The Painter in Oil Part 21

Any man who would truly study for the just value and note of color must work more or less in this way when he works out-of-doors.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

MARINES

All that has been said on landscape painting applies to marines. You have the same open-air feeling and vibration of light and color. There is no need to say the same things over again. It is only necessary to take all these things for granted, and emphasize certain other things which are peculiar to the sea.

=Sea and Sky.=--To begin with, the relation of the sky to what is under it is markedly different in color from any other relations in painting. The sea is always more or less of a perfect reflecting surface, and always strongly influenced in color, value, and key by the reflections of the sky on its surface. The sky color is always modifying the water--when and how depends on the condition of the weather, and the degree of quiet or movement of the water. Sometimes the water is a perfect mirror; sometimes the mirror quality is almost lost, but the influence is there.

This relation is the most important thing, because the sea and the sky is always the main part of your picture; and no matter what else is there, or how well painted it may be, if these things are not recognized, if they are not justly observed, your picture is bad.

I cannot tell you all about these things. The variety of effects and relations is infinite. You must study them, paint them in the presence of nature, and use your eyes; only remember the general principles of air and atmosphere and light and color that I have spoken of elsewhere--all have most vital importance on marine painting. You must study these, and think of them, and in the presence of sea or sky observe their bearings, and apply them as well as you can.

=Movement.=--If "_la nature ne s'arrete pas_" ordinarily, the fact is even more marked in marines; for the water is the very type of ceaseless motion. Somehow, you must not only study in spite of the continual motion, but you must manage to make that motion itself felt.

This you will find is in the larger modelling of the whole surface--the "heave" of it as distinguished from the waves themselves.

The waves are a part of that motion of course; but give the wave-drawing only, without their relation to the great swing of the whole body of water, and you get rigidity rather than movement. The wave movement is in and because of this larger motion. See that first, and make it most evident, then let the waves themselves cut it up and help to express it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Entrance to Zuyder Zee.= _Clarkson Stanfield._]

=Wave Drawing.=--How shall you "draw" so changeable a thing as a wave?

Every wave has a type of form, has a characteristic movement and shape; and as it changes it comes into a new position and shape in logical and practically identical sequence of movement. You can only study this by constant watching. You look at the wave, and then turn your eyes away to fix it on your canvas; as you look back, the wave is not there. Well, you can only not try to make a portrait of each wave; it isn't possible. Don't expect to. Study the movement and type forms; think of it; fix it in your mind; decide on the ma.s.s and suggestive relation of it to other ma.s.ses, and put that down.

There is never a recurrence of the same thing either in exact form or color, but fix your eyes on one place, and over and over again you will see a succession of waves of similar kind. Or look at a wave and follow it as it drives on; changes come and go, but the wave form in the main keeps itself for some time.

Look over a large field of the water without too sharply focussing the eyes, you will see the great lines and planes of modelled surface over and over again taking the same or similar shapes, positions, and relations. And as you look your eye will follow the movement in spite of yourself. Your gaze will gradually come nearer and nearer; but meanwhile, in following the wave, it will have felt that the wave was the same in shape, but only varied in position.

In this way you will come to know the wave forms. Jot them down, either in color or with charcoal; but do not look for outline too much. Try to study the forms and relations, mainly by the broad touch, with a characteristic direction and movement. No amount of explanation will tell you anything. You must sit and look, think, a.n.a.lyze, and suggest, then generalize as well as you can.

=Open Sea and Coast.=--The open sea is all movement. Even a ship, the most rigid thing on it, moves with it. But you do not have to study these things from the standpoint of invariable movement. You can start from a stable base. Study coast things first. You have then the relation of the movement of the water to the rock or land, and you can simplify the thing somewhat. What has been said of motion holds good still; but you can get something definite in a rock ma.s.s, and study the changes near it, and then extend your study as you feel strong enough.

The study of coast scenery is quite as full of changing beauty as the open sea, and it has certain types that belong to it alone. Breakers and surf, and the contrast of land and sea colors and forms, give great variety of subject and problem. In the drawing of rocks the study of character is quite as important, but not so evasive, as the study of wave forms. You must try to give the feeling of weight to them. The ma.s.s and immovability add to the charm and character of the water about them.

=Subject.=--Don't undertake too much expanse on one canvas. Of course there are times when expanse is itself the main theme; but aside from that, too much expanse will make too little of other things which you should study. Whether your canvas be big or little, to get expanse everything in the way of detail and form must be relatively small, otherwise there is no room on the canvas for the expanse. So if you would paint some surf, or a rock and breakers, or a ship, place the main thing in proper proportion to the canvas, and let the expanse take care of itself, making the main thing large enough to study it adequately. If it is too small on the canvas, you cannot do this.

=Ships.=--The painting of the sea necessarily involves more or less the painting of vessels of different kinds. You may put the ship in so insignificant a relation to the picture that a very vague representation of it will do, but you must have a thorough knowledge of all the details of structure and type if you give any prominence to the ship in your picture.

=Detail.=--You do not need to put in every rope in a vessel. You do not need to follow out every line in the standing rigging even, in order to paint a ship properly. To do this would miss the spirit of it, and make the thing rigid and lifeless. But ignorance will not take the place of pedantry for all that. Every kind of vessel has its own peculiar structure, its own peculiar proportions, and its own peculiar arrangement of spar and rigging. Whether you are complete or not in the detailing of the masts and rigging, you must know and represent the true character of the craft you are painting. You must take the trouble to know how, why, and when sails are set, and what are the kinds, number, and proportion of them, and their arrangement on any kind of vessel or boat you may paint. There is again only one way to know this. If you are not especially a painter of marines, you may find that the study of some particular vessel in its present condition and relation to surrounding things will serve your turn; but if you go in for the painting of marine pictures generally, you can only get to know vessels by being on and about them at all seasons and places.

Your regular marine painter fills dozens and hundreds of sketch-books with pencilled notes of details and positions and accidents and incidents of all sorts and conditions of ships. Ships under full sail and under reefed canvas; ships in a squall and ships in dead calm--he can never have too many of these facts to refer to.

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 pa.s.sed and does pa.s.s 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: =Girl Spinning.= _Millet._ Example of "_contre jour_" and out-of-door contrast of light and shade.]

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

FIGURES

The broadest cla.s.sification 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 cla.s.s. 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 ma.s.ses 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 a.s.sured 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.ses 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 s.p.a.ces between as well as the s.p.a.ces they occupy. And don't fill up these s.p.a.ces with background objects. That will not bind the group together, but will separate it.

Fill the s.p.a.ces 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 ma.s.s 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 ma.s.s 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?