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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.



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.

THE END