The Painter in Oil Part 2

Some of the most useful sizes of the more pointed brushes are shown on opposite page. There are, of course, sizes between these, and many larger; but these are what you will find the best. It would be better to have more of each size than to have more sizes. You should try to work with fewer rather than more sizes, and, as a rule, work more with the larger than with the smaller brush, even for fine work. You will work with more force and tend less to pettiness, if you learn to put in small touches with the largest brush that will do it. Breadth is not painting with a large brush; but the man who works always with a small brush instinctively looks for the things a small brush is adapted to, and will unconsciously drift into a little way of working.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The fan brush, such as here ill.u.s.trated, is a useful brush, not to paint with, but to flick or drag across an outline or other part of a painting when it is getting too hard and liney. You may not want it once a month, but it is very useful when you do want it.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

=Care of Brushes.=--The best of economy in brushes lies in your care of them. You should never let the paint dry on them nor go too long without careful washing. It is not necessary to wash them every day with soap and water, but they would be the better for such treatment.

Quite often, once a week, say, you should wash your brushes carefully with soap and water. You may use warm water, but don't have it hot, as that may melt the glue which holds the bristles together in the ferrule. Use strong soap with plenty of lye in it--common bar soap, or better, the old-fashioned soft soap. Hold several brushes together in one hand so that the tips are all of a length, dip them together into or rub them onto the soap, and then rub them briskly in the palm of the other hand. When the paint is well worked into the lather, do the same with the other brushes, letting the first ones soak in the soap, but not in the water. Then rinse them, and carefully work them clean one by one, with the fingers. When you lay them aside to dry, see that the bristles are all straight and smooth, and they will be in perfect condition for next painting.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

=Cleaning.=--But from day to day you need not take quite so much trouble as this. True, the brushes will keep in better condition if washed in soap and water every day, but it is not always convenient to do this. You may then use the brush-cleaner. This is a tin box with a false bottom of perforated tin or of wire netting about half-way down, which allows the liquid to stand a half-inch or so above it; so that when you put your brush in and rub it around, the paint is rinsed from it, and settles through the perforations to the bottom, leaving the liquid clear again above it. If you use this carefully, cleaning one brush at a time, not rubbing it too hard, and pulling the hairs straight by wiping them on a clean rag, you may keep your brushes in good condition quite easily. But they will need a careful soap-and-water washing every little while, besides. The liquid best for use in this cleaner is the common kerosene or coal oil. Never use turpentine to rinse your brushes. It will make them brittle and harsh; but the kerosene will remove all the paint, and will not affect the brush.

CHAPTER V

PAINTS

Of all your materials, it is on your paints that quality has the most vital effect. With bad paint your work is hopeless. You may get an effect that looks all right, but how long will it stand, and how much better may it not have been if your colors had been good? You can tell nothing about it. You may have luck, and your work hold; or you may not have luck, and in a month your picture is ruined. Don't trust to luck. Keep that element out as much as you can, always. But in the matter of paints, if you count on luck at all, remember that the chances are altogether against you. Don't let yourself be persuaded to indulge in experiments with colors which you have reason to think are of doubtful quality. Keep on the safe side, and use colors you are sure of, even if they do cost a little more--at first; for they are cheaper in the long-run. And even in the time of using of one tube, generally the good paint does enough more work to cover the difference of cost.

=Bad Paints.=--Suspect colors which are too cheap. Good work is expensive. Ability and skill and experience count in making artists'

colors, and must be paid for. If you would get around the cost of first-cla.s.s material you must mix it with inferior material.

The first effect you will notice in using poor colors is a certain hindrance to your facility, due to the fact that the color is weak--does not have the snap and strength in it that you expect. The paint has not a full color quality, but mixes dead and flat. This you will find particularly in the finer and lighter yellows. You need not fear much adulteration in those paints which are naturally cheap, of course. It is in those higher-priced colors, on which you must largely depend for the more sparkling qualities, that you will have most trouble.

Unevenness of working, and lack of covering or mixing power, you will find in poor paints also. They have no strength, and you must keep adding them more and more to other colors to get them to do their work. All these things are bothersome. They make you give more attention to the pigments while working than you ought to, and when all is done, your picture is weak and negative in color.

Another effect to be feared from bad colors is that your work will not stand; the colors fade or change, and the paint cracks. The former effect is from bad material, or bad combinations of them in the working, and the latter mainly from bad vehicles used in grinding them.

I have seen pictures go to pieces within a month of their painting--bad paint and bad combinations. Of course you can use good colors so that the picture will not stand. But that will be your own fault, and it is no excuse for the use of colors which you can by no possibility do good work with.

=Good Paints.=--The three things on which the quality of good paint depends are good pigment, good vehicles, and good preparation.

The pigments used are of mineral, chemical, and vegetable origin. The term _pigment_ technically means the powdered substance which, when mixed with a vehicle, as oil, becomes _paint_. The most important pigments now used are artificial products, chiefly chemical compounds, including chemical preparations of natural mineral earths.

As a rule, the colors made from earths may be cla.s.sed as all permanent; those from chemicals, permanent or not, as the case may be; and those of vegetable origin fugitive, with few exceptions. Some colors are good when used as water colors, and bad when used in oil.

Further on I will speak of the fugitiveness and permanency of colors in detail. I wish here to emphasize the fact that the origin of the material of which the pigment is made has much to do with the sort of work that that pigment will do, and with the permanency of the effect which is produced; and therefore that while a paint may look like another, its working or its lasting qualities may be quite different.

=The Vehicles.=--The vehicles by which the pigment is made fluent and plastic are quite as important in their effects. They not only have to do with the business of drying, owing to the substances used as dryers, but they may have to do with the chemical action of one pigment on another.

=The Preparation.=--Finally, the preparation of the pigment demands the utmost skill and knowledge, if the colors are to be good. The paints used by the old masters were few and simple, and the fact that they prepared them themselves had much to do with the manner in which they kept their color. The paints used now are less simple. We do not prepare and grind them ourselves, and we could hardly do so if we wished to, so we are the more dependent on the integrity of the colorman who does it for us.

The preparation of the paint begins with the chemical or physical preparation of each pigment, and then comes the mixing of several to produce any particular color; and finally the mechanical process of grinding with the proper vehicle to bring it to the proper fineness and smoothness.

=Grinding.=--The color which the artist uses must be most evenly and perfectly ground. The grinding which will do for ordinary house paints will not do for the artist's colors. Neither will the chemical processes suitable for the one serve for the other. Not only must the machinery, but the experience, skill and care, be much greater for artist's colors. Therefore it is that the specialization of color-making is most important to good colors for the use of the artist.

=Reliable Makers.=--If you would work to the best advantage as far as your colors are concerned, both as to getting the best effects which pure pigments skilfully and honestly prepared will give you, and as to the permanency of those effects when you have gotten them, see to it that you get paint made by a thoroughly reliable colorman.

It is not my province to say whose colors you should use; doubtless there are many colormen who make artists' materials honestly and well.

Nevertheless, I may mention that there are no colors which have been more thoroughly tested, both by the length of time they have been in the possession of painters, and by the number of painters who have used them, than those of Winsor and Newton of London. No colors have been so generally sold and for so long a time, particularly in this country, as these, and none are so well known for their evenness and excellence of quality.

I do not say that these manufacturers do not make any colors which should not go on the palette of the cautious artist--I believe that they do not make that claim themselves; but such colors as they do a.s.sert to be good, pure, and permanent, you may feel perfectly safe in using, and be sure that they are as well made as colors can be. This is as much as can be said of any paints, and more than can be said of most. I have used these colors for many years, and my own experience is that they have always been all that a painter need ask.

The fact that Winsor and Newton's colors can be found in any town where colors can be had at all, makes me the more free to recommend them, as you can always command them. This fact also speaks for the general approval of them.

Inasmuch as certain colors are not claimed to be permanent and others are, it is for you to compose your palette of those which will combine safely. This you can do with a little care. Some colors are permanent by themselves or with some colors, but not in combination with certain others. You should then take the trouble to consider these chemical relationships.

It is not necessary for you to study the chemistry of paints, but you may read what has been ascertained as to the effects of combinations, and act accordingly. There are practically duplications of color-quality in pigments which are bad, and in pigments which are good; so that you can use the good color instead of the bad one to do the same work. The good color will cost more, but there is no way of making the bad color good, so you must pay the difference due to the cost of the better material, or put up with the result of using bad colors.

=Chemical Changes.=--The causes of change of color in pigments are of four kinds, all of them chemical effects. 1, the action of light; 2, the action of the atmosphere; 3, the action of the medium; and 4, the action of the pigments themselves on each other. The action of light is to bring about or to a.s.sist in the decomposition of the pigment. It is less marked in oil than in water color, because the oil forms a sort of sheath for the color particles. The manner in which light does its deteriorating work is somewhat similar to that of heat. The action of light is very slow, but it seems to do the same thing in a long time that heat would do in a short time.

Some colors are unaffected or little affected by light, and of course you will use them in preference to all others. The atmosphere affects the paint because of certain chemical elements contained in it, which tend to cause new combinations with the materials which are already in combination in the pigment. The action of the oxygen in the air is the chief agent in affecting the pigment, and it is here particularly that light, and especially sunlight, a.s.sists in decomposition. The air of towns and cities generally contains sulphuric and sulphurous acids and sulphuretted hydrogen. This latter gas is most effective in changing oil paintings, because of its action in turning white lead dark; and as white lead is the basis of many qualities in painting, this gas may have a very general action.

Moisture in the atmosphere is also a cause of change, but there is little to be dreaded from this, as the oil protects the colors.

Oil absorbs oxygen in drying, and so is apt to have an effect on colors liable to change from that element, and many vehicles contain materials to hasten the drying which further aid in the deterioration of the pigment. Bad oil will tend to crack the picture also. The greatest care should be used in this direction, as the most permanent colors may be ruined by bad vehicles.

Pigments will not have a deteriorating effect on each other as long as they are solid. But if one of them is soluble in the medium, then chemical action commences; but as most pigments are somewhat soluble, there is always some danger in mixing them. The best we can do is, as I said before, to try to have on the palette, as far as possible, only colors which are friendly to each other.

As a student you should not be much occupied, however, with all this.

You must expect that all color will change somewhat. But you need not use those which change immediately or markedly, and you may use them in a way which will tend to make them change as little as may be.

Colors have stood for years, and what is practical permanence, not perfect permanence, is all you need look for. If you think too much of the permanence of your colors, it will interfere with the directness of your study. Therefore, decide on a palette which is as complete and safe as you can make it, excluding the notably bad pigments, and think no more about it.

When you need to add a new color to your palette, choose it with reference to those already on it, and go ahead. This is what the whole subject resolves itself to, practically, for you as a student.

=Opaque and Transparent Colors.=--Some colors, like the madders, have a jelly-like consistency when mixed with oil, others, the earths among them, are dense and opaque. We speak of them respectively as "transparent" and "solid" colors. These qualities, which divide the paints into two cla.s.ses, have no relation to their permanency. As far as that is concerned you use them in the same way, as some transparent colors are safe and some fugitive; and the same with the opaque colors.

The only difference is in the fact that, as a rule, the solid colors are better dryers. But you will notice that while you may mix these colors together as though this difference between them did not exist, in certain processes you use them differently. So you will see, farther on, that for a "glaze" you can use only the transparent or semi-opaque colors, for a sc.u.mble you naturally use the solid ones.

You should know, however, for the sake of clearness, just what is meant when "solid" or "body" or "opaque" color is spoken of, and what is meant by "transparent" color.

=Safe and Unsafe Colors.=--Beyond what has been said of the causes of change in colors it is not necessary that you should know the chemical const.i.tuents of them. If you want to look into the matter further there are books, such as "Field's Chromatography," which treat fully of the subject, and which you may study.

But practically you should know which colors are to be depended on and which not. Let us consider the princ.i.p.al colors in detail then, merely as to their actual stability. I will speak of them in connection with the plates of colors at the end of this book. I would like you to compare what is said of each color with the corresponding color in the plates. Those colors in the plates which are not spoken of here, you may consider as useful in showing you the character of different colors which are made, but which may or may not be used, according as you may need them. I shall not attempt to mention all the pigments that are in the market. You need never use more than fifteen or twenty all told. Many painters use more, it is true; but if you know how to make the best use of that number, you may safely wait till you "grow to them" before you bother with more. And I shall speak only of those which you will find essential or most generally useful, and those which should be particularly avoided.

=Permanency.=--It should be stated what is meant by a permanent color.

There is no color which is not to be influenced in some way. The most sound of pigments will change if the conditions favor the change. When we speak of a permanent color, we mean only one which under the usual conditions will stand for an indefinite time. By which is meant ordinary diffused daylight, not direct sunlight, and the ordinary air under normal conditions. If there be direct sunlight, you may expect your picture to change sooner or later. But one does not hang his pictures where the sun's rays will fall on them. If there is any exceptional condition of moisture in the air, the picture may suffer.

Or if from any cause unusual gases are in the atmosphere, or if the picture be too long in a dark, close place, the picture may smother for lack of fresh air, just as any other thing, plant or animal, which depends on normal conditions of atmosphere would do.

Let us say, then, that what we mean by a permanent color is one which will stand unchanged for an indefinite length of time in a room which is of the usual condition of temperature and freedom from moisture, and where the light is diffused, and such that the direct rays of the sun are not on the picture often, or to any great extent. Cold will not hurt a picture if the canvas is not disturbed in that condition, but to bend or roll it while it is very cold will of course crack it, and sudden and extreme changes of temperature may have the same effect. In other words, some care must be used with all pictures as a matter of course.

COLOR LIST

=Whites.=--_Zinc white_ is the only permanent white, but it lacks body and is little used. The lead whites, _flake_, _silver_, _cremnitz_, will darken in time, and will turn yellow with oil, and may change with or affect change in other pigments. The zinc white is liable to crack. We have no perfect white, so practically you may consider the lead whites as permanent enough, as other painters do.