The Painter in Oil Part 19

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 ma.s.ses. Try to feel the skull under these planes of light and dark. Have the edges of them p.r.o.nounced 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.

t.i.tian 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 ma.s.ses you are to look for and emphasize are the great s.p.a.ces 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Haystacks in Suns.h.i.+ne.= _Monet._ To show certain characteristics of handling in "Impressionist" work.]

CHAPTER x.x.xI

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 a.n.a.lysis; 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 pa.s.sing 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 s.p.a.ce, 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 ma.s.ses, but there is great probability of overdrawing. The curves that mark the modelling of the ground are very difficult to give justly. The alt.i.tude 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Willow Road.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._]