The Painter in Oil Part 15

From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the expression at the same time.

This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of the power of perception rather than the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of nature should come first. The _seeing_ of what is must precede the _stating_ of it.

But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right places.

Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the original.

This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really having a picture which is more than superficially like the original; but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.

Study your original carefully before and while working on your own canvas. See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush than the painter used on the picture you are copying.

The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. Never glaze nor sc.u.mble because _you_ can't get the colors without. Your business is to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. And any other manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. You are not originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it another way.

This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of course any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and I have found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to advanced students.

So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.

In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. For this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand, without which the work would be too rigid and hard.

="Squaring up."=--This process is called "squaring-up," and consists of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.

The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. It is not necessary that there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit the lines of the study.

Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other that the horizontal ones are, or not.

Number the s.p.a.ces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at one side the same.

Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of s.p.a.ces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done with the study, and keep the relation of the s.p.a.ces the same, you can make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical s.p.a.ces are to the horizontal, in both the study and the picture.

By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to modify it, or correct it.

In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any surface you please.

CHAPTER XXV

KINDS OF PAINTING

Why not recognize that conviction, intense personal attraction to a certain sort of thing is the life of all art. How else can life get into art than through the love of what you paint? A man may understand what he does not love, but he will never infuse with life that which he does not love. Understand it he should, if he would express it; but love it he must, if he would have others love it.

You see it is not the thing, but the manner; not the fact, but what you can find in it; not the object, but what you can express by it.

"_Un chef d'oeuvre vaut un chef d'oeuvre_" because perfect delight in loveliness found in a small thing is as perfect as perfect delight in loveliness found in a great thing. And still life uninteresting as a fact, may be fascinating if "seen through the medium of a temperament."

Don't let the idea get into your head that one thing is easier to do than another thing. Perhaps it is, but it is a bad mental att.i.tude to think so. And even then, you may find that when you have worked out all that its easiness shows you, some one with better knowledge or insight may come along and point out undreamed-of beauties and subtleties. And are they easy? To see and express the possibilities in easy things is the hardest of all.

=Cla.s.sification.=--Divide paintings into two cla.s.ses,--those representing objects seen out-of-doors, and those representing objects in-doors. This is the most fundamental of all cla.s.sifications, and it is one which belongs practically to this century. Before this century it was hardly thought of to distinguish out-door light from in-door light.

Some of the Dutchmen did it. But it is only in this century that the principle has made itself felt. It is this which makes the difference of pitch or key so marked between the modern and the ancient pictures.

It has changed the whole color-scheme.

An out-door picture may be still painted in the studio, but it must be painted from studies made out-doors. It is no longer possible to pose a model in a studio-light and paint her so into a landscape. It was right to do it when it was done frankly, when the world had not waked up to the fact that things look different in diffused and in concentrated lights. It is not right now. You cannot go back of your century. To be born too late is more fatal than to be born too soon.

Whatever kind of picture you take in hand, remember that what distinguishes the treatment of it from that of other pictures depends on the inherent character of it. That the difficulties as well as the facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a different application of the universal principles. Don't think that landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the more obvious right are more easily seen.

You must study the necessities, the demands of treatment of the different sorts of subjects--see what is peculiar to each, and what common to all. You must find to what aesthetic qualities each most readily lends itself, what are the subtleties to be sought for, and what are the problems they offer.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE SKETCH

The sketch is the germ of the picture. It contains the idea which may later become the finished work. In your sketches you gather effects and suggestions of possibilities, of all kinds. You do not work long over a sketch, nor do you work perfunctorily. You do not make it because you ought to, but because you see something in nature which charms you; or because you have found an idea you wish to make a note of.

Understand thoroughly the use and meaning of sketches, and you will get more good from the making of them. For your sketching is an important matter to your painting. You do not learn how to paint by sketching; but you can learn a great many things, and some of them you can learn no other way. A sketch is not a picture; neither is it a study. Each of these things has its special purpose and function, and its proper character.

A sketch is always a note of an idea--an idea seen or conceived.

Everything is sacrificed in the sketch to the noting of that idea. One idea only, in one sketch; more ideas, more sketches.

There are two kinds of sketches: those made from nature to seize an effect of some sort; and those made to work out or express tersely some composition or scheme of color which you have in your mind. Both are of great use to the student as well as essential to the work of the artist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Sketch of a Hillside blocked in from Nature, First Suggestion of Composition, etc.=]

The first conception of a picture is always embodied in the form of a sketch, and the artist will make as many sketches as he thinks of changes in his original idea. It is in this form that he works out his picture problem. He is troubled here by nothing but the one thing he has in mind at this time. It may be an arrangement of line or of ma.s.s. He changes and rearranges it as he pleases, not troubling himself in the least with exactness of drawing, of modelling, of color, nor of anything but that one of composition. It may be a scheme of color, and here again the spots of pigment only vaguely resemble the things they will later represent; now they are only composition of color to the painter, and everything bends to that. When this has been decided on, has been successfully worked out, then it is time enough to think of other things. And think of other things he does, before he makes his picture; but not in this sketch; in another sketch or other sketches, each with its own problem, or in studies which will furnish more material to be used later; or in the picture itself, where the problem is the unity of the various ideas within the great whole in the completed painting.

It is the sketch on which the picture rests for its singleness of purpose. No picture but begins in this way, whether it is afterwards built up on the same canvas or not. The sketch points the way. But all the preliminary sketches of a painting are not problems of composition or color; are not conceptions of the brain. There are suggestions received from nature which the painter perceives rather than conceives. Possibilities show themselves in these, but it is in the sketch that they first become tangible and stable. This is the sketch from nature, always the record of an impression, the note of an idea hinted by one fact or condition seen more sharply or clearly than any or all of the thousands which surrounded it at the moment.

The painter must always sketch from nature. Only by so doing can he be constantly in touch with her, and receive her suggestions unaffected by mult.i.tudinous facts. The sketch preserves for him the evanescent effects of nature, which the study would not so entirely, because not so simply, grasp. The sudden storm approaches; the fleeting cloud shadow; or the last gleam of afterglow; these, as well as the more permanent, but equally charming effects of ma.s.s against ma.s.s of wood and sky, or of meadow and hill, he can only store up for future use or reference in his sketches.

=Main Idea Only.=--In the making of the sketch, then, no problem should come in but that of the expression of the main idea,--no problem of drawing or of manipulation of color. To get the idea expressed in the most direct and immediate and convenient way, anything will do to sketch on or with; that which presents the least difficulty is the best. The matter of temperament, of course, comes in largely, and technical facility. That which you can use most freely, use in your sketching, and keep for other occasions the new means or medium. Use freely, if you can, black and white for whatever black and white will express, and pigment for all color effects. Oil for greatest certainty and facility of correction.

=Quick Work.=--Make your sketch at one sitting, or you will have something which is not a sketch. Work long enough, and it may be a study; but more than one sitting makes it neither one thing nor the other. To say nothing of the fact that the conditions are unlikely to be exactly the same again, you are almost sure on the second working to have lost the first impression,--the freshness and directness of purpose which the first impress gives; and this is the very heart of a sketch. You must never lose sight of what was the original purpose of it; never forget what it was which first made you want to paint it. No matter what else you get or do not get, if you lose this you lose all that can give it life or reality.

The very fact that you have limited yourself to one working makes you concentrate on that which first caught your attention, and that is what you want to seize.

Overworkings and after-paintings will only interfere with the directness and force with which this is expressed.

Remember that nature is never at rest. You must catch her on the wing, and the more quickly you do it the more vivid will be the effect.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =The River Bank.= _D. Burleigh Parkhurst._ Half-hour sunset sketch.]

"Nature is economical. She puts her lights and darks only where she needs them." Do the same, and use no more effort than will suffice to express that which is most important. The rest will come another time.