respect, you may rest assured that you are
+wrong. And when you have made up your mind to that, when you have
+reached that mental attitude, you have taken a long step towards
+training your judgment; for you have admitted a standard outside of
+mere opinion.
+
+Another attitude that you should place your mind in is one of
+catholicity--one of openness to the possibility of there being many
+ways of being right. Don't allow yourself to take it for granted that
+any one school or way of painting or looking at things is the only
+right one, and that all the other ways are wrong. That point of view
+may do for a man who has studied and thought, and finally arrived at
+that conclusion which suits his mind and his nature,--but it will not
+do for a student. Such an attitude is a sure bar to progress. It
+results in narrowness of idea, narrowness of perception, and
+narrowness of appreciation. You should try all things, and hold fast
+to that which is good. And having found what is good, and even while
+holding fast to it, you should remember that what is good and true for
+you is not necessarily the only good and true for some one else. You
+must not only hold to your own liberty of choice, but recognize the
+same right for others. If this is not recognized, what room has
+originality to work in?
+
+The range of subject, of style, and of technical methods among
+acknowledged masters, should alone be proof of the fact that there is
+no one way which is the only good way; and if you would know how to
+judge and like a good picture, the study of really great pictures,
+without regard to school, is the way to learn.
+
+=How to Look at Pictures.=--The study of pictures means something more
+than merely looking at them and counting the figures in them. It
+implies the study of the treatment of the subject in every way. The
+management of light and shade; the color; the composition and drawing;
+and finally those technical processes of brush-work by means of which
+the canvas gets covered, and the idea of the artist becomes visible.
+All these things are important in some degree; they all go to the
+making of the complete work of art: and you do not understand the
+picture, you do not really and fully judge it, unless you know how to
+appreciate the bearing on the result, of all the means which were used
+to bring it about. All this adds to your own technical knowledge as
+well as to your critical judgment, both of which ends are important
+to your becoming a good painter.
+
+=Why Paint Well.=--You see I am assuming that you wish to be a good
+painter. There is no reason why you should be a bad painter because
+you are not a professional one. The better you paint the better your
+appreciation will be of all good work, the keener your appreciation of
+what is beautiful in nature, and the greater your satisfaction and
+pleasure in your own work. There are better reasons for painting than
+the desire to "make a picture." Painting implies making a picture, it
+is true; but it means also seeing and representing charming things,
+and working out problems of beauty in the expression of color and
+form: and this is something more than what is commonly meant by a
+picture. The picture comes, and is the result; but the making of it
+carries with it a pleasure and joy which are in exact proportion to
+the power of appreciation, perception, and expression of the painter.
+This is the real reason for painting, and it makes the desire and the
+attempt to paint well a matter of course.
+
+=Craftsmanship.=--The mechanical side of painting naturally is an
+important part of your problem. You cannot be too catholic in your
+opinion with regard to it. It is vital that you be not narrowed by any
+prejudices as to the surface effect of paint. Whether the canvas be
+smooth or rough, the paint thick or thin, the details few or
+many,--the goodness or badness of the picture does not depend on any
+of these. They are or should be the result, the natural outcome
+because the natural means of expression, of the manner in which the
+picture is conceived. One picture may demand one way of painting and
+another demand a quite different way; and each way be the best
+possible for the thing expressed. It all depends on the man; the
+make-up of his mind; the way he sees things; the results he aims to
+attain,--all of them controlled more or less by temperament and
+idiosyncrasy. What would produce a perfect work for one man would not
+do at all for another. The works of the great masters offer the most
+marked contrasts of ideal and of treatment, and painters have varied
+greatly in their manner of some painting at different periods of their
+lives. Rembrandt, for instance, painted very thinly in his early
+years, with transparent shadows and carefully modelled, solidly loaded
+lights. Later in life he painted most roughly; and "The Syndics" was
+so heavily and roughly loaded that even now, after two hundred years,
+the paint stands out in lumps--and this is one of his masterpieces. So
+again, if you will compare the manipulation in the work of Raphael
+with that of Tintoretto, that of Rubens with that of Velasquez, or
+most markedly, the work of Frans Hals with that of Gerard Dou, you
+will see that the greatest extremes of handling are consistent with
+equal greatness of result.
+
+=Finish.=--From this you may conclude that what is generally
+understood by the word "finish" is not necessarily a thing to be
+sought for. The tendency of great painters is rather away from
+excessive smoothness and detail than towards it. While a picture may
+be a good one and be very minute and smooth, it by no means follows
+that a picture is bad because it is rough. The truth is that the test
+of a picture does not lie in the character of the pigment surface _in
+itself_ at all, nor in whether it be full of detail or the reverse,
+but in the conception and in the harmonious relation of the technique
+to the manner in which the whole is conceived. The true "finish" is
+whatever surface the picture happens to have when the idea which is
+the purpose of the picture is fully expressed, with nothing lacking to
+make that expression more complete, nor with anything present which is
+not needed to that completeness. This too is the truth about
+"breadth," that much misunderstood word. Breadth is not merely breadth
+of brush stroke. It is breadth of idea, breadth of perception; the
+power of conceiving the picture as a whole, and the power of not
+putting in any details which will interfere with the unity of effect.
+
+=Intent.=--In this connection it would be well to bear in mind the
+purpose of the work on which the painter may be engaged. A man would,
+and should, work very differently on canvases intended for a study, a
+sketch, and a picture. The study would contain many things which the
+other two would not need. It is the work in which and by which the
+painter informs himself. It is his way of acquiring facts, or of
+assuring himself of what he wants and how he wants it. And he may put
+into it all sorts of things for their value as facts which he may
+never care to use, but which he wishes to have at command in case he
+should want them.
+
+The sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a
+general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most
+successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a
+picture, or which suggests a scheme. A carefully worked-up sketch is a
+contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be.
+
+A picture might have more or less of the character of either of these
+two types, and yet belong to neither. It might have the sketch as its
+motive, and would use as much or as little of the material of the
+study as should be needed to make the result express exactly the idea
+the painter wished to impart, and no more and no less.
+
+All these things should be borne in mind, as you study the
+characteristics of paintings to learn what they can mean to you beyond
+the surface which is obvious to any one; or as you work on your own
+canvas to attain such power or proficiency, such cleverness or
+facility, as you may conclude it is worth your while to try for.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI
+
+                     TRADITION AND INDIVIDUALITY
+
+
+A picture is made up of many elements. Certain of them are essentially
+abstract. They must be thought out by a sort of _mental vision without
+words_. This is the most subtle and intimate part of the picture.
+These are the means by which the ideal is brought into the picture.
+
+=Line, Mass, and Color.=--Such are the qualities of _line_,
+dissociated from representation; of _mass_, not as representing
+external forms; and _color_, considered as a _quality_, not as yet
+expressed visibly in pigment, nor representing the color of any
+_thing_. When these elements are combined they may make up such
+conceptions as proportion, rhythm, repetition, and balance, with all
+the modifications that may come from still further combination.
+
+It is because these elements are qualities in themselves beautiful
+that actual objects not beautiful may be made so in a painting, by
+being treated as _color_ or _line_ or _mass_, and so given place on
+the canvas, rather than as being of themselves interesting. A face,
+for instance, may be ugly as a _face_, yet be beautiful as color or
+light and shade in the picture. These qualities, I say, do not
+represent--they do not necessarily even exist, except in the mind to
+which they are the terms of its thought. Nevertheless, they are the
+soul of the picture. For whatever the subject, or the objects chosen
+for representation, it is by working out combinations of these
+elements, through and by means of those objects, that the picture
+really is made.
+
+The picture, _as a work of art_, is not the representation of objects
+making up a subject, but a fabric woven of color, line, and mass; of
+form, proportion, balance, rhythm, and movement, expressed through
+those actual objects in the picture which give it visible form.
+
+I do not purpose to go deeply into these matters here. Elsewhere, as
+they bear practically on the subject in hand, as in the chapters on
+"Composition" and on "Color," I shall speak of them more fully. But I
+wish here to call attention to this abstract side of painting in order
+to show the relation between the two classes of things, the one
+abstract and the other concrete, which together are needed to make up
+a picture.
+
+The concrete, or material, part of a picture includes all those things
+which you can look at or feel on the canvas; and by seeing which you
+can also see the abstract qualities, which do not _visibly_ exist
+until made visible through the disposition of these tangible things,
+on the canvas.
+
+Beyond this is included all the technical qualities of expression;
+form, as _drawing_; all representations of objects; the pigment by
+means of which color is seen; and all those technical processes which
+produce the various kinds of surface in the putting on of paint, and
+bring about the different effects of light and shade and color, form
+or accent.
+
+In learning to paint, it is with these concrete things that you should
+concern yourself mainly. The science of painting consists in the
+knowledge of how to be the master of all the practical means of the
+craft. For it is with these that you must work, with these you must
+express yourself. These are the tools of your trade. They are the
+words of your art language--the language itself being the abstract
+elements--and the thoughts, the combinations which you may conceive in
+your brain by means of these abstract elements.
+
+You must have absolute command of these _materials_ of painting. No
+matter how ideal your thought may be, no matter how fine your feeling
+for line and color and composition, if you do not know how to handle
+the gross material which is the only medium by which this can all be
+made visible and recognizable to another person, you will fail of
+either expressing yourself, or of representing anything else.
+
+Now you will see what I have been driving at all this time; why I
+have been talking in terms which may well be called not practical. I
+want to fix your attention on the fact that there are two qualities in
+a picture: that one will be always within you, mainly, and will
+control the character of your picture, because it will be the
+expression of your mental self; and the other the practical part,
+which any one may, and all painters must learn, because it is the only
+means of getting the first into existence.
+
+The one, the abstract part, no one can tell you how to cultivate nor
+how to use. If I tried to do so, it would be my idea and not yours
+which would result. I can only tell you that it is the _thought of
+art_, and you must think your own thoughts.
+
+But the other, the material, the concrete, the practical, it is the
+purpose of this whole book to help you to understand and to acquire
+the mastery of, so far as may be done by words.
+
+Teaching by words is difficult, and never completely satisfactory. But
+much may be done. If you will use your own brains, so that what does
+not seem clear at first may come to have a meaning because of your
+thinking about it, we may accomplish a great deal. I cannot make you
+paint. I cannot make you understand. I can give you the principles,
+but you must apply them and think them out.
+
+Everything I say must be in a measure general; for the needs of every
+one are individual, and the requirement of each technical problem is
+individual. I must speak for all, and not to any one. Yet I shall
+state principles which can always be made to apply to each single
+need, and I will try to show how the application may be made.
+
+=Technique.=--The science of painting consists of a variety of
+processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and
+various objects are represented thereon. The whole body of method and
+means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called
+by names of their own. That part which applies to the putting on of
+the paint may be generally called _handling_, although the word
+_painting_ is sometimes restricted to this sense, and _brush-work_ is
+often used for the same thing. The other technical means will be
+spoken of in their proper place. Let me say now a few words as to
+_handling_ in general.
+
+Where did all this technique come from?
+
+From experiment.
+
+Ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing
+ideas upon surfaces. But it is only within the last four hundred years
+that the processes of oil painting have been in existence--simply
+because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a
+vehicle, and the oil medium was not invented until the middle of the
+fifteenth century.
+
+With the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the
+world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways
+of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and
+processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting
+to-day.
+
+From time to time there have been groups of artists who have used
+common methods, and who have developed expression through those
+methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the
+resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods
+of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect
+on different periods of painting.
+
+In this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what
+ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as "legitimate."
+And the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate
+have been varied from time to time--those condemned by one period
+being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been
+almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them.
+
+In the long run, methods and processes have received such
+authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted
+masters, that they have become the traditional property of all art,
+which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. They have
+become the stock in trade of the craft.
+
+The artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the
+trouble to understand them. He must understand them, because the
+manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish
+different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at
+results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he
+uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended.
+
+The painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be
+controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. He should feel
+free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and
+he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from
+selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring
+about his true purpose.
+
+Of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. Some
+pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own
+color, or tend to destroy the color of others. You should always bear
+this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you
+should not use such materials or such processes as work against it.
+But beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of
+the workers who have gone before you are at your command, to help you
+to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent
+whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive.
+
+And this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the
+whole purpose of the picture.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XII
+
+                             ORIGINALITY
+
+
+Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not
+through striving. The search for originality seldom results in
+anything worth having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the
+best way of being original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the
+most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always
+natural. Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another
+person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he
+does. The most original things are often the most simple, because they
+have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been
+seen or felt, in the most direct way.
+
+If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of
+originality. No two people are alike, neither are any two painters
+alike; they could not be. They do not look alike, nor see alike, nor
+feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike? The
+attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort
+of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting.
+
+Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don't try to paint what
+appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the
+most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely
+convey just what it is that _you_ like, unaffected by anything else.
+And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and
+expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other
+that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that
+ever was--and that is originality.
+
+But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive
+impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well,
+accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There
+are always plenty of things--ideas, impressions, conceptions,
+appreciations--waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one
+twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new
+thing.
+
+That is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang
+it on a wall, and call it by a name. The painter is the eye of the
+people. He sees things which they have no time to look for, or
+looking, have not learned to see. The painter serves his purpose best
+when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before,
+and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his
+having seen it.
+
+There is the difference between the artist and the photograph, which
+sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so
+mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in
+unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter's eye which sees and
+distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using
+facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than
+the facts.
+
+But what is a picture? I have met some strange though positive notions
+as to what is and what is not a picture. Some persons think that a
+certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are
+necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite
+and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. I remember one man who
+asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a
+sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To
+make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds,
+or better, a ship and some reflections. All this sort of thing is
+idle. A picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less
+of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of
+the idea which is the cause of its existence. And that idea may be
+tangible or not. It may include many details or none. It is an idea
+which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is
+worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and when that idea
+is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface
+is a picture. What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter
+personal to the painter of it. The manner in which it is conceived and
+produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.
+
+A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and
+line. It is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus
+knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. And as all these are
+differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being
+natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be
+original.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII
+
+                      THE ARTIST AND THE STUDENT
+
+
+It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is
+likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as
+successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he
+made it for the sake of making a picture--better probably. The making
+of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His
+is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up
+something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather
+than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of
+nature.
+
+They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This
+implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of
+selection,--of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad
+and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he
+is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants
+to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things.
+
+=Aims.=--It should be noted that the aim of the student and the aim
+of the artist are essentially different. The student's first aim is to
+learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly
+between relations. It is the training of the eye and the judgment.
+Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the
+ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must
+not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of
+materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the
+problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far
+from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his
+command before he can freely express himself.
+
+The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business.
+Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to
+being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and
+as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not
+hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.
+
+All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them,
+simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the
+necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost
+knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of
+art, but with the laws of nature.
+
+There are changes which can be made, and be right--made as nature
+might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways,
+and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in
+accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas
+through nature, not to express notions about nature.
+
+The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language
+in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths
+more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which
+they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit
+of them. This is the true fact of the picture.
+
+It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give
+the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so,
+but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the
+character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.
+
+To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the
+artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIV
+
+                             HOW TO STUDY
+
+
+There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around
+the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What
+you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must
+learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature,
+and all the characteristics of pigments. All qualities, color and form
+and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know
+how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be
+trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you
+are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in
+conditions commonplace to others.
+
+You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little
+the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of
+the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is
+painted. All is material to the painter. It is not that "everything
+that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and
+possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, make the picture,
+in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In one sense nothing
+is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and
+color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange
+or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious
+qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background--is lost.
+There is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is
+nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your
+perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of
+beauty in everything that comes within your view.
+
+You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of
+view. The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be
+represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest
+sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily
+presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow,
+of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of
+light and color, and furnishes the element of relation.
+
+=Methods.=--Two general methods are at the command of the student from
+the first,--to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may
+safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also
+professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study
+rather for the advanced student than for the beginner. You cannot
+begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate
+your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying is
+not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of
+painting. The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes
+to see relations, to see them in nature. It is not to see that there
+are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure
+and to judge them. Painting is the art of perception before
+everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else
+has already perceived. Copying does not help you to _perceive_, it can
+only help to show you how something can be _expressed after_ it has
+been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of
+painting. Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the
+brush generally, may be studied by copying. These only--and for these
+things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is not ready for these,
+for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting.
+
+=Danger.=--The danger of too early copying is that the student learns
+to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which
+the surface is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious
+one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes
+clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained his power to
+see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature,
+and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and
+suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that
+student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of
+nature--the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees
+always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's
+brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that
+is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter.
+
+These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later,
+when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground
+of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but
+with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible
+point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material
+and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and
+sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some
+hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.
+
+But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise
+copying,--the over-knowledge of process and surface, and
+under-knowledge of nature,--is to be preferred a frank crudeness of
+work which is the result of an honest going to nature for study. You
+should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. Better a
+healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing
+for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents
+your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is
+insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of
+the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an
+acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others.
+
+Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help.
+There is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture
+serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of
+color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its
+own sake. If you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it
+represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work
+of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack
+of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are qualities of
+brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. You
+can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in
+studying and copying other pictures.
+
+I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity
+in your education. You can do it slowly in learning to paint, but you
+can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good
+pictures, if you do it in the right way.
+
+=The Right Way.=--So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to
+get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the
+greater part of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy
+which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a
+more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original
+what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception
+and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are
+attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other execution.
+Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles;
+study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and
+hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but
+why. So that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his
+problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you will get some
+real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no
+use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a
+good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.
+
+=Why Copy.=--There are only two good reasons for making a copy,--to
+study the original as a problem, and to have something to serve as an
+example of the master on a work which you like. And in either case
+such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the only possible way to
+get what you want. To "get a picture," regardless of whether it really
+does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always
+through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you
+escape an entire perversion of your point of view.
+
+You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of
+thing, but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it
+is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is
+worth seeing.
+
+=Get to Nature.=--If you would really learn to paint, to see for
+yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to
+nature too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it
+is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything
+which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure,
+or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior--all things which
+actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon
+them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark.
+Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about
+all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. But
+models are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long
+time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are
+not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far
+advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first
+combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most practically
+useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call
+"still life,"--_"morte" nature_, dead nature is the better or more
+descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all
+combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for
+representation. Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac;
+all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this
+use.
+
+The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of
+combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that
+he can always command. There is practically no problem possible to
+in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life.
+The training in perception and representation, in composition and
+arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable;
+and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements
+as will interest you, because you need place only such things or
+colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are
+looking at the things themselves, and the result you get is the
+product of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own,
+both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well
+learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line.
+
+You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing
+which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future
+work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you
+have in view,--to learn how to paint well.
+
+=Be Sincere.=--But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do
+anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting
+is difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination
+that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so
+that it is worth the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by
+insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me once that he
+believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by
+the sole criterion of conviction. Can you think of any painting being
+good without it? Can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability
+making a picture good without that. And it is quite as important in
+study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take yourself
+and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results
+come.
+
+=Joy in Your Work.=--Do it because you like to. But like good work and
+hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand
+yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be
+honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what
+you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART III
+
+                         TECHNICAL PRINCIPLES
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV
+
+                       TECHNICAL PRELIMINARIES
+
+
+=Reasons.=--Painting is something more than laying on paint. It implies
+a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries--technical
+matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting
+is impossible.
+
+It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a
+knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as
+well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and
+why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods
+and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may
+select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main
+purpose--the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color
+and pitch, the expression of an idea--it is all right. But there are
+laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and
+the reasons for placing them in certain relations. These laws are back
+of personal idiosyncrasy. They are a part of the laws which control
+all material things. The painter may no more go contrary to them in
+painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the
+practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with
+the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If
+the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture
+will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically
+fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which
+give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the
+laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression
+inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them.
+
+=Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.=--It is not necessary that you
+should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the
+application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have
+some practical notions about them and their effect on your work.
+
+You can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go.
+The farther the better. The more you study them the more you will find
+them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely
+within their limitations. But this is not the place for special study.
+There are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must
+go to them.
+
+But a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out
+of any book which would be really helpful to the student of painting.
+I can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that
+amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as
+a painter. What I shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely
+left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are
+determined by the same reason.
+
+As you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and
+think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the
+process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually
+essential to it--which is part and parcel of it.
+
+Another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any
+discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words
+or phrases which must be understood. To speak of technical things
+presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of
+the words there can be no comprehension of the thought.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVI
+
+                               DRAWING
+
+
+Drawing is basic to painting. Good painting cannot exist without it. I
+do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but
+that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be
+felt; and that is drawing. Drawing is not merely form, but implies
+these other things, and painting is not legible without them. They go
+to the completeness of expression. Movement, and action, as well as
+composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing,
+and they are vital to a painting.
+
+=Importance of Drawing.=--Much has been said and written of drawing as
+being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse
+all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. This is a mistake.
+Drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express
+anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. But
+still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not
+strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply
+because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it
+would be a drawing.
+
+All painters fall into two classes,--those who are most sensitive to
+the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of
+color and tone. But the great colorists, the painters _par
+excellence_, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who
+find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made
+painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. And
+looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more
+important than other qualities.
+
+=Neglect of Drawing.=--Great artists have sometimes not been perfect
+draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they
+have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they
+have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness
+in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his
+temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express
+his temperamental richness of color. These things are superficial to
+the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it
+in accepting the picture. And a great colorist may be so forgiven; he
+makes up for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness
+for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman.
+
+The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. A painter,
+who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work
+weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." Lack of firmness,
+indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. Those firm,
+simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work
+of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. They
+mean precision. Precision means position. Position means drawing.
+
+=Proportions.=--All good work is from the general to the particular,
+from the mass to the detail. Keep that in mind as a fundamental
+principle in good work, whatever the kind. You should never place a
+detail till you have placed your larger masses. The relative
+importance of things depends on the consideration of those most
+important first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.
+
+Proportions next. Largest proportions, then exactness of relative
+proportions. Study first in masses. See nothing at first but the large
+planes. As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head, not the head on
+to the nose." In getting proportions of the great masses, let no small
+variations of line or form break into your study of the whole.
+Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. If you
+cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines
+of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the
+general direction of them. Train yourself to look at things in this
+way. There is nothing which will not fall into position so. This will
+not be easy at first. The training of a quick perception of these
+things is a part of your training in drawing--the first essential. It
+is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but
+that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts,
+and so makes more easy the study of proportion. The accuracy of the
+general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser
+proportions which come within them.
+
+You see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on
+a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. It saves time
+for you, too. You do not have to rub out so much. The great lines and
+planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place.
+Spend much time over this part of a drawing. Cut the time you give to
+a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of
+larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and
+study and correct these until they are right.
+
+Once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it
+would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect.
+
+=Modelling.=--In the same way that you have laid out the proportions
+in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. Model your
+drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are
+in place. Avoid seeing curves in relief as you have avoided curves of
+outline. Try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large
+enough to give a definite mass of relief. Don't be afraid of an edge
+in doing this. Let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and
+stop. This again is not for any effect in itself, but only for
+facility and exactness. Later you can loose it as much as you see fit
+in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these
+again into the most subtle.
+
+Study first the outline and then the planes. Constantly compare them
+as to relation; you will find it suggestive. Remember that your aim is
+to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes
+the parts, the parts are incidental.
+
+=Measurements.=--You will always have to use measurements for the sake
+of accuracy. Probably you will never be able to dispense with them.
+The best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so
+that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. You
+will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting
+this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the
+habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver.
+
+Hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip
+along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them
+across the coal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions into
+themselves and into each other. Height and breadth are checks to each
+other. If the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the
+smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each
+other _as well as to breadth_. Measure these and you are sure of being
+right.
+
+=Steps.=--Divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. You will
+find it a helpful thing in studying. You will do it quite naturally
+later. Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.
+
+_First step._--Measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole
+group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.
+
+_Second step._--Outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines
+possible. Give the general shape of the whole. This blocks it in.
+
+_Third step._--Measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts
+most prominent, if it be a single object. Measure its height and
+breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the
+dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. Enclose it in straight
+lines as you did with the whole mass.
+
+_Fourth step._--Find the more important of the lesser proportions in
+each object, and block them out also. This should map out your drawing
+exactly and with some completeness.
+
+_Fifth step._--Lay in simple flat tones to fill in these outlines,
+and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so.
+
+_Sixth step._--This should leave your paper with a few large masses of
+dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller
+masses, giving more refinement to the whole. This also should so break
+up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.
+
+_Seventh step._--Put in such accents of dark, or take out such of
+light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing.
+
+I do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but
+it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less
+modified, is practically the basis of all methods. In practised hands
+it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. I have
+seen most beautiful work done in this way.
+
+=Home Study.=--It is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw
+well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good
+drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them.
+
+Good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the
+exactness must come first. The structure of the thing must be shown
+without unnecessary detail. You should always look at any really good
+drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of
+helpful suggestion to you.
+
+[Illustration: =Drawing of Hands.= _Duerer._]
+
+=Study the Masters.=--Get photographs of drawings by the masters of
+drawing, and study them. See how they searched their model for form
+and character. Do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner
+in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning.
+
+In this drawing by Albrecht Duerer you have a splendid example of
+exactness and feeling for character. You could have no better type of
+what to look for and how to express it. Although it is not important
+that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it
+is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the
+character of the surface--which is one of the ways in which the point
+helps to search out the modelling.
+
+This drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground;
+a very good way to study.
+
+A good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old
+masters, in subject. A hand or part of any object is enough to study
+from. There is no need to always demand a picture in everything you
+do.
+
+=Materials.=--For all purposes which come in the range of the painter
+you should use charcoal. For purposes of study it is the most
+satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and
+easily corrected. For sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas
+it is equally good.
+
+You should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical
+positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the
+pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all
+you need in that direction.
+
+In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than
+place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and
+accurately. Sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which
+include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this
+can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative
+afterwards.
+
+=Imitation.=--Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not
+the most important thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the
+truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater
+character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact
+which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the
+whole. There is something more important than detail, and the
+essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing
+which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more
+true to the larger fact.
+
+Then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express
+through his representation of the external; and he is justified in
+altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more
+important self-expression. Of course the self must be worth
+expressing. There is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere
+inability. But a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the
+complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever
+means he has taken.
+
+=Feeling.=--Drawing must be a matter of feeling. A perception of
+essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the
+facts. The good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of
+facts first, always searching for those most important, and
+emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his
+eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come
+also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. And the
+trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of
+expression. This is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to
+be aimed at,--the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and
+do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of
+expression which comes of that perfect union.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII
+
+                                VALUES
+
+
+=The Term.=--The word "values" is seldom understood by the average
+individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. It means simply
+the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of
+color considered as light and dark. Translate the word into
+"importance," and think what it means. The relative importance,
+strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt
+in the whole--that is its value. A weak value is a note which does not
+make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. A false value is a
+touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or
+masses of color in the picture, _considered_ as _light and dark_--_not
+as color per se_.
+
+=Importance.=--As soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how
+important values must be to the whole picture. It is not possible to
+do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. In
+one sense it is incidental to drawing. When you consider drawing as
+the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of
+relief, as well as outline, values come into play to give the
+relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. In this it
+becomes part of drawing.
+
+=Values and Color.=--As soon, however, as color becomes a part of the
+picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished
+from the painting of previous centuries. Values, of course, always
+existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint
+without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative
+strength of tones. But the word is never heard in relation to old
+masters. It is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it
+probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the
+fact which it represents.
+
+The older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole
+object--a head or a figure, say--in relation to itself; and that was
+values--but restricted values. The whole picture was arranged on the
+basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of
+composition of that picture. This is not values, but what is generally
+understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." The
+modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as
+a technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a
+picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which
+expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse.
+
+=Basis of Modern Painting.=--Instead of the old composition in
+arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual
+arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the
+values over the whole canvas. In this way the quality of "value"
+becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. For you cannot
+accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the
+light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of
+relations over the whole canvas. Every most insignificant spot of
+light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep
+its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all
+the rest. Each value must keep its place according to the laws of
+fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. The whole picture must be
+either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary
+arrangement. Any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection
+must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else
+there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. The modern painter
+accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result.
+
+=Absolute and Relative Values.=--We may speak of values as absolute or
+relative. This relates to the key or pitch of a painting. It is the
+contribution to the art of painting which was made by the French
+painter, Manet. You may paint a picture in the same pitch as nature,
+or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch.
+
+The relations of the different values of the picture will hold the
+same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other.
+But the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute
+light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature.
+This would be relative values.
+
+Or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may
+be the same, value for value, as in nature. This would be absolute
+values.
+
+The attempt at absolute values was not made at all before Manet's
+time. A landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch
+of nature, and an interior as frankly painted up, or lighter. In both
+cases the values had to be condensed,--telescoped, so to
+speak,--because pigment would not express the highest light nor the
+lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations
+between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of
+difference between each value had to be diminished--but _relatively_
+they were the same. The degree of variation from the actual was the
+same all through.
+
+With absolute values the painter aims at giving the _just note_,--the
+exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. He tries to paint
+up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light.
+
+=Close Values.=--This naturally calls for a fine distinction of
+tones--the utmost subtlety of perception of values. To paint a picture
+in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black,
+and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the
+picture, the values must be _close_; must be studied so closely as to
+take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly
+express it. This sort of thing was not thought of by the older
+painters. It is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting.
+It is a substitution of the study of _relation_ for the study of
+_contrast_.
+
+=Study of Values.=--You see at once how important, how vital, the
+study of values is to painting. Even if you paint with arbitrary
+lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits,
+you have to consider and study them as they apply to _parts_ of your
+picture. You will find no good painter of old time who did not study
+relations. If you look at a Velasquez, you will find that he knew
+values, even though he did not use the word.
+
+But if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to
+express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if
+you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that
+world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to
+make the study of values fundamental to your work.
+
+="The Fourth Dimension."=--You study values with your eyes only, but
+you cannot _measure_ values. Length, breadth, and thickness you can
+measure; but values constitute what might be called a "_Fourth
+Dimension_," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any
+mechanical aid. Your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge
+differences of value.
+
+=Helps.=--There are, however, several things which you can use to help
+you in training your eye to distinguish values. When you look for
+values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only
+masses and relations. You must _unfocus_ your eye. The focussed eye
+sees the fact, and not the relation. Anything which will help you to
+see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the
+values more distinctly.
+
+=Half-closed Eyes.=--The most common way is to half close the eyes,
+which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. Some
+painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide
+open, but to focus them on some point _beyond_ the values they are
+studying. This is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but
+becomes less difficult with practice.
+
+=The Blur Glass.=--An ordinary magnifying-glass of about 15-inch
+focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents,
+will blur the details, and help you to see the values, because it
+makes everything vague except the masses. You can frame it for use by
+putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you
+can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. Of
+course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken
+if unprotected.
+
+Do not try to look _through_ the glass at your subject, but _at_ the
+glass and the image on it.
+
+=The Claude Loraine Mirror.=--This is a curved mirror with a black
+reflecting surface. The object is reflected on it, _reduced_ both in
+size and pitch. It concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps
+to distinguish the relative values.
+
+You can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back
+of a piece of plate glass black. The real Claude Loraine mirror is
+expensive.
+
+=The Common Mirror= is also very helpful in distinguishing values. It
+reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see
+your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the
+result. Place the group and your painting side by side, if you are
+painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror.
+Do the same with a portrait and the sitter.
+
+=Diminishing Glass.=--Much the same effect can be had by using a
+double concave lens. The picture is not reversed, but it is reduced,
+and the details eliminated.
+
+In using any of these means you must remember that it is always the
+relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of
+these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything
+in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XVIII
+
+                             PERSPECTIVE
+
+
+There are two kinds of perspective, linear and aerial. The former has
+to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as
+they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of
+distance. The latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is
+due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in
+objects farther and farther away from the observer.
+
+=Aerial Perspective.=--To the student, aerial is _color_ perspective,
+because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a
+distance. Modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance,
+and so aerial perspective is largely a matter of _values_. That they
+are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a
+matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important
+thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to
+relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a
+picture.
+
+To the student, aerial perspective should be only a matter of
+observation and of the study of relations of color and value. There
+are no rules. The effect depends on greater or less density of
+atmosphere. Near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and
+farther objects through a thicker one. All you have to do to express
+it is to recognize the relative tones of color. Paint the colors as
+they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with
+aerial perspective.
+
+But though I say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that I
+mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought
+and study. You will have to use all your powers of perception if you
+wish to do good work in this direction. Especially on clear days, or
+in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great
+distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is
+simply another name for close values. And close values, you remember,
+are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color.
+
+The only rule for aerial perspective is to use your eyes, and do
+nothing without a previous careful study of nature.
+
+=Linear Perspective.=--For most kinds of painting, a technical
+knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every
+painter should understand the general principles of it. In most cases
+all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparing all lines
+carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or
+vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. Apply to
+all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any
+other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as
+you are drawing from an object before you. But if you go into
+perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. A little perspective is a
+dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts
+of half-understood things than to be of any real help.
+
+There are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete
+knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. Whenever you
+have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you
+have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures
+are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and
+they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you
+cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make
+most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great
+exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will
+not be true.
+
+Such men as Gerome and Alma-Tadema plan their pictures most carefully,
+and so did Paul Veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical
+knowledge of perspective.
+
+But this is not the place to teach you perspective. It is a subject
+which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the
+elucidation of it. In a work of this kind anything more than a mention
+of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. If
+you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid
+attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care
+to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time
+to it, and study it thoroughly.
+
+=Foreshortening.=--In this connection I may speak of something which
+is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. As its name
+implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems
+shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while
+perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from
+you. Like aerial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is
+to study nature, not rules.
+
+Perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. Pose
+your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort,
+place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then
+study the drawing _as it appears_, thinking nothing of _how it is_;
+make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no
+problem of foreshortening at all, but study the relations of lines,
+of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of
+itself.
+
+After all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman
+will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. Therefore,
+learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIX
+
+                           LIGHT AND SHADE
+
+
+=Chiaroscuro.=--A few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. This is
+a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers
+up to within the last thirty or forty years. It has of late become
+almost unused. The reason for this was explained in the chapter on
+"Values." Nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what
+the word meant, and still means. Although he may hear and use it less
+frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures,
+certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and
+are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. He should
+know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation
+to the work of to-day.
+
+Chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which
+is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of
+painting. Of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy.
+Chiaroscuro is an Italian compound word whose two parts, _chiar_ and
+_oscuro_, signify simply _bright_ and _obscure_, or _light_ and
+_dark_. Hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards
+all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of
+coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the
+clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. The art of
+clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and
+arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their
+degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single
+objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole,
+so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner
+possible; that is, _so as to produce the most desirable effect upon
+the senses and spirit of the observers_. In a word, its end and aim
+are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of
+light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values,
+reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." The
+italics are mine.
+
+You see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. But it is to be
+again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not
+only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so
+arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to
+fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while
+the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. In this way
+the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct
+element of composition, and a very important one. The _quality_ of
+"light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. It is stated
+(whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was
+according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some
+permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to
+light and to dark. The gradations of light and dark were studied of
+course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was
+calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the
+space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in
+the picture. They wrought with the _quality of light and shade_ as an
+_element_, just as they would with the quality of line or of color,
+considered apart from objects or facts they might represent.
+
+=Arbitrary Lighting.=--This is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of
+in the chapter on "Values"; and although the older painters included
+what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of
+arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall,
+or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we
+would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting
+generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and
+as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past.
+
+=Light and Shade.=--But we may use the old word with a more
+restricted meaning. If we use it to mean literally light and shade,
+the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side
+and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very
+important and practical matter for present study.
+
+[Illustration: =Eggs. White against White.=]
+
+=Objects Visible by Light and Shadow.=--If you will put a white egg on
+a piece of white paper, with another white paper back of it, you will
+see that it is only because the egg obstructs the light, the side of
+it towards the light preventing the light rays from touching the other
+side, and so casting a shadow on itself and on the paper, that the egg
+is visible. You will also see, if you manipulate the egg, that
+according as the light is concentrated or diffused, or according to
+the sharpness of the shadow and light, is the egg more or less
+distinct.
+
+=Contrast.=--Apply these facts to other objects, and you will see how
+important the principle of contrast is to the representation of
+nature. Not only contrast of light and shade, but contrast of color.
+And you should make a study, both by setting up groups of objects in
+different lights, and by studying effects of lights wherever you are,
+of the possibilities and combinations of light and shadow.
+
+=Constant Observation.=--The painter is constantly studying with his
+eyes. It is not necessary always to have the brush in your hand in
+order to be always studying. Keep your brain active in making
+observations and considering the relations in nature around you. The
+amount of material you can store up in this way is immense, to say
+nothing of the training it gives you in the use of your eyes, and in
+the practice of selection of motives for work. Schemes of color or
+composition are not usually deliberately invented within the painter's
+brain. They are in most cases the result of some suggestion from a
+chance effect noticed and remembered or jotted down, and afterwards
+worked out. Nature is the great suggester. It is the artist's business
+to catch the suggestion and make it his own. For nature seldom works
+out her own suggestions. The effect as nature gives it is either not
+complete, or is so evanescent as to be uncopyable. But the habit of
+constant receptivity on the part of the artist makes nature an
+infinite mine of possibilities to him.
+
+[Illustration: =The Canal.= _Burleigh Parkhurst._
+Effect of diffused out-door light to be compared with effect of studio
+light in "Bohemian Woman," and artificial light in "Woman Sewing by
+Lamplight."]
+
+=Perception.=--Only by continually observing and judging of contrasts
+and relations can the eye be trained to perceive subtle distinctions;
+yet it must be so trained, for all good work is dependent on these
+distinctions.
+
+=Effects of Light.=--It is important to study the different qualities
+of light. Take, for instance, the difference of character on a sunny
+day and on a gray day. On the former, fine distinctions of color are
+less pronounced; they are lost in the contrasts of sunlight and
+shadow. On a gray day the light is diffused; contrast is less, but the
+finer distinctions are more marked. For the study of the subtleties of
+color choose a gray day.
+
+So, too, is the difference marked between the general light of
+out-doors and the more concentrated light of the house. The pitch is
+different. Outside, even in a dark day, the general character of light
+is clearer, more full, than in-doors.
+
+There is nothing possible under the open sky like the strong contrasts
+you get from a single window in an otherwise unlighted room.
+
+Compare, for instance, the character of the light and shade as shown
+in the illustrations on pages 156 and 159. The one is the diffused,
+out-of-door light, the other that from a studio window. The character
+of the subject has nothing to do with this quality. The head would
+have less of sharpness and contrast in the open air, and more
+reflected light.
+
+Other differences to be studied as to quality of the light in the
+manner of its contrast, and also for its color quality, are to be seen
+in moonlight or nightlight as compared with daylight. Artificial
+light, such as lamp- and candle-light, gives marked effects also,
+which may be compared with daylight both as it is out-of-doors and in
+its more concentrated effects in the studio. Compare the picture of
+the "Woman Sewing by Lamplight," by Millet, with the "Canal" and the
+"Bohemian Woman" given above. The effects of gas and electric light
+also should be studied. Their characteristics both of contrast and,
+particularly, of color are worth your attention as a student, inasmuch
+as the essence of some pictures lies in these qualities.
+
+Another matter of great importance to the student, and one which the
+same three illustrations just referred to may serve to show, is the
+effect on objects of the position of the point of entrance of the
+light with reference to them and to the observer. The simplest light
+is the side-light from a single window. This gives broad, sharp masses
+of light and shade, and makes the study of drawing and painting more
+simple. With the observer in the same relative position to the
+subject, as the light swings round towards a point back of him the
+contrasts become less, the relations more subtle and difficult of
+recognition, and naturally the study of them more difficult. In this
+position of light the values become "close." To make the object seen
+at all, it is necessary that the finest distinctions shall be
+observed.
+
+[Illustration: =Bohemian Woman.= _Frans Hals._
+Effect of contrast of light and shade in studio to be compared with
+diffused light of open air in the "Canal," and artificial light in
+"Woman Sewing by Lamplight."]
+
+[Illustration: =Sewing by Lamplight.= _Millet._
+Effect of artificial light contrast to be compared with natural light
+in illustrations of "Canal" and "Bohemian Woman."]
+
+[Illustration: =Descent from the Cross.=]
+
+Portrait painters have always been fond of a top light, which gives a
+direct concentrated light descending on the sitter, very similar in
+character to the side-light, but more favorable to the expression and
+drawing of the face.
+
+=Cross Lights.=--The most confusing and difficult of study and
+representation are the "_cross lights_." If there are several windows
+or other points for the admission of light, and the sitter or object
+painted is between them, the light comes from all sides, so that the
+rays cross each other and there is no single scheme of light and
+shade. The rays from one side modify the shadows cast from the other
+side, and a perplexing and involved arrangement of values is the
+result. This is a favorite technical problem with painters, and its
+solution is splendid training; but the student who can successfully
+solve it is not far from the end of his "student days."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX
+
+                              COMPOSITION
+
+
+=Importance.=--Composition is of the utmost importance. It is
+impossible that a picture should be good without it. You may define it
+as that study by means of which the balance of the picture comes
+about. But you must understand the word balance in its broadest sense.
+There is nothing in the planning of the picture which has not to be
+considered in making the picture balance.
+
+The arrangement of the lines, of the forms, of the masses, and of the
+colors must all be right if the composition be right. Composition is
+the planning of the picture; and it is more or less complicated, more
+or less to be carefully studied beforehand in exact accordance with
+the simplicity or complication of the scheme of the picture. You may
+not need more than the consideration of a few main facts. It may
+almost be done by a few moments' deliberation in some simple studies
+or even pictures. But even then there is possible the most subtle
+discrimination of selection, and a perfect gem of composition may be
+found in the arrangement of a picture having the simplest and fewest
+elements. The more complicated the materials which are to be worked
+into a picture, the more careful must be the previous planning; but,
+for all that, the genius will find scope for his utmost powers in a
+simple figure, just because the fewer the means, the more each single
+thing can interfere with the balance of the whole, and the more a fine
+choice will tell.
+
+=The AEsthetic.=--I have already mentioned briefly the aesthetic
+elements of a picture. I have called to your attention that back of
+the obvious facts of a subject and the objects in the picture, and the
+theme which the painter makes his picture represent; back of the
+technical processes and management of concrete material which make
+painting possible, is the aesthetic purpose of the work of art; without
+this it could not be a work of art at all: it would be merely a more
+or less exact representation of something, a mere prosaic description,
+the interest in which would lie wholly in the _fact_, and would perish
+whenever interest in the fact should cease. It is not the _fact_, nor
+even the able expression of the fact, which makes a work of art a
+thing of interest and delight centuries after the bearing of the fact
+has been forgotten. The perennial interest of a work of art lies in
+the way in which the artist has used his ostensible theme, and all the
+facts and objects appertaining to it, as a part of the material with
+which he expresses those ideas which are purely aesthetic; which do not
+rest on material things. These have to do with material things only by
+rendering them beautiful, giving to them an interest which they
+themselves could not otherwise have.
+
+=Theory.=--Does this sound unpractical? Well, it is unpractical. Does
+it seem mere theory? It is theory. I want to impress it on you that it
+is theory. For it is the theory which underlies art, and if you do not
+understand it, you only understand art from the outside. Consciously
+or unconsciously every artist works to express these purely aesthetic
+qualities, and to a greater or less extent he expresses himself
+through them.
+
+=Art for Art's Sake.=--This is the real meaning of the much-debated
+phrase, "Art for art's sake." The mistake which leads to the
+misconception and most of the discussion about it, is in confounding
+"art for art's sake" with "technique for technique's sake," which is a
+very different thing. Certainly every painter will work to attain the
+most perfect technique he is capable of. But not for the sake of the
+technique, but for what it will do. The better the technique the
+better the control of all the means to expression. If you take
+technique to mean only the understanding and knowledge of all the
+manipulations of art, technique is only a means, and it is so that I
+mean it to be understood here. If you broaden its meaning to include
+all the _mental_ conceptions and means, that is another thing, and one
+likely to lead to confusion of idea. So I use the word technique in
+its strictest sense.
+
+=The AEsthetic Elements.=--What, then, are these aesthetic qualities I
+have spoken of? Will you consider the quality of "line"? Not _a_ line,
+but line as an element, excluding all the possible things which may be
+done with lines in different relations to themselves and to other
+elements. Now will you consider also the other elements, "mass" and
+"color"? Do you see that here are three terms which suggest
+possibilities of combination of infinite scope? and they are purely
+intellectual. What may be done with them may be done, primarily,
+without taking into consideration the representation of any material
+fact whatsoever. Take as the type, conventional ornament. You can make
+the most exquisite combinations, in which the only interest and charm
+lies in the fact of those combinations in line and mass and color.
+
+Take architecture. Quite aside from the use of the building is the
+aesthetic resultant from combinations of line and mass and color.
+
+And so in the picture the question of _art_, the question of aesthetic
+entity, lies in the intellectual qualities of combinations of line and
+mass and color which permeate through and through the technical and
+material structure that you call the picture, and give it whatever
+universal and permanent value it has, and which make it immortal, if
+immortal it ever can be.
+
+=Composition.=--The bearing of all this on composition should be
+obvious, for composition is the technique of combination. In the
+composition of a picture all the elements come into play. It is in
+composition that the management of the abstract results in the
+concrete.
+
+Let us look at it from a more practical side. Frankly, there are
+qualities, which you always look for in a picture,--good drawing, of
+course, and good color. But there are such things as these: Harmony,
+Balance, Rhythm, Grace, Impressiveness, Force, Dignity. Where do they
+come from? Must not every good picture have them, or some of them, to
+some extent? How are you going to get them? If you have fifteen or
+twenty square feet or square yards of surface, you will not get them
+onto it by unaided inspiration. Inspiration is, like any other
+intellectual quality, quite logical, only it acts more quickly and
+takes longer steps between conclusions perhaps. You will get these
+qualities onto your canvas only by so arranging all the objects which
+make up the body of your picture that these qualities shall be the
+result. It is arrangement then.
+
+=Arrangement.=--But arrangement of what? how? The objects. But on some
+principle back of them. Consider another set of qualities: proportion,
+i.e., relative size; arrangement, relative position; contrast;
+accent,--these are what you manipulate your objects with, and your
+objects themselves are only line and mass and color in the concrete.
+Objects, figures, bric-a-brac, draperies, houses and trees, skies and
+mountains, and every and any other natural fact, you may consider as
+so many bits of form and color with which you may work out a scheme on
+canvas; and how you do it is to consider them as pawns in your game of
+aesthetics.
+
+With these as materials, what you really do is to combine mass and
+line and color by means of proportion, arrangement, contrast, and
+accent, that a beautiful entity of harmony, balance, rhythm, grace,
+dignity, and force may result. And this is composition.
+
+=No Rules.=--Naturally in dealing with a thing like this, which is the
+very essence of art, rules are of very little use. Ability in
+composition may be acquired when it is not natural, but it calls for a
+continuous training of the sense of proportion and arrangement, just
+as the development of any other ability calls for training.
+
+The best thing that you can do is to study good examples and try to
+appreciate, not only their beauty, but how and why they are beautiful.
+Cultivate your taste in that direction; and with the taste to like
+good and dislike bad composition will come the feeling which tells you
+when it is good and when it is bad, and this feeling you can apply to
+your own work, and by experiment you will gain knowledge and skill.
+
+Rules are not possible simply because they are limitations, and the
+true composer will always overstep a limitation of that kind, and with
+a successful result.
+
+Principles of composition, too, must be variously adapted, according
+to the kind of picture you have in hand. The principles are the same,
+of course; but as the materials differ in a figure painting and a
+landscape, for instance, you must apply them to meet that difference.
+
+=Suggestions.=--The first suggestion that might be made as a help to
+the study of composition is to consider your picture as a whole
+always. No matter how many figures, no matter how many groups, they
+must all be considered as parts of a _whole_, which must have no
+effect of being too much broken up.
+
+If the figures are scattered, they must be scattered in such a way
+that they suggest a logical connection between them as individuals in
+each group, and groups in a whole. There should usually be a main
+mass, and the others subsidiary masses. There should be a centre of
+interest of some sort, whether it be a color, a mass, or a thing; and
+this centre should be the point to which all the other parts balance.
+
+=Simplicity= is a good word to have in mind. However complicated the
+composition may seem superficially, you may treat it simply. You will
+control it by not considering any part as of any importance in itself,
+but only as it helps the whole; and you may strengthen or weaken that
+part as you need to. Don't cut the thing up too much. Let a half a
+dozen objects count as one in the whole. Mass things, simplify the
+masses, and make the elements of the masses hold as only parts of
+those masses.
+
+=Study placing= of things in different sizes relative to the size of
+the canvas. Make sketches which take no note of anything but the
+largest masses or the most important lines, and change them about till
+they seem right; then break them up in the same way into their
+details. Apply the _steps_ suggested for drawing to the study of
+composition, searching for balance chiefly, or for some other quality
+which is proper to composition.
+
+=Line.=--Each of the main elements of composition can be used as a
+problem of arrangement. You can study _composition_ in line, in mass,
+or in color.
+
+"The Golden Stairs," by Burne-Jones, is almost purely an arrangement
+in _line_, and beautifully illustrates the use of this element as the
+main aesthetic motive in a picture.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+Compare this composition in line with the "Descent from the Cross," in
+which the _line_ is equally marked, but more complicated, and used in
+connection with _mass_ to a much greater extent, and involved with
+interrelations of chiaroscuro and color. Consider the effect which
+each picture derives as a whole from this management of these
+elements. The one emphasizing that of line, with the resultant of
+rhythm and grace; the other balancing the elements, and so gaining
+power and impressiveness.
+
+[Illustration: =The Sower.= _Millet._
+To show arrangement in mass and line, in which the mass gives weight
+and dignity without weakening the emphasis of rhythm in the line.]
+
+Often the whole composition should be a balancing of the elements, as
+in this case. But the emphasizing of one element will always emphasize
+the characteristics to which those elements tend as the main
+characteristic of the picture.
+
+Grace, rhythm, movement, come most naturally from arrangement chiefly
+in _line_. If _mass_ comes into the picture, the masses may be
+arranged to help the _line_, or to modify it. In "The Sower" the
+management of mass is such as to give great dignity, and almost
+solemnity, to the picture, yet not to take away from the rhythmic
+swing and action of the figure which comes from line, but even to
+emphasize it. Compare this in these respects with the lighter grace of
+"The Golden Stairs" and the less unified movement, but greater
+activity, of the "Descent from the Cross."
+
+Of course masses will come into the picture; but either the masses
+themselves can be arranged into line, or there can be emphasis given
+to lines which break up or modify the masses, so that the character of
+the picture is governed by them.
+
+=Mass.=--In the arrangement of mass, light and shade and color are
+effective. Smaller groups may be made into a larger one, and
+individual objects also brought together, by grouping them in light or
+in shade, or by giving them a common color.
+
+[Illustration: =Return to the Farm.= _Millet._
+To show the effect of mass in giving qualities of "scale" and "the
+statuesque."]
+
+Weight, dignity, the statuesque, scale, are characteristics of _mass_.
+Line in this connection only takes from the brusqueness that mass
+alone would have, or helps to break up any tendency to monotony. The
+"Return to the Farm," by Millet, shows this combination, the reverse
+of "The Sower." In this, the _line_ is used to enrich the repose and
+weight, the statuesque of the _mass_. In the other, the _mass_ gives
+dignity and impressiveness to the grace and rhythm of the _line_.
+
+The color scheme of course will have an equal effect in the
+emphasizing or modifying of the motive of line or mass. Color will not
+only have an effect on it, but must be in sympathy with it, or the
+balance will be lost.
+
+=Color.=--This is mainly where composition in color will come in.
+Light and shade or chiaroscuro, as I explained in the last chapter,
+are necessarily intimately connected with composition here. And you
+never work in color or mass without working in light and shade also.
+Of color itself I shall speak in the next chapter. It is only
+necessary to point out the fact of connection here. Of course in
+painting, all the elements are most closely related. Although it is
+necessary to speak of them separately in the actual working out, you
+keep them all in mind together, and so make them continually help and
+modify each other.
+
+=A Principle.=--There is a well-established principle in architecture,
+that you must never try to emphasize two proportions in one structure.
+A hall may be long and narrow, but not both long and wide; in which
+case the proportions would neutralize each other--you would have a
+simple square, characterless. You may emphasize height or
+breadth--not both, or you get the same negative character.
+
+So you may apply this principle more or less exactly to the
+composition of a picture. Don't try to express too many things in one
+picture, or if you do, let some one be the main thing, and all the
+rest be subordinate to it. There is perhaps no law more rigid than the
+one which denies success to any attempt to scatter force, effect, and
+purpose. One main idea in each picture, and everything subordinated to
+lend itself to the strengthening of that.
+
+To a certain extent this will apply to line and mass, though not
+absolutely. As a rule, line or mass, one or the other, must be the
+main element.
+
+=Leverage.=--I have often thought that much insight into the
+principles of balance of masses, and of mass and line, could be gained
+by thinking of it analogously to equilibrium in leverage. A small
+mass, or a simple line or accent, may be made to balance a very much
+greater mass. The greater part of a canvas may be one mass, and be
+balanced by quite a small spot. But leverage must come in to help.
+Somewhere in the picture will be the point of support, the fulcrum.
+And the large mass and the small one will have an obvious relation
+with reference to that point. Or the element of apparent density will
+come in. The large mass will be the least dense, the small one the
+most dense, and the equilibrium is established. For composition is but
+the equilibrium of the picture, and equilibrium the picture must have.
+
+There are many rules as to placing of mass and arrangement of line,
+but they are all more or less arbitrary and limiting in influence.
+Individuality must and will ignore such rules, just because
+composition deals chiefly with the abstract qualities rules will not
+help. A fine feeling or perception of what is right is the only law,
+and the trained eye is the only measure. As in values, so in
+composition you must study relations in nature, and results in the
+work of the masters, to train your eye to see; and you must sketch and
+block in all sorts of combinations with your own hand, to give you
+practical experience.
+
+=Scale.=--One point of great importance should be noticed. That is the
+effect on the observer of the size of any main mass or object with
+reference to the size of the canvas. This is analogous to what is
+called _scale_ in architecture.
+
+If the mass or object is justly proportioned to the whole surface of
+the canvas, and is treated in accordance with it, it will impose its
+own scale on all other objects. You can make a figure impress the
+observer as being life size, although it may really be only a few
+inches long. A house or castle coming into the picture may be made to
+give its scale to the surroundings, and make them seem small instead
+of itself seeming merely an object in a picture. This will be due to
+the _placing_ of it on the canvas, largely, and more in this than in
+anything else. The manner of painting will also lend importantly to
+it; for an object to appear big must not be drawn nor painted in a
+little manner.
+
+The placing of objects of a known size near, to give scale, is a
+useless expedient in such a case. At times it may be successful, often
+of use; but if the scale of the main object is false, the other object
+of known size, instead of giving size to the main one, as it is
+intended to do, will be itself dwarfed by it.
+
+=Placing.=--This matter of placing is one which you should constantly
+practise. Make it a regular study when you are sketching from nature.
+Try to concentrate in your sketches so as to help your study of
+composition. In making a sketch, look for one main effect, and often
+have that effect the importance of some object, studying to give it
+_scale_ by the placing and the treatment of it, and its relation to
+the things surrounding it in nature and on the canvas. In this way you
+will be studying composition in a most practical way.
+
+=Still Life.=--For practical study of composition, the most useful
+materials you can have are to be found in still life. Nowhere can you
+have so great freedom of arrangement in the concrete. You can take as
+many actual objects as you please, and place them in all sorts of
+relations to each other, studying their effect as to grouping; and so
+study most tangibly the principles as well as the practice of bringing
+together line and mass and color as elements, through the means of
+actual objects. This you should constantly do, till composition is no
+more an abstract thing, but a practical study in which you may work
+out freely and visibly intellectual aesthetic ideas almost
+unconsciously, and train your eye to see instinctively the
+possibilities of all sorts of compositions, and to correct the
+falsities of accidental combinations.
+
+=Don't Attempt too much.=--Don't be too ambitious. Begin with simple
+arrangements, and add to them, studying the structure of each new
+combination and grouping. When you are going to paint, remember that
+too much of an undertaking will not give you any more beauty in the
+picture, and may lead to discouragement.
+
+In the Chapter on "Still Life" I will explain more practically the
+means you may take, and how you may take them, to the end of making
+composition a practical study to you.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXI
+
+                                COLOR
+
+
+The subject of color naturally divides, for the painter, into two
+branches,--color as a _quality_, and color as _material_. Considered
+in the former class, it divides into an abstract a theoretical and a
+scientific subject; considered in the latter, it is a material and
+technical one. The material and technical side has been treated of in
+the Chapter on "Pigments." In this chapter we will have to do with
+color considered as an aesthetic element.
+
+=The Abstract.=--The quality of _color_ is the third of the great
+elements or qualities, through the management of which the painter
+works aesthetically.
+
+Just as he uses all the material elements of his picture as the means
+of making concrete and visible those combinations of line and mass
+which go to the making of the aesthetic structure, so he uses these in
+the expression of the ideal in combinations of color. In this relation
+nothing stands to him for what it is, but for what it may be made to
+do for the color-scheme of his picture. If he wants a certain red in a
+certain place, he wants it because it is red, and it makes little
+difference to him, _thinking in color_, whether that red note is
+actually made by a file of red-coated soldiers, by a scarlet ribbon,
+or by a lobster. The scarlet spot is what he is thinking of, and what
+object most naturally and rightly gives it to him is a matter to be
+decided by the demands of the subject of the picture; and its fitness
+as to that is the only thing which has any influence beyond the main
+fact that red color is needed at that point. If he were a designer of
+conventional ornament, the color problem would be the same. At that
+point a spot of red would be needed, and a spot of paint would do it.
+The painter thinks in color the same way, but he expresses himself in
+different materials.
+
+=The Ideal.=--This is the reason that a still-life painting is as
+interesting to a painter as a subject which to another finds its great
+interest in the telling of a story. To the painter the story, or the
+objects which tell it, are of minor importance. That the picture is
+beautiful in color is what moves him. As composition and color the
+thing is an admirable piece of aesthetic thinking and aesthetic
+expression, and so gives him a purely aesthetic delight; and the
+technical process is secondary with him, interesting only because he
+is a technician. The representation of the objects incidental to the
+subject is as incidental to his interest, as it is to the picture
+considered as an aesthetic thought.
+
+This is what the layman finds it so impossible to take into his mental
+consciousness. And it is probable that many painters do not so
+distinguish their artistic point of view from their human point of
+view. But consciously or unconsciously the painter does think in these
+terms of color, line, and mass when he is working out his picture; and
+whether he admits it to himself or not, these characteristics are the
+great influencing facts in his judgment of pictures, as well as in the
+growth and permanency of his own fame. That is why a great popular
+reputation dies so rapidly in many instances. The aesthetic qualities
+of the man's work are the only ones which can insure a permanent
+reputation for that work; for the art of painting is fundamentally
+aesthetic, and nothing external to that can give it an artistic value.
+Without that its popularity and fame are only matters of accidental
+coincidence with popular taste.
+
+If a painter is really great in the power of conception and of
+expression of any of the great aesthetic elements, his work will be
+permanently great. It will be acknowledged to be so by the consensus
+of the world's opinion in the long run; nothing else can make it so,
+and nothing but obliteration can prevent it.
+
+I am explicit in stating these ideas, not because I expect that you
+will learn from this book to be a great master of the aesthetic, but
+because I am assured that you can never be a painter unless you
+understand a painter's true problems. You must be able to know a good
+picture in order to make a good picture, and however little you try
+for, your work will be the better for having a painter's way of
+looking at a painter's work. The technical problems are the control of
+the materials of expression. The painter must have that control. The
+student's business is to attain that control, and then he has the
+means to convey his ideas. But those ideas, if he be a true painter,
+are not ideas of history or of fiction, but ideas of line and mass and
+color, and of their combinations.
+
+=The Color Sense.=--Therefore color is a thing to be striven for for
+its own sake. Good color is a value in itself. You may not have the
+genius to be a good colorist, but you need not be a bad one; for the
+color sense can be definitely acquired. I will not say that color
+initiative can always be acquired; but the power to perceive and to
+judge good color can be, and it will go far towards the making of a
+good painter, even of a great one.
+
+I knew one painter who came near to greatness, and near to greatness
+as a colorist, who in twelve years trained his eye and feeling from a
+very inferior perception of color to the power which, as I say, came
+near to greatness. He was an able painter and a well-trained one
+before that; but in this direction he was deficient, and he
+deliberately set about it to educate that side of himself, with the
+result I have stated. How did he do it? Simply by recognizing where he
+needed training, and working constantly from nature to perceive fine
+distinctions of tone; and by careful and severe self-criticism. Summer
+after summer he went out-doors and worked with colors and canvas to
+study out certain problems. Every year he set himself mainly one
+problem to solve. This year it might be luminosity; next it might be
+the domination of a certain color; another year the just
+discrimination of tones--and he became a most exquisite colorist.
+
+So, as I knew his work before and after this self-training, and as I
+know personally of the means he took to attain his purpose, I think I
+can speak positively of the fact that such development of the color
+sense is possible.
+
+=Taste.=--It is well to remember that taste in color is not dependent
+on personal judgment alone; that what is good and what is bad in color
+does not rest on mere opinion. That a good colorist's idea of color
+does not agree with your own is not a matter of mere whim or liking,
+in which you have quite as good a right to your opinion as he has to
+his. The colorist, it is true, does not produce or judge of color by
+rule. He works from his feeling of what is right. But there is a law
+back of his taste and feeling. The laws of color harmony are
+definite, and have been definitely studied and definitely calculated.
+Color depends for its existence on waves of vibration of rays of
+light, just as sound is dependent on sound waves.
+
+=Color Waves.=--These waves of light give sensations of color which
+vary with the rapidity or length of the wave, and certain combinations
+of wave lengths will be harmonious (beautiful), and others will not
+be. This is a matter of scientific fact; it is not a notion. The
+mathematical relations of color waves have been calculated as
+accurately as the relations of sound waves have been. It is possible
+to make combinations of mathematical figures which shall represent a
+series of harmonious color waves. And it is possible to measure the
+waves radiated from a piece of bad coloring and prove them,
+_mathematically_, to be bad color.
+
+It is a satisfaction to the artist to know that this is so; because
+although he will never compose color-schemes by the aid of
+mathematics, it gives him solid ground to stand on, and it diminishes
+the assurance of the man who claims the right to assert his opinion on
+color because "one man's taste is as good as another's." It is also
+encouraging to the student to know it, because he then knows that
+there is a definite knowledge, and not a personal idiosyncrasy, on
+which he can found his attempts to cultivate this side of his artistic
+life.
+
+=Color Composition.=--The artist's problem in color composition is
+analogous to that of line and mass, but is of course governed by
+conditions peculiar to it. The qualities which derive from line and
+mass are emphasized or modified by the management of color in relation
+to them. The painter in this direction uses the three elements
+together. Contrast and accent are attributes of color. Dignity and
+weight, as well as certain emotional qualities, such as vivacity and
+sombreness, may give the key to the picture in accordance with the
+arrangement of its color-scheme.
+
+The mass may be simplified and strengthened, or broken up and
+lightened, by the color of the forms in it. By massing groups of
+objects in the same color, or by introducing different colors in the
+different forms in the same group, the mass is emphasized or weakened.
+So in line, the same color in repetition will carry the line through a
+series of otherwise isolated forms, and effect the emphasis of line.
+Masses can be strung into line, like beads, on a thread of color. In
+the great compositions of the old Venetian painters this marshalling
+of color groups constituted a principal element. The decorative unity
+of these great canvases could have been possible in no other way.
+
+As I have said, the key of the color-scheme has a direct emotional
+effect, so adding to the power and dignity or the grace and
+lightsomeness of the composition. The analogy between color and
+imagination is marked. Certain temperaments instinctively express
+their ideals through color. To the painter color may be an
+all-influencing power; it is the glory of painting.
+
+Drawing appeals to the intellect, but color speaks directly to the
+emotions, and conveys at a glance the idea which is re-enforced
+through the slower intellectual perception of the meaning of forms. In
+some unexplained way it expresses to the observer the temperamental
+mood; the joyousness, the severity or agitation which was the cause of
+its conception. In this strange but direct manner the color note aids
+the expression by line and mass of the aesthetic emotion which is the
+meaning of the painter's thought.
+
+=Key.=--The key, then, is an important part of the picture. The very
+terms _warm_ and _cold_ applied to colors suggest what may be done by
+color arrangement. The _pitch_ of the picture places it, in the
+emotional scale.
+
+=Tone.=--Tone is harmony; the perfect balance of color in all parts of
+the picture. Fine color always means the presence, in all the color of
+the picture, of all the three primaries in greater or less proportion.
+Leave one color out in some proportion, and you have just so much less
+of a balance. I do not mean that some touch may not be pure color. On
+the contrary, the whole picture may be built up of touches of pure
+color. But the balance of color must be made then by touches of the
+different colors balancing each other, not only all over the picture,
+but in each part of it, to avoid crudity or over-proportion of any
+color. Generally the color scheme is dominated by some one color:
+which means that every touch of color on the canvas is modified to
+some extent by the presence of that color, keeping the whole in key.
+Each color retains its personal quality, but the quality of the
+dominant color is felt in it.
+
+=False Tone.=--This is not to be attained by painting the picture
+regardless of color relations, and then glazing or scumbling some
+color all over the whole. This is the false tone of some of the older
+historical painters, particularly of the English school of the earlier
+part of this century. They "painted" the picture, and then just before
+exhibiting it "toned" it by glazing it all over with a large brush and
+some transparent pigment, generally bitumen. This did, in fact, bring
+the picture in tone after a fashion. But it is not a colorist's
+method. It is the rule of thumb method of a false technique and a
+vicious color sense. True tone is not something put onto the picture
+after it is painted. It is an inherent part of its color conception,
+and is worked into it while the picture is being painted, and grows to
+perfection with the growth of the picture. It is of the very essence
+of the picture. It is the dominant balance of color qualities; the
+result of a perfect appreciation of the value of every color spot
+which goes to the expression of the artist's thought.
+
+In one sense it is the same as _atmosphere_ in that the tonality of
+the picture is the atmosphere which pervades it. It may perhaps be
+best described by saying that it is that combination of color which
+gives to the picture the effect of every object and part in it having
+been seen under the same conditions of atmosphere; having been seen at
+the same time, with the same modification, and with the same degree
+and quality of light vibration. Tone is _color value_ as distinguished
+from value as degree of power as light and shade; and in this is the
+perfection of subtlety of color feeling.
+
+=Tone Painters and Colorists.=--Some painters have been called "tone
+painters," while others have been called "colorists;" not that tone
+painters are not colorists, but that there is a difference. It is a
+difference of aim, a difference of desire. Those painters who are
+usually called colorists, like Titian and Rubens, are in love with the
+richness and power of the color gamut. They are full of the splendor
+of color. They paint in full key, however balanced the canvas. Each
+note of color tells for its full power. Their stop is the open
+diapason, and their harmony is the harmony of large intervals and full
+chords.
+
+The tone painter deals with close intervals. He is in love with subtle
+harmonies. What he loves is the essence of the color quality, and not
+its splendor. With the closest range he can give all possible
+half-tones and shades and modulations of color, yet never exceed the
+gray note perhaps; never once go to the full extent of his
+palette-power.
+
+The utmost delicacy of perception and feeling, and the most perfect
+command of materials and of values, are necessary to such a painter.
+Above all, is he the "painter's painter," for the infinite subtlety
+and the exquisiteness of power are his. And yet this is the thing
+least appreciated by the lay mind, the most difficult to encompass,
+and requiring the most knowledge to appreciate.
+
+=Scientific Color.=--To the scientist color is simply the irritation
+of the nerves of the retina of the eye by the waves of light.
+Different wave lengths give different color sensations. It is the
+generally accepted theory now that there are three primary sensations;
+that is, that the eye is sensitive to three kinds of color, and that
+all other shades and varieties of color are the results of mingling or
+overlapping of the waves which produce those three colors, and
+irritating more or less the nerves sensitive to each color
+simultaneously. These three primary colors are now stated to be red,
+blue, and _green_. The older idea was that they were red, blue, and
+_yellow_; and was based on experiments with pigments. Pigments do give
+these results; for a mixture of blue and yellow _pigment_ will give
+green, and a mixture of red and green _pigment_ will not give yellow,
+while the reverse is the fact with _light_.
+
+White light is composed of all the colors. And the white light may be
+broken up (separated by refraction or the turning aside of light rays
+from their true course) into the colors of the rainbow, which is
+itself only this same decomposition of light by atmospheric
+refraction. Black is the absence of light, and consequently of color.
+This is not the case with pigment, for pure pigment has never been
+produced. The pigment simply reflects light rays which fall on it;
+that is, pigments have the power of absorbing, and so rendering
+invisible, certain of the rays which, combined, make up the white
+light which illumines them; and of transmitting others to the eye by
+reflection. We see, that is, our nerves of sight are irritated by,
+those rays which are not absorbed, but which are reflected.
+
+All pigment is more or less absorbent of color rays, and more or less
+reflective of them; certain color rays being absorbed by a pigment,
+and certain other rays being reflected by it. The pigment is named
+according to those rays which it reflects. As a color-producing
+substance, then, the pigment is practically a mirror reflecting color
+rays. But a true mirror would reflect all rays unmodified. If we could
+paint with mirrors, each of which would reflect its own color
+_unsullied_, we could do what the scientist does with light; but the
+painter deals with an imperfect mirror which gives no color rays back
+unsullied by rays of another class, and so our results cannot be the
+same as the scientist's. So that just in accordance with the degree of
+purity of transmitting power of a pigment will be the purity of the
+color which we get by its use. But absolute purity of pigment we
+cannot get, so we cannot deal with it as we do with light, and we deal
+with a practical fact rather than a scientific fact, as painters.
+
+=Primaries and Secondaries.=--As all the other shades of color are
+produced by the combinations (over-lappings) of the waves or
+vibrations in the light rays from the primary colors, we have a series
+of colors called secondaries, because they are made up of the rays of
+any two of the three primaries: as purple, which is a combination of
+blue and red. When dealing with _light_ the secondaries are: shades of
+violet and purple from red and blue; shades of orange red, orange,
+orange yellow, yellow, and yellowish green from red and green; and
+bluish green and greenish blue from blue and green--the character of
+the color being decided by the proportions of the primaries in the
+mixture.
+
+These conclusions have been reached mainly through experiments in
+white light. The primaries so obtained do not hold good with pigment,
+as I have stated, but the principles do. It will avoid confusion if I
+speak hereafter of the combinations as they occur with pigment, it
+being borne in mind that it is a practical fact that we are dealing
+with rather than a scientific one.
+
+In dealing with _pigment_ the primaries are red, blue, and _yellow_,
+not _green_. Of course the secondaries are also changed; and we have
+purple and violet shades from red and blue, orange from red and
+_yellow_, and green from blue and yellow--all of which vary in shade
+with the proportion of the mixture of the primaries, as is the case
+with light.
+
+=Tertiaries.=--Another class of shades or colors is called _tertiary_,
+or third; for they are mixtures of all the three primaries, or of a
+primary with a secondary which does not result from mixture with that
+primary. Tertiaries are all _grays_, and grays are practically always
+tertiaries. If you keep this in mind as a technical fact, it will help
+you in management of color. Grays are, to the painter, always
+combinations of color which include the three primaries. The usual
+idea is that gray is more or less of a negation of color. This is not
+so. Gray is the balancing of all color, so that any true harmony of
+color, however rich it may be, is always quiet in effect as a whole;
+that is, grayish--good color is never garish. It is very important
+that the painter should understand this characteristic of color. You
+cannot be too familiar with the management of grays. If you try to
+make your grays with negative colors, you will not produce harmonious
+color, but negative color, and negative color is only a shirking of
+the true problem. Grays made of mixtures of pure colors, balancings of
+primaries and secondaries, that is, modifications of the tertiaries,
+are quite as quiet in effect and quite as beautiful as any, but they
+are also more luminous; they are _live_ color instead of _dead_ color.
+Grays made by mixing black with everything are the reverse, and should
+not be used except when you use black as a color (which it is in
+_pigment_), giving a certain color quality to the gray that results
+from it.
+
+=Complementary Colors.=--Two colors are said to be complementary to
+each other when they together contain the three primaries in equal
+strength. Green, for instance, is the complementary of red, for it
+contains yellow and blue; orange (yellow and red) is complementary to
+blue; and purple (red and blue) is complementary to yellow.
+
+The knowledge of complements of colors is very important to the
+painter, for all the effects of color contrast and color harmony are
+due to this. Complementary colors, in mass, side by side, contrast.
+The greatest possible contrast is that of the complementaries.
+
+Complementary colors mixed, or so placed that small portions of them
+are side by side, as in hatching or stippling, give the tertiaries or
+grays by the mixing of the rays.
+
+=The Law of Color Contrast.=--"When two dissimilar colors are placed
+in contiguity, they are always modified in such a manner as to
+increase their dissimilarity."
+
+=Warm and Cold Colors.=--Red and yellow are called warm colors, and
+blue is called a cold color. This is not that the color is really cold
+or warm, of course, but that they convey the impression of warmth and
+coldness. It is mainly due to association probably, for those things
+which are warm contain a large proportion of yellow or red, and those
+which are cold contain more blue. There is a predominance of cold
+color in winter and of the warm colors in summer.
+
+From the primaries various degrees of warmth and coldness characterize
+the secondaries and tertiaries, as they contain more or less
+proportionately of the warm or cold primaries.
+
+In contrasting colors these qualities have great effect.
+
+=Color Juxtaposition.=--In studying the facts of color contrast and
+color juxtaposition you will find that two pigments, if mixed in the
+ordinary way, will have one effect; and the same pigments in the same
+proportions, mixed not by stirring them into one mass, but by laying
+separate spots or lines of the pigment side by side, produce quite
+another. The gain in brilliancy by the latter mode of mixing is great,
+because you have mixed the _color rays_, which are really light rays,
+instead of mixing the _pigment_ as in the usual way. You have really
+mixed the color by mixing _light_ as far as it is possible to do it
+with pigment. You have taken advantage of all the light reflecting
+power of the pigment on which the color effect depends. Each pigment,
+being nearly pure, reflects the rays of color peculiar to it,
+unaffected by the neutralizing effect of another color mixed with it;
+while the neutralizing power of the other color being side by side
+with it, the waves or vibrations of the color rays blend by
+overlapping as they come side by side to the eye; and so the color,
+made up of the two waves as they blend, is so much more vibrant and
+full of life.
+
+="Yellow and Purple."=--It is this principle which is the cause of the
+peculiarity in the technique of certain "Impressionist" painters. The
+"yellow lights and purple shadows" is only placing by the side of a
+color that color which will be most effective in forcing its note.
+
+Brilliancy is what these men are after, and they get it by the study
+of the law of color contrast and color juxtaposition. The effect of
+complementaries in color contrast is what you must study for this, for
+the theory of it. For the practice of it, study carefully and
+faithfully the actual colors in nature, and try to see what are the
+real notes, what the really component colors, of any color contrast or
+light contrast which you see. Purple shadows and yellow light
+re-enforcing each other you will find to exist constantly in nature.
+Refine your color perception, and you will be able to get the result
+without the obviousness of the means which has brought down the
+condemnation on it. Closer study of the relations is the way to find
+the art of concealing art.
+
+But yellow and purple are not the only complementaries. All through
+the range of color, the secondaries and tertiaries as well as the
+primaries, this principle of complement plays a part. There is no
+color effect you can use in painting which does not have to do, more
+or less, with the placing of the complementary color in mass, to
+emphasize; or mixed through to neutralize, the force of it. Train your
+eyes to see what the color is which makes the effect. Analyze it, see
+the parts in the thing, so that you may get the thing in the same way,
+if you would get it of the same force as in nature.
+
+=Practical Color.=--All these theoretical ideas as to color have their
+relation to the actual handling of pigment, which is the craft of the
+painter. The facts of contrasting and harmonizing color relation have
+a practical bearing on the painter's work, both in what he is to
+express and how he is to do it; as to his conception of a picture and
+his representation of facts. In his conception he must deal with the
+possibilities of effect of color on color. The power of one color to
+strengthen the personal hue of another, or its power to modify that
+hue, is a fact bearing on whether the color in the picture is the true
+image of the color he has seen in his mind. In the same degree must
+this possibility affect his representation of actual objects.
+
+The greatest possibilities of luminosity in sunlight or atmospheric
+effects come from the power to produce vibration by cool contrasted
+with warm color. You will find that a red is not so rich in any
+position as when you place its complementary near it. At times you
+will find it impossible to get the snap and sparkle to a
+scarlet--cannot make it carry, cannot make it felt in your picture as
+you want it without placing a touch of purple, perhaps, just beside
+it; to place near by a darker note will not have the same effect. It
+is the contrast of color vibration, not the contrast of light and
+shade, which gives the life. And at the same time that you enhance the
+brilliancy of the several notes of color in the picture, you harmonize
+the whole. For the mosaic of color spots all over the canvas brings
+about the balance of color in the composition, and harmony is the
+result.
+
+=Study Relations.=--You must constantly study the actual relations of
+color in nature. You will find, if you look for it, that always, just
+where in art you would need a touch of the complementary for strength
+or for harmony, nature has put it there. She does it so subtly that
+only a close observer would suspect it. But the thing is there, and it
+is your business to be the close observer who sees it, both for your
+training as a colorist, and your use as an interpreter of nature's
+beauties. It is your business to see subtly, for nature uses colors
+subtly. The note sparkles in nature, but you do not notice the
+complementary color near it. Can you not also place the complementary
+color so that it is not seen, but its influence on the important color
+is felt? It is by searching out these _finesses_ of nature that you
+train your eye. You must actually see these colors. At first you may
+only know that they must be there because the effect is there. But
+your eye is capable of actually recognizing them themselves, and you
+are no painter till it can. The theoretical knowledge is and should be
+a help to you, but the actual power of sight is most important. A
+painter may use theoretical knowledge to help his self-training, but
+power of eye he must have as the result of that training. The
+instantaneous recognition of facts and relations, the immediate and
+perfect union of eye and thought, are what make that intuitive
+perception which is the true feeling of the artist.
+
+Work this out with eye and palette. Study the color and its relation
+in nature, and study its analogy in the pigment touches on the canvas.
+
+=The Palette.=--You try to attain nature's effects of light with
+pigment. Pigment is less pure than light. You cannot have the same
+scale, the same range, but you must do the best you can, and the
+arrangement of your palette will help you. As you have not a perfect
+blue, a perfect red, and a perfect yellow, you must have two colors
+for one. Your paints will always be more or less impurely primary. No
+one red will make a pure purple with blue, and an equally pure orange
+with yellow. Yet pure purple and pure orange you must be able to make.
+Have, then, both a yellowish or orange red and a bluish or purplish
+red on your palette. Do the same with blue and yellow. In this way you
+can not only get approximately pure secondaries when you need them,
+but the primaries themselves lean somewhat towards the secondaries, so
+that you can make very delicate combinations with pure colors. A
+bluish yellow and a yellowish blue, for instance, will make a rather
+positive green. By using a reddish yellow and a bluish or purplish
+red, you practically bring in the red note, and make a grayer green
+while still using only two pigments.
+
+So, too, you get similar control of effects by the use of opaque or
+transparent pigments, the transparent ones tending to richness, the
+opaque to dulness of color. Various processes in the manner of laying
+on paint bring about these different qualities, and will be spoken of
+in the chapter on "Processes."
+
+Classify your pigments in your mind in accordance with these
+characteristics. Think of the ochres, for instance, as mainly opaque,
+and as yellows tending to the reddish. With any blue they make gray
+greens because of the latter quality, and they make gray oranges with
+red because of the dulness of their opacity and body. For richer
+greens think of the lighter chromes and cadmium yellows or citrons;
+and for the richer oranges, the deeper cadmiums and chromes. With
+reds, work the same way, scarlet or orange vermilions for one side of
+the scale, and the Chinese or bluish vermilion on the other side. The
+deeper and heavier reds fall in line the same way. Indian red is
+bluish, light red and Venetian red are yellowish.
+
+
+
+
+                               PART IV
+
+                        PRACTICAL APPLICATION
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII
+
+                            REPRESENTATION
+
+
+Although much has been said about the theoretical and abstract side of
+painting, and the importance of the aesthetic elements in art have been
+insisted upon, it is not to be supposed for a moment that painting
+does not deal with actual things. All painting which is not purely
+conventional must deal with and represent nature and natural facts.
+These are the body of the picture; the aesthetic elements are the heart
+of it. I believe that it is important that you should know that there
+is that side to painting, and should have some insight into it; that
+you should see that there is something else to think of than the
+imitation of natural objects. I would have you think more nobly of
+painting than to believe that "the greatest imitation is the greatest
+art." Beneath the imitation of the obvious facts of nature are the
+deeper facts and truths, and in and through these may you express
+those qualities of intellectual creation by means of which only,
+painting is not a craft, but an art.
+
+But for all that, painting does, and always must, deal with those
+obvious facts; and however much you may give your mind to the problems
+of composition and color, you must base it on a foundation of ability
+to represent what you see. Represent well the external objects, and
+you are in a position to interpret the spirit of them. For as nature
+only manifests her inner spirit through her outward forms and facts,
+you must be able to paint these well before you can do anything else.
+
+The intellectual action which perceives and constructs is the art, the
+skill which represents and reproduces is the science, of painting.
+
+Painting is the art of expression in color. The fact of color rather
+than form is the fundamental characteristic of it. The use of pigment
+rather than other materials is implied in its name. Therefore the
+science of painting deals with the materials with which to produce on
+canvas all manner of visible color combinations; and those processes
+of manipulation which make possible the representation of all the
+facts of color and light, of substance and texture, through which
+nature manifests herself.
+
+It is not enough to have the pigment, nor even that it should get
+itself onto the canvas. Different characteristics call for different
+management of paint. Luminosity of light and sombreness of shadow will
+not be expressed by the same color, put on in the same way. Different
+forms and surfaces and objects demand different treatment. The
+science of painting must deal with all these.
+
+It has been said that there are as many ways of painting as there are
+painters. Certainly there are as many ways as there are men of any
+originality. For however a painter has been trained, whatever the
+methods which he has been taught to use, he will always change them,
+more or less, in adapting them to his own purposes. And as the main
+intent of the art of an epoch or period differs from that of a
+previous one, so the manner of laying on paint will change to meet the
+needs of that difference. The manner of painting to-day is very
+different from that of other times. Some of the old processes are
+looked upon by the modern man as quite beneath his recognition. Yet
+these same methods are necessary to certain qualities, and if the
+modern man does not use or approve of those methods, it is because he
+is not especially interested in the qualities which they are necessary
+to.
+
+There is probably no one statement which all fair-minded painters will
+more willingly acquiesce in, than one which affirms that the method by
+which the result is attained is unimportant, provided that the result
+_is_ attained, and that it is one worth attaining. Every man will,
+whether it is right or not, use those methods which most surely and
+completely bring about the expression of the thing he wishes to
+express. In the face of this fact, and of the many acknowledged
+masterpieces, every one of which was painted in defiance of some rule
+some time or other alleged to be the only right one, it is not
+possible to prescribe or proscribe anything in the direction of the
+manipulation of colors. The result _must_ be right, and if it is, it
+justifies the means. If it be not right, the thing is worthless, no
+matter how perfectly according to rule the process may be. As Hunt
+said, "What do I care about the grammar if you've got something to
+say?" The important thing is to say something, and if you do really
+say something, and do really completely and precisely express it, as
+far as a painter is concerned it will be grammatical. If not to-day,
+the grammar will come round to it to-morrow. Henry Ward Beecher is
+reported to have answered to a criticism on grammatical slips in the
+heat of eloquence, "Young man, if the English language gets in the way
+of the expression of my thought, so much the worse for the English
+language!" In painting, at any rate, the _complete_ expression of
+thought _is_ grammatical, and if not, so much the worse for the
+grammarians.
+
+=Try Everything.=--Know, then, all you can about all the ways of
+manipulating paint that have ever been used. Use any or all of those
+ways as you find them needful or helpful. There is none which has not
+the authority of a master behind it, and though another master may
+decry it, it is because, being a master, he claims the very right he
+denies to you.
+
+Experiment with all; but never use any method for the sake of the
+method, but only for what it is capable of doing for you in helping
+expression.
+
+=Safety.=--The only real rule as to what to use and what not, applies
+to the effect on the permanence of your canvas. Never use pigments
+which will fade; nor in such a way that they will cause others to
+fade. Avoid all such using of materials as you know will make your
+picture crack, or in any other way bring about its deterioration.
+
+=Good Painting.=--But for all I have just said, there is an
+acknowledged basis of what is good painting. If any man or school lays
+on paint in a frank, direct way, getting the effect by sheer force of
+putting on the right color in just the right place, with no tricks nor
+affectations, that is good painting; and the more simple, direct, and
+frank the manner of handling, the better the painting.
+
+Let us understand what direct painting is first, and then consider
+varieties of handling. For whatever may be the subsequent
+manipulations, the picture is generally "laid in" with the most direct
+possible manner of laying on paint, and the other processes are mainly
+to modify or to further and strengthen the effect suggested in the
+first painting. And generally, also, in all sketches and studies
+which are preliminary preparations for the picture, the most direct
+painting is used, and the various processes are reserved for working
+out more subtle effects on the final canvas.
+
+=Old Dutch Painting.=--Probably there are no better examples of frank
+painting than the works of the old Dutchmen. You should study them
+whenever you have a chance. Waiving all discussion as to the aesthetic
+qualities of their work,--as _painters_, as masters of the craft of
+laying on paint, they are unexcelled. And in most cases, too, they
+possessed the art of concealing their art. You will have to use the
+closest observation to discover the exact means they used to get the
+subtle tones and atmospheric effects.
+
+The only obvious quality is the perfect understanding and skill of
+their brush-work. In the smoothest as well as in the roughest of their
+work, you can note how perfectly the brush searches the modelling, and
+with the most exquisite expressiveness and perfect frankness, follows
+the structural lines. No doubt there were often paintings, glazings,
+and scumblings; but they always furthered the meaning of the first
+painting, and never in the least interfered with or obscured the
+effect of _naivete_, of candor of workmanship.
+
+It is, however, this simple and sincere brush-work that you should
+strive to attain as the basis of your painting. Learn to express
+drawing with your brush, and to place at once and without indecision
+or timidity the exact tone and value of the color you see in nature at
+that point. Until you are enough of a master of your brush to get an
+effect in this way, do not meddle with the more complex methods of
+after-painting. You will never do good work by subsequent
+manipulation, if you have a groundwork of feebleness and indecision.
+Direct painting is the fundamental process of all good painting.
+
+Let me take the type of old Dutch painting to represent to you this
+quality of direct painting. First of all notice a basis of perfect
+drawing,--a knowledge, exactness, and precision which admits of no
+fumbling, no vagueness, but only of a concise and direct recognition
+of structure. Note that this drawing is as characteristic of the
+brush-work as of the drawing which is under it. Observe that the
+handling of the whole school, from the least to the greatest, is
+founded on a similar and perfect craftsmanship,--the same use of
+materials; the same deliberateness; the same simple yet ample palette;
+the same use of solid color candidly expressing the planes of
+modelling, freely following the lines of structure; the absence of
+affectation or invention of individual means. Whatever the
+individuality of the artist, it rests on something else than
+difference of technique. From the freest and most direct of painters,
+Frans Hals, to the most smooth and detailed, Gerard Dou, the
+directness and ingenuousness of means to ends is the same, and founded
+on the same technical basis of color manipulation. The one is more
+eager, terse, the other more deliberate and complete; but both use the
+same pigments, both use the same solid color, are simple, lucid, both
+occupied solely with the thing to be expressed, and the least degree
+in the world with the manner of it. That manner comes from the same
+previous technical training which each uses in the most
+matter-of-course way, with only such change from the type, as his
+temperament unconsciously imposes on him.
+
+There is nothing like it elsewhere. Study it; notice the
+unaffectedness of brush-stroke in Rembrandt. See how it is the same as
+Hals, but less perfunctory. See how the brush piles up paint again and
+again along the same ridge of flesh, taking no notice of its
+revelation of the insistence of attempt at the right value, nor of its
+roughness of surface. To get that drawing and that color in the
+freest, frankest, most direct way: that is the aim. The absolute
+conviction of it: that is the essence of this technique of the old
+Dutch masters. And whatever else it may have or may not have, you will
+find in it all that you can find anywhere of suggestion of direct and
+frank and sincere painting, and nothing I can say will give you any
+such clear idea of what you should strive for as the basis of all the
+different sorts of brush-work necessary or useful in the production of
+an oil painting.
+
+[Illustration: =The Fisher Boy.= _Frans Hals._
+To show the directness and sureness of brush-stroke, and candor and
+simplicity of means, always present in Dutch work, though never so
+free as with Hals.]
+
+=Detail.=--The question of detail may well come in here. How far are
+you to carry detail in your painting? The Dutch painters went to both
+extremes. Gerard Dou worked two weeks on a broom-handle, and hoped to
+finish it in a few days more. Frans Hals would paint a head in an
+hour. The French painter Meissonier paints the high light on every
+button of a trooper's coat, and De Neuville barely paints the button
+at all. What way are you to turn? Which are you to choose? We have a
+great deal said nowadays against detail in painting. Much is said of
+breadth and broad painting. Which is right?
+
+=True Breadth.=--The answer lies in the central idea of the picture.
+There are times when detail may be very minute, and times when the
+greatest freedom is essential. True breadth is compatible with much
+even minute detail in the same canvas. For breadth does not mean
+merely a large brush. It never means slap-dash. It is the just
+conception of the amount of detail necessary (and the amount necessary
+to be left out) in order that the idea of the picture may be best
+expressed.
+
+Detail is out of place in a large canvas always, and in proportion to
+its size it is allowable. A decorative canvas, a picture which is to
+be seen from a distance, or is to fill a wall space, wants effect,
+much justness of composition and color. Largeness of conception and
+execution, and only so much detail as shall be necessary to the best
+expression compatible with that largeness. On the other hand, a
+"cabinet picture," a small panel, will admit of microscopic detail if
+it be not so painted that the detail is all you can see. And just here
+is the heart of the whole matter. Whether you use much or little
+detail, it is not for the sake of the detail, not for any interest
+which lies in the detail itself, but for what power of expression may
+lie in it. If the picture, large or small, be largely conceived, and
+its main idea as to subject and those qualities of aesthetic meaning I
+have spoken of are always kept in view, and never allowed to lose
+themselves in the search for minuteness, then any amount of detail
+will take its place in true relation to the whole picture. If it does
+not do this it is bad.
+
+The relations of parts to the whole are the key to the situation
+always.
+
+Nothing is right which interferes with the true relations in the
+picture. This is where the working for detail is most likely to lead
+you astray. It takes great ability and power to keep detail where it
+belongs. Detail is always the search for small things, and they are
+almost sure to obtrude themselves to the neglecting of the more
+important things. Details which do not stay in their places had better
+be left out of the picture. There is such a thing as _values_ in
+_facts_ as well as other parts of your work. And this applies to
+breadth as well as to detail.
+
+[Illustration: =Boar-Hunt.= _Snyders._
+To show relation of detail to the whole picture. The detail is carried
+far, yet does not interfere with emphasis of action and life. The
+picture is broad in spirit and effect if detailed in execution.]
+
+Gerard Dou remains a great painter, and even a broad painter, strange
+as it may sound, in spite of his microscopic work. But only because of
+his breadth of eye. The detail is not the most important thing with
+him. It is in the picture, and you can see it when you look for it.
+But as you look at the picture it is not peppered all over with
+pin-points of detail, until the picture itself cannot be seen. Every
+detail stays back as it would in nature; loses itself in the part to
+which it belongs; modestly waits to be sought out; is not seen until
+it is looked for. This is broad painting, because the main things are
+emphasized; and if the details are painted they are seen in their true
+relations, and the power of the whole is not sacrificed to them.
+
+With much or little detail, this is what is to be aimed at. Whether
+with big brushes or little ones, the expression of the main idea, of
+the important, the vital things,--this is broad painting, and this
+only.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII
+
+                             MANIPULATION
+
+
+=Premier Coup.=--Something similar to what I have spoken of as "direct
+painting" has long been a much-advocated manner of painting in France,
+under the name of _Premier Coup_; which means, translated literally,
+"first stroke."
+
+It is taught that the painter should use no after or overworkings at
+all; but that he should carefully and deliberately select the color
+for his brush-stroke, and then lay it on the canvas at one stroke,
+each after-stroke being laid beside some previous one, until the
+canvas has been covered by a mosaic of color each shade representing a
+single "first-stroke," with no after-stroke laid over it to modify its
+effect. Such a process tends to great deliberation of work and
+exactness of study. Probably no better thing was ever devised for the
+training of the eye and hand. But it has its limits, and is not often
+rigidly adhered to in the painting of pictures; although the fresh,
+direct effect of this sort of work is preserved as far as possible in
+much modern French work, and that quality is held in great esteem.
+
+This manner of painting is especially useful in the making of sketches
+and studies, and leads to a strong control of the brush and the
+resources of the palette.
+
+In all painting of this character the color should have body.
+Transparent color should not be used alone, but only to modify the
+tint of the more solid pigments; for the transparent colors used
+indiscriminately are apt to crack, which characteristic is avoided
+when the heavier color forms the body of the paint.
+
+=Solid Painting.=--In most cases solid painting is the safest,--the
+least likely to crack, and the most safely cleaned from varnish and
+dirt without injury to the paint itself. It is firmer in character
+too, and gives more solidity of effect to the picture.
+
+=Mixing.=--In mixing colors you should be careful not to over mix.
+Don't stir your paint. Too much mixing takes the life out of the
+color. Particles of the pure color not too much broken up by mixing
+are valuable to your work, giving vibration and brilliancy to it. The
+reverse is muddiness, which is sure to come from too much fussing and
+overworking of wet paint. Don't use more than three pigments in one
+tint if you can help it, and mix them loosely. If you must use more
+colors, mix still more loosely. Put all the colors together, one
+beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up
+loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly.
+Never muddle the color on the canvas. Don't put one color over another
+more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one
+kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty
+color, which of all things in painting is most useless.
+
+Keep the color clean and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and
+free. Never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the
+color is, and mix it as you want it. Decide just where the touch is to
+go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. If it isn't right,
+daubing into it or pat-patting it won't help it. Either leave it, or
+mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped this one off.
+
+Don't try to economize on your mixing. A color mixed for one place
+will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with
+it. Have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially
+for each brush-stroke. On the other hand, don't be niggardly with your
+paint. Don't use less paint than you need. Mix an ample brushful and
+put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you
+should use each time. The variety of tone and value which comes of
+mixing new color for every touch of the brush is in itself a charm in
+a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it.
+
+[Illustration: =Good Bock.= _Manet._
+To illustrate direct and solid painting.]
+
+=Corrections.=--As far as you can, make corrections by over-painting
+when the paint is dry, or nearly so. When I say don't work into wet
+color to correct, I do not mean that you are never to do so, but that
+to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty. Of
+course it is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when
+you do, do it with deliberation. Don't lose your head and pile wet
+paint on wet paint in the vain hope of getting the color by force of
+piling it on. You will only get it worse and worse. Get it as nearly
+right as you can. If it is hopeless, scrape it off clean, and mix a
+fresh tint. If it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go
+ahead; and put a better color on that place to-morrow when it is dry,
+if you can.
+
+=Keep at it.=--But above all don't be permanently satisfied with the
+almost. Don't be afraid to put paint over dry paint till it is right.
+Work at it day after day. Let the paint get thick if it will, if only
+you get the thing right. The secret of getting it right is to keep at
+it, and be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. When
+you can see nothing wrong you can do no better. But as long as your
+eye will recognize a difference between what is on the canvas and what
+ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are shirking
+if you stop. Never call a thing done as long as you can see something
+wrong about it. No matter what any one else says, your work must come
+up _at least_ to the standard of what you yourself can see.
+
+=Loose Painting.=--Sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very
+loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure
+pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show
+somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. Too much of
+this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right
+place is not to be obtained in any other way. The paint may be dragged
+over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less
+thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into
+its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. All these
+ways will be spoken of as they suggest themselves in other chapters.
+Solid color, generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of body
+is rather strengthened by it than the reverse.
+
+=Scumbling.=--Another means of modifying the color and effect of a
+painting has perhaps always been more or less commonly in use. This is
+called _scumbling_, and may be considered under the head of solid
+painting, as it is always done with body, and never with transparent,
+color. The process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color,
+without thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried.
+Generally this _scumble_ is of a lighter color than the
+under-painting, and is rubbed on with a stubby brush slightly charged
+with the paint. As much surface as is desired may be covered in this
+way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to
+reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. Often the effect is very
+successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and
+rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by
+scumbling. Too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and
+after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to avoid
+this.
+
+The scumble may be used with the richer and darker colors, too, to
+modify towards richness the tone of parts of the picture, or to darken
+the value. Most often, however, its value lies in its use to bring
+harsher and sharper parts together, and to give the hazy effect when
+it is needed.
+
+Scumbling will not have a good effect when it is not intended to
+varnish the picture afterwards; for the oil in the paint is absorbed
+immediately, and the rubbing of color gives a dead look to the canvas
+which is very unpleasant, and decidedly the reverse of artistic.
+
+=Glazing.=--A very valuable process, the reverse of scumbling, is
+glazing. It has always been in use since the invention of the oil
+medium. All the Italian painters used it; it is an essential part of
+their system of coloring. The rich, deep color of Titian, the warm
+flesh of Raphael, and the jewel-like quality of the early German
+painters are impossible without some form of glaze. The Germans
+perhaps made glazes with white of egg before oil was used as a
+vehicle. But to glaze is the only way to get the fullest effect of the
+quality characteristic of the transparent paints.
+
+A glaze is a thin wash of transparent color flowed over an
+under-painting to modify its tone or to add to its effect. It is not
+always transparent color, but usually it is. Sometimes opaque or
+semi-opaque color may be used, and it is a glaze by virtue of the fact
+that it is thinned with a vehicle either oil or varnish, and _flowed_
+on. A scumble is _rubbed_ on, and is never pure transparent color.
+
+=Advantages of Glazing.=--The advantages are the gain in harmony, in
+force, in brilliancy; you may correct a color when it is wrong, or
+perfect it when it is not possible to get the force or richness
+required without it. These are the qualities which have made it used
+by all schools more or less.
+
+=Disadvantages.=--There are, however, quite as evident and marked
+disadvantages. The free use of oil as a thinning vehicle, although it
+makes possible a greater degree of richness of color, is very likely
+to turn the picture brown in time. Oil will always eventually have a
+browning effect on all paints, even when mixed with them as little as
+is absolutely necessary. If you make a tinted varnish of oil (which
+is practically what a glaze is), you add so much, to the surely
+darkening action of the oil on the picture.
+
+If, again, you depend upon a glaze for the richness of color for your
+picture, and you use a color which is not permanent, your glaze fades,
+and your color is not there. A glaze is particularly liable to be
+injured by the cleaner if it ever gets into his hands. He works down
+to fresh color, and what with the browning of the glaze and the fact
+that the cleaner is more anxious that the picture should be cleaned
+than that its color should be fine, he will, in nine cases out of ten,
+_clean_ off the glaze which may be the final and most expensive color
+the painter has put on it.
+
+Glazing is little used nowadays, compared with what it once was. But
+there are times when you cannot get what you want in any other way,
+and when you are sure that glazing is the only thing which will give
+you your result, the only law for the painter comes in,--get your
+result.
+
+=Precautions.=--If you do glaze, however, there is a right and a wrong
+way. You should not use a glaze as a last resort. It is better to
+calculate on it beforehand; for you always glaze with a darker tint
+upon a lighter one, so that if you have not allowed for this, you will
+get your picture too low in tone before you know it.
+
+If you want to make your picture, or a part of it, brighter and
+lighter, bring it up in pitch with body color first, with solid
+painting, and then glaze it.
+
+Do not glaze on color which is not well dried. The drying of the under
+color and the drying of the glaze are apt to be different in point of
+time, and the picture will crack. If the vehicle is the same as was
+used in the under-painting, and the drying qualities of both paintings
+are the same, there is no danger. But when color dries, it shrinks and
+flattens, and two kinds of colors shrinking differently are sure to
+pull apart, and that causes cracking. If the under-painting is well
+dry, but not hard and glossy on the surface, and is capable of still
+absorbing enough of the new color's vehicle to bind the coats
+together, your glaze will stand. But rather than have it too soft,
+have the under-painting too hard, and then before you glaze go over it
+with a little thin, quick-drying varnish, and glaze into that. The
+varnish will hold the two coats of paint together.
+
+Glazing, as well as scumbling, implies the obligation to varnish your
+picture. Whenever you use oil freely you will have to varnish your
+picture to keep it bright and fresh in color.
+
+It would be wise never to use a glaze as a final process. Glaze to get
+the tone or to modify it, but paint into the glaze with body color,
+and you keep the advantage of the glaze without many of the
+disadvantages of it, and the picture has a more solid effect of
+painting.
+
+=Frottee.=--Closely akin to the glaze in manner, but very different in
+use, is the _frottee_, or "rubbing." This is generally used on the
+fresh surface of the canvas, to "rub in" the light and shade or the
+first coloring of the picture after the drawing is done. It is one of
+the safest and wisest ways of beginning your picture. You can either
+rub in the picture with a _frottee_ of one color, as sienna or umber,
+or you can use all the colors in their proper places, only using very
+little vehicle, and making something very thin in tint, somewhat
+between a glaze and a scumble. You can make a complete drawing in
+monochrome in this way, or you can lay in all the ground colors of the
+picture till it has much the effect of a complete painting. Then, as
+you paint and carry the picture forward, every color you put on will
+be surrounded with approximately the true relations, instead of being
+contrasted by a glare of white canvas.
+
+A _frottee_ is a most sympathetic ground to paint over.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV
+
+                                COPYING
+
+
+Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of
+manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful,
+sometimes necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the
+results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter
+must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. Before
+the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be
+placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and
+their relation to that plan. This calls for some method of exact
+reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that
+purpose. The process of copying is that method.
+
+From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical
+means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter
+whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why
+and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study
+with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as
+the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the
+expression at the same time.
+
+This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said
+before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye;
+and the training of the power of perception rather than the
+understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The
+processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature
+are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find
+his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is
+still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as
+he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can
+give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of
+nature should come first. The _seeing_ of what is must precede the
+_stating_ of it.
+
+But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to
+be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right
+places.
+
+Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for
+something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student
+makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing,
+but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and
+whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the
+original.
+
+This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really
+having a picture which is more than superficially like the original;
+but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which
+cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.
+
+Study your original carefully before and while working on your own
+canvas. See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the
+same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a
+large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with
+a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush
+than the painter used on the picture you are copying.
+
+The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted
+solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. Never glaze nor
+scumble because _you_ can't get the colors without. Your business is
+to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. And any other
+manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the
+problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you
+certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. You are not
+originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another
+man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying
+to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your
+canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of
+fact his canvas shows that he did it another way.
+
+This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of
+course any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is
+precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and I have
+found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to
+advanced students.
+
+So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if
+you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes
+used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship
+of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.
+
+In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing
+freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else,
+and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful
+studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have
+qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the
+model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than
+they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the
+characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been
+worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over
+again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not
+only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. For
+this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which
+combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand,
+without which the work would be too rigid and hard.
+
+="Squaring up."=--This process is called "squaring-up," and consists
+of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its
+lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part
+of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no
+matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual
+laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.
+
+The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points
+horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think
+best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one
+part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. It is not necessary that
+there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit
+the lines of the study.
+
+Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping
+them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines
+cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the
+study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not
+according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other
+that the horizontal ones are, or not.
+
+Number the spaces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at
+one side the same.
+
+Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of
+spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done
+with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can
+make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the
+outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will
+be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working
+to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is
+not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the
+horizontal, in both the study and the picture.
+
+By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the
+study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line
+or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same
+part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the
+same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to
+modify it, or correct it.
+
+In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the
+smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any
+surface you please.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV
+
+                           KINDS OF PAINTING
+
+
+Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a
+certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get
+into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand
+what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which
+he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but
+love it he must, if he would have others love it.
+
+You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what
+you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it.
+"_Un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in
+loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in
+loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a
+fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a
+temperament."
+
+Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do
+than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental attitude to
+think so. And even then, you may find that when you have worked out
+all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or
+insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and
+subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in
+easy things is the hardest of all.
+
+=Classification.=--Divide paintings into two classes,--those
+representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects
+in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all classifications, and it
+is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century
+it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door
+light.
+
+Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the
+principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference
+of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures.
+It has changed the whole color-scheme.
+
+An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be
+painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose
+a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was
+right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked
+up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in
+concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your
+century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon.
+
+Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what
+distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends
+on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the
+facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a
+different application of the universal principles. Don't think that
+landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of
+green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a
+smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that
+the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the
+more obvious right are more easily seen.
+
+You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the
+different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what
+common to all. You must find to what aesthetic qualities each most
+readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and
+what are the problems they offer.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI
+
+                              THE SKETCH
+
+
+The sketch is the germ of the picture. It contains the idea which may
+later become the finished work. In your sketches you gather effects
+and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. You do not work long
+over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. You do not make it
+because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which
+charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note
+of.
+
+Understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will
+get more good from the making of them. For your sketching is an
+important matter to your painting. You do not learn how to paint by
+sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you
+can learn no other way. A sketch is not a picture; neither is it a
+study. Each of these things has its special purpose and function, and
+its proper character.
+
+A sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived.
+Everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. One
+idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches.
+
+There are two kinds of sketches: those made from nature to seize an
+effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely
+some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. Both
+are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of
+the artist.
+
+[Illustration: =Sketch of a Hillside blocked in from Nature, First
+Suggestion of Composition, etc.=]
+
+The first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a
+sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of
+changes in his original idea. It is in this form that he works out
+his picture problem. He is troubled here by nothing but the one thing
+he has in mind at this time. It may be an arrangement of line or of
+mass. He changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling
+himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of
+color, nor of anything but that one of composition. It may be a scheme
+of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble
+the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of
+color to the painter, and everything bends to that. When this has been
+decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough
+to think of other things. And think of other things he does, before he
+makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other
+sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish
+more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the
+problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in
+the completed painting.
+
+It is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of
+purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards
+built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all
+the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition
+or color; are not conceptions of the brain. There are suggestions
+received from nature which the painter perceives rather than
+conceives. Possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the
+sketch that they first become tangible and stable. This is the sketch
+from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea
+hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any
+or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment.
+
+The painter must always sketch from nature. Only by so doing can he be
+constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected
+by multitudinous facts. The sketch preserves for him the evanescent
+effects of nature, which the study would not so entirely, because not
+so simply, grasp. The sudden storm approaches; the fleeting cloud
+shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow; these, as well as the more
+permanent, but equally charming effects of mass against mass of wood
+and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can only store up for future use or
+reference in his sketches.
+
+=Main Idea Only.=--In the making of the sketch, then, no problem
+should come in but that of the expression of the main idea,--no
+problem of drawing or of manipulation of color. To get the idea
+expressed in the most direct and immediate and convenient way,
+anything will do to sketch on or with; that which presents the least
+difficulty is the best. The matter of temperament, of course, comes
+in largely, and technical facility. That which you can use most
+freely, use in your sketching, and keep for other occasions the new
+means or medium. Use freely, if you can, black and white for whatever
+black and white will express, and pigment for all color effects. Oil
+for greatest certainty and facility of correction.
+
+=Quick Work.=--Make your sketch at one sitting, or you will have
+something which is not a sketch. Work long enough, and it may be a
+study; but more than one sitting makes it neither one thing nor the
+other. To say nothing of the fact that the conditions are unlikely to
+be exactly the same again, you are almost sure on the second working
+to have lost the first impression,--the freshness and directness of
+purpose which the first impress gives; and this is the very heart of a
+sketch. You must never lose sight of what was the original purpose of
+it; never forget what it was which first made you want to paint it. No
+matter what else you get or do not get, if you lose this you lose all
+that can give it life or reality.
+
+The very fact that you have limited yourself to one working makes you
+concentrate on that which first caught your attention, and that is
+what you want to seize.
+
+Overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere with the
+directness and force with which this is expressed.
+
+Remember that nature is never at rest. You must catch her on the wing,
+and the more quickly you do it the more vivid will be the effect.
+
+[Illustration: =The River Bank.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._
+Half-hour sunset sketch.]
+
+"Nature is economical. She puts her lights and darks only where she
+needs them." Do the same, and use no more effort than will suffice to
+express that which is most important. The rest will come another time.
+
+Try to keep things simple. Keep the impression of unity; have the
+sketch one thing only.
+
+Express things as they look. As they look to _you_ and at _this time_.
+How they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not
+to the point. What you know they are or may be will not help you, but
+only hinder you in a sketch. The more facts the worse, in sketching.
+Remember always what a sketch is for. Don't be beguiled into trying to
+make a picture of it, nor a study of it. Above all, don't try to make
+a clever thing of it. Make something sincere and purposeful of it, and
+have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one
+thing as you can.
+
+=Keep Looking.=--Always keep your eyes open and your mind receptive;
+do not be always looking for reasons. Accept the charm as it presents
+itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express it with; if
+not, study it, and get something into your mind and memory from it.
+The simplest way of expressing it, and the simplest elements which
+cause it, you can study without the materials to preserve it, and you
+so keep your receptivity and quicken your power of observation.
+
+Your sketch will be more quickly done, directly and more forcefully,
+if you map out the thing rather deliberately first with a few very
+exact lines and masses in some way: then you have a free mind to
+concentrate on the effect. A few values and masses well placed are the
+things you most want; you can almost always spare time to ensure
+their exactness by a few measurements and two or three rubs of color
+first. Of course if the sketch is of a passing gleam you can do
+nothing but get a few smudges of color. But get them true in value and
+in color relation; get the glow of it, or you will get nothing.
+
+=Canvases of a Size.=--In sketching from nature, have the habit of
+using always the same sized canvases or panels. They pack better, and
+you learn to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and better work.
+Make them big enough to do free work on, yet small enough to cover
+easily, so that you lose no time in mere covering of surface. Ten
+inches by fourteen is plenty small enough, and fifteen by twenty large
+enough, for most persons. Suit yourself as to the size, but settle on
+a size, and stick to it. Nothing is more awkward and inconvenient than
+to have stacks of canvases of all sizes and shapes.
+
+Always have plenty of sketching materials on hand. You will lose many
+a good effect which will pass while you are getting your kit ready.
+
+In sketching, avoid details. When you want them, make a study of them.
+In a sketch they only interfere with frankness of expression. One or
+two details for the sake of accent only, may be admitted.
+
+Make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut a square hole in a card,
+and look through it. Decide what is the essence of it, what is vital
+to the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. Put in what you need
+for the conveying of that, and leave out everything else.
+
+=Work Solidly.=--Work in body color, and lay on your paint fully and
+freely. In getting an effect of light, don't be afraid of contrast
+either of value or of color. Paint loosely; get the vibration which
+results from half-mixed color. Don't flatten out the tone. Load the
+color if you want to. In twenty years you will wonder to see how
+smooth it has become.
+
+Freedom and breadth give life to a sketch. Don't work close to your
+work. Don't bend over it. Use plenty of color, large brushes, and
+strike from the shoulder.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVII
+
+                              THE STUDY
+
+
+The qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which
+make a good sketch. In the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or
+to the one thing which is its purpose. The study is what its name
+implies, and its purpose is not one thing, but many. In a study you
+put in everything which may be valuable. You store it with facts. You
+leave out nothing which you wish to put in. It is all material. You
+can take and leave in using it afterwards, as you could from nature.
+Of course every study has some main intention, but you must take the
+trouble to give everything that goes to the making of that.
+
+A study is less of a picture than a sketch is. For unity of effect is
+vital to both a sketch and a picture. But this quality is of no
+essential value in a study--unless it be a study of unity. For you can
+make a _study_ of anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed
+interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge.
+
+But in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you
+deliberately and carefully study everything in it, while in a sketch
+you work only for general effect. The study is the storehouse of facts
+to the painter. By it he assures himself of the literal truths he
+needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as
+mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained
+in this way.
+
+In making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself
+by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. A study of
+an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple
+object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few
+hours. But in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and
+remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture,
+but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be
+useful only so far as it is accurate.
+
+In making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and
+leave all other qualities for the picture. Don't glaze and scumble,
+but work as directly as you can. Study the structure and texture of
+whatever you are doing. Understand it thoroughly as you go on, and
+search out whatever is not clear to you. This is no place for effects;
+nor for slighting or shirking. If you do not do work of this kind
+thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all--better; for you are at
+least not training yourself to be careless.
+
+There are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study
+is not that place.
+
+Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get all your foundation
+work true. Have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and
+then build your superstructure of careful study.
+
+Don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here.
+All that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to
+have it. You can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a
+groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.
+
+Be exact also with your values. If your study is not sure of its
+values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later.
+
+Make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will
+represent. You can paint a picture under any light you please if your
+studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to
+nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture
+representing another are useless to that picture.
+
+No good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. When you
+are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare
+yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may
+require. Don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and
+your "general knowledge." That sort of thing is something which a
+painter of experience may do after storing his mind for years with
+all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people--least of
+all for a student. And it is a dangerous way for any one to work. Even
+the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he
+does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. Take time to be
+right.
+
+[Illustration: =Study of a Blooming-Mill.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+Don't be afraid of taking measurements. Every one who did anything
+worth looking at took measurements. Leonardo laid down a complete
+system of proportions. You can't get your proportions right without
+measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be
+right. Use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals
+and verticals. If you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and
+measure. It takes less time than correcting.
+
+Whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. Character
+is not a conglomeration of details. The detail is the incident of
+character. See what the vital things are first, then search farther.
+
+Use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. Think as you work.
+Don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. Don't work
+absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. If your mind is tired, if your
+eye won't see, stop and rest a while. Tired work runs your picture
+down hill.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+                              STILL LIFE
+
+
+The name of still life is used in English for all sorts of pictures
+which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. The
+French word for it is better than ours. They call it "_nature morte_"
+or dead nature.
+
+There is no kind of painting which is more universally useful--to the
+student as well as to the painter. It furnishes the means for
+constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. You need never
+lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit
+quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery,
+and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in
+a convenient light.
+
+You can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make
+it include any phase of study. The advantage of its possible variety,
+scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and
+manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner.
+
+=Materials.=--Practically anything and everything is available for
+still life. You should be constantly on the lookout for interesting
+objects of all kinds. Try to get a collection which has as much
+variety in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things are
+generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things
+the best. An object is not intrinsically better because of its being
+more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities,
+as of color or history, because of its age.
+
+What you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things
+you get. The cost is not of any importance at all. You can pick up
+things for a few cents which will be most useful. Have all sorts of
+things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. Have metals and glass,
+and books and plaques. They all come in, and they add to the variety
+and interest of your compositions.
+
+=Draperies.=--The study of drapery particularly is facilitated by
+still-life study. You can arrange your draperies so that they are an
+essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to
+paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of "staying
+power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to
+the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in
+any other kinds of work. The value of the antique in drawing lies in
+its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In still life you
+have the same, with color added. You can give all your attention and
+time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day
+if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you
+left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is only the more useful.
+You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To
+study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question,
+because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be
+gotten into exactly the same lines again.
+
+Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into
+any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.
+
+In draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you
+have of the more massive objects,--variety of surface, of color, and
+of texture. Do not have all velvet and silk. These are very useful and
+beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk.
+Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by
+men, and so you should study them. Sometimes you want the drapery as a
+background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface
+qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in
+the other objects of the group.
+
+As to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but
+see to it that the colors are good,--in themselves "good color," not
+harsh nor crude. It does you no good as a student to learn how to
+express bad color. Neither is it good training for you, in studying
+how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your
+group into good color in your picture.
+
+Good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with
+much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid
+spotty or prominent design in it. Still, the more kinds you have, the
+more you can vary your work.
+
+If your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it
+more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. There is very little
+material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the
+color is too strong, don't use it.
+
+Don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush.
+The fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress
+does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a
+foreground color. These old and faded materials furnish some of the
+most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in
+general of other still-life things.
+
+=The Use of Still Life.=--There is no way in which you can better
+study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. The
+fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any
+color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect
+and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not
+by merely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to
+composition that is of the greatest service to you. You can use (and
+should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise
+composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a
+table. That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and
+books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and
+usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color
+do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the
+effect, but the effect itself.
+
+It is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make
+very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one
+or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all
+the practical knowledge possible.
+
+=Practical Composition.=--Suppose you were going to work with still
+life, how would you begin? In the first place, get a good composition.
+Never work from a bad one. You must learn composition some time, so
+you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a
+still-life study. Take any number of things and put them on a table,
+get a simple background to group them against. Consider your things,
+and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the
+composition. It is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or
+composition) tells against it; so get rid of anything which will not
+help the composition.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 1.=]
+
+For instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a
+table. You might paint them, but they are not arranged. There is no
+composition. They would lack one commanding characteristic of a good
+picture if you were to paint them so. What do they lack as they are?
+They have no logical connection with each other, either in arrangement
+or in the placing, to begin with. They do not help each other either
+in line or mass. They are crowded, huddled together. You could do with
+less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. But
+suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the
+rest.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 2.=]
+
+Here are some of the things, with others taken away. The combination
+is simpler, but still it is not satisfactory. There is some logical
+connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. They are still
+huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance;
+they are simply things. If you change them about a little, having
+regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something
+better out of these same objects.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 3.=]
+
+Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and
+mass, and to break up the round of the plaque; the handle turned
+around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where
+it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or
+awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the
+coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in
+balancing the whole is considered. The drapery is spread out so as to
+have some probability. It does not help much in line, but it does in
+mass and in color (in the original). It could be bettered, but it will
+do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable position, and helps
+to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the
+coffee-pot. There is not much light and shade in this composition, nor
+much distinction. But it does balance, and would make a good study,
+and is a very respectable piece of composition,--simple, modest, and
+dignified.
+
+Now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated,
+and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same
+things in it when completed. We have simply the same group, with the
+bottle and glass added. The stout jug in the first group is left out
+because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily.
+The tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count
+either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and
+therefore counts against, because it does not count for, our
+composition. The things we have here are enough, but they are not
+right as they are now. They injure rather than help the last
+arrangement. The bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of
+it; a composition must be _one thing_, no matter how many objects go
+to the making of it. This is two things. Draw a line down between the
+bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions,
+both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 4.=]
+
+Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything. We have now got
+two groups and a thing. The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the
+bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull
+them together, but can't. The plaque has no connection with anything.
+They are all pulled apart. In the last group at least there was some
+chief mass, the first complete composition. Now every one is for
+himself; three up and down lines and a circle--that's about what it
+amounts to.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 5.=]
+
+Let's group them,--push them together. Place the bottle near the
+coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot
+dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.
+
+[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 6.=]
+
+Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the
+centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the
+glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of
+the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and
+gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole.
+This group is about as well placed as these objects will come. There
+is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.
+
+Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with
+only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact
+and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line
+come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as
+elements in your group.
+
+In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and
+see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things
+together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on
+"Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.
+
+=Scope of Study.=--Drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to
+which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and
+values with still life. The drawing is not so severe as that of the
+antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to
+draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you
+please; and as I said at first, you need never lack an amiable model.
+
+All sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life;
+and of color and texture also. The study of surface and texture is
+most important to you. If you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a
+cow the first time; if you were to paint without previous experience
+a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet
+or satin dress, you would not succeed. These all involve problems of
+skill and facility of representation. When you paint a portrait or
+figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to
+deal with, as new, problems of this sort. You should have arrived at
+some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not
+complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. This is where
+still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier.
+
+=Interest.=--But the use of this sort of painting is not only its
+practical _use_. You need not feel that it is all drudgery--which is
+something that most students do not love! You may make pictures with a
+much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture,
+and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is
+your work as study. You can be as interested in the beauty and the
+picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the
+better. To see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be
+the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. An artist's eye is
+sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it.
+The student's should be also. No artist but has found delight in
+painting still life. No student should think it beneath his serious
+study.
+
+=Procedure.=--Study painting first in still-life compositions. When
+you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front
+of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a
+single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color
+contrast. All the problems of manipulation are there for you to study.
+No processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot
+use in this study.
+
+Learn here what you will need in other lines of work.
+
+=Beginning.=--The best way to make a study from still life is to begin
+with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. You may shade it more
+or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and
+forms. The shading means the modelling and the values in black and
+white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can
+be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. But you must have
+the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality.
+You must know _where_ a value is to go before you can justly place it.
+The value is the _how much_. You must have the _where_ before the _how
+much_ can mean anything in drawing. It would be well to lay in some of
+the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more
+naturally and truly so than with mere outline. The outline encloses
+the form, but with nothing but outline you are less apt to feel the
+reality of the form. The planes of values fill in the outline and give
+substance to it. They map it out so that it takes thickness and
+proportion; it is more real. And any fault of outline is more quickly
+seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form
+and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right.
+
+=The Frottee.=--Make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with
+charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it
+tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of
+the canvas.
+
+Be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple
+and well defined. Draw all characteristic details, but only the most
+important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain
+a drawing.
+
+Fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer.
+
+In beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thin _frottee_
+which shall re-enforce the drawing with color. You may do this with
+one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas
+bare for the lights. Many of the best painters lay in all pictures
+this way. What color is to be used is a matter for consideration. It
+should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that
+if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still
+look all right. Raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with
+burnt sienna and black. You can make a mixture that seems right. This
+establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a
+bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of
+the effect of each touch of color you put on.
+
+If there is much variety of color in the various objects of your
+composition, it is better to make your _frottee_ suggest the different
+colors. Instead of making a monochrome _frottee_, rub in each object
+with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid,
+nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. Nevertheless,
+you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a
+distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so
+carefully studied. When you come to put on solid color with this sort
+of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as
+well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into
+it.
+
+Into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body
+color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and
+working down through the half darks into the darks. Paint the
+background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to
+handling. Paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. There is no
+need to pile up masses of wrong color. You should try to be sure of
+the color before you lay it on. Study the color in the group, mix on
+the palette, and compare them. Think at least two minutes for every
+one minute of actually laying on paint. You save time in the end by
+being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. Put on color firmly and
+with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of
+the body of it.
+
+=Loaded Lights.=--It was a principle with the older painters to paint
+the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights.
+It gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which
+was much valued. But don't think about this; don't let it influence
+the frankness of your painting. The theory is in itself largely
+obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able
+painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it.
+I only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it
+down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting.
+Like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the
+greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of
+painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as
+suits your purpose. The main thing is to get the right color and value
+in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least
+affected, manner possible.
+
+You may work into your _frottee_, then, more or less solidly as you
+feel will give you the best representation of the color you see.
+
+=Solid Painting.=--Don't paint always in the same way. It is a mistake
+to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. Different things
+require different handling. Let the thing suggest how you shall paint
+it. If you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last
+instead of rubbing in thinly first. But always have an accurate
+drawing underneath.
+
+In working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each
+brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the
+appearance of reality. If the canvas is light, begin by putting in the
+main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. You get the
+most immediate effect of reality by the _relief_; the relief you get
+most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with
+what is already there. Establish your most telling values first, then
+work from them towards less immediately effective things.
+
+=Color and Values.=--Study the color at the same time you do the
+value. Put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. If you
+do, you will have to paint that spot twice,--once for the value, and
+again for the color. You might as well paint for the two qualities in
+one stroke. It takes more thought, but it gives you more command of
+your work. It doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it
+saves time in the long run.
+
+=Relations and Directness.=--Study to give the true relations of
+things. Try to get the just color quality. Give it at once. Don't get
+it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it.
+You will never learn to paint that way. Paint intensely while you
+paint. Use all the energy you have. Paint with your whole strength for
+a half or a whole hour, and then rest. You will accomplish more so
+than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way.
+
+=Directness.=--Directness comes from making up your mind just what
+tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first,
+then putting it there with no coaxing. Get the right color on your
+brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly
+down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the
+result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that
+it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. Then do that
+and stop.
+
+Directness and justness of relation are the most important things in
+painting. They tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and
+to the student. Whatever you do, work for that. Try to have no
+vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and
+the effect of it will show on your canvas.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX
+
+                                FLOWERS
+
+
+Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same
+control of combination, but you have not the same control of time.
+Flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you
+can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most
+exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well.
+
+People seem to think that any one can paint flowers. On the contrary,
+almost no one can paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in
+the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted.
+Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so
+infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely
+subtle in substance and sentiment.
+
+When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have
+not got the _quality_.
+
+What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax,
+neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these
+are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower
+petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals.
+
+Yet you cannot paint the _petals_ either, else you lose the _flower_.
+You must paint the _quality_ of the petal, and the _character_ of the
+flower.
+
+All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and
+it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be
+something else, and you can never get it back to its original form
+again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What will
+you do?
+
+=Mass and Value.=--There is something besides the flower and the
+petal; there is the _mass_. The mass is _one thing_, and it is
+surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. You
+must make this visible. The difference in value in flowers is
+something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me
+once. Yet the difference is there. The bunch has its nearer and its
+farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious
+expression of it.
+
+When you begin a group of flowers, get the _whole_ first. Make up your
+mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in
+front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. Do not
+paint the little things, the personal things first then. Paint what is
+common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the
+rotundity of it, and express most vaguely the _forms_ of the accents,
+and of the darks which fall between the flowers, but get their
+values. For you will have to change these, and you should have nothing
+there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can you get
+the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be
+wrong.
+
+[Illustration: =Sweet Peas.=]
+
+Get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of
+the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change,
+substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of
+the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that
+which was in that place before; then work more closely from these new
+flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general
+relation. As you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and
+constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from
+general to particular. Finally, from new flowers, put in those more
+individual touches which give the personal flowers.
+
+This is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. But
+it should not discourage you. Nothing takes the place of the flower
+picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint
+flowers.
+
+=General Principles Hold Always.=--Still, the principles of all
+painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in
+general will have its application to flowers.
+
+Paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them
+enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth
+painting, even if there be difficulties.
+
+=Details Again.=--Don't make too much of unimportant things. The whole
+is more than the part; the flower than the petal. Of course you can't
+paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the
+petals so that you can't see anything else. If the character of the
+flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of
+any special petal, suggest the petals only. If the petal is important
+to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it
+well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or
+do not paint it at all.
+
+=Colors.=--Colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than
+less subtle than you think them. If you have a doubt, make it more
+delicate--give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers are
+never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of
+strength. Black will be the most useless color of your palette. Make
+your grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a flower is shadow
+on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by
+refinement of color.
+
+=Sketches.=--Make sketches of flowers constantly. Try to carry the
+painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an
+hour. Practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible
+with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your
+picture.
+
+Get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work
+better in more difficult combinations.
+
+When you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to
+your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what
+not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. It
+will be a more patient sitter than they.
+
+Apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to
+the sketching of flowers. Either rub in quickly a _frottee_ and then
+paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately
+to render the characteristic qualities. When you sketch flowers don't
+take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a
+half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you
+can complete in that time.
+
+When you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious
+canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. Then
+put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the
+flower. Make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. In the
+study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and
+relief, effect and large accent.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXX
+
+                              PORTRAITS
+
+
+Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is
+more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of
+the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a
+great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this
+field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other
+kinds of work.
+
+You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with
+having got a likeness. Likeness is a very commonplace thing, which
+almost any one can get. If there were no other qualities to be tried
+for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. Back of the
+likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character,
+which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception
+to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage.
+
+=Character.=--The first requisite in a good portrait is
+character,--more than likeness, more than color or grace, before
+everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and
+make a portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything else may be
+added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this
+is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. Some of the greatest
+painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest
+beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. Holbein's
+wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere
+expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of
+drawing. There are masterpieces of Albrecht Duerer which rest on the
+same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of Himself by Duerer.
+Likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will
+be there in spite of you.
+
+Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he
+got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be
+there. The same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on
+the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly
+passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the
+man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. The
+painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the
+painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more
+on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always.
+Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your
+sitter. Get likeness if you will, of course; but remember that there
+is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can
+always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger
+character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of
+feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large
+expressiveness of the individual. You may find it elsewhere than in
+the face. The character affects the whole movement of the man. The set
+of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders
+alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. Study
+to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail
+as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in
+getting those details.
+
+=Qualities.=--There are other great qualities also which you can get
+in a portrait. All the qualities of color and tone, of course. But the
+simplicity of a single figure does not preclude the qualities of line
+and mass. The great things to be done with composition may as well be
+done in portrait as elsewhere. If you would see what may be done with
+a single figure, study the Portrait of his Mother, by Whistler. You
+could not have a better example. It is one of the greatest portraits
+of the world. Notice the character which is shown in every line and
+plane in the figure. The very pose speaks of the individuality. Notice
+the grace and repose of line, and the relations of mass to mass and
+space--the proportion. See how quiet it is and simple, yet how just
+and true. Of the color you cannot judge in a black and white, but you
+can see the relations of tones, the values and the drawing. It is
+these things which make a picture; not only a portrait, but a great
+work of art as well.
+
+[Illustration: =Duerer=, _by Himself_.
+To be studied as an example of directness and naivete of painting.]
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait of his Mother.= _Whistler._]
+
+=Drawing.=--Good work in portraiture depends on good drawing, just as
+other work does. Don't think that because it is only a head you can
+make it more easily than anything else. As in other kinds of work,
+the drawing you should try for is the drawing of the proportions and
+characteristic lines. Get the masses and the more important planes,
+and don't try for details. You can get these afterwards, or leave them
+out altogether, and they will not be missed if your work has been well
+done.
+
+Don't undertake too much in your work. Make up your mind how much you
+can do well, and don't be too ambitious; the best painters who ever
+lived have been content to work on a head and shoulders, and have made
+masterpieces of such paintings. You may be content also. See how
+little Velasquez could make a picture of! and notice also the placing
+of the head, and the simplicity of mass, and of light and shade.
+
+=Painting.=--Of course you can help your color with glazing and
+scumbling, but work for simplicity first. It is not necessary to use
+all sorts of processes; you can get fine results and admirable
+training from portrait studies, and the more directly you do it, the
+better the training will be.
+
+Study the Portrait of Himself, by Albrecht Duerer. You will find no
+affectation here; the most simple and direct brush-work only. You will
+not be able to do this sort of thing, but that is no reason why you
+should not try for it. It will depend on the brush-stroke. It implies
+a precision of eye as well as of hand. It means drawing quite as much
+as painting,--drawing in the painting. You will not get this great
+precision; nevertheless, try for it, and get as near it as you can.
+Don't try for too much cleverness; be content with good sincere study,
+and the most direct expression of planes that you can give.
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait of Himself.= _Velasquez._]
+
+Let your brush follow lines of structure. Don't lay on paint across a
+cheek, for instance. Notice the direction of the muscle fibre. It is
+the line of contraction of the muscle which gives the anatomical
+structure to a face. If your brush follows those, you will find that
+it takes the most natural course of direction.
+
+Do the same with the planes of the body and of the clothing. Note the
+lines of action, and the brush-stroke will naturally follow them.
+
+See that the whole form, and particularly the head, "constructs." The
+head is round, more or less; it is not flat. The planes of it cross
+the plane of the canvas, recede from it, cross behind, and return.
+This in all directions. You must make your painting express this. It
+is not enough that there be features, the features must be part of a
+whole which is surrounded, behind as well as in front, by the
+atmosphere. The hair is not just hair, it is the outer covering of the
+skull, and of necessity follows the curves of the skull; and there is
+a back part to the skull which you cannot see, but which you can
+feel--can know the presence of, because of the way it is connected
+with the front part by the sides. All this you must make evident in
+your painting, as well as the facts which are on the side of the skull
+turned toward you. How make it evident? By values and directness of
+brush-stroke.
+
+=Background.=--Never treat the background as something different from
+the head. The whole thing must go together. The slightest change in
+the background is equivalent to that much change of the head itself.
+For the change means necessarily a different contrast, either of color
+or light and shade, and it will have its effect on the color or relief
+of the head.
+
+Paint the two together, then. Make the head and all that goes with it
+or around it as equally parts of the picture, which all tend to affect
+each other. Your background is not something which can be laid in
+after the head is finished. True you can paint the background
+immediately around the head first, and then, after painting the head,
+extend the background to the edge of the canvas; but the color, tone,
+and character of the background must be decided upon at the time the
+head is painted, and carried on in the same feeling.
+
+It is never good work to paint the head and then paint a background
+behind it. Particularly is this true when there are windows or any
+objects whatever in the background. It is most important that the
+whole thing shall be seen in the same kind of light, and in the same
+relation of light. This is hardly to be done when the head is one
+painting and the background another.
+
+[Illustration: =Portrait.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+This is not rigidly true, however, in cases when the whole thing is
+planned beforehand, and studies made for each part, as in elaborate
+portraits and compositions which include several figures or special
+surroundings. But the principle holds good here also. The relation
+must be kept of the head to the surroundings, and the effect of the
+one upon the other always kept in mind.
+
+=Complex Portraits.=--It is often possible to pose your model so as to
+bring out some characteristic occupation. This is often done in
+portraits of distinguished men. Such a treatment gives opportunity for
+composition both of the figure and of the various objects which may
+make up the background.
+
+In such pictures you should study arrangement of line and mass, to
+make the thing aesthetically interesting as well as interesting as a
+portrait. Composition in mass,--the consideration of the head and
+shoulders in relation to the space of the canvas,--is necessary in the
+simplest head; but as soon as the canvas takes in a representation of
+action on the part of the figure, line and movement must be
+considered, as was done so beautifully in Whistler's portrait. In this
+the study of composition is your problem. You may study it all the
+time and in every picture you do, but it should be worked out before
+you begin to paint.
+
+Plan your canvas carefully always. Know just where everything is
+coming. When you leave things to chance, you are pretty sure to have
+trouble later.
+
+=Portraits Good Training.=--I would not have you undertake to paint a
+portrait rashly. You should know what you are to expect. If you are
+not pretty sure of your drawing, and of the first principles of seeing
+color in nature, and of representing it on canvas, you are likely to
+get discouraged. Particularly if a friend poses for you, you may
+expect disappointment on both sides. Drawing a head from the life is a
+very different thing from drawing an inanimate object which will stay
+in one position as long as you can pay the rent. So in the painting of
+it, too, the color itself is alive. Flesh is something very elusive to
+see the color of. And when you find that just as you begin to get
+things well under way, or are in a particularly tight place, just at
+that moment your model must rest, you must stop while the position is
+changed and gotten back to again; then you will begin to realize that
+"_la nature ne s'arrete pas_."
+
+I would have you know all this, I say, before you begin on your first
+portrait; but, nevertheless, if you can get a start at it you will
+find it extremely good practice. The very difficulties bring more
+definitely to you the real problems of painting. The fact that it is
+really the representation of something which has life has an interest
+quite of its own. The constant change of position on the part of the
+model will make you more observant, and less regardful of details; or
+if you do regard the details, and forget the other things, it will
+show you how inadequate those details are to real expression, unless
+there is something larger to place them on.
+
+Don't undertake the painting of a head without considering well that
+you are likely to have trouble, and that the trouble you will have is
+most likely to be of a kind that you don't expect. But, having begun,
+keep your head and your grit, and do the best you can. Remember that
+you learn by mistakes, and failures are a part of every man's work,
+and of every painter's experience, and not only of your own.
+
+You will save your self-esteem from considerable bruising if you make
+it a point never to let your sitter see your work till you are pretty
+well over the worst of it. The knowledge that it is to be seen will
+make you work less unconsciously, and you will find yourself trying
+for likeness, and all that sort of thing, when that is not what you
+should be thinking about; and if, after all, the thing is a failure,
+it is a great consolation to know that no one but yourself has seen
+it!
+
+=Beginning a Portrait.=--The ways of beginning portraits are
+innumerable. There is no one right way. Some are right for one painter
+or subject, and some for others; but there are some methods which are
+more advisable for the beginner.
+
+You can begin and carry through your painting entirely with body
+color, or you can begin it with _frottees_, and paint solidly into
+that. Take these two methods as types, and work in one or the other,
+according to what are the special qualities you want your work to
+have.
+
+If you have never painted a head, and have some knowledge of the use
+of paint and of drawing, I would suggest that you make a few studies
+of the head and shoulders, life size, in solid color, and on a not too
+large canvas, say sixteen by twenty inches. This will leave you no
+extra space, and you can devote your whole attention to the study of
+the head, with only a few inches of background around it. You will
+probably make the head too large. A head looks larger than it really
+is, especially when you are putting it on canvas. If you measure them
+you will find that few heads will be longer than nine inches from the
+top of the hair to the bottom of the chin. Take this as the regular
+size in drawing it on your canvas, and make the other proportions
+according to that.
+
+Make a drawing of the outlines in straight lines, which shall give
+only the main proportions of the head, neck, and shoulders. Within
+this, block out the features largely. Don't draw the eyes, but only
+the shape of the orbit; nor the nostril, but only the mass of light
+and shade of the nose.
+
+=Construction.=--In these studies avoid trying to get anything more
+than what will be suggested by this simple drawing. Use body color.
+Don't think of anything but what you have to represent. Never mind how
+the paint goes on, nor what colors you use, except that it is right in
+value, and as near the color as you can get. Put it on with the full
+brush, and try to get first the large masses and planes. Get it light
+where it is light, and dark where it is dark, and have contrast enough
+to give some relief. Don't try for any problems. Set your model in a
+simple, strong light and go ahead.
+
+No details, no eyes, only the great structural masses. Try to feel the
+skull under these planes of light and dark. Have the edges of them
+pronounced and firm.
+
+Do a lot of these studies; learn structure first. You will never be
+able to put an eye in its place in the orbit till you can make the
+plane of dark which expresses the bony structure of the orbit. You
+will feel the edge of the brow, of the cheekbone, and where the light
+falls on the temple and on the side of the nose. Inside of this is
+the dark of the cavity, broken for your purpose only by the light on
+the upper lid. Lay these in. Do the same with the other planes, and
+put your brush down firmly where you want the color, with no
+consideration but the simplest and most direct expression of value and
+color.
+
+Now, when you can lay in a head in this way, so that you can express
+the likeness with nothing but these dozen or so of simple planes, you
+have got some idea of what are the main things which give character to
+a head. You will begin to understand how it should "construct." Into
+this you can put all the detail you want, and if the detail is in
+value with this beginning it will keep its proper relation to the
+whole.
+
+Always when painting a head solidly, work this way. Get the action and
+character of the head as a whole. Block in the planes of the face and
+the features; and then go ahead to give the details which express the
+lesser characteristics. But always get the character, even the first
+look of resemblance, with this blocking in. Details and features will
+not give you the likeness, to say nothing of the character, if you
+have not gotten the character first by the representation of those
+proportions which mean the structure which underlies all the
+accidental positions of the detail of feature.
+
+=The Frottee.=--If you want to be more exact with your drawing before
+you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing
+in charcoal. Then make a _frottee_ in one color, and paint into and
+over that, as was described in the Chapter on "Still Life."
+
+By careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn
+the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as
+you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are
+modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these
+fundamentally different ways of working.
+
+If you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can
+the first day. Put in your _frottee_ the next, or make your blocking
+in; then after that do your painting into the _frottee_, or the
+working out of such details as you decide to put in.
+
+Titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in
+and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze.
+
+But you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. When
+you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making
+all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. Work first
+for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such
+facts. Perception and representation by any most convenient means are
+the first things to be thought of, and nothing else is of importance
+until a certain amount of advance is made along this line.
+
+Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the
+details, but the _fact_ of it. Try to lay in things so that you have a
+solid ground to work onto and into later.
+
+Look for the vital things. Don't try for "finish." Finish is not
+worked for nor painted into a picture; finish _occurs_ when you have
+represented all you have to express. When you have got character and
+values and true representation of color, you will find that the
+"finish" is there without your having bothered about it.
+
+The masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces
+where the light strikes and the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The
+lines disappear. You only see large planes of values; express these at
+once and simply.
+
+Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first.
+Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you
+must get the important things first. Learn to be strong _first_, or
+you never will be. Delicacy comes after strength, not before.
+
+So, too, freedom comes after knowledge--is the result of knowledge. So
+paint to learn. If it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the
+understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for
+other things later.
+
+[Illustration: =Haystacks in Sunshine.= _Monet._
+To show certain characteristics of handling in "Impressionist" work.]
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI
+
+                              LANDSCAPE
+
+
+From the usual rating of figures as the most important branch of
+painting, it would be natural to speak of that kind of work first. But
+work from the head must come before you attempt the figure, and there
+are a good many things that you can learn from landscape which will
+help you in figure-work. The manner of painting figures has been much
+modified, too, of late years, owing to certain qualities and points of
+view which are due to the study of landscape and the important
+position that it has come to occupy.
+
+In the old days landscape was only a secondary thing, not only as a
+branch of art in itself, but particularly as it was used by figure
+painters. In this century it has so broadened in its scope that it is
+now recognized to be as important a field of work as any. But further
+than this, it has become the most influential study in the whole range
+of painting. From the development of the study of outdoor nature, and
+particularly outdoor light, it has come about that certain facts of
+nature have been recognized which were before neglected, ignored, or
+unsuspected, and these facts bear quite as much on the painting of the
+figure as on the painting of landscape. So that it is no more possible
+to paint the figure, in some respects, as it was painted as a matter
+of course a hundred years ago, while other ways of painting the
+figure, which were undreamed of at that time, are the matters of
+course now.
+
+The whole problem of light has taken a new phase, and the treatment of
+color in that relation is modified in the painting of figures as well
+as in the other branches of work.
+
+=Pitch.=--In no direction is this more marked than in the matter of
+_pitch_, or _key_. With the study of landscape, the range of gradation
+from light to dark has broadened. A picture may now be painted in a
+"high key;" the picture may be, from the highest to the lowest note in
+it, far lighter than would have been thought possible even thirty
+years ago.
+
+This question of "bright pictures" is one which demands consideration.
+One has only to go into any exhibition of pictures to-day to be struck
+with the fact that the key of almost every picture in it, of whatever
+kind, has changed from what it would have been in the last generation.
+This is not merely the result of the spread of the "Impressionist"
+idea. That influence has only been strongly felt in this country
+within the last ten years. It is not that which I am speaking of now.
+I mean the fact that even the grayer pictures--those which do not in
+any ordinary sense of the word belong to Impressionist work--are light
+in color, where they would once have been dark, or at least darker.
+The impressionists have had a definite influence, it is true; but the
+work of the earlier "_plein air_" men--the men who posed their models
+out-of-doors as a matter of principle, who studied landscape
+out-of-doors--was the first and most powerful influence, and that of
+the impressionists, coming along after it, has simply emphasized and
+carried it farther.
+
+=Bright Pictures.=--Whatever may be thought of the work of those
+painters who are called "impressionists," it must be recognized that
+they have taught us how some things may be possible. And the present
+quality of brightness will necessarily be to a certain extent a
+permanent one in art. For like it or not as we may, it is true--true
+to a certain great, fundamental characteristic of nature. For outdoor
+light _is bright_, even on a gray day. The luminosity of color is too
+great to be represented with dark paint or lifeless color. And once
+this fact is recognized, it is a fact which will inevitably influence
+all kinds of work. What is possible and right at a certain stage of
+knowledge or recognition may be impossible when other points of view
+have once been accepted. We see only what we look for, and we look
+for only what we expect to see or are interested to see. You cannot go
+out-of-doors now and paint as you would have painted a hundred years
+ago. Then you would have painted what you saw then; but you would not
+have seen nor looked for things which you cannot help seeing now. For
+our eyes have been opened to new qualities and new facts, and once the
+eyes have been opened to them they can never be closed to them again.
+
+=Average Observation.=--I say we see only what we look for, what we
+expect to find; anything out of the ordinary is hard to believe at
+first. In looking at nature the average observer does not even see the
+obvious. Certain general facts he accepts in the general, but as a
+rule there is no real recognition of what is there; no perception of
+the relations of things; no analysis; no real _seeing_, only a
+conventional acceptance of a thing as a _thing_. Men look at nature
+with one idea, and at a picture of nature with an entirely different
+idea. Nature in the picture is to most people just what they have been
+accustomed to see in other pictures. They get their idea of how nature
+looks from those pictures, and if you show them a picture differently
+conceived they have difficulty in taking it in.
+
+For this reason the "bright picture" does not "look right." I remember
+being asked by a man in a modern exhibition what I thought of "these
+bright pictures." When I asked which pictures he had reference to, I
+found that he meant the work of a man whose whole aim in painting
+landscape was, as he once said to me, to get "the just note" in color
+and value. One would think that the fact that the whole force of an
+extremely able and sincere mind was directed to that purpose, would
+produce a picture with at least truth of observation. Yet this was not
+what my passing acquaintance wanted to see. The picture he liked,
+which "had some nature in it," as he pointed out to me, was an
+extremely commonplace landscape with a black tree against a garish
+sky, reflected in a pool of water. The "bright picture" seemed to me
+exquisitely gray and quiet, though high in key, and the one with
+"nature in it," harsh and crude, but conventional; and that was just
+the point. The average observer wants to see, and does see, in nature
+what he is accustomed to accept in a picture as nature.
+
+But a painter cannot go on such a basis. He may paint a dark picture,
+but he must find a subject which is dark to do so. He may not paint
+daylight with false pitch and false relations, and say he sees it so.
+With every liberty for personal seeing, there are still certain facts
+so established and obvious that personality must take them and deal
+with them, must use them and not ignore them, in its self-expression.
+
+[Illustration: =On the Race Track.= _Degas._
+To show relations of pitch and contrast out-doors.]
+
+The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may
+not be qualities which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore
+not make them the main theme of your painting of landscape; but you
+cannot paint a daylight picture without in some way making it obvious
+that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There is
+no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it
+is the most vital quality. You might as well paint water without
+recognizing the fact that water is wet, as to paint daylight without
+recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.
+
+=A Help.=--You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as
+well as color to have a card with a square hole cut in it to look
+through at your landscape. Have one side covered with black velvet and
+the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the lights
+with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a
+frame.
+
+=Key and Harmony.=--But you should remember that the high key for
+out-of-door work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither
+does it mean that there is nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your
+picture may be as high as you please in pitch, and yet be harmonious
+and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most pronounced
+type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony
+with them. It means that good color is always good color, and will
+always be harmonious with other good color, whatever the pitch of
+either. One picture is simply a different note from the other, that is
+all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations
+of spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing
+them, and your picture will be harmonious.
+
+Make your notes just _all over_ your canvas. Have some of them just
+and the rest false, and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to
+make crudity take the place of brilliancy, you will not get harmony.
+The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation of all the
+colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try
+for the most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door
+color, but you should feel for the out-of-doorness of it.
+
+The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement,
+vibration and life,--these are the things which the modern painter has
+discovered in landscape and has emphasized; and this is what has made
+modern landscape a vital force in modern art. Whatever you do or do
+not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see, feel,
+and express; for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they
+are as universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.
+
+=Landscape Drawing.=--Landscape is more difficult to draw than is
+generally thought; not only is the character affected by the _scale_
+of the main masses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The
+curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to
+give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably
+exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are
+seldom carefully drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to
+be gained by just representation of them. To give the character of a
+tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it, needs more
+precise observation than it generally gets.
+
+[Illustration: =Willow Road.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important
+things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each
+line than about the number of lines.
+
+Don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many
+objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided
+what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to
+express, and then draw most carefully those parts. See which are the
+_most expressive lines_ in it. Get the swing and movement of those
+lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get
+these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as
+subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you begin to
+paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.
+
+Don't get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time
+and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the
+mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many.
+Having found which lines and forms, which masses and relations of
+color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in
+other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the
+real reason of existence of your picture.
+
+In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been
+said of sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most
+bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and
+colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will
+neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you
+just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike.
+Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the
+general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before
+you even at the risk of over-repetition. In no kind of picture can you
+drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In
+landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must
+select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to
+concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize
+those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.
+
+=Selection.=--When you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the
+French call it, select it for something definite. There is always
+something which makes you think this particular view will make a good
+picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in
+detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the
+whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and space, or a
+beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees,
+or a river? Perhaps it is the mass and majesty of a mountain or a
+group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you--else you
+had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know
+quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.
+
+When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for,
+then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that
+characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a
+very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave
+out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the
+only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception
+of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much analysis of the whole
+field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in
+the expression of it.
+
+=Detail.=--Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether
+big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more
+important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express
+character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail _where the
+emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not
+a touch more.
+
+=Structure.=--Have your foreground details well understood in drawing
+and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it
+does require _structure_. Everything requires structure. _Structure is
+fundamental to character._ If you will not take the trouble to study
+the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all.
+Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough
+to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.
+
+I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but
+"structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would
+get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If
+you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the
+anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the
+world, you will understand its character, and that is what is
+important, everywhere.
+
+=Work in Season.=--Make your picture in the season which it
+represents. I don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in
+winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer
+quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half
+painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up"
+afterwards.
+
+Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin
+and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of
+material, to accumulate all your facts with the intention of working
+from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to
+work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at
+least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will
+find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed
+material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply
+it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the
+picture, you can just go out and study it.
+
+=Out-of-door Landscapes.=--The most important movement in modern art,
+the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have
+mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. It was thought by some
+clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to
+take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from
+a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole
+picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way,
+certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the
+color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and
+frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The
+spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture
+was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as
+things in themselves interesting and important. The result on
+landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed
+unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the
+making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.
+
+It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these
+men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for
+itself, or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with
+landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. Make
+sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please;
+but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you,
+and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. For
+your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will
+get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get
+any other way. You will also acquire a power of concentration and of
+selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the
+utmost importance to you.
+
+=Impressionism.=--It is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein
+air_ without mention of the "Impressionists." You should understand
+what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the
+impressionist stands for. Whether we like it or not, this work is not
+to be ignored. It has tried for certain things, and has shown that
+they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed
+to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands.
+
+In the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow."
+Any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside,
+is a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow are incidental to
+the impressionist, not essential. It is only one of the ways of
+handling color by means of which it was found possible to express
+certain qualities of light.
+
+Before everything else the real impressionist stands for the
+representation of the personal conception and method as against the
+traditional. He believes that if a man has anything of his own to say,
+he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature
+has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a
+personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas
+and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that
+whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express
+it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is
+_his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is
+"personal."
+
+=Luminosity.=--The impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the
+light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it
+vibrates. He does not think that living light can be represented by
+dead color. He strives to make his color live also. This is the secret
+of the purple and yellow. By the contrast of these two colors, by the
+combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors
+and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and
+so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. He actually applies on his
+canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color
+scientifically. He applies practically in his work those laws which
+the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. The result in some
+hands is garish, crude. But the best men have shown that it is
+possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous
+brilliancy that have never before been attained. The crudity is the
+result of the man, not of the method.
+
+=The Application.=--The application of all this to your own work is
+that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the
+observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of
+pigment as will bring this about. Try to study the actual contrasts of
+color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. Study the facts
+which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other,
+and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results.
+
+=The Luminists.=--This is the principle of all "loose painting"
+carried out scientifically. It is the cause of the peculiar technique
+of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The
+manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of
+outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the
+quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what
+they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate
+explicable.
+
+Now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical
+application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of
+the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of
+out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for
+yourself. If the complete adoption of it implies too much of a
+sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then
+modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the
+balance of qualities you most want. There is one way to get light and
+brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you
+need it.
+
+This is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. The placing
+of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding
+to the brilliancy of light. You will find this most useful when you
+want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight
+and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the
+richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more
+strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can.
+Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of
+objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of
+warm and cool than contrast of light and dark.
+
+Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising you to be an impressionist.
+I wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at
+nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will
+be of use to you in the painting of landscape. I would have you know
+what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in
+certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then I
+would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely
+serve your purpose.
+
+Do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because
+of any advocacy whatsoever. Know first what you want to paint and why.
+Let nature speak to you. Go out and look at landscape. Study and
+observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use
+the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. Don't ask
+yourself, nor let any one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method?
+or, Does this belong to this or that school? Don't bother about
+schools or methods at all. Look frankly to see, accept frankly, and
+then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. Be
+sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will
+surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and
+whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor
+matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in
+painting, and method of representation one of the least.
+
+=Atmosphere.=--A universal characteristic of nature will be a
+fundamental one in landscape. A landscape which you cannot breathe in
+is not a perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere, and the
+expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. But
+atmosphere is not haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness
+of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do
+most in getting it. You had better not try for atmosphere as a thing,
+but as a result. Anything so universal and so indefinite can be
+expressed by no one thing. If you try to get it by any one means you
+will miss it. Study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness
+of value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be
+satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that
+your picture will not lack atmosphere.
+
+=Color of Contour.=--An important thing for you to look for and to
+study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy
+even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a
+combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will
+reveal themselves to you.
+
+No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color
+surrounding it lacks variety. All along the edge of forms and objects,
+of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The
+outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from identity
+of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself.
+The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The
+inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness,
+gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are
+qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of
+light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant
+variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the
+visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the
+picture, and all the objects represented in it.
+
+Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the
+movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their
+own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is
+most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and
+air.
+
+=Skies.=--In the painting of the sky there are several points to be
+kept in mind. The sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement.
+Cloud masses change continually. If there are no clouds there is
+constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of
+color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a
+dead, flat tint.
+
+Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad,
+flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with
+horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a
+lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm
+and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed
+color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will
+be flat and even, but not dense and dead. So far as the sky is
+concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not
+by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.
+
+=Clouds.=--If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get
+the effect of the mass and movement, and the lightness of them. As
+they constantly change in form, any one form they may assume cannot be
+characteristic. The type form is what you must get, and the suggestion
+of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of
+the wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. The direction of the
+sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud
+mass is never hard, never rigid. The pitch and luminosity and subtlety
+are what give you most of the effect of it.
+
+Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a _cumulus_, _cirrus_,
+_stratus_, or what not. This character is important; but the character
+lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental
+outlines or the special position of it for the moment.
+
+=Sky Composition.=--The massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor
+in the composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is
+capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. As it is not
+constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with
+truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as
+an element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the
+forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of
+them.
+
+=Diffused Light.=--Much of the characteristic quality of out-door
+light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the
+refraction and the reflection of the sky. The light which bathes the
+landscape comes in all directions from the sky. Necessarily, then, the
+sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it.
+Even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in
+the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell
+against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will
+look lighter. There are times when the sun glares on a white building
+or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue.
+But these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would
+give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light,
+even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the
+higher value. It is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or
+the reverse, as we cannot have both.
+
+Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is
+really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if
+there be a bit of sun breaking through on it.
+
+But in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always
+lighter and more luminous than anything under it.
+
+=Three Planes.=--It will help you in understanding the way the light
+falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes,
+and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according
+to the position of the sun with reference to them.
+
+The position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a
+point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything
+that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at
+some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some
+sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly,
+the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full
+amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of
+foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by
+diffused and reflected light. The planes lying between these two
+extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at
+right angles to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun declines
+from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the
+horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late
+afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-masses
+are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and
+water are in shadow.
+
+However obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less;
+and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in
+landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know.
+
+Millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art
+of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these
+facts.
+
+He said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the
+light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or
+less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color
+and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its
+representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects,
+lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties of the art rested
+on it. He showed a painting of a single pear in which these things
+were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete
+and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the
+observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything
+which was vital to painting.
+
+=Short Sittings.=--This characteristic, and the steady change of
+position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are
+directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting
+from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very
+long at a time. The light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only
+takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is seldom that
+you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half
+at a sitting. Some men do work two or three hours, but they are not
+studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three
+hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under
+these conditions. Of course on gray days this is less marked, but you
+must suit your sittings to the time and facts.
+
+It would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time
+on each, and many days on all. You would have the truest work.
+
+Monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he
+starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and
+paints on each till the light has changed. Theodore Robinson seldom
+worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one
+canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and
+sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons.
+
+Any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color
+must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXII
+
+                               MARINES
+
+
+All that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. You
+have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. There
+is no need to say the same things over again. It is only necessary to
+take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things
+which are peculiar to the sea.
+
+=Sea and Sky.=--To begin with, the relation of the sky to what is
+under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in
+painting. The sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting
+surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by
+the reflections of the sky on its surface. The sky color is always
+modifying the water--when and how depends on the condition of the
+weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. Sometimes
+the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost
+lost, but the influence is there.
+
+This relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky
+is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is
+there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not
+recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad.
+
+I cannot tell you all about these things. The variety of effects and
+relations is infinite. You must study them, paint them in the presence
+of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of
+air and atmosphere and light and color that I have spoken of
+elsewhere--all have most vital importance on marine painting. You must
+study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky
+observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can.
+
+=Movement.=--If "_la nature ne s'arrete pas_" ordinarily, the fact is
+even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of
+ceaseless motion. Somehow, you must not only study in spite of the
+continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt.
+This you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole
+surface--the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves.
+The waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the
+wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the
+whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. The
+wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. See that first,
+and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and
+help to express it.
+
+[Illustration: =Entrance to Zuyder Zee.= _Clarkson Stanfield._]
+
+=Wave Drawing.=--How shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave?
+Every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and
+shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in
+logical and practically identical sequence of movement. You can only
+study this by constant watching. You look at the wave, and then turn
+your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is
+not there. Well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave;
+it isn't possible. Don't expect to. Study the movement and type forms;
+think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the mass and suggestive
+relation of it to other masses, and put that down.
+
+There is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or
+color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you
+will see a succession of waves of similar kind. Or look at a wave and
+follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in
+the main keeps itself for some time.
+
+Look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the
+eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over
+and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and
+relations. And as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite
+of yourself. Your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but
+meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was
+the same in shape, but only varied in position.
+
+In this way you will come to know the wave forms. Jot them down,
+either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too
+much. Try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch,
+with a characteristic direction and movement. No amount of explanation
+will tell you anything. You must sit and look, think, analyze, and
+suggest, then generalize as well as you can.
+
+=Open Sea and Coast.=--The open sea is all movement. Even a ship, the
+most rigid thing on it, moves with it. But you do not have to study
+these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. You can start
+from a stable base. Study coast things first. You have then the
+relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can
+simplify the thing somewhat. What has been said of motion holds good
+still; but you can get something definite in a rock mass, and study
+the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong
+enough.
+
+The study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the
+open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. Breakers
+and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give
+great variety of subject and problem. In the drawing of rocks the
+study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the
+study of wave forms. You must try to give the feeling of weight to
+them. The mass and immovability add to the charm and character of the
+water about them.
+
+=Subject.=--Don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. Of course
+there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from
+that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you
+should study. Whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse
+everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small,
+otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. So if you
+would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the
+main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse
+take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it
+adequately. If it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this.
+
+=Ships.=--The painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less
+the painting of vessels of different kinds. You may put the ship in so
+insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague
+representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge
+of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to
+the ship in your picture.
+
+=Detail.=--You do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. You do
+not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in
+order to paint a ship properly. To do this would miss the spirit of
+it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take
+the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own
+peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar
+arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in
+the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent
+the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the
+trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the
+kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any
+kind of vessel or boat you may paint. There is again only one way to
+know this. If you are not especially a painter of marines, you may
+find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition
+and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go
+in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to
+know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places.
+Your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books
+with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and
+incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. Ships under full sail
+and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm--he
+can never have too many of these facts to refer to.
+
+The true marine painter is nine parts a sailor. If he does not take,
+or has not taken a voyage at sea, at least has passed and does pass a
+large part of his time among vessels and sailors. He knows them both;
+his details are facts that he understands. And what he puts in or
+leaves out of a painting is done with the full knowledge of its
+relative importance to his picture and to the significance of the
+ship.
+
+All this sounds like a good deal to undertake; but to the man who
+loves the water and what sails upon it, it is only following his
+liking, and any one who does not love all this should content himself
+with only the most incidental sea painting; for sea pictures are not
+to be painted from recipes any more than any other thing, and ships
+particularly cannot be represented without an understanding of them.
+And after all, you do not have to do all this study at once. If you
+will only study well each thing that you do, and never paint one
+vessel or boat without understanding that one; if you will study the
+one you are doing now, and will do the same every time,--eventually
+you will have piled up a vast deal of knowledge without having
+realized how much you were doing.
+
+=Color of Water.=--You must study the color of water in the large when
+you paint it. Remember that its color depends on other things than
+what it is itself. The character of the bottom, whether it be rocky
+or sandy, and the depth of the water, will affect its color; and to
+one accustomed to see these things, the picture betrays its truth or
+falsity at a glance, especially as the character of the wave and the
+great movement of the whole surface are influenced by the same things.
+
+[Illustration: =Girl Spinning.= _Millet._
+Example of "_contre jour_" and out-of-door contrast of light and
+shade.]
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+                               FIGURES
+
+
+The broadest classification of figure pictures is to consider them as
+of two kinds,--those painted in an out-door or diffused light, and
+those painted in an in-door or concentrated light. The painting of
+figures out-of-doors you will find more difficult if you have had no
+experience in painting them in the studio. The problems of light and
+shade and color are more complex in the diffused light, and the
+knowledge of structure and modelling, as well as of special values
+gained by studio study, will be most helpful to you when you paint
+out-of-doors. I should say, then, don't attempt any serious painting
+of the human figure in the open air till you have had some experience
+with its special problems in the house.
+
+=The Nude.=--No good figure-work has ever been done which was not
+founded on a knowledge of the nude. Whether the figure is draped or
+not, the nude is the basis of form. The best painters have always made
+their studies of pose and action in the nude, and then drawn the
+draperies over that. This insures the truth of action and structure,
+which is almost sure to be lost when the drawing of the form is made
+through drapery or clothing. The underlying structure is as essential
+here as in portrait. It is the more imperative that the body be felt
+within the clothes from the fact that it cannot be seen. There must be
+no ambiguity; no doubt as to the anatomy underneath; for without this
+there can be no sense of actuality.
+
+I do not say paint the nude. On the contrary, if you want to go so far
+as that in the study of the figure, you must not attempt to do it with
+the aid of a book. Go to a good life class. But I wish to emphasize
+the principle that when you undertake to paint anything involving the
+figure, you must know something of the structure of what is more or
+less hidden, and must make allowance for the disguising of form which
+the draping of it will inevitably cause.
+
+And when you draw your figure, you should lay in your main lines, at
+any rate, from the nude figure if you can. If you cannot command a
+professional model for this purpose, you can only be more careful
+about your study of the underlying lines and forms as they are
+suggested by the saliencies of the draperies.
+
+If this is the case, be most accurate in those measurements which
+place the proportions of the parts which show through the covering,
+and try to trace out by the modelling where the lines would run. By
+mapping out these proportions, and drawing the lines over the drapery
+masses wherever you can make them out, you can judge to a certain
+extent of the truth of action in your drawing.
+
+The use of a lay figure will help you somewhat if you can get one
+which is true in proportion. It will not help you much in the finer
+modelling, but it will at least insure your structural lines being in
+the right place, and that is as much as you can hope for without the
+special study of the nude.
+
+A lay figure is expensive, costing about three hundred dollars in this
+country. You will hardly be apt to aspire to a full-sized one, as only
+professional painters can afford to pay so much for accessories. But
+small wooden ones are within the means of most people, and will be
+found useful for the purpose I have mentioned, and one should be
+obtained.
+
+When you have assured yourself, as far as you can by its use with and
+without special draperies, of the right action of your drawing, you
+must do your painting from the draped model.
+
+=The Model.=--Never paint without nature before you. If you paint the
+figure, never paint without the model. For the sake of the study of
+it, it goes without saying that you can learn to paint the figure only
+by studying from the figure. But beyond that, for the sake of your
+picture, you can have no hope of doing good work without working from
+the actual object represented. The greatest masters have never done
+pictures "out of their heads." The compositions and aesthetic qualities
+came from their heads it is true, but they never worked these things
+out on canvas without the aid of nature. And the greater the master,
+the more humble was he in his dependence on nature for the truth of
+his facts.
+
+Much more, then, the student needs to keep himself rigidly to the
+guidance of nature; and this he can only do by the constant use of the
+model.
+
+=One Figure or Many.=--Whether you have one or more figures, the
+problem may be kept the same. The canvas must balance in mass and line
+and in color. When you decide to make a picture with several figures,
+study the composition first as if they were not _figures_, but groups
+of masses and line. Get the whole to balance and compose, then decide
+your color composition. Simplify rather than make complex. The more
+you have of number, the more you should consider them as parts of a
+whole. Keep the idea of grouping; combine the figures, rather than
+divide them. Have every figure in some logical relation to its group,
+and then the group in relation to the other parts. Don't string them
+out or spot them about. Study the spaces between as well as the
+spaces they occupy. And don't fill up these spaces with background
+objects. That will not bind the group together, but will separate it.
+Fill the spaces with air and with values--even more important!
+
+All this arranged, paint each group and each figure as if it were one
+thing instead of many. As you treat the head, the body, the dress, and
+the chair as all parts of a whole in a single sitting figure, so treat
+the various heads, bodies, dresses, etc., in a group as parts of a
+whole, by studying always the relations of each to each. And then
+study to keep the different groups as parts of whole canvas in the
+same way.
+
+=Simplicity of Subject.=--But do not be too ambitious in your
+attempts. Keep your subjects simple. Don't be in a hurry to paint many
+figures. Paint one figure well before you try several.
+
+You will find plenty of scope for your knowledge and skill in single
+figures. Practise with sketches and compositions, if you will, in
+grouping several figures, and try to manage them so that the whole
+shall be simple in mass and effect; but do not attempt, as a student,
+without experience and skill in the painting of one figure, to paint
+pictures containing several. By the time you can really paint a single
+figure well, you can dispense with a manual of painting, and branch
+out as ambitiously as you please. In the meantime, everything that
+you have knowledge enough to express well, you can express with the
+single figure.
+
+With the model, the background, the pose and occupation, the clothing
+and draperies, and whatever accessories may be natural to the thing as
+elements, it is possible to work out all the problems of line and mass
+and color. If a really fine thing cannot be made with one figure, more
+figures will only make it worse.
+
+Look again at Whistler's portrait of his mother. Consider it now, not
+as a portrait, but as a single figure. What are the qualities of it
+which would be helped if there were more in it? The very simplicity of
+it makes the handling of it more masterly.
+
+Look also at the one simple figure of Millet's "Sower;" all the great
+qualities of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one
+canvas you will find in this.
+
+See what movement and dignity there are in it. How statuesque it is!
+It is monumental. It has scale; it imposes its own standard of
+measurement. There are air and envelopment and light and breadth. Are
+these not qualities enough for one canvas?
+
+=Nature the Suggester.=--Take your suggestions, your ideas, for
+pictures from nature. Keep your eyes open. Observe all poses which may
+hint of possible schemes of light and shade, of composition, or of
+color. It is marvellous how constantly groupings and poses and effects
+of all kinds occur in every-day life. Humanity is kaleidoscopic in its
+succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and
+different, but equally suggestive of a picture if you will take the
+hint. The picture which originates in a natural occurrence is always
+true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. Truth is more various
+than fiction. It is easier to see than to invent. And in the
+arrangement of the material which nature freely and constantly
+furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of man.
+
+=Action and Character.=--The picture comes from the action--resides in
+it. The action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of
+it. Any gesture or position which is the natural and unaffected result
+of an essential action will be true and vital, suggestive of nature,
+and beautiful because it will inevitably have character--be
+characteristic. The beauty of the picture is not something external to
+the costumes, occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be
+found, contained in it, and brought out, manifested, made visible, by
+the mere logical working out of the need, the custom, or the occasion.
+
+Emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement.
+
+Daily life swarms with pictures. You do not need to go to other places
+and other times for subjects. If you are awake to what is going on
+around you, if you see the essential line of the occupation, or the
+mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you will
+have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. And it
+is your business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. Everything
+is commonplace till you see the charm in it. The artistic possibility
+does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but in the fact that the
+thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and
+contrast; and these are the artist's opportunities. Keep your eyes
+open for them; learn to recognize them when you see them; look for
+these rather than for the details of the accidental fact which brings
+them out. See the movement of it, and the relation of it to what
+surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it.
+
+Here is a composition which is an almost literal rendering of the
+movement and light and shade effect of a position quite accidentally
+seen.
+
+The whole effect of lighting and of line, the grouping and the pose,
+resulted purely from the musician's desire to get a good light on his
+music. There was no need to add to it. It was simply necessary to
+recognize the charm of it, and to represent that charm through it as
+frankly as it could be done.
+
+[Illustration: =Sketch of a Flute Player.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]
+
+=Posing the Model.=--Let the character of the model suggest the pose.
+If you have a scheme for a picture, choose a model whose personality
+will lend itself naturally to the occupation or action natural to that
+scheme. Then follow the suggestion which you find in the model. Some
+rearrangement will always be necessary if you do not use as a model
+the same person who originally gave you the idea for the picture.
+Every human being has a different manner. You cannot hope for exactly
+the same expression in one person that you found in another. But put
+the model as nearly as you can in the same situation and pose, and
+then when the model eases from the unnatural muscular balance into the
+one natural to him, you will find the idea taken from your first
+observation translated into the characteristics of your present model.
+
+Never try to place a model in a pose which he can only hold by an
+unnatural strain. You will not get a satisfactory result from it.
+Study your model; see what poses he most naturally falls into, and
+then take advantage of one of these, and arrange your picture with
+reference to it.
+
+Never attempt to represent a character in your picture by using a
+model of a different class or type from it; you will not be successful
+either in painting a lady from a model who is a peasant, nor in
+painting a peasant from a model who is a lady. The life and occupation
+and thought common to your model will get into your painting of her;
+and if that is not in accordance to the idea in the picture, your
+picture will be false. The dress, no less than the pose and
+occupation, must be such as is natural to your model. The accessories
+of your picture must befit the character you wish to paint; otherwise
+your model becomes no more than a lay figure.
+
+Take note of the characteristics which are peculiar to your model, and
+use them; do not change them nor idealize them. Rather paint them as
+they are, and make them a vital part of your study of the subject.
+This is the best you can do with these characteristics. They may be
+the most expressive thing in your picture. If they are of such a
+nature that you cannot use them in this way, then do not use this
+model at all; you cannot get rid of these things. In trying to obscure
+or idealize them, you only lose character, or paint a character into
+your model which is unnatural to him; the result will not be
+satisfactory.
+
+=Quiet Sitters.=--An inexperienced painter should not use a model with
+too much vivacity of body or of expression. The quiet, reposeful,
+thoughtful model, who will change little in position or manner, will
+simplify the problem. A model too wide awake or too sleepy will either
+of them give you trouble.
+
+Avoid very young children as models, and particularly babies. They are
+never quiet, and the problems you will have even with the best of
+models will be made enormously more difficult by their restlessness.
+
+For your first work choose models with well-marked faces, and pose
+them in a direct light which will give you the simplest and strongest
+effect of light and shade.
+
+See that your sitter is in as comfortable a position as you can get
+him into, so that the pose can be held easily. Don't attempt difficult
+and unusual attitudes. Such things require much skill and knowledge to
+take advantage of, and to use successfully. Make your effect more in
+the study of composition and color than in fanciful poses. Later, when
+you have gained experience, you may do this sort of thing.
+
+If you are painting a face, see that the eyes are in at a restful
+angle with the head, and that they are not facing a too strong light,
+nor are obliged to look at a blank space. Give them room to have a
+restful focus, and perhaps something pleasant or interesting to look
+at.
+
+=Length of Pose.=--No sitter can hold a pose in perfect
+motionlessness. Do not expect it. You must learn to make allowance for
+certain slight changes which are always occurring. You must give your
+model plenty of rest, too, especially if he be not a professional
+model. A half-hour pose to ten minutes' rest is as much as a regular
+model expects to do as a rule. If you have a friend posing for you,
+particularly if it be a woman, twenty minutes' pose and ten minutes'
+rest, for a couple of hours, is all you should expect; and if the
+pose is a standing one, this will probably be more than she can
+hold--make the rests longer.
+
+An inexperienced model--and sometimes even a trained one--is likely to
+faint while posing, particularly if the room be close. Look out for
+this; watch your sitter, and see that she is not looking tired. The
+minute that you see the least sign of fatigue, if she shows
+pallor--rest. Do not get so absorbed in your canvas that you do not
+notice your model's condition. If you are observing and studying your
+model as closely as you should, you can hardly fail to notice any
+change that may occur, and you should at once give her relief.
+
+=Distance.=--Don't work too near your model, nor too near your canvas.
+As regards the first, be far enough away to see the whole of the
+figure you are painting, or of that part which you are doing, entirely
+at one focus of the eye, and yet near enough to see the detail
+clearly. If you are too near, you see parts at a time, and do not see
+it as a whole. If you are too far, you see too generally for good
+study. You might make it a rule to be away from your subject a
+distance of about three or four times the extreme measurement of it.
+If it is a full length, say fifteen to twenty feet, if you can get so
+large a room. If it is a head and shoulders, about six or eight feet.
+Never get closer than six feet.
+
+As to your canvas, work at arm's length. Don't bend over--again you
+see parts, and you must treat your canvas as a whole. Never rest your
+hand or arm on the canvas. Train your arm to be steady. Sit up
+straight, hold your brush well out at the end of the handle, and your
+arm extended; now and then, if you need closer work, lean forward, and
+if necessary use a rest-stick; but as a rule your work will be
+stronger and hang together better if you work as I have suggested. Of
+course you will often get up, and walk away from your work. Set your
+easel alongside the model, and go away to a distance, and compare
+them. Too intense application to the canvas forgets that relations,
+effect, and wholeness of impression are of the greatest importance,
+and are only to be judged of when seen at some distance.
+
+=Background.=--Under the general title of background you may place
+everything which will come in as accessory to the figure, and against
+or alongside of which it stands. The picture must "hang together";
+must have envelopment; must be a whole, not an aggregation of parts.
+Everything that goes to the making up of this whole must have a
+natural and logical connection with it. From the first conception of
+the picture you must consider the background as an essential part of
+it, and as something which will have a vital effect upon the figure.
+The color of the background must be thought of as a part of, because
+affecting, the figure itself. The simplicity or variety in the
+background, the number of objects in it, must be considered as to the
+effect on the figure also. You cannot make the background a patchwork
+of objects and colors without interfering with the effect of the main
+thing in the picture.
+
+If your figure is simple and quiet, keep the background the same. Make
+it a principle to treat the background simply always. If the character
+of the case demands some detail, and a variety of objects, then treat
+them so that their effect is as simple as possible; and the figure
+must be made stronger, in order that the variety in the background
+shall not overpower it. Control it by the way the light or the color
+masses, or simplify the painting of them. Keep the background in value
+as regards prominence and relief of objects as well as in the matter
+of color.
+
+=Composition of Backgrounds.=--You can make the background help the
+figure, not merely by the painting of objects which help to
+explain,--that is of course,--but in the placing and arranging of them
+you may emphasize the composition. Whether the background be a curtain
+with its folds, or an interior with its furniture, you can and must
+make every object, every fold of the drapery, every mass of wall or
+object, distinctly help out in the composition as line and mass. Your
+composition must balance; the line and movement of the figure must
+have its true relation. The way you use whatever goes into the
+picture, the objects which make up the background, the way they group,
+and the spaces between them, must have a helpful reference to that
+movement, and to the balance of the whole.
+
+=Simplicity.=--Lean always towards simplicity in composition as
+against complexity. In backgrounds particularly, avoid detail and
+over-variety. Don't have the whole surface of the canvas spotted with
+_things_. If it is necessary, put it in; if it is not necessary, leave
+it out; and if there is the slightest doubt which it is, leave it out.
+
+The most common and the most fatal mistake is to make the picture too
+"interesting." The interest in a picture does not lie in the quantity
+of things expressed, but in the character of them, and in the quality
+of their representation. If you cannot treat a simple composition
+well, if you cannot make a picture balance well, and make it
+interesting with a quiet background, be sure a multitude of objects
+will not help it. The more you put into it the worse it will be. Learn
+to be master of the less before you try to be master of the more.
+
+[Illustration: =Milton Dictating "Paradise Lost."= _Munkacsy._
+To show use of background. Notice also the composition.]
+
+=Lighting.=--I have spoken of lighting in general in other chapters.
+You must apply the principles to your use of figures. Study the
+different effects which you can get on the model by the different ways
+of placing in reference to the window. Whatever lighting will be
+difficult in one kind of painting will be no less so in another. Avoid
+cross-lights, and do not be ambitious to try unusual and exceptional
+effects. If one should occur to you as charming, of course do it, if
+it is not too difficult, but don't go around hunting for the strange
+and weird. There is beauty enough for all occasions in such effects as
+are constantly coming under your observation. What was said about
+simplicity of subject will apply here as well, for the light and color
+effect is naturally a part of the subject. The most practical lights
+are those which fall from one side, so as to give simple masses of
+light and dark; they should come from above the level of the head, so
+as to throw the shadow somewhat downwards.
+
+="Contre Jour."=--One kind of posing with reference to lighting, gives
+very beautiful effect, but calls for close study of values, and is
+very difficult. It is called in French, _contre jour_; that is,
+literally, "against the day," or, against the light. It is a placing
+of the model so that the light comes from behind, and the figure is
+dark against the light. From its difficulty it should not be taken as
+a study by a beginner, for modelling and color are difficult enough at
+best. When they are to be gotten in the low key that the light behind
+necessitates, and with the close values which this implies, the
+difficulty is enormously increased. But before you attempt the human
+figure in the open air, you will find it very good study to work in
+the house _contre jour_. The effect of a figure out-doors has many of
+the qualities of _contre jour_. The diffusion of light and the many
+reflections make the problem more complex; but the contrast, the close
+values, and the subtle modelling which you must study in _contre jour_
+will be good previous training before going out-doors with a model.
+
+Look at Millet's "Shepherdess Spinning," at the head of this chapter,
+as an example of _contre jour_.
+
+=Figures Out-of-doors.=--In painting, an object is always a part of
+its environment. So a figure must partake of the characteristics of
+its surroundings. Out-of-doors it is part of the landscape,
+characterized by the qualities which are peculiar to landscape. The
+diffusion of light, the vibration and the movement of it, the
+brilliancy and pitch, the cross-reflections and the envelopment,--all
+these give to the figure a quality quite different from that which it
+has in the house. There is no such definiteness either of drawing, or
+of light and shade, or of color. The problem is a different one. You
+must treat your figure no more as something which you can control the
+effect of, but as something which, place it in what position, in what
+surroundings, you will, it will still be affected by conditions over
+which you have no control.
+
+Textures and surface qualities, local or personal colors, lose their
+significance to the figure out-of-doors. They become lost in other
+things. The pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or
+value,--these are what are of importance. The more you search for the
+qualities which would be a matter of course in the house, the more you
+will lose the essential quality,--the quality of the fact of
+out-doors.
+
+When in the house, you can have things as definite as you wish;
+out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light.
+The shadows do not fall where you expect them to. The values are less
+marked. The stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant
+movement of nature. The color is influenced by the diffused color of
+the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and
+the sky. The light does not fall _on_ the face so much as it falls
+_around_ it. The modelling is less, the planes are not precise. The
+expression is as much due to the influence of what is around it as to
+the face itself.
+
+All this means that you must study and paint the figure from a new
+point of view. You do not make so much of what the model is as how the
+model looks in these surroundings. You must not look for so much
+decision, and you must study values closely. Look more for the
+modelling of the mass than for the modelling of surface. Look more for
+the vibration of light and air on the flesh and drapery colors than
+for these colors in themselves. Look for color of contours in the
+model. Study the subtleties of values of contours, and make your
+figure relieve by the contrast of value in mass rather than by the
+modelling within the outline. See how the figure "tells" as a whole
+against what is behind it first, and keep all within that first
+relation.
+
+[Illustration: =Buckwheat Harvest.= _Millet._]
+
+It is possible to look for and to find many of the qualities which
+distinguish the figure in the studio light; sometimes you may want to
+do so. The telling of a story, the literary side of the picture, if
+you want that side, sometimes needs help that way. But in this you
+lose larger characteristics, and the picture as a whole will not have
+the spirit of open air in it.
+
+What has been said of the painting of landscape applies to the
+painting of figures in landscapes. Pose your figure out-of-doors if
+you would represent it out-of-doors. Then paint it as if it were any
+other out-door object. If the figure is more important to the
+composition than anything else in the landscape, as it often will be,
+then study that mainly, and treat the rest as background, but as
+background which has an influence which must be constantly recognized.
+
+Never finish a figure begun out-doors by painting afterwards from a
+model posed in the house. Leave the figure as you bring it in. If it
+is not finished, at least it will be in keeping with itself; and this
+will surely be lost if you try to work it from a model in different
+conditions.
+
+=Animals.=--Animals should be considered as "figures out-of-doors."
+There is no essential difference in the handling one sort of a figure
+or another. The anatomy is different, and the light falls on different
+textures, but the principle is not changed. You must consider them as
+forms influenced by diffused light and diffused color, and paint them
+so. You will find that often, especially in full sunlight, the color
+peculiar to the thing itself is not to be seen at all. The character
+of the light which falls on it gives the note, and controls. In the
+shade the effect is less marked, but the constant flicker makes the
+same sort of variation, though not to the same extent.
+
+There is no secret of painting animals either in the house or
+out-of-doors which is not the same as the secret of painting the human
+figure. If you would paint an animal, get one for a model and study
+it. Work in some sort of a house-light first, in a barn or shed, or,
+if it be a small animal, in your studio. Study as you would any other
+thing, from a chair to a man. The principles of drawing do not change
+with the character of anatomy. The animal may be less amiable a poser,
+but you must make allowance for that.
+
+When you have got a knowledge of the form, and the character of color
+and surface, take the animal out-doors, get some one to help hold him,
+and apply the same principles that would govern your study of a rock
+or a tree in the open air.
+
+As for fur, and all that sort of thing, treat it as you would any
+other texture-problem in still life.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+                        PROCEDURE IN A PICTURE
+
+
+Some pictures, particularly those begun and finished in the open air,
+may be frankly commenced immediately on the canvas from nature as she
+is before the painter, and without any special processes or methods of
+procedure carried on to completion. But many pictures are of a sort
+which renders this manner of work unwise or impossible. There may be
+too many figures involved. The composition, the drawing, or other
+arrangement may be too complicated for it, and then the painter has to
+have some methodical and systematic way of bringing his picture into
+existence. He must take preliminary measures to ensure his work coming
+out as he intends, and must proceed in an orderly and regular manner
+in accordance with the planning of the work. It is in this sort of
+thing that he finds sketches and studies essential to the painting of
+the picture as distinguished from their more common use as training
+for him, or accumulation of general facts.
+
+=Preliminaries.=--There must be made numbers of sketches, first of the
+slightest and merely suggestive, and then of a more complete, kind,
+to develop the general idea of composition from the first and perhaps
+crude conception of the picture. All the great painters have left
+examples of work in these various stages. It is a part of the training
+of every student in art schools to make these composition sketches,
+and to develop them more or less fully in larger work. In the French
+schools there are monthly _concours_, when men compete for prizes with
+work, and their success is influenced by a previous _concour_ of these
+composition sketches.
+
+This preliminary sketch in its completed stage gives the number and
+position and movement of the figures and accessories, with the
+arrangement of light and shade and color. There is no attempt to give
+anything more than the most general kind of drawing, such details as
+the features, fingers, etc., being neglected. The light and shade on
+the single figures also is not expressed, but the light and shade
+effect of the whole picture is carefully shown, and the same with the
+color-scheme. It is this first sketch that establishes the character
+of the future picture in everything but the details. Sometimes this
+work is done on a quite large canvas, but usually is not more than a
+foot or two long, and of corresponding width.
+
+=Studies.=--After this there must be studies made for the drawing of
+the single figures, and for more exactness of line and action in the
+bringing of all together into the whole. This work is usually done in
+charcoal, from the life, and sometimes on a piece of drawing-paper
+stretched over the same canvas that the picture will be painted on, or
+otherwise arranged, but of the same size. Often, however, this work,
+too, is done on a smaller scale than that of the picture, especially
+when the picture is to be very large. This is based on the preliminary
+sketch as composition, and is intended to carry that idea out more in
+full, and perfect the drawing of the different figures, and to
+harmonize the composition. The composition and relation of figures
+both as to size and position on the final canvas depend on this study.
+
+[Illustration: =Study of Fortune.= _Michael Angelo._]
+
+=Corrections.=--In making these studies and in transferring them to
+the canvas, corrections are of course often necessary. The correction
+may or may not be satisfactory. To avoid too great confusion from the
+number of corrections in the same place, they are not made always
+directly on the study or canvas, but on a curtain of tissue paper
+dropped over it. The figure may be completely drawn, and is to be
+modified in whole or in part. The tissue paper receives the new
+drawing, and the old drawing shows through it, and the effect of the
+correction can be compared with that of the first idea. The study
+itself need not then be changed until the alteration which is
+satisfactory is found, as the process may be repeated as many times
+as necessary on the tissue paper, and the alterations finally embodied
+in the completed study.
+
+=Figure Studies.=--The studies for the various single figures are now
+made in the nude from the model, generally a quarter or half life
+size--a careful, accurate light and shade drawing of every figure in
+the picture, the model being posed in the position determined on in
+the study just spoken of. Sometimes further single studies are made
+with the same models draped, and generally special studies of drapery
+are made as well; these studies are afterwards used to place the
+figures in position on the canvas before the painting begins.
+
+=Transferring.=--The composition study must now be transferred to the
+canvas, to give the general arrangement and relative position, size,
+and action of the figures, etc. If the drawing is the same size as the
+canvas it is done by tracing, if not, then it is "squared up." In this
+stage of the process mechanical exactness of proportion is the thing
+required, as well as the saving of time; all things having been
+planned beforehand, and freedom of execution coming in later. This
+establishes the proportions, the sizes, and positions of the several
+figures on the final canvas. The drawing is not at this stage
+complete. The more general relations only are the purpose of this.
+
+Onto this preparation the studies drawn from the nude model are
+"squared up," and the drawing corrected again from the nude model.
+This drawing is now covered with its drapery, which is drawn from the
+life in charcoal, or a _frottee_ of some sort. At this stage the
+canvas should represent, in monochrome, very justly, what the finished
+picture will be in composition, drawing, and light and shade. If the
+_frottee_ of various colors (as suggested in the chapter on "Still
+Life") has been used, the general color scheme will show also. This
+completes the preliminary process of the picture, and when the
+painting is begun with a _frottee_, this stage includes also the
+_first painting_.
+
+="The Ebouch."=--An _ebouch_ is a painting which, mainly with body
+color, blocks in broadly and simply the main masses of a composition.
+Sometimes an _ebouch_ is used as one of the preliminary color studies
+for a picture, especially if there is some problem of drapery massing
+to be determined, or other motive purely of color and mass. Or if
+there is some piece of landscape detail such as a building or what not
+to come in, _ebouches_ for it will be made to be used in completing
+the picture. But more commonly the _ebouch_ is the first blocking-in
+painting of the picture, by means of which the greater masses of color
+and value are laid onto the canvas, somewhat rudely, but strongly, so
+as to give a strong, firm impression of the picture, and a solid
+under-painting on which future work may be done. Whether this
+_ebouch_ is rough or smooth, just how much of it will be body or solid
+color and how much transparent, just what degree of finish this
+painting will have,--these depend on the man who does it. No two men
+work precisely the same way.
+
+Some men make what is practically a large and very complete sketch.
+Some paint quite smoothly or frankly, with more or less of an effect
+of being finished as they go, working from one side of the picture
+gradually across the whole canvas. Others work a bit here and a bit
+there, and fill in between as they feel inclined. Another way is to
+patch in little spots of rather pure color, so that the _ebouch_ looks
+like a sort of mosaic of paint.
+
+In the matter of color, too, there is great difference of method. Some
+men lay in the picture with stronger color than they intend the
+finished picture to have, and gray it and bring it together with
+after-painting. Others go to the other extreme, and paint grayer and
+lighter, depending on glazings and full touches of color later on to
+richen and deepen the color. All the way between these two are
+modifications of method. The main difference between these extremes is
+that when stronger color is used in the first painting, the process is
+to paint with solid color all through; while if glazings are to be
+much used, the _ebouch_ must be lighter and quieter in color, to allow
+for the results of after-painting. For you cannot glaze _up_. You
+always glaze _down_. The glaze being a transparent color, used without
+white, will naturally make the color under it more brilliant in color,
+but darker in value, just as it would if you laid a piece of colored
+glass over it. And this result must be calculated on beforehand.
+
+[Illustration: =Ebouch of Portrait.= _Th. Robinson._
+One sitting of one hour and a half.]
+
+Which of all these methods is best to use depends altogether on which
+best suits the man and his purpose in the picture or his temperament.
+A rough _ebouch_ will not make a smooth picture. A mosaic gives a
+pure, clear basis of color to gray down and work over, and may be
+scraped for a good surface. It is a deliberate method, and will be
+successful only with a thoughtful, deliberate painter. If a man is a
+timid colorist, a strong, even crude, under-painting will help to
+strengthen his color. A good colorist will get color any way. For a
+student, the more directly he puts down what he sees, the less he
+calculates on the effect of future after-painting, the better.
+
+But whichever way a man works as to these various beginnings, the
+chief thing is, that he understand beforehand what are the peculiar
+advantages and qualities of each, and that he consider before he
+begins what he expects to do, and how he purposes to do it.
+
+=Further Painting.=--The first painting may be put in from nature with
+the help of the several models in succession. More probably it will
+be put in from the color sketch which furnishes the general scheme,
+and from a number of studies and _ebouches_ which will give the
+principal material for each part of the canvas. With the next painting
+comes the more exact study from models and accessories themselves. The
+under-painting is in, the color relations and the contrasts of masses,
+but all is more or less crude and undeveloped. Every one thing in the
+picture must be gradually brought to a further stage of completion.
+The background is not as yet to be carried farther as a whole. If the
+canvas is all covered, so that the background effect is there, it is
+all that is needed as yet. The most important figures are to be
+painted, beginning with the heads and hands, and at the same time
+painting the parts next to them, the background and drapery close
+around them, so that the immediate values shall all be true as far as
+it has gone.
+
+No small details are painted yet. The whole canvas is carried forward
+by painting all over it, no one thing being entirely finished; for the
+same degree of progress should be kept up for the whole picture. To
+finish any one part long before the rest is done, would be to run the
+risk of over-painting that part.
+
+After the heads and other flesh parts, the draperies should be brought
+up, and the background and all objects in it painted, to bring the
+whole picture to the same degree of completion. This finishes the
+second painting. It is all done from nature direct, and is painted
+solidly as a rule. Even if the first painting has been a _frottee_
+this one will have been solidly painted into that _frottee_, although
+the transparent rubbing may have been left showing, whenever it was
+true in effect; most probably in the shadows and broader dark masses
+of the backgrounds. In this second painting no glazings or scumblings
+come in. The canvas is brought forward as far as possible with direct
+frank brush-work with body color before these other processes can be
+used. Glazes and such manipulations require a solid under-painting,
+and a comparative completion of the picture for safe work. These
+processes are for the modifying of color mainly; you do not draw nor
+represent the more important and fundamental facts of the picture with
+them. All these things are painted first, in the most frank and direct
+way, and then you can do anything you want to on a sure basis of
+well-understood representation. There will be structure underneath
+your future processes.
+
+=The Third Painting.=--The third painting simply goes over the picture
+in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the
+important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or
+strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights.
+The procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture
+was begun with an _ebouch_ of body color or a _frottee_ of transparent
+color. The third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a
+whole further toward being finished.
+
+=Rough and Smooth.=--If body color has been used pretty freely in the
+two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in
+places by the time it is ready for the third painting. Whether that
+roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the
+painter to decide for himself. Among the greatest of painters there
+have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly.
+I have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of
+detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute
+detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of
+the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the
+heavier brush-strokes. The effect of color, and especially luminosity,
+has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these
+things are to be considered. As a rule, it might be well to look upon
+either extreme as something not of importance in itself. The mere
+quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any
+more than the mere quality of roughness is. If these things are
+necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities
+which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these
+qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. The
+painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to
+the picture. If he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the
+expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of
+the surface quality of his canvas will not bother him beyond the
+effect that it has upon his attaining of that expression.
+
+=Scraping.=--The second painting will be well dry before the third
+begins, especially if the paint be more rough and uneven than is for
+any reason desirable. Almost every painter scrapes his pictures more
+or less. There is pretty sure to be some part of it in which there is
+roughness just where he doesn't want it. For the third painting, that
+is to say, after the main things in the picture are practically
+entirely finished, there remains to be done the strengthening and
+richening and modifying of the colors, values, and accents, and the
+bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking.
+Before this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all
+over. If it does need it, you may use a regular tool made for that
+purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it being held firmly in
+such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas.
+
+It is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off
+such projections and unevenness of paint as would interfere with the
+proper over-painting.
+
+The third painting represents any and all processes that may be used
+to complete the picture. There is no rule as to the number of
+processes or "paintings." You may have a dozen paintings if you want
+them, and after the first two they are all modifications and
+subdivisions of the third painting; for they all add to furthering the
+completion of the picture. They are all done more or less from nature,
+as the second painting was. There should be very little done to any
+picture without constant reference to nature.
+
+If you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. Don't "tone" it
+with a general wash of some color. That is not the way pictures are
+"brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of the glaze. The glaze,
+like any other application of paint, is put on just where it is needed
+to modify the color of that place where the color goes. The use of a
+scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be
+painted into and over with solid color, and that again modified as
+much as is called for. The thing which is to be carefully avoided is
+not the use of any special process, but the ceasing from the use of
+some process or other before the thing is as it should be,--don't stop
+before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of
+the idea of the picture.
+
+This completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what
+is ordinarily looked upon as "finish." Finish is not surface, but
+expression; and completeness of expression may demand roughness and
+avoidance of detail and surface at one time quite as positively as it
+demands more detail and consequent smoothness at another.
+
+And this final completeness comes from the last paintings which I
+group together as the "third." Scumble and glaze and paint into them,
+and glaze and scumble again. Use any process which will help your
+picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any
+picture being a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition
+that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. Those
+qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of
+meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more
+general qualities of color and tone. Emphasis and force of accent,
+such detail as you want, and the final and more delicate perceptions
+of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be
+divided into several paintings.
+
+=Between Paintings.=--When a painting is dry and you begin to work on
+it again, you will probably find parts of its surface covered with a
+kind of bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures the
+work altogether. It is "dried in." In drying, some of the oil of the
+last painting is absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze is
+the result. You cannot paint on it without in some way bringing it
+back to its original color. You cannot varnish it out at this stage,
+for this will not have a good effect on your picture.
+
+="Oiling Out."=--You can oil it all over, and then rub all the oil off
+that you can. This will bring it out. But the oil will tend to darken
+the picture; too much oil should be avoided. Turpentine with a little
+oil in it will bring it out also, but it will not stay out so long,
+but perhaps long enough for you to work on it. If you put a little
+siccative de Harlem in it, or use any picture varnish thinned with
+turpentine, it will serve well enough. There is a retouching varnish,
+_vernis a retoucher_, which is made for this purpose, and is perfectly
+safe and good.
+
+The picture must be well dried before it is finally varnished.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV
+
+                      DIFFICULTIES OF BEGINNERS
+
+
+All painters have difficulty with their pictures, but the trouble with
+the beginner is that he has not experience enough to know how to meet
+it. The solving of all difficulties is a matter of application of
+fundamental principles to them; but it is necessary to know these
+principles, and to have applied them to simple problems, before one
+can know how to apply them to less simple ones.
+
+I have tried to deal fully with these principles rather than to tell
+how to do any one thing, and to point out the application whenever it
+could be done.
+
+There are, however, some things that almost always bother the
+beginner, and it may be helpful to speak of them particularly.
+
+=Selection of Subject.=--One of the chief objections to copying as a
+method of beginning study is that while it teaches a good deal about
+surface-work, it gives no practical training just when it is most
+needed. The student who has only copied has no idea how to look for a
+composition, how to place it on his canvas, or how to translate into
+line and color the actual forms which he sees in nature. These things
+are all done for him in the picture he is copying, yet these are the
+very first things he should have practised in. The making of a picture
+begins before the drawing and painting begins. You see something
+out-doors, or you see a group of people or a single person in an
+interesting position. It is one thing to see it; how are you
+practically to grasp it so as to get it on canvas? That is quite a
+different thing. How much shall you take in? How much leave out? What
+proportion of the canvas shall the main object or figure take up? All
+these are questions which need some experience to answer.
+
+In dealing with figures experience comes somewhat naturally, because
+you will of course not undertake more than a head and shoulders, with
+a plain background, for your first work. The selecting of subject in
+this is chiefly the choice of lighting and position of head, which
+have been spoken of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the canvas
+should be reduced to the making of the head as large as it will come
+conveniently. The old rule was that the point of the nose should be
+about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases on the ordinary
+canvas this brings the head in the right place. As you paint more you
+will put in more and more of the figure, and so progress comes very
+naturally.
+
+But in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at
+first. There is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that
+it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. Practice in
+still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are
+seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to
+see. Even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come
+to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its
+simplicity. The simplicity which you should look for to make your
+selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but
+the definiteness of some marked object or effect. What is good as a
+"view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. You want
+something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it.
+A long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is
+simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? In an
+ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color
+without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. It can be painted,
+of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject
+for a master, not for a student. But suppose there were a tree or a
+group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky,
+and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in
+the clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose all was in broad
+light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other
+shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of
+it. Immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make
+your picture around. The field and hill alone will make a study of
+distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an
+effective sketch. The two effects I have supposed give the possibility
+for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture.
+
+This central object or effect which I have supposed also clears up the
+matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. With merely the
+hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side
+or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. But
+the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. The tree
+and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. Very well, then,
+make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. Then
+what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and
+you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size,
+it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither
+in the middle exactly nor too much to one side.
+
+Here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view,
+with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. One shows the
+lack of saliency, although the tree is there. In the other the camera
+was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree
+became large enough to be of importance in the composition. The
+placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this
+case.
+
+=Centralize.=--Now, as you go about looking for things to sketch,
+look always for some central object or effect. If you find that
+what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite
+and graspable,--some contrast of form, or light and shade, or
+color,--don't attempt it. The thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a
+picture in it, but not for you. You are learning how to look for and
+to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched,
+without too much subtlety either of form or color or value.
+
+=Placing.=--Having found your subject with something definite in it,
+you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." It will not do to
+put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it
+happens. You will not be satisfied with the effect of this. The object
+of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call
+attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at.
+Then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to
+be seen whether anything else is seen or not. This is the first thing
+to be thought of in placing your subject. _Where_ is it to come on
+the canvas? How much room is it to take up? If it is too large, there
+is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. If it is to
+be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference
+to. On the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it
+insignificant.
+
+[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 1.=]
+
+If it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and
+sky,--where your horizon line will come. Then, having drawn that line,
+make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect
+or object--a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get
+merely its simplest suggestion of outline. These two things will show
+you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of
+the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. If it isn't right, rub it
+out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one
+side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. When you have
+done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important
+thing.
+
+[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 2.=]
+
+=Still Life, etc.=--If your subject be still life, flowers, or an
+animal or other figure, go about it in the same way. Look at it well.
+Try to get an idea of its general shape, and block that out with a few
+lines. You will almost always find a horizontal line which by cutting
+across the mass will help you to decide where the mass will best come.
+First, the mass must be about the right size, and then it must balance
+well on the canvas. Any of the things suggested as helping about
+drawing and values will of course help you here. The reducing-glass
+will help you to get the size and position of things. The card with a
+square hole in it will do the same. Even a sort of little frame made
+with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands will cut off the
+surrounding objects, and help you see your group as a whole with other
+things out of the way.
+
+=Walk About.=--A change of position of a very few feet sometimes makes
+a great difference in the looks of a subject. The first view of it is
+not always the best. Walk around a little; look at it from one point
+and from another. Take your time. Better begin a little later than
+stop because you don't like it and feel discouraged. Time taken to
+consider well beforehand is never lost. "Well begun is half done."
+
+=Relief.=--In beginning a thing you want to have the first few
+minutes' work to do the most possible towards giving you something to
+judge by. You want from the very first to get something recognizable.
+Then every subsequent touch, having reference to that, will be so much
+the more sure and effective. Look, then, first for what will count
+most.
+
+=What to look for.=--Whether you lay your work out first with
+black-and-white or with paint, look to see where the greatest contrast
+is. Where is there a strong light against dark and a strong dark
+against light? Not the little accents, but that which marks the
+contact of two great planes. Find this first, and represent it as soon
+as you have got the main values, in this way the whole thing will tell
+as an actuality. It will not yet carry much expression, but it will
+look like a _fact_, and it will have established certain relations
+from which you can work forward.
+
+=Colors.=--It ought to go without saying that the colors as they come
+from the tube are not right for any color you see in nature however
+you think they look. But beginners are very apt to think that if they
+cannot get the color they want, they can get it in another kind of
+tube. This is a mistake. The tubes of color that are actually
+necessary for almost every possible tint or combination in nature are
+very few. But they must be used to advantage. Now and then one finds
+his palette lacking, and must add to it; but after one has
+experimented a while he settles down to some eight or ten colors
+which will do almost everything, and two or three more that will do
+what remains. When you work out-of-doors you may find that more
+variety will help you and gain time for you; that several blues and
+some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular
+outfit. Still even then, when you have got beyond the first frantic
+gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself constantly using
+certain colors and neglecting others. These others, then, you do not
+need, and you may leave them out of your box.
+
+=Too Many Tubes.=--If you have too many colors, they are a trouble
+rather than a help to you. You must carry them all in your mind, and
+you do not so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and taking
+up the paint from different parts of your palette instinctively--which
+means that you are gaining command of it. Never put a new color on
+your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special
+reason for it. Better get well acquainted with the regular colors you
+have, and have only as many as you can handle well.
+
+=Mixing.=--Use some system in mixing your paint. Have your palette set
+the same way always, so that your brush can find the color without
+having to hunt for it. Have a reasonable way too of taking up your
+color before you mix it. Don't always begin with the same one. Is the
+tint light or dark? strong or delicate? What is the prevailing color
+in it? Let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors
+together for mixing. Let these things have to do also with the
+proportionate quantity of each. Suppose you have a heavy dark green to
+mix, what will you take first? Make a dash at the white, put it in the
+middle of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? How much
+paint would you have to take before you got your color? Yet I've seen
+this very thing done, and others equally senseless. What is the green?
+Dark. Bluish or warm? Will reddish or yellowish blue do it best? How
+much space do you want that brushful to cover? Take enough blue, add
+to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color.
+Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. The
+color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't
+mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab
+of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in
+quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep
+it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of
+each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every
+time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its
+vibration and life.
+
+Now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? White?
+Wait a minute. Think. Will white take away the richness of it? White
+always grays and flattens the color. Don't put it into a warm, rich
+color unless it belongs there. Then only as much as is needed.
+
+Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value on a forehead in
+full light? White first, then a little modifying color, yellow first,
+then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. When you have
+a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. Then gray it
+as much as you need to, never the reverse. But when you want a
+delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it
+cautiously.
+
+These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary to take the trouble to
+write it down? But common-sense is not always attributed to artists,
+and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense
+to his painting at first. To say it to him opens his eyes. Best be on
+the safe side.
+
+=Crude Color.=--The beginner is sure to get crude color, either from
+lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints
+he knows he wants. In the latter case crude color either comes from
+too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought
+together, which is only another form of the same, for an added
+complementary would make it right. For instance, Prussian blue and
+chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly
+put anywhere--a strong, crude green. Well, what is the complementary?
+Red? And what does a complementary do to a color? Neutralizes, grays.
+Then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to
+kill its quality.
+
+Or if you don't want the color that makes, take a little reddish
+yellow, ochre say, and possibly a little reddish blue, new blue or
+ultramarine; add these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the
+same kind of green. This is the principle in extreme. Still, the best
+way would be not to try to make a green of Prussian blue and chrome
+yellow. It is better to know the qualities of each tube color on your
+palette. Know which two colors mix to make a crude color, and which
+will be gray, more or less, without a third.
+
+=Muddy Color.=--Dirty or muddy color comes from lack of this last. You
+do not know how your colors are going to affect each other. You mix,
+and the color looks right on the palette, but on the canvas it is not
+right. You mix again and put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first
+tint and you get--mud. Why? Both wrong. Scrape the whole thing off.
+With a clean spot of canvas mix a fresh color. Put it on frankly and
+freshly and let it alone--don't dabble it. The chances are it will be
+at least fresh, clean color.
+
+Over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than
+three colors are used. When you don't get the right tint with three
+colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. If that is
+not so, and you must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or
+you will have to mix the tint again.
+
+=Dirty Brushes and Palette.=--Using dirty brushes causes muddy color.
+Don't be too economical about the number of brushes you use. Keep a
+good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out of your brush often.
+If the color is getting muddy, clean your palette and take a clean
+brush. Your palette is sure to get covered with paint of all colors
+when you have painted a little while. You can't mix colors with any
+degree of certainty if the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints.
+Use your palette-knife--that's what it's for. Scrape the palette clean
+every once in a while as it gets crowded. Wipe it off. Take some fresh
+brushes. Then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the fault
+of your tools.
+
+=Out-door and In-door Colors.=--There is one source of discouragement
+and difficulty that every one has to contend against; that is, the
+difference in the apparent key of paint when, having been put on
+out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. Out-of-doors the color looked
+bright and light, and when you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray,
+and perhaps muddy and dead. This is something you must expect, and
+must learn how to control.
+
+As everything that the out-door light falls upon looks the brighter
+for it, so will your paint look brighter than it really is because of
+the brilliancy of the light which you see it in. You must learn to
+make allowance for that. You must learn by experience how much the
+color will go down when you take it into the house.
+
+Of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary thing in working
+out-of-doors, and if it is lined with black so much the better for
+you; for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming through the
+cloth, and while it shades your canvas, it does to some extent give a
+false glow to your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances.
+
+Mere experience will give you that knowledge more or less; but there
+are ways in which you can help yourself.
+
+When you first begin to work out-doors try to find a good solid shade
+in which to place your easel, and then try to paint up to the full
+key, even at the risk of a little crudeness of color. Use colors that
+seem rather pure than otherwise. You may be sure that the color will
+"come down" a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. Then, if the
+shade has been pretty even, and your canvas has had a fair light, you
+will get a fairly good color-key.
+
+=Predetermined Pitch.=--Another way is to determine the pitch of the
+painting in some way before you take the canvas out-of-doors. There
+are various ways of doing this. The most practical is, perhaps, to
+know the relative value, in the house and out-doors, of the priming of
+your canvas. Have a definite knowledge of how near to the highest
+light you will want that priming is. Then, when you put on the light
+paint, if you keep it light with reference to the known pitch of the
+priming, you will keep the whole painting light.
+
+=Discouragement.=--We all get discouraged sometimes, but it is
+something to know that the case is not hopeless because we are. That
+what we are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason that it
+may not get done eventually. Often the discouragement is not even a
+sign that what we are doing is not going well. The discouragement may
+be one way that fatigue shows itself, and we may feel discouraged
+after a particularly successful day's work--in consequence of it very
+probably. Make it a rule not to judge of a day's work at the end of
+that day. Wait till next morning, when fresh and rested, and you will
+have a much more just notion of what you have done.
+
+When you begin to get blue about your work is the time to stop and
+rest. If the blues are the result of tire, working longer will only
+make your picture worse. A tired brain and eye never improved a piece
+of painting. And in the same spirit rest often while you are painting.
+If your model rests, it is as well that you rest also. Turn away from
+your work, and when you get to work again you will look at it with a
+fresh eye.
+
+=Change Your Work Often.=--Too continued and concentrated work on the
+same picture also will lead to discouragement. Change your work, keep
+several things going at the same time, and when you are tired of one
+you may work with fresh perceptions and interest on another.
+
+Stop often to walk away from your work. Lay down your palette and
+brushes, and put the canvas at the other end of the room. Straighten
+your back and look at the picture at a distance. You get an impression
+of the thing as a whole. What you have been doing will be judged of
+less by itself and more in relation to the rest of the picture, and so
+more justly.
+
+When things are going wrong, stop work for the day. Take a rest. Then,
+before you begin again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look
+the picture over--consider it, compare it with nature, and make up
+your mind just what it lacks, just what it needs, just what you will
+do first to make it as it should be. It is marvellous how it drives
+off the blues to know just what you are going to do next.
+
+
+
+
+                         TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
+
+
+1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
+
+2. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
+
+3. Illustration captions are indicated by =caption=.
+
+4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the
+   closest paragraph break.
+
+5. The word d'oeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original on page 242.
+
+6. In the List of Illustrations, page number for "Descent from Cross"
+   is corrected to 163 (original text is 165).
+
+7. The following misprints have been corrected:
+     "heavvier" corrected to "heavier" (page 16)
+     "interor" corrected to "interior" (page 141)
+     "arrangemen" corrected to "arrangement" (page 171)
+     "analagous" corrected to "analogous" (page 190)
+     "freeest" corrected to "freest" (page 216)
+     "naeivete" corrected to "naivete" (page 289)
+
+8. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies
+   in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been
+   retained.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
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