COPYING
Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of
manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful,
sometimes necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the
results of his sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter
must be able to copy, and to know all the conveniences of it. Before
the painting begins on a picture, the main figures in it must be
placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the plan of it, and
their relation to that plan. This calls for some method of exact
reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that
purpose. The process of copying is that method.
From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical
means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter
whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why
and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study
with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as
the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the
expression at the same time.
This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said
before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye;
and the training of the power of perception rather than the
understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The
processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature
are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find
his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is
still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as
he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can
give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of
nature should come first. The _seeing_ of what is must precede the
_stating_ of it.
But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to
be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right
places.
Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for
something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student
makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing,
but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and
whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the
original.
This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really
having a picture which is more than superficially like the original;
but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which
cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.
Study your original carefully before and while working on your own
canvas. See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the
same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a
large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with
a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush
than the painter used on the picture you are copying.
The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted
solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. Never glaze nor
scumble because _you_ can't get the colors without. Your business is
to try to get the same qualities _in the same way_. And any other
manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the
problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you
certainly won't get the _same one_ any other way. You are not
originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another
man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying
to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your
canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of
fact his canvas shows that he did it another way.
This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of
course any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is
precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and I have
found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to
advanced students.
So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if
you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes
used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship
of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.
In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing
freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else,
and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful
studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have
qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the
model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than
they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the
characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been
worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over
again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not
only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. For
this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which
combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand,
without which the work would be too rigid and hard.
="Squaring up."=--This process is called "squaring-up," and consists
of making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its
lines and proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part
of the original will come in the same relative place in the copy no
matter what the size may be, and at the same time leaves the actual
laying out of the thing to freehand drawing.
The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points
horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think
best--if there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one
part; if too many, it makes you more trouble. It is not necessary that
there be as many points one way as the other; make the number to suit
the lines of the study.
Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping
them carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines
cross the vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the
study into right-angled parallelograms, which may be squares or not
according as the vertical lines are the same distance from each other
that the horizontal ones are, or not.
Number the spaces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at
one side the same.
Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of
spaces at the top and the same number at the side as you have done
with the study, and keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can
make it as large or as small as you please, and you can draw the
outlines within those squares as they fall in the study, and they will
be the same in proportion without your having the trouble of working
to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the proportion is
not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to the
horizontal, in both the study and the picture.
By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the
study, and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line
or part of a line comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same
part of the corresponding square on the canvas, repeat the line in the
same relation and with exactness, while still leaving the hand free to
modify it, or correct it.
In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the
smallest study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any
surface you please.