FLOWERS
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 the _quality_.
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 the _petals_ either, else you lose the _flower_.
You must paint the _quality_ of the petal, and the _character_ of 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 the _mass_. The mass is _one 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 the _whole_ first. 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 the _forms_ of 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.
[Illustration: =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 petals only. 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 a _frottee_ and 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.