Sketch of a Hillside.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 heworks 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 mass. 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 perceivesrather 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 multitudinous 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 mass against mass 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.
The River Bank.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.
Try to keep things simple. Keep the impression of unity; have the sketch one thing only.
Express things as they look. As they look toyouand atthis time. How they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not to the point. What you know they are or may be will not help you, but only hinder you in a sketch. The more facts the worse, in sketching. Remember always what a sketch is for. Don't be beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a study of it. Above all, don't try to make a clever thing of it. Make something sincere and purposeful of it, and have it as concise, as terse, as direct, and as expressive of one thing as you can.
Keep Looking.—Always keep your eyes open and your mind receptive; do not be always looking for reasons. Accept the charm as it presents itself; note it, if you have anything handy to express it with; if not, study it, and get something into your mind and memory from it. The simplest way of expressing it, and the simplest elements which cause it, you can study without the materials to preserve it, and you so keep your receptivity and quicken your power of observation.
Your sketch will be more quickly done, directly and more forcefully, if you map out the thing rather deliberately first with a few very exact lines and masses in some way: then you have a free mind to concentrate on the effect. A few values and masses well placed are the things you most want; you can almost always spare time toensure their exactness by a few measurements and two or three rubs of color first. Of course if the sketch is of a passing gleam you can do nothing but get a few smudges of color. But get them true in value and in color relation; get the glow of it, or you will get nothing.
Canvases of a Size.—In sketching from nature, have the habit of using always the same sized canvases or panels. They pack better, and you learn to know your spaces, and so you do quicker and better work. Make them big enough to do free work on, yet small enough to cover easily, so that you lose no time in mere covering of surface. Ten inches by fourteen is plenty small enough, and fifteen by twenty large enough, for most persons. Suit yourself as to the size, but settle on a size, and stick to it. Nothing is more awkward and inconvenient than to have stacks of canvases of all sizes and shapes.
Always have plenty of sketching materials on hand. You will lose many a good effect which will pass while you are getting your kit ready.
In sketching, avoid details. When you want them, make a study of them. In a sketch they only interfere with frankness of expression. One or two details for the sake of accent only, may be admitted.
Make a frame with your hand, or, better, cut a square hole in a card, and look through it.Decide what is the essence of it, what is vital to the effect, and do that; concentrate on that. Put in what you need for the conveying of that, and leave out everything else.
Work Solidly.—Work in body color, and lay on your paint fully and freely. In getting an effect of light, don't be afraid of contrast either of value or of color. Paint loosely; get the vibration which results from half-mixed color. Don't flatten out the tone. Load the color if you want to. In twenty years you will wonder to see how smooth it has become.
Freedom and breadth give life to a sketch. Don't work close to your work. Don't bend over it. Use plenty of color, large brushes, and strike from the shoulder.
The qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which make a good sketch. In the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or to the one thing which is its purpose. The study is what its name implies, and its purpose is not one thing, but many. In a study you put in everything which may be valuable. You store it with facts. You leave out nothing which you wish to put in. It is all material. You can take and leave in using it afterwards, as you could from nature. Of course every study has some main intention, but you must take the trouble to give everything that goes to the making of that.
A study is less of a picture than a sketch is. For unity of effect is vital to both a sketch and a picture. But this quality is of no essential value in a study—unless it be a study of unity. For you can make astudyof anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge.
But in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you deliberately and carefully studyeverything in it, while in a sketch you work only for general effect. The study is the storehouse of facts to the painter. By it he assures himself of the literal truths he needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as mental material by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained in this way.
In making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself by the difficulty and size of the thing you are studying. A study of an interior or a landscape may occupy a week or two; one of a simple object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a few hours. But in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and remember that what you are doing is neither a sketch nor a picture, but the gathering of material which is to be useful, but which can be useful only so far as it is accurate.
In making studies, don't try for surface finish; get the facts, and leave all other qualities for the picture. Don't glaze and scumble, but work as directly as you can. Study the structure and texture of whatever you are doing. Understand it thoroughly as you go on, and search out whatever is not clear to you. This is no place for effects; nor for slighting or shirking. If you do not do work of this kind thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all—better; for you are at least not training yourself to be careless.
There are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study is not that place.
Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get all your foundation work true. Have a good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and then build your superstructure of careful study.
Don't be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here. All that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to have it. You can leave it out if you want to in your picture, but a groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.
Be exact also with your values. If your study is not sure of its values, it will weaken the results you should get from it later.
Make your studies in the same light as that which the picture will represent. You can paint a picture under any light you please if your studies give you the facts as to light and shade that the truth to nature requires; but studies made in one light for a picture representing another are useless to that picture.
Study of a Blooming-Mill.Study of a Blooming-Mill.D. Burleigh Parkhurst.
No good painting was ever made without preliminary studies. When you are to make a picture, therefore, take plenty of time to prepare yourself with all the material in the form of facts that you may require. Don't trust to building up a picture from a sketch or two and your "general knowledge." That sort of thing is something which a painter of experience may do after storinghis mind for years with all sorts of knowledge; but it will not do for most people—least of all for a student. And it is a dangerous way for any one to work. Even the experienced painter is apt to do the worse work for it, and if he does so constantly, his reputation may suffer for it. Take time to be right.
Don't be afraid of taking measurements. Every one who did anything worth looking at took measurements. Leonardo laid down a complete system of proportions. You can't get your proportions right without measurements, and if your proportions are not right, nothing will be right. Use a plumb-line: use it frequently, and measure horizontals and verticals. If you are in doubt about anything, stop a minute and measure. It takes less time than correcting.
Whatever you do, get the character first, then the details. Character is not a conglomeration of details. The detail is the incident of character. See what the vital things are first, then search farther.
Use your intelligence as well as your eye and hand. Think as you work. Don't for a moment let your hand get ahead of your brain. Don't work absent-mindedly, nor without purpose. If your mind is tired, if your eye won't see, stop and rest a while. Tired work runs your picture down hill.
The name of still life is used in English for all sorts of pictures which represent groupings of inanimate objects except flowers. The French word for it is better than ours. They call it "nature morte" or dead nature.
There is no kind of painting which is more universally useful—to the student as well as to the painter. It furnishes the means for constant, regular, and convenient study and practice. You need never lack for something interesting to paint, nor for a model who will sit quietly and steadily without pay, if you have some pieces of drapery, and a few articles, of whatever shape or form, which you can group in a convenient light.
You can make the group as simple or as difficult as you wish, and make it include any phase of study. The advantage of its possible variety, scope, and particularly, its convenience and cheapness and manageableness, make it the fundamental work for the beginner.
Materials.—Practically anything and everything is available for still life. You should be constantlyon the lookout for interesting objects of all kinds. Try to get a collection which has as much variety in form, size, and surface as you can. Old things are generally good, but it is a mistake to suppose old and broken things the best. An object is not intrinsically better because of its being more or less damaged, although it sometimes has interesting qualities, as of color or history, because of its age.
What you should avoid is bad proportion, line, and color in the things you get. The cost is not of any importance at all. You can pick up things for a few cents which will be most useful. Have all sorts of things, tall slim vases, and short fat jugs. Have metals and glass, and books and plaques. They all come in, and they add to the variety and interest of your compositions.
Draperies.—The study of drapery particularly is facilitated by still-life study. You can arrange your draperies so that they are an essential part of your study, and will stay as long as you care to paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of "staying power" in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum the movement and change which add to the difficulties in any other kinds of work. The value of the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In still life you have the same, with color added. You can giveall your attention and time unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day if you want to, and find it just the same to-morrow morning as you left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is only the more useful. You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question, because it is disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into exactly the same lines again.
Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into any form of study, and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.
In draperies you should try to have a considerable variety just as you have of the more massive objects,—variety of surface, of color, and of texture. Do not have all velvet and silk. These are very useful and beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in velvet and silk. Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by men, and so you should study them. Sometimes you want the drapery as a background, to give color or line; and yet to have also marked surface qualities (texture), would take from the effect of those qualities in the other objects of the group.
As to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but see to it that the colors are good,—in themselves "good color," not harsh nor crude. It does you no good as a student to learnhow to express bad color. Neither is it good training for you, in studying how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your group into good color in your picture.
Good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with much variety of color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or prominent design in it. Still, the more kinds you have, the more you can vary your work.
If your drapery is a little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any extent. There is very little material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the color is too strong, don't use it.
Don't scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush. The fact that it would look out of place on furniture or as a dress does not imply that it may not be beautiful as a background or as a foreground color. These old and faded materials furnish some of the most useful things you can have; a fact the reverse of what is true in general of other still-life things.
The Use of Still Life.—There is no way in which you can better study the principles of composition than by the use of still life. The fact that you can bring together a large number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not bymerely drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest service to you. You can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table. That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men and women, does not affect the seriousness and usefulness of the problem; for the principles of composition and color do not have to do with the materials which you use to bring about the effect, but the effect itself.
It is practically impossible for the student and the amateur to make very advanced study of composition in line and mass with more than one or two living models; but with still life he may and should get all the practical knowledge possible.
Practical Composition.—Suppose you were going to work with still life, how would you begin? In the first place, get a good composition. Never work from a bad one. You must learn composition some time, so you might as well study it every time you have occasion to start a still-life study. Take any number of things and put them on a table, get a simple background to group them against. Consider your things, and eliminate those which are not necessary, or will not tell in the composition. It is a law that whatever does not help your picture (or composition) tells againstit; so get rid of anything which will not help the composition.
Still Life, No. 1.Still Life, No. 1.
For instance, here are a lot of things indiscriminately grouped on a table. You might paint them, but they are not arranged. There is no composition. They would lack one commanding characteristic of a good picture if you were to paint them so. What do they lack as they are? They have no logical connection with each other,either in arrangement or in the placing, to begin with. They do not help each other either in line or mass. They are crowded, huddled together. You could do with less of them; or, if you want them all, you can place them better. But suppose we take some of them away for simplicity, and rearrange the rest.
Still Life, No. 2.Still Life, No. 2.
Here are some of the things, with others taken away. The combination is simpler, but still it isnot satisfactory. There is some logical connection among the objects, but none in the grouping. They are still huddled; there is no line; it is too square; no attempt at balance; they are simply things. If you change them about a little, having regard to size, proportion, balance, and line, you can get something better out of these same objects.
Still Life, No. 3.Still Life, No. 3.
Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and mass, and to break up theround of the plaque; the handle turned around to give more looseness and freedom; the pitcher is placed where it will break the line of the plaque, yet not too obviously or awkwardly; the handle is placed at a good angle with that of the coffee-pot, and the relation of distance with the coffee-pot in balancing the whole is considered. The drapery is spread out so as to have some probability. It does not help much in line, but it does in mass and in color (in the original). It could be bettered, but it will do for the present. The cup also has a reasonable position, and helps to balance and to give weight to the main mass, which is the coffee-pot. There is not much light and shade in this composition, nor much distinction. But it does balance, and would make a good study, and is a very respectable piece of composition,—simple, modest, and dignified.
Now if you wanted to add some of those things which were eliminated, and make a more complicated composition, you would look for the same things in it when completed. We have simply the same group, with the bottle and glass added. The stout jug in the first group is left out because it is not needed, and it will not mass with the rest easily. The tall glass vase is left out because it is too transparent to count either as line, mass, or color, and does not in any way help, and therefore counts against, because it does not count for, ourcomposition. The things we have here are enough, but they are not right as they are now. They injure rather than help the last arrangement. The bottle and glass are in the composition, but not of it; a composition must beone thing, no matter how many objects go to the making of it. This is two things. Draw a line down between the bottle and glass and the other things, and you get two compositions, both good, instead of one, which we must have for good arrangement.
Still Life, No. 4.Still Life, No. 4.
Let's change them again. This is worse, if anything. We have now got two groups and a thing. The coffee-pot and cup and saucer alone, the bottle and glass alone, and the pitcher; the drapery tries to pull them together, but can't. The plaque has no connection with anything. They are all pulled apart. In the last group at least there was some chief mass, the first complete composition. Now every one is for himself; three up and down lines and a circle—that's about what it amounts to.
Still Life, No. 5.Still Life, No. 5.
Let's group them,—push them together. Place the bottle near the coffee-pot. Because they areabout the same height, one cannot dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.
Still Life, No. 6.Still Life, No. 6.
Place the cup about as before, and the mass pretty well towards the centre of the plaque. Put the pitcher where it will balance, and the glass where it will count unobtrusively, and help break the line of the bottoms of the objects. The drapery now helps in line also, and gives more unity, as well as mass and weight and color, to the whole. This group is about as well placed asthese objects will come. There is balance, mass, proportion, dignity, unity.
Of course you may make a paintable and interesting composition with only two things. But you must give them some relation both as to fact and as to position. The same elements of unity and balance and line come in, no matter how many or how few are the objects which enter as elements in your group.
In this way study composition with still life. Move things about and see how they look; use your eye and judgment. Get to see things together, and apply the principles spoken of in the chapter on "Composition" to all sorts of things in nature.
Scope of Study.—Drawing is always drawing, whatever the objects to which it is applied, and you can study all the problems of drawing and values with still life. The drawing is not so severe as that of the antique, nor so difficult as study from the life, but you can learn to draw and then apply it to other things, and advance as far as you please; and as I said at first, you need never lack an amiable model.
All sorts of effects of lighting you can study easily with still life; and of color and texture also. The study of surface and texture is most important to you. If you were to undertake to paint a sheep or a cow the first time; if you were topaint without previous experience a background which contained metal and glass, or a model with a velvet or satin dress, you would not succeed. These all involve problems of skill and facility of representation. When you paint a portrait or figure picture, or a landscape with animals, you should not have to deal with, as new, problems of this sort. You should have arrived at some understanding of this sort of thing in studies which are not complicated by other problems of greater difficulty. This is where still life comes in again to make the study of painting easier.
Interest.—But the use of this sort of painting is not only its practicaluse. You need not feel that it is all drudgery—which is something that most students do not love! You may make pictures with a much clearer conscience along this line; for the better the picture, and the more interesting and charming it is, the more successful is your work as study. You can be as interested in the beauty and the picture of it as you please, and it will only make you work the better. To see the picture in a group of bottles and books is to be the more able to see the picture in a tree and sky. An artist's eye is sensitive to beauty of color and line and form wherever he sees it. The student's should be also. No artist but has found delight in painting still life. No student should think it beneath his serious study.
Procedure.—Study painting first in still-life compositions. When you set up your canvas first, and set your palette, let it be in front of a few simple objects grouped interestingly; or, better, set up a single jar or a book, with a simply arranged background for color contrast. All the problems of manipulation are there for you to study. No processes of handling, no manner of color effect, which you cannot use in this study.
Learn here what you will need in other lines of work.
Beginning.—The best way to make a study from still life is to begin with a careful charcoal drawing on the canvas. You may shade it more or less as you please, but be most careful about proportions and forms. The shading means the modelling and the values in black and white; and you can do this either in charcoal as you draw, or it can be put in with monochrome when you begin with paint. But you must have the drawing sure and true first; for drawing is position, locality. You must knowwherea value is to go before you can justly place it. The value is thehow much. You must have thewherebefore thehow muchcan mean anything in drawing. It would be well to lay in some of the planes of light and shade, because you feel proportion more naturally and truly so than with mere outline. The outline encloses the form, but with nothing but outlineyou are less apt to feel the reality of the form. The planes of values fill in the outline and give substance to it. They map it out so that it takes thickness and proportion; it is more real. And any fault of outline is more quickly seen, because you cannot get your masses of shade of the right form and proportion if the outline enclosing them is not right.
The Frottée.—Make, then, a careful light-and-shade drawing with charcoal directly on the canvas, working in the background where it tells against the group, but without carrying it out to the edges of the canvas.
Be accurate with your modelling and values, and keep the planes simple and well defined. Draw all characteristic details, but only the most important, nearly as if it were not to be painted, but were to remain a drawing.
Fix this drawing with fixative and an atomizer.
In beginning with paint go over the drawing with a thinfrottéewhich shall re-enforce the drawing with color. You may do this with one color, making a monochrome painting very thin, leaving the canvas bare for the lights. Many of the best painters lay in all pictures this way. What color is to be used is a matter for consideration. It should be one so sympathetic to the coloring of the whole picture that if it is left without any other paint over it in places it will still look allright. Raw umber is a good color, or raw umber modified with burnt sienna and black. You can make a mixture that seems right. This establishes your larger values, and gives you something better than a bare canvas, and something with which you can have a more just idea of the effect of each touch of color you put on.
If there is much variety of color in the various objects of your composition, it is better to make yourfrottéesuggest the different colors. Instead of making a monochromefrottée, rub in each object with a thin mixture, approximating the color and value, but not solid, nor as strong as it will become when painted, of course. Nevertheless, you can get in this first rubbing in, a strong effect, which at a distance has a very solid look, though the relations are not so carefully studied. When you come to put on solid color with this sort of an under-painting, it is easy to judge pretty closely of color as well as light-and-shade relations, and you can work more frankly into it.
Into this painting, when it is dry, you may begin to paint with body color, beginning with the true color and value of the lights, and working down through the half darks into the darks. Paint the background pretty carefully as to color and value, but loosely as to handling. Paint slowly, deliberately, and thoughtfully. There is no need to pile up masses of wrong color. You should try to besure of the color before you lay it on. Study the color in the group, mix on the palette, and compare them. Think at least two minutes for every one minute of actually laying on paint. You save time in the end by being deliberate and by working thoughtfully. Put on color firmly and with a full brush, but there is no need to load color for the sake of the body of it.
Loaded Lights.—It was a principle with the older painters to paint the shadows thinly and with transparent color, and to load the lights. It gave a richness to the shadows and a solidity to the lights which was much valued. But don't think about this; don't let it influence the frankness of your painting. The theory is in itself largely obsolete now, and in fact has been disregarded by almost every able painter who ever lived, in practice, no matter what he said about it. I only speak of it because almost all books on painting have laid it down as a rule, and you had better know its true relation to painting. Like all other traditional methods of painting it has been used by the greatest of painters, and has also been disregarded by the greatest of painters; and as far as you are concerned, you may use it or not as suits your purpose. The main thing is to get the right color and value in the right place, in the most direct and natural, in the least affected, manner possible.
You may work into yourfrottée, then, more or less solidly as you feel will give you the best representation of the color you see.
Solid Painting.—Don't paint always in the same way. It is a mistake to get too accustomed to one manner of procedure. Different things require different handling. Let the thing suggest how you shall paint it. If you want to paint directly, paint solidly from first to last instead of rubbing in thinly first. But always have an accurate drawing underneath.
In working solidly without previous laying in, begin where each brush-stroke will have the greatest effect toward establishing the appearance of reality. If the canvas is light, begin by putting in the main darks, and if the canvas is dark, do the reverse. You get the most immediate effect of reality by therelief; the relief you get most directly by putting in first those values which contrast with what is already there. Establish your most telling values first, then work from them towards less immediately effective things.
Color and Values.—Study the color at the same time you do the value. Put on no touch of paint as a value or a color alone. If you do, you will have to paint that spot twice,—once for the value, and again for the color. You might as well paint for the two qualities in one stroke. It takes more thought, but it gives you more command of yourwork. It doesn't load your canvas with useless paint, and it saves time in the long run.
Relations and Directness.—Study to give the true relations of things. Try to get the just color quality. Give it at once. Don't get it half way and trust to luck and a subsequent painting to correct it. You will never learn to paint that way. Paint intensely while you paint. Use all the energy you have. Paint with your whole strength for a half or a whole hour, and then rest. You will accomplish more so than by painting all day in a languid, half-hearted way.
Directness.—Directness comes from making up your mind just what tint of color and value is needed, and just where it is to go, first, then putting it there with no coaxing. Get the right color on your brush and plenty of it; then put the brush deliberately and firmly down in the right place, and take it directly away, and look at the result without touching it again till you have made up your mind that it needs something else, and what it is that it needs. Then do that and stop.
Directness and justness of relation are the most important things in painting. They tell for most, result in most, both to the picture and to the student. Whatever you do, work for that. Try to have no vagueness in your mind as to what you will do or why you do it, and the effect of it will show on your canvas.
Flower painting is the refinement of still life. You have the same control of combination, but you have not the same control of time. Flowers will change, and change more rapidly than any other models you can have; and at the same time they are so subtle that the most exquisite truth and justness are necessary to paint them well.
People seem to think that any one can paint flowers. On the contrary, almost no one can paint them well. There are not a dozen painters in the world who can really paint flowers as they ought to be painted. Why? Because while they are so exquisite in drawing and color, and so infinitely delicate in value, they are also even more infinitely subtle in substance and sentiment.
When you have got the drawing and the color and the value, you have not got thequality.
What is the petal of a flower? It is not paper, and it is not wax, neither is it flesh and blood, of the most exquisite kind. All these are gross as substance compared to the tender firmness of the flower petal; and the whole bunch of flowers is made up of petals.
Yet you cannot paint thepetalseither, else you lose theflower. You must paint thequalityof the petal, and thecharacterof the flower.
All these things make the mere perception of facts most difficult, and it must be done with full knowledge that in an hour it will be something else, and you can never get it back to its original form again. Yet you cannot paint a bunch of flowers in an hour. What will you do?
Mass and Value.—There is something besides the flower and the petal; there is themass. The mass isone thing, and it is surrounded with air, and air goes through the interstices of it. You must make this visible. The difference in value in flowers is something "infinitely little," as a great flower painter said to me once. Yet the difference is there. The bunch has its nearer and its farther sides, and the way the light falls on it is the most obvious expression of it.
When you begin a group of flowers, get thewholefirst. Make up your mind that you cannot complete your work from the flower you have in front of you, and that you must constantly change your models. Do not paint the little things, the personal things first then. Paint what is common to all the flowers in the group first. Paint the mass and the rotundity of it, and express most vaguely theformsof the accents, and of the darks which fall between the flowers,but get their values. For you will have to change these, and you should have nothing there which will influence you to shirk. In this way only can you get the larger things without hampering your future work by what may be wrong.
Sweet Peas.Sweet Peas.
Get the large values, and as little as possible of the expression of the individual flowers; then as the flowers fade and change, substitute one or two fresh ones at a time, in this or that part of the partially wilted group, using the same kind of flower as that which was in that place before;then work more closely from these new flowers, letting the whole bunch preserve for you the mass and general relation. As you work, the bunch will be gradually changing and constantly renewed from part to part, and you can work slowly from general to particular. Finally, from new flowers, put in those more individual touches which give the personal flowers.
This is the only way you can work a long time, and it is not easy. But it should not discourage you. Nothing takes the place of the flower picture, and the only way to learn to paint flowers is to paint flowers.
General Principles Hold Always.—Still, the principles of all painting hold here as elsewhere, and what is said of painting in general will have its application to flowers.
Paint flowers because you love them; and if you love them, love them enough to study patiently to express the qualities most worth painting, even if there be difficulties.
Details Again.—Don't make too much of unimportant things. The whole is more than the part; the flower than the petal. Of course you can't paint a flower without painting the petals, but you need not paint the petals so that you can't see anything else. If the character of the flower as a whole is to be seen at a glance without the emphasis of any special petal, suggest the petalsonly. If the petal is important to the expression of character, then paint it; and if you do, paint it well. Use your judgment; make the less expressive of the greater, or do not paint it at all.
Colors.—Colors and tints in flowers are always more rather than less subtle than you think them. If you have a doubt, make it more delicate—give delicacy the benefit of the doubt. Still, flowers are never weak in color. Subtle as they are, it is the very subtlety of strength. Black will be the most useless color of your palette. Make your grays by mixing your richer colors. A gray in a flower is shadow on rich color, and it must not be painted by negation of color, but by refinement of color.
Sketches.—Make sketches of flowers constantly. Try to carry the painting of a single flower or of a group as far as you can in an hour. Practise getting as much of the effect of detail as possible with as little actual painting of it, and then apply this to your picture.
Get to know your work in studies and sketches, and you will work better in more difficult combinations.
When you have, as you generally will have, still-life accessories to your flowers, rub in quickly the color and values of the vase or what not first, but leave the painting of it till the flowers are done. It will be a more patient sitter than they.
Apply the ways of painting spoken of with reference to still life to the sketching of flowers. Either rub in quickly afrottéeand then paint solidly into that, or work frankly and solidly but deliberately to render the characteristic qualities. When you sketch flowers don't take too many at a time; calculate to work not more than an hour and a half or two hours, and have no more flowers in your sketch than you can complete in that time.
When you sketch, quite as much as when you work at more ambitious canvases, get the mass first, especially if the group is large. Then put in the accents which do most to give the character or type of the flower. Make studies of single flowers and sketches of groups. In the study search detail and modelling; in the sketch search relations and relief, effect and large accent.
Don't look upon portraits as something any one can do. A portrait is more than a likeness, and the painting of it gives scope for all of the great qualities possible in art. Only a great painter can paint a great portrait. Some great painters rest their fame on work in this field, and others have added by this to the fame derived from other kinds of work.
You must not think it easy to paint a portrait, or rest satisfied with having got a likeness. Likeness is a very commonplace thing, which almost any one can get. If there were no other qualities to be tried for, it would hardly be worth while to paint a portrait. Back of the likeness, which a few superficial lines may give, is the character, which needs not only skill and power to express but great perception to see, and judgment to make use of to the best advantage.
Character.—The first requisite in a good portrait is character,—more than likeness, more than color or grace, before everything else, it needs this; nothing can take the place of it and makea portrait in any real sense of the word. Everything else may be added to this, and the picture be only so much the greater; but this is the fundamental beauty of the portrait. Some of the greatest painters made pictures which were very beautiful, yet the greatest beauty lay in the perception and expression of character. Holbein's wonderful work is the apotheosis of the direct, simple, sincere expression of character in the most frank and unaffected rectitude of drawing. There are masterpieces of Albrecht Dürer which rest on the same qualities, as you can see in the Portrait of Himself by Dürer. Likeness is incidental to character; get that, and the likeness will be there in spite of you.
Hubert Herkomer said once that he did not try for likeness; if only he got the right values in the right places, the likeness had to be there. The same can hardly be said of character, for this depends on the selection from the phases of expression which are constantly passing on the face, those which speak most of the personality of the man; and the emphasis of these to the sacrifice of others. The painting of character is interpretation of individuality through the painting of the features, and, like all interpretation, depends more on insight and selection than on representation. Try for this always. Search for it in the manner, in the pose and occupation, of your sitter. Get likenessif you will, of course; but remember that there is a petty likeness, which may be accident or not, which you can always get by a little care in drawing; and that there is a larger character which includes this, and does not depend on exaggeration of feature or emphasis of accidental lines, but on the large expressiveness of the individual. You may find it elsewhere than in the face. The character affects the whole movement of the man. The set of the head and the great lines of the face, the head and shoulders alone would give it to you even if the features were left out. Study to see this, and to express it first, and then put in as much detail as you see fit, only taking care never to lose the main thing in getting those details.