Originality is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not through striving. The search for originality seldom results in anything worth having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always natural. Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he does. The most original things are often the most simple, because they have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way.
If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. No two people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. They do not look alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike? The attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting.
Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don't try to paint what appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is thatyoulike, unaffected by anything else. And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was—and that is originality.
But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There are always plenty of things—ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations—waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing.
That is what a painter is for, not to cover a canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it by a name. The painter is the eye of the people. He sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see. The painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his having seen it.
There is the difference between the artist andthe photograph, which sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts.
But what is a picture? I have met some strange though positive notions as to what is and what is not a picture. Some persons think that a certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. I remember one man who asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections. All this sort of thing is idle. A picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of the idea which is the cause of its existence. And that idea may be tangible or not. It may include many details or none. It is an idea which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; andwhen that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface is a picture. What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter personal to the painter of it. The manner in which it is conceived and produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.
A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line. It is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. And as all these are differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be original.
It is a mistake to make pictures too soon. The nearest a student is likely to get to a picture is a careful study, and he will be as successful with this, if he makes it for the study of it, as if he made it for the sake of making a picture—better probably. The making of a picture for the picture's sake is dangerous to the student. His is less likely to be sincere. He is apt to "idealize," to make up something according to some notion of how a picture should be, rather than from knowledge of how nature is. Real pictures grow from study of nature.
They are the outcome of maturity, not of the student stage. This implies something deeper than superficial facts, and a power of selection,—of choice and of purpose which must rest on a very broad and deep knowledge. The artist is always a student, of course; but he is not a student only. He is a student who knows what and why he wants to study; not one who is in process of finding out these things.
Aims.—It should be noted that the aim of thestudent and the aim of the artist are essentially different. The student's first aim is to learn to see and represent nature's facts; to distinguish justly between relations. It is the training of the eye and the judgment. Imitation is not the highest art; but the highest art requires the ability to imitate as a mere power of representation. The mind must not be hampered in its expression by lack of knowledge and control of materials, and the painter who is constantly occupied with the problems he should have worked out in his student days, is just so far from being a master. He must have all his means perfectly at his command before he can freely express himself.
The acquirement of this mastery of means is the student's business. Everything he does which aids him in this makes him so much nearer to being a painter. But he must remember that he is still a student, and as he hopes to be a painter, must have patience with himself; must not hurry himself, must work as a student for the ends of a student.
All the facts of nature art uses. But she uses them as she needs them, simplifying, emphasizing, suppressing, combining as will best meet the necessities of the case in hand. All this requires the utmost knowledge, for it must be done in accordance not only with laws of art, but with the laws of nature.
There are changes which can be made, and be right—made as nature might make them. Other changes which would be false to nature's ways, and so false to art also. For art works through nature always, and in accordance with her. This is the aim of the painter, to express ideas through nature, not to express notions about nature.
The facts of nature are the material of art; the words of the language in which the ideas of art are to be conveyed. But there are truths more important than these facts. The underlying sentiment of which they are the external manifestation, and which is the vivifying spirit of them. This is the true fact of the picture.
It is more important to give the sentiment of the thing than to give the fact of it; not merely because it is more truly represented so, but because the beauty is shown in showing the character. For the character of the fact is the beauty of the fact.
To bring out the beauty which may lie in the fact is the aim of the artist; to acquire the ability to do this is the aim of the student.
There is a right and a wrong way to study, and it all centres around the fact that what you aim to learn is perception and expression. What you are to express you do not learn; you grow to that. But you must learn how to use all possible means; all the facts of visible nature, and all the characteristics of pigments. All qualities, color and form and texture, are but the means of your expression, and you must know how they may be used. Your perception and appreciation must be trained, and your mind stored with facts and relativities. Then you are ready to recognize and to convey the true inwardness you find in conditions commonplace to others.
You are to see where others see not; for it is marvellous how little the average eye sees of the really interesting things, how little of the visual facts, and how rarely it sees the picture before it is painted. All is material to the painter. It is not that "everything that is, is beautiful," but that everything that is has qualities and possibilities of beauty; and these, when expressed, makethe picture, in spite of the superficial or obvious ugliness. In one sense nothing is commonplace, for everything exists visibly by means of light and color, and light and color are of the fundamental beauties. So arrange or look upon the commonplace that light and color are the most obvious qualities, and the commonplace sinks into the background—is lost. There is nothing like painting to make life fascinating; for there is nothing which brings so many charming combinations into your perception, as the habit of looking to find the possibilities of beauty in everything that comes within your view.
You must form the habit of looking always from the painter's point of view. The painter deals primarily with pigment, and what can be represented with pigment; chiefly color and light in the broadest sense, including form and composition, as things which give bodily presence and action to the possibilities of pigment. Shade, or shadow, of course, is an actuality in painting, because it is the foil of light and color, and furnishes the element of relation.
Methods.—Two general methods are at the command of the student from the first,—to study at once from nature, or to copy. I think I may safely claim to speak for the great body of teachers who are also professional artists, in saying that copying is a means of study rather for the advancedstudent than for the beginner. You cannot begin too soon to study nature with your own eyes, and to accumulate your own facts and observations and deductions. The use of copying is not to find out how to paint, but to see how many ways there are of painting. The great end of all study in painting is to train the eyes to see relations, to see them in nature. It is not to see that there are relations, but to see where they are; to recognize and to measure and to judge them. Painting is the art of perception before everything, and when you copy you only see, accept, what some one else has already perceived. Copying does not help you toperceive, it can only help to show you how something can beexpressed afterit has been perceived, and that is not the vital thing in the study of painting. Handling, composition, management of color, technique of the brush generally, may be studied by copying. These only—and for these things it is useful and wise. But the beginner is not ready for these, for they are not the alphabet, but the grammar of painting.
Danger.—The danger of too early copying is that the student learns to set too much value on surface qualities rather than those to which the surface is merely incidental. With this is the danger (a serious one, and one hard to overcome the results of) that the student becomes clever as a producer of pictures before he has trained hispower to see. He becomes a student of pictures rather than a student of nature, and when in doubt will go to art rather than to nature for help and suggestion. Could anything be more fatal? Consider the things that student will have to unlearn before he can think a picture in terms of nature—the only healthy, the only prolific way of thinking. He sees always through other people's eyes, and thinks with other people's brains, and feels other people's emotions; that is not creation; that is the attitude for the spectator, not for the painter.
These things are all useful and good, but not for the beginner. Later, when you have found out something for yourself, when you have ground of your own to stand on, then you may not only without danger, but with benefit, go to the work of other men to see the range of possible point of view and expression, to see the scope of technical material and individual adaptation; and so broaden your own mental view and sympathy, possibly reform or educate your taste, and perhaps get some hints which will help you in the solving of some future problem.
But rather than the undue sophistication which can result from unwise copying,—the over-knowledge of process and surface, and under-knowledge of nature,—is to be preferred a frank crudeness of work which is the result of an honest going tonature for study. You should not expect a perfect eye for color and form too soon. Better a healthily youthful crudity of perception based on nature, and standing for what you have yourself studied and worked out, which represents your own attainment, than a greater show of knowledge which is insincere and superficial because it represents a mere acceptance of the facts set down by others; and not only that, but even with it an acceptance also of the actual terms used by those others.
Often copying is the most convenient way in which you can get help. There is really much to be learned from it, and you can make a picture serve as a criticism on your own work. Particularly in the matter of color or tone, as something to recognize the achievement of for its own sake. If you can recognize good color as such, aside from what it represents, if you can appreciate tone in a picture which is the work of some one else, you are so much the more likely to notice the lack of those qualities in your own work. So, too, there are qualities of brush-work which are always good, and some which are always bad. You can study the former positively, and the latter negatively, in studying and copying other pictures.
I have mentioned the training of your critical judgment as a necessity in your education. Youcan do it slowly in learning to paint, but you can facilitate that training by copying and studying really good pictures, if you do it in the right way.
The Right Way.—So if you do copy, do it in the right way, so as to get all the real help out of it, and not so as to have to unlearn the greater part of it. Don't copy "to get a picture." Don't make a copy which at a distance has a resemblance to the original, but which on a more careful study shows none of the qualities which make the original what it is. Not only see to it that the same subtleties of perception and representation are preserved in your copy, but that they are attained in the same way. Use the same brush-work or other execution. Use the same pigments in the same places, with the same vehicles; study the original with your brain as well as with your eyes and hands; try to see not only how the painter did a certain thing but why. So that as you work, you follow him in the working out of his problem, and make it your problem also. In this way you will get some real good from his picture, and not a mere canvas which has been of no use to you, nor can be of any satisfaction to any one else who knows a good picture (copy or original) when he sees it.
Why Copy.—There are only two good reasons for making a copy,—to study the original as aproblem, and to have something to serve as an example of the master on a work which you like. And in either case such a sincere manner of copying as I urge is the only possible way to get what you want. To "get a picture," regardless of whether it really does justice to the original, is the wrong way, and this leads always through bad copying to bad painting, and you are fortunate if you escape an entire perversion of your point of view.
You may be able to make some money now and again by doing this sort of thing, but you will never learn anything from it. On the contrary, it is the surest way you could find of closing your eyes to all that is worth seeing.
Get to Nature.—If you would really learn to paint, to see for yourself, to represent what you see in your own way, you cannot get to nature too soon. Don't bother about what the thing is, so long as it is nature herself. By nature I mean anything, absolutely anything which exists of itself, not painted. Whether it be the living figure, or a cast, or a bit of landscape, or a room interior—all things which actually exist must show themselves by the facts of light falling upon them: the relation of color, and the contrasts of light and dark. Whatever you see is useful to you in this way, for these bring about all the qualities and conditions which you most need to study. Butmodels are not always at command, interiors do not easily stay a long time at your disposal, and bits of landscape which interest you are not always easy to get at; for a student is apt to be either far advanced or unusually ardent who will find interest in the first combination which falls under his eye. Therefore the most practically useful material for study, which is always "nature," is what we call "still life,"—"morte" nature, dead nature is the better or more descriptive name the French give to it. By this is meant any and all combinations of objects and backgrounds grouped arbitrarily for representation. Bottles and jugs and fruits, books and bric-a-brac; all sorts of things lend themselves readily and interestingly to this use.
The great value of still life for the student lies in the variety of combinations of color and form, of light and shade and texture, that he can always command. There is practically no problem possible to in-the-house light which may not be worked out by means of still life. The training in perception and representation, in composition and arrangement, and in technique, which it will give you is invaluable; and most important of all, while you can always make such arrangements as will interest you, because you need place only such things or colors as you like, you are really studying nature herself, you are looking at the thingsthemselves, and the result you get is the product of your own eyes and brain. The problem is entirely your own, both in the stating and the solving, and what you learn is well learned, and represents a definite progress along the right line.
You have worked for the sake of the working, and there is nothing which you have got from it that may not be applicable to any future work you may do, that does not directly lead to the great object you have in view,—to learn how to paint well.
Be Sincere.—But, above all, be sincere with yourself; don't do anything to be clever, nor because it pleases some one else. Painting is difficult enough at best. You need all the interest and fascination that the most charming thing can have for you to help you to do it so that it is worth the trouble. Don't take away the whole life of it by insincerity. A very thoughtful painter said to me once that he believed that all really good pictures could be shown to be good by the sole criterion of conviction. Can you think of any painting being good without it? Can you think of any amount of cleverness and ability making a picture good without that. And it is quite as important in study as elsewhere. Never do anything except seriously; take yourself and your work seriously; only by serious work can serious results come.
Joy in Your Work.—Do it because you like to. But like good work and hate bad work; and, above all, hate half-way work. Understand yourself: what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then be honest enough with yourself to work till you have honestly done what you wanted to do, and as you wanted to do it.
Reasons.—Painting is something more than laying on paint. It implies a certain amount of knowledge of necessary preliminaries—technical matters which are not strictly painting, but without which good painting is impossible.
It is all well enough to put paint on canvas, but there must be a knowledge on which to base the where and the why of laying it on, as well as the knowledge of how to lay it on. If anything, the where and why are more important than the how. There are almost infinite methods and processes of getting the paint onto the surface. Every painter may select or invent his own way, and provided it accomplishes the main purpose—the bringing about of combinations of form, relative color and pitch, the expression of an idea—it is all right. But there are laws which govern the positions of the different spots of paint, and the reasons for placing them in certain relations. These laws are back of personal idiosyncrasy. They are a part of the laws which control all material things. The painter may no more go contraryto them in painting than he may go contrary to physical laws in any of the practical matters of life. If pigments are not used in accordance with the laws governing their chemical composition, they will not stand. If the laws of proportion are not observed in composition, the picture will not balance. The laws of color harmony are as mathematically fixed as the law of gravity. So, too, the relations of size, which give the impression of nearness or distance to objects, rest on the laws of optics. You have infinite scope for individual expression inside of those laws, but you cannot go outside of them.
Scientific Knowledge not Necessary.—It is not necessary that you should have any special knowledge of all these laws nor even of the application of them; but you must recognize their existence, and have some practical notions about them and their effect on your work.
You can of course carry the study as far as you are interested to go. The farther the better. The more you study them the more you will find them interesting, and the easier will it be for you to work freely within their limitations. But this is not the place for special study. There are books which treat particularly of these things, and you must go to them.
But a superficial consideration of these subjects cannot be left out of any book which would bereally helpful to the student of painting. I can go into the theory of things only so far as to give you that amount of practical knowledge which is absolutely necessary to you as a painter. What I shall give is given only because it cannot be wisely left out, and the form of it as well as the substance and quantity are determined by the same reason.
As you hope to become a painter, then, do not neglect to study and think of this part of the book, not merely as a preliminary to the process of painting, but as containing matter which is continually essential to it—which is part and parcel of it.
Another reason for the careful reading of these chapters is that any discussion of the art of painting necessarily demands the use of words or phrases which must be understood. To speak of technical things presupposes the use of technical phrases, and without a knowledge of the words there can be no comprehension of the thought.
Drawing is basic to painting. Good painting cannot exist without it. I do not mean that there must be always the outline felt or seen, but that the understanding of relative position, size, and form must be felt; and that is drawing. Drawing is not merely form, but implies these other things, and painting is not legible without them. They go to the completeness of expression. Movement, and action, as well as composition and all that it implies or includes, depend upon drawing, and they are vital to a painting.
Importance of Drawing.—Much has been said and written of drawing as being the most important thing in a picture; so much so, as to excuse all sorts of shortcomings in other directions. This is a mistake. Drawing is essential because you cannot lay on color to express anything without the colors taking shape, and this is drawing. But still the color itself, and other characteristics which are not strictly a part of drawing, are quite as important to painting, simply because the thing without them could not be a painting at all: it would be a drawing.
All painters fall into two classes,—those who are most sensitive to the refinements of form, and those most sensitive to refinements of color and tone. But the great colorists, the painterspar excellence, the workers in pigment before everything else, those who find their sentiment mainly there, these are the men who have made painting what it is, and who have brought out its possibilities. And looking at painting from their point of view, drawing cannot be more important than other qualities.
Neglect of Drawing.—Great artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express his temperamental richness of color. These things are superficial to the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. And a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman.
The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. A painter, who was also an exceptionallyfine draughtsman, once spoke of work weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." Lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. Those firm, simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. They mean precision. Precision means position. Position means drawing.
Proportions.—All good work is from the general to the particular, from the mass to the detail. Keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in good work, whatever the kind. You should never place a detail till you have placed your larger masses. The relative importance of things depends on the consideration of those most important first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.
Proportions next. Largest proportions, then exactness of relative proportions. Study first in masses. See nothing at first but the large planes. As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head, not the head on to the nose." In getting proportions of the great masses, let no small variations of line or form break into your study of the whole. Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. If you cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the general direction of them. Train yourself to look at things in this way. There is nothing whichwill not fall into position so. This will not be easy at first. The training of a quick perception of these things is a part of your training in drawing—the first essential. It is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts, and so makes more easy the study of proportion. The accuracy of the general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser proportions which come within them.
You see form more truly also, when the perception of it is founded on a mass or a line indicating the larger character of it. It saves time for you, too. You do not have to rub out so much. The great lines and planes once established, everything else falls naturally into place. Spend much time over this part of a drawing. Cut the time you give to a drawing into parts, and let the part given to the laying in of larger proportions be from a third to a half of the whole time, and study and correct these until they are right.
Once these are right a very slight accent tells for twice what it would otherwise, and so you need much less detail to give the effect.
Modelling.—In the same way that you have laid out the proportions in mass, lay out your proportions of light and shade. Model your drawing by avoiding the small until the large variations of shade are in place. Avoid seeing curves in reliefas you have avoided curves of outline. Try to analyze the modelling into flat planes, each one large enough to give a definite mass of relief. Don't be afraid of an edge in doing this. Let your flat tone come frankly up to the next tone and stop. This again is not for any effect in itself, but only for facility and exactness. Later you can loose it as much as you see fit in breaking up the drawing into the more delicate planes, and these again into the most subtle.
Study first the outline and then the planes. Constantly compare them as to relation; you will find it suggestive. Remember that your aim is to produce a whole, not a lot of parts, and although a whole includes the parts, the parts are incidental.
Measurements.—You will always have to use measurements for the sake of accuracy. Probably you will never be able to dispense with them. The best way would be to take them as a matter of course, and get so that you make them almost mechanically, without thinking of it. You will save yourself an immense deal of time and trouble by accepting this at once; for accuracy is impossible without measurements, and the habit of accuracy is the greatest time-saver.
Hold your charcoal in your hand freely, so that your thumb can slip along it and mark off parts of the object when you sight at them across thecoal. Measure horizontal and vertical proportions into themselves and into each other. Height and breadth are checks to each other. If the height is a certain proportion of the breadth, then the smaller proportions of height must have equivalent proportions to each otheras well as to breadth. Measure these and you are sure of being right.
Steps.—Divide your drawing into steps or stages of work. You will find it a helpful thing in studying. You will do it quite naturally later. Do it deliberately at first, as a matter of training.
First step.—Measure the extreme height and breadth of the whole group or object of your drawing, with accuracy, and mark each extreme.
Second step.—Outline the great mass of it with the simplest lines possible. Give the general shape of the whole. This blocks it in.
Third step.—Measure each of the objects in the group, or the parts most prominent, if it be a single object. Measure its height and breadth, both in its own proportion and in proportion to the dimensions of the other parts and of the whole. Enclose it in straight lines as you did with the whole mass.
Fourth step.—Find the more important of the lesser proportions in each object, and block them out also. This should map out your drawing exactly and with some completeness.
Fifth step.—Lay in simple flat tones to fill inthese outlines, and keep the relations of light and dark very carefully as you do so.
Sixth step.—This should leave your paper with a few large masses of dark and light, which can now be cut into again with the next smaller masses, giving more refinement to the whole. This also should so break up the edges as to get rid of any feeling of squareness or edginess.
Seventh step.—Put in such accents of dark, or take out such of light, as will give necessary character and force to the drawing.
I do not say that this method produces the most finished drawing; but it is a most excellent way to study drawing, and, more or less modified, is practically the basis of all methods. In practised hands it allows of any amount of exactness or freedom of execution. I have seen most beautiful work done in this way.
Home Study.—It is not necessary to have a teacher in order to draw well; but it is necessary to find out what are the essentials of good drawing, and to work definitely and acquire them.
Good drawing is a combination of exactness and freedom; and the exactness must come first. The structure of the thing must be shown without unnecessary detail. You should always look at any really good drawing you can come at, and try to see what there may be in it of helpful suggestion to you.
Drawing of Hands.Drawing of Hands.Dürer.
Study the Masters.—Get photographs of drawings by the masters of drawing, and study them. See how they searched their model for form and character. Do not make so much of the actual stroke as the manner in which it is made to express and lend itself to the meaning.
In this drawing by Albrecht Dürer you have a splendid example of exactness and feeling for character. You could have no better type of what to look for and how to express it. Although it is not important that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is done, it is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the character of the surface—which is one of the ways in which the point helps to search out the modelling.
This drawing is made with a black and a white chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to study.
A good hint is also offered in this drawing, of the modesty of the old masters, in subject. A hand or part of any object is enough to study from. There is no need to always demand a picture in everything you do.
Materials.—For all purposes which come in the range of the painter you should use charcoal. For purposes of study it is the most satisfactory of materials; it is sensitive, easily controlled, and easily corrected. For sketching or preliminary drawing on the canvas it is equally good.
You should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical positions of parts in relation to each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally for other relative positions, gives you all you need in that direction.
In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than place the various objects and draw their outlines carefully and accurately. Sometimes, however, as in faces, or in pictures which include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing, and this can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards.
Imitation.—Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not the most important thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet be true to the greater character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. There is something more important than detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed sometimes only by a drawing which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be the more true to the larger fact.
Then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express through his representation of the external; and he is justified in altering or slighting facts in order to bring about that more important self-expression. Of course the self mustbe worth expressing. There is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere inability. But a good workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete picture in its unity will be his justification for whatever means he has taken.
Feeling.—Drawing must be a matter of feeling. A perception of essential truth of a thing, as much as of trained observation of the facts. The good draughtsman becomes so by training his observation of facts first, always searching for those most important, and emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his eye and hand easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come also the power of mind to grasp the essential characteristics. And the trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect freedom of expression. This is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to be aimed at,—the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and do, and the trained mind to feel and select, and the freedom of expression which comes of that perfect union.
The Term.—The word "values" is seldom understood by the average individual, yet it should not be difficult to take in. It means simply the relation between degrees of strength of light and dark, and of color considered as light and dark. Translate the word into "importance," and think what it means. The relative importance, strength, force, power, value, of a touch of color to make itself felt in the whole—that is its value. A weak value is a note which does not make itself felt; a strong value is one which does. A false value is a touch of color which has not its proper relation to the other spots or masses of color in the picture,consideredaslight and dark—not as color per se.
Importance.—As soon as you grasp this idea you see at once how important values must be to the whole picture. It is not possible to do any good work, either in black and white or color, without it. In one sense it is incidental to drawing. When you consider drawing as the expression of modelling, the relative roundness of parts, and of relief,as well as outline, values come into play to give the relations of planes of light and dark in black and white. In this it becomes part of drawing.
Values and Color.—As soon, however, as color becomes a part of the picture, values become the basis of modern painting as distinguished from the painting of previous centuries. Values, of course, always existed wherever good painting existed, because you cannot paint without recognizing the relations, the relative pitch and relative strength of tones. But the word is never heard in relation to old masters. It is apparently of quite modern coinage and use, and it probably was coined because of a new and greater importance of the fact which it represents.
The older painters in painting a picture kept parts of a whole object—a head or a figure, say—in relation to itself; and that was values—but restricted values. The whole picture was arranged on the basis of arbitrary lighting, which entered into the scheme of composition of that picture. This is not values, but what is generally understood by the older writers when they speak of "chiaroscuro." The modern painter deals little with chiaroscuro. It is almost obsolete as a technical word. Arbitrary arrangement of light and shade in a picture is not usual nowadays, and consequently the word which expressed it has dropped somewhat into disuse.
Basis of Modern Painting.—Instead of the old composition in arbitrary light and shade, the modern painter accepts the actual arrangement of light as the basis of his picture, and spreads the values over the whole canvas. In this way the quality of "value" becomes the very foundation of the modern picture. For you cannot accept the ordinary or actual condition of light, as governing the light and shade of your picture, without extending the same scheme of relations over the whole canvas. Every most insignificant spot of light and shade and color, as well as the most significant, must keep its place, must hold its true relation to every other spot and to all the rest. Each value must keep its place according to the laws of fact, or it is out of touch with the whole. The whole picture must be either on a scheme of general fact, or a scheme of general arbitrary arrangement. Any one piece of arbitrary arrangement in this connection must be backed up by other pieces of arbitrary arrangement, or else there must be no arbitrary arrangement at all. The modern painter accepts the former; and the importance of "values" is the result.
Absolute and Relative Values.—We may speak of values as absolute or relative. This relates to the key or pitch of a painting. It is the contribution to the art of painting which was made by the French painter, Manet. You may paint a picturein the same pitch as nature, or you may transpose it to a higher or a lower pitch.
The relations of the different values of the picture will hold the same relation to each other as the values of nature do to each other. But the actual pitch of each, the relation of each to an absolute light or an absolute dark, will be higher or lower than in nature. This would be relative values.
Or the pitch, relation to absolute light and dark, of each value may be the same, value for value, as in nature. This would be absolute values.
The attempt at absolute values was not made at all before Manet's time. A landscape was frankly painted down, or darker, from the pitch of nature, and aninterioras frankly painted up, or lighter. In both cases the values had to be condensed,—telescoped, so to speak,—because pigment would not express the highest light nor the lowest dark in nature; and to have the same number of gradations between the highest and lowest notes in the picture, the amount of difference between each value had to be diminished—butrelativelythey were the same. The degree of variation from the actual was the same all through.
With absolute values the painter aims at giving thejust note,—the exact equivalent in value that he finds in nature. He tries to paint up to out-door light or paint down to in-door light.
Close Values.—This naturally calls for a fine distinction of tones—the utmost subtlety of perception of values. To paint a picture in which the highest light may not be white nor the lowest dark black, and yet give a great range and variety to the values all through the picture, the values must beclose; must be studied so closely as to take cognizance of the slightest possible distinction, and to justly express it. This sort of thing was not thought of by the older painters. It is the distinguishing characteristic of modern painting. It is a substitution of the study ofrelationfor the study ofcontrast.
Study of Values.—You see at once how important, how vital, the study of values is to painting. Even if you paint with arbitrary lighting, as is still done by many painters, especially in portraits, you have to consider and study them as they apply topartsof your picture. You will find no good painter of old time who did not study relations. If you look at a Velasquez, you will find that he knew values, even though he did not use the word.
But if you are in touch with your century, if you would paint to express the suggestion you receive from the nature you study, or if you would convey the idea of truth to the world around you, as that world exists, frankly accepting the conditions of it, you will have to make the study of values fundamental to your work.
"The Fourth Dimension."—You study values with your eyes only, but you cannotmeasurevalues. Length, breadth, and thickness you can measure; but values constitute what might be called a "Fourth Dimension," and you must measure it by your eye, and without any mechanical aid. Your eye must be trained to distinguish and judge differences of value.
Helps.—There are, however, several things which you can use to help you in training your eye to distinguish values. When you look for values you do not wish to see details nor things, you wish to see only masses and relations. You mustunfocusyour eye. The focussed eye sees the fact, and not the relation. Anything which will help you to see outlines and details less distinctly will help you to see the values more distinctly.
Half-closed Eyes.—The most common way is to half close the eyes, which shuts out details, but permits you to see the values. Some painters think this falsifies pitch, and prefer to keep the eyes wide open, but to focus them on some pointbeyondthe values they are studying. This is not so easy to do as to half close the eyes, but becomes less difficult with practice.
The Blur Glass.—An ordinary magnifying-glass of about 15-inch focus, which you can get at an optician's for fifteen or twenty cents, will blur thedetails, and help you to see the values, because it makes everything vague except the masses. You can frame it for use by putting it between two pieces of cardboard with a hole in them, or you can do the same with two pieces of leather sewed around the edge. Of course the glass itself is all you need, but it will be easily broken if unprotected.
Do not try to lookthroughthe glass at your subject, butatthe glass and the image on it.
The Claude Loraine Mirror.—This is a curved mirror with a black reflecting surface. The object is reflected on it,reducedboth in size and pitch. It concentrates the masses and the color, and so helps to distinguish the relative values.
You can make a mirror of this sort for yourself by painting the back of a piece of plate glass black. The real Claude Loraine mirror is expensive.
The Common Mirroris also very helpful in distinguishing values. It reduces the size of things, and reverses the drawing so that you see your subject under different conditions, and a fresh eye is the result. Place the group and your painting side by side, if you are painting still life, and look at both at the same time in the mirror. Do the same with a portrait and the sitter.
Diminishing Glass.—Much the same effect can be had by using a double concave lens. The pictureis not reversed, but it is reduced, and the details eliminated.
In using any of these means you must remember that it is always the relations and not the things you are studying; and the most useful of these aids is the blur glass, because you cannot possibly see anything in it but the values and color masses, everything else being blurred.
There are two kinds of perspective, linear and aërial. The former has to do with the manner in which horizontal lines appear to converge as they recede from the foreground, and so produce the effect of distance. The latter has to do with the effect of distance, which is due to the successive gradations of gray in color noticeable in objects farther and farther away from the observer.
Aërial Perspective.—To the student, aërial iscolorperspective, because of the modifications which colors undergo when removed to a distance. Modifications of tone are largely due to varying distance, and so aërial perspective is largely a matter ofvalues. That they are due to the greater or less thickness of the atmosphere is only a matter of interest, not of importance, to the artist; the important thing to him is that the careful study of values is necessary to relief, perspective, and particularly, atmosphere and envelopment in a picture.
To the student, aërial perspective should be only a matter of observation and of the study ofrelations of color and value. There are no rules. The effect depends on greater or less density of atmosphere. Near objects are seen through a thin stratum of air, and farther objects through a thicker one. All you have to do to express it is to recognize the relative tones of color. Paint the colors as they are, as you see them in nature, and you need have no trouble with aërial perspective.
But though I say "this is all you have to do," don't imagine that I mean that it is always easy, or that it can be done without thought and study. You will have to use all your powers of perception if you wish to do good work in this direction. Especially on clear days, or in those climates where the air is so rare that objects at great distances seem near, you will find that atmospheric perspective is simply another name for close values. And close values, you remember, are the most subtle of relations of light and shade and color.
The only rule for aërial perspective is to use your eyes, and do nothing without a previous careful study of nature.
Linear Perspective.—For most kinds of painting, a technical knowledge of linear perspective is not necessary, although every painter should understand the general principles of it. In most cases all the exactness needed can be obtained by comparingall lines carefully with the pencil or brush handle held horizontally or vertically, and studying the angle any line makes with it. Apply to all objects in perspective the same observation that you do in any other kind of drawing, and you will have little trouble, as long as you are drawing from an object before you. But if you go into perspective at all, go into it thoroughly. A little perspective is a dangerous thing, and more likely to mix you up by suggesting all sorts of half-understood things than to be of any real help.
There are some kinds of subjects, however, which require a complete knowledge of all the rules and processes of perspective. Whenever you have to construct a picture from details stated but not seen; when you have a complicated architectural interior or exterior; when figures are to be placed at certain distances or in definite positions, and they are too numerous or the conditions are otherwise such that you cannot pose your models for this purpose; then you may have to make most elaborate perspective plans, and lay out your picture with great exactness, or the drawing which is fundamental to such a picture will not be true.
Such men as Gérôme and Alma-Tadema plan their pictures most carefully, and so did Paul Veronese, and it requires a thorough and practical knowledge of perspective.
But this is not the place to teach you perspective. It is a subject which requires special study, and whole volumes are given to the elucidation of it. In a work of this kind anything more than a mention of the bearings of perspective on painting would be out of place. If you do not care to take up seriously the study of perspective, avoid attempting to paint any subjects which call for it; or, if you do care to study it, get a special work on that subject, give plenty of time to it, and study it thoroughly.
Foreshortening.—In this connection I may speak of something which is akin to perspective, yet the very reverse of it. As its name implies, foreshortening means the way in which anything seems shortened or in modified drawing as it projects towards you; while perspective is the manner in which lines appear as they recede from you. Like aërial perspective, the best way to study foreshortening is to study nature, not rules.
Perspective can be worked out by rule, foreshortening cannot. Pose your model, or if it be a branch of a tree, or anything of that sort, place yourself in the proper position with reference to it, and then study the drawingas it appears, thinking nothing ofhow it is; make your measurements, and place your lines as if there were no problem of foreshortening at all, but study therelations of lines, of size, and of values, and the foreshortening will take care of itself.
After all, foreshortening is only good drawing, and a good draughtsman will foreshorten well, while a bad draughtsman will not. Therefore, learn to draw, and don't worry about the foreshortening.
Chiaroscuro.—A few words about chiaroscuro will be useful. This is a term of great importance and frequent use with artists and writers up to within the last thirty or forty years. It has of late become almost unused. The reason for this was explained in the chapter on "Values." Nevertheless, it is well that the student should know what the word meant, and still means. Although he may hear and use it less frequently than if he had lived earlier in the century, the pictures, certain qualities of which no other word expresses, still exist, and are probably as immortal as anything in this world can be. He should know what those qualities are, and he should understand their relation to the work of to-day.
Chiaroscuro is described by an old writer as suggesting "a theme which is the most interesting, perhaps, in the whole range of the art of painting. Of vast importance, great extent, and extreme intricacy. Chiaroscuro is an Italian compound word whose two parts,chiarandoscuro, signify simplybrightandobscure, orlightanddark.Hence the art or branch of art that bears the name regards all the relations of light and shade, and this independently of coloring, notwithstanding that in painting, coloring and the clair-obscure are of their very nature inseparable. The art of clair-obscure, therefore, teaches the painter the disposition and arrangement in general of his lights and darks, with all their degrees, extreme and intermediate, of tint and shade, both in single objects, as the parts of a picture, and in combination as one whole, so as to produce the best representation possible in the best manner possible; that is,so as to produce the most desirable effect upon the senses and spirit of the observers. In a word, its end and aim are fidelity and beauty of imitation; its means, every effect of light; chromatic harmonies and contrasts; chromatic values, reflections; the degradations of atmospheric perspective, etc." The italics are mine.
You see at once that this covers a pretty wide field. But it is to be again noted that the use of chiaroscuro by the old painters meant not only the expression of the light and shade of nature, but the so arranging of the objects and the way that the light was permitted to fall on them, that certain parts of the picture became shadow, while the light was concentrated in some other part or parts. In this way the arrangement of the light and shade of a picture became a distinct elementof composition, and a very important one. Thequalityof "light" was something to be emphasized by contrast. It is stated (whether truly or not) that the proportion of light to dark was according to a definite rule or principle with certain painters, some permitting more, and some less, space of canvas to be proportioned to light and to dark. The gradations of light and dark were studied of course; but the quantity of light spread over the canvas was calculated upon, so that the less space of light and the greater the space of dark, the more brilliant would be the main spot of light in the picture. They wrought with thequality of light and shadeas anelement, just as they would with the quality of line or of color, considered apart from objects or facts they might represent.
Arbitrary Lighting.—This is the arbitrary light and shade spoken of in the chapter on "Values"; and although the older painters included what we now call values in their word chiaroscuro, it is this fact of arbitrary lighting as opposed to accepting the light as it does fall, or selecting those places or times where it does naturally fall as we would like it to, that makes the difference between modern painting generally and the older method, and has made chiaroscuro as a word and as a quality of painting so much a thing of the past.
Light and Shade.—But we may use the old wordwith a more restricted meaning. If we use it to mean literally light and shade, the way light falls on objects and the relief due to the light side and the shadow side of them, we get a use which implies a very important and practical matter for present study.