The Painter in Oil Part 24

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 ma.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =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 ma.s.s will help you to decide where the ma.s.s will best come.

First, the ma.s.s 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-gla.s.s 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 quant.i.ty 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 s.p.a.ce 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 quant.i.ty, 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. Sc.r.a.pe 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. Sc.r.a.pe 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.