STILL LIFE
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 constantly on 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 give all 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 learn how 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
by merely 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 against it; so get rid of anything which will not
help the composition.
[Illustration: =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.
[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 2.=]
Here are some of the things, with others taken away. The combination
is simpler, but still it is not 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.
[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 3.=]
Here the coffee-pot is moved toward the centre, to give height and
mass, and to break up the round 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, our
composition. 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 be _one 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.
[Illustration: =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.
[Illustration: =Still Life, No. 5.=]
Let's group them,--push them together. Place the bottle near the
coffee-pot. Because they are about the same height, one cannot
dominate the other in height; then make them pull together as a mass.
[Illustration: =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 as these 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 to paint 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
practical _use_. 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 know _where_ a value is to go before you can justly place it.
The value is the _how much_. You must have the _where_ before the _how
much_ can 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 outline you 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 Frottee.=--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 thin _frottee_
which 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 all right. 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 your _frottee_ suggest the different
colors. Instead of making a monochrome _frottee_, 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 be sure 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 your _frottee_, 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 the _relief_; 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
your work. 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.