Matting--Badgering--How to preserve Correctness of
Outline--Difficulty of Large Work--Ill-ground Pigment--The
Muller--Overground Pigment--Taking out Lights--"Scrubs"--The Need
of a Master.
Take your camel hair matting-brush (fig. 27 or 28); fill it with the
pigment, try it on the slab of the easel till it seems just so full that
the wash you put on will not run down till you have plenty of time to
brush it flat with the badger (fig. 29).
Have your badger ready at hand and _very clean_, for if there is any
pigment on it from former using, that will spoil the very delicate
operation you are now to perform.
Now rapidly, but with a very light hand, lay an even wash over the whole
piece of glass on which the outline is painted; use vertical strokes,
and try to get the touches to just meet each other without overlapping;
but there is a very important thing to observe in holding the brush. If
you hold it so (fig. 30) you cannot properly regulate the pressure, and
also the pigment runs away downwards, and the brush gets dry at the
point; you must hold it so (fig. 31), then the curve of the hair makes
the brush go lightly over the surface, while also, the body of the brush
being pointed downwards, the point you are using is always being
refilled.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
[Illustration: FIG. 29.]
It takes a very skilful workman indeed to put the strokes so evenly side
by side that the result looks flat and not stripy; indeed you can hardly
hope to do so, but you can get rid of what "stripes" there are by taking
your badger and "stabbing" the surface of the painting with it very
rapidly, moving it from side to side so as never to stab twice in the
same spot; this by degrees makes the colour even, by taking a little off
the dark part and putting it on the light; but the result will look
mottled, not flat and smooth. Sometimes this may be agreeable, it
depends on what you are painting; but if you wish it to be smooth, just
give a last stroke or two over the whole glass sideways, that is to say,
holding the badger so that it stands quite perpendicular to the glass,
move it, _always still perpendicular_, across the whole surface. You
must not sway it from side to side, or kick it up at the end of each
stroke like a man white-washing; it must move along so that the points
of the hairs are all just lightly touching the glass all the time.
[Illustration: FIG. 30.]
_How to Ensure the Drawing of a Face being kept Correct while
Painting._--If you adopt the plan of doing the first painting over an
unfired outline, you must be very careful that the outline is not
brushed out of drawing in the process. If you have sufficient skill it
need not be so, for it is quite possible--if all the conditions as to
adhesiveness are right--and if you are light-handed enough--to so lay
and badger the "matt" that the outline beneath shall only be gently
softened, and not blurred or moved from its place. But in any case the
best plan is at the same time that you trace the outline of a head on to
the glass to trace it also with equal care on to a piece of tracing
paper, and arrange three or four well-marked points, such as the corner
of the mouth, the pupil of the eye, and some point on the back of the
head or neck, so that these cannot possibly shift, and that you may be
able at any time to get the tracing back into its proper place, both on
the cartoon and on the piece of glass on which you are to paint the
head. On which piece of glass also your first care should be that these
three or four points should be clearly marked and unmovable; then during
the whole progress of the painting you will always be able to verify the
correctness of the drawing by placing your piece of tracing paper over
the glass, and so seeing that nothing has shifted its place.
[Illustration: FIG. 31.]
It requires a good deal of patience and practice to lay matt
successfully over unfired outline. It is a question of the amount and
quality of the gum, the condition of your brush, even the dryness or
dampness of the air. You must try what degree of gum suits you best,
both in the outline and in the matt which you are to pass over it. Try
it a good many times on a slab of plain glass or on the plate of your
easel first, before you try on your painting. Of course it's a much
easier thing to matt successfully over a small piece than over a large.
A head as big as the palm of your hand is not a very severe test of your
powers; but in one as large as the _whole_ of your hand, say a head
seven inches from crown to chin, the problem is increased quite
immeasurably in difficulty. The real test is being able to produce in
glass a real facsimile of a head by Botticelli or Holbein, and when you
can do that satisfactorily you can do anything in glass-painting.
Do not aim to get _too much_ in the first painting, at any rate not till
you have had long practice. Be content if you get enough modelling on a
head to turn the outline into a more sensitive and artistic drawing than
it could be if planted down, raw and hard, upon the bare, cold glass.
After all it is a common practice to fire the outline separately, and
anything beyond this that you get upon the glass for first fire is so
much to the good.
But besides the quality of the _gum_ you will find sometimes differences
in the quality or condition of the _pigment_. It may be insufficiently
ground; in which case the matt, in passing over, will rasp away every
vestige of the outline, so delicate a matter it is.
You can tell when colour is not ground sufficiently by the way it acts
when laid as a vertical wash. Lay a wash, moist enough to "run," on a
bit of your easel-slab; it will run down, making a sort of
seaweed-looking pattern--clear lanes of light on the glass with a black
grain at the lower end. Those are the bits of unground material: under a
100-diameter microscope they look like chunks of ironstone or road
metal, or of rusty iron, and you'll soon understand why they have
scratched away your tender outline.
You must grind such colour till it is smooth, and an old-fashioned
_granite_ muller is the thing, not a glass one.
Now, after all this, how am I to excuse the paradox that it is possible
to have the colour ground _too_ fine! All one can say is that you "find
it so." It can be so fine that it seems to slip about in a thin, oily
kind of way.
It's all as you find it; the differences of a craft are endless; there
is no forecasting of everything, and you must buy your experience, like
everybody else, and find what suits you, learning your skill and your
materials side by side.
Now these are the chief processes of painting, as far as laying on
colour goes; but you still have much of your work before you, for the
way in which light and shade is got on glass is almost more in "taking
off" than in "putting on." You have laid your dark "matt" all over the
glass evenly; now the next thing is to remove it wherever you want light
or half-tone.
[Illustration: FIG. 32.]
_How to Finish a Shaded Painting out of the Even Matt._--This is done in
many ways, but chiefly with those tools which painters call "scrubs,"
which are oil-colour hog-hair brushes, either worn down by use, or
rubbed down on fine sandpaper till they are as stiff as you like them
to be. You want them different in this: some harder, some softer; some
round, some square, and of various sizes (figs. 32 and 33), and with
these you brush the matt away gently and by degrees, and so make a light
and shade drawing of it. It is exactly like the process of mezzotint,
where, after a surface like that of a file has been laboriously produced
over the whole copper-plate, the engraver removes it in various degrees,
leaving the original to stand entirely only for the darkest of all
shadows, and removing it all entirely only in the highest lights.
[Illustration: FIG. 33.]
There is nothing for this but practice; there is nothing more to _tell_
about it; as the conjurers say, "That's how it's done." You will find
difficulties, and as these occur you will think this a most defective
book. "Why on earth," you will say, "didn't he tell us about this, about
that, about the other?"
Ah, yes! it is a most defective book; if it were not, I would have taken
good care not to write it. For the worst thing that could happen to you
would be to suppose that any book can possibly teach you any craft, and
take the place of a master on the one hand, and of years of practice on
the other.
This book is not intended to do so; it is written to give as much
information and to arouse as much interest as a book can; with the hope
that if any are in a position to wish to learn this craft, and have not
been brought up to it, they may learn, in general, what its conditions
are, and then be able to decide whether to carry it further by seeking
good teaching, and by laying themselves out for a patient course of
study and practice and many failures and experiments. While, with regard
to those already engaged in glass-painting, it is of course intended to
arouse their interest in, and to give them information upon, those other
branches of their craft which are not generally taught to those brought
up as glass-painters.