DIFFICULTIES OF BEGINNERS
All painters have difficulty with their pictures, but the trouble with
the beginner is that he has not experience enough to know how to meet
it. The solving of all difficulties is a matter of application of
fundamental principles to them; but it is necessary to know these
principles, and to have applied them to simple problems, before one
can know how to apply them to less simple ones.
I have tried to deal fully with these principles rather than to tell
how to do any one thing, and to point out the application whenever it
could be done.
There are, however, some things that almost always bother the
beginner, and it may be helpful to speak of them particularly.
=Selection of Subject.=--One of the chief objections to copying as a
method of beginning study is that while it teaches a good deal about
surface-work, it gives no practical training just when it is most
needed. The student who has only copied has no idea how to look for a
composition, how to place it on his canvas, or how to translate into
line and color the actual forms which he sees in nature. These things
are all done for him in the picture he is copying, yet these are the
very first things he should have practised in. The making of a picture
begins before the drawing and painting begins. You see something
out-doors, or you see a group of people or a single person in an
interesting position. It is one thing to see it; how are you
practically to grasp it so as to get it on canvas? That is quite a
different thing. How much shall you take in? How much leave out? What
proportion of the canvas shall the main object or figure take up? All
these are questions which need some experience to answer.
In dealing with figures experience comes somewhat naturally, because
you will of course not undertake more than a head and shoulders, with
a plain background, for your first work. The selecting of subject in
this is chiefly the choice of lighting and position of head, which
have been spoken of elsewhere; and the placing of them on the canvas
should be reduced to the making of the head as large as it will come
conveniently. The old rule was that the point of the nose should be
about the middle of the canvas, and in most cases on the ordinary
canvas this brings the head in the right place. As you paint more you
will put in more and more of the figure, and so progress comes very
naturally.
But in landscape you are more than likely to be almost helpless at
first. There is so much all around you, and so little saliency, that
it is hard to say where to begin and where to leave off. Practice in
still life will help you somewhat, but still things in nature are
seldom arranged with that centralization which makes a subject easy to
see. Even the simplicity which is sometimes obvious is, when you come
to paint it, only the more difficult to handle because of its
simplicity. The simplicity which you should look for to make your
selection of a subject easy is not the lack of something to draw, but
the definiteness of some marked object or effect. What is good as a
"view" is apt to be the reverse of suitable for a picture. You want
something tangible, and you do not want too much or too little of it.
A long line of hill with a broad field beneath it, for instance, is
simple enough, but what is there for you to take hold of? In an
ordinary light it is only a few broad planes of value and color
without an accent object to emphasize or centre on. It can be painted,
of course, and can be made a beautiful picture, but it is a subject
for a master, not for a student. But suppose there were a tree or a
group of trees in the field; suppose a mass of cloud obscured the sky,
and a ray of sunlight fell on and around the tree through a rift in
the clouds. Or suppose the opposite of this. Suppose all was in broad
light, and the tree was strongly lighted on one side, on the other
shadowed, and that it threw a mass of shadow below and to one side of
it. Immediately there is something which you can take hold of and make
your picture around. The field and hill alone will make a study of
distance and middle distance and foreground, but it would not make an
effective sketch. The two effects I have supposed give the possibility
for a sketch at once, and what suggests a sketch suggests a picture.
This central object or effect which I have supposed also clears up the
matter of the placing of your subject on the canvas. With merely the
hill and plain you might cut it off anywhere, a mile or two one side
or the other would make little or no difference to your picture. But
the tree and the effect of light decide the thing for you. The tree
and the lighting are the central idea of the picture. Very well, then,
make them large enough on your canvas to be of that importance. Then
what is around them is only so much more as the canvas will hold, and
you will place the tree where, having the proper proportionate size,
it will also "compose well" and make the canvas balance, being neither
in the middle exactly nor too much to one side.
Here are two photographs taken in the same field and of the same view,
with the camera pointed in the same direction in both. One shows the
lack of saliency, although the tree is there. In the other the camera
was simply carried forward a hundred yards or so, until the tree
became large enough to be of importance in the composition. The
placing is simply a better position with reference to the tree in this
case.
=Centralize.=--Now, as you go about looking for things to sketch,
look always for some central object or effect. If you find that
what seems very beautiful will not give you anything definite
and graspable,--some contrast of form, or light and shade, or
color,--don't attempt it. The thing is beautiful, and has doubtless a
picture in it, but not for you. You are learning how to look for and
to find a subject, and you must begin with what is readily sketched,
without too much subtlety either of form or color or value.
=Placing.=--Having found your subject with something definite in it,
you must place it on your canvas so that it "tells." It will not do to
put it in haphazard, letting any part of it come anywhere as it
happens. You will not be satisfied with the effect of this. The object
of a picture is to make visible something which you wish to call
attention to; to show something that seems to you worth looking at.
Then you must arrange it so that that particular something is sure to
be seen whether anything else is seen or not. This is the first thing
to be thought of in placing your subject. _Where_ is it to come on
the canvas? How much room is it to take up? If it is too large, there
is not enough surrounding it to make an interesting whole. If it is to
be emphasized, it must have something to be emphasized with reference
to. On the other hand, if it is too small, its very size makes it
insignificant.
[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 1.=]
If it is a landscape, decide first the proportions of land and
sky,--where your horizon line will come. Then, having drawn that line,
make three or four lines which will give the mass of the main effect
or object--a barn, a tree, a slope of hill, or whatever it be, get
merely its simplest suggestion of outline. These two things will show
you, on considering their relation to each other and to the rest of
the canvas, about what its emphasis will be. If it isn't right, rub it
out and do it again, a little larger or smaller, a little more to one
side or the other, higher or lower, as you find needed. When you have
done this to your satisfaction, you have done the first important
thing.
[Illustration: =Landscape Photo. No. 2.=]
=Still Life, etc.=--If your subject be still life, flowers, or an
animal or other figure, go about it in the same way. Look at it well.
Try to get an idea of its general shape, and block that out with a few
lines. You will almost always find a horizontal line which by cutting
across the mass will help you to decide where the mass will best come.
First, the mass must be about the right size, and then it must balance
well on the canvas. Any of the things suggested as helping about
drawing and values will of course help you here. The reducing-glass
will help you to get the size and position of things. The card with a
square hole in it will do the same. Even a sort of little frame made
with the fingers and thumbs of your two hands will cut off the
surrounding objects, and help you see your group as a whole with other
things out of the way.
=Walk About.=--A change of position of a very few feet sometimes makes
a great difference in the looks of a subject. The first view of it is
not always the best. Walk around a little; look at it from one point
and from another. Take your time. Better begin a little later than
stop because you don't like it and feel discouraged. Time taken to
consider well beforehand is never lost. "Well begun is half done."
=Relief.=--In beginning a thing you want to have the first few
minutes' work to do the most possible towards giving you something to
judge by. You want from the very first to get something recognizable.
Then every subsequent touch, having reference to that, will be so much
the more sure and effective. Look, then, first for what will count
most.
=What to look for.=--Whether you lay your work out first with
black-and-white or with paint, look to see where the greatest contrast
is. Where is there a strong light against dark and a strong dark
against light? Not the little accents, but that which marks the
contact of two great planes. Find this first, and represent it as soon
as you have got the main values, in this way the whole thing will tell
as an actuality. It will not yet carry much expression, but it will
look like a _fact_, and it will have established certain relations
from which you can work forward.
=Colors.=--It ought to go without saying that the colors as they come
from the tube are not right for any color you see in nature however
you think they look. But beginners are very apt to think that if they
cannot get the color they want, they can get it in another kind of
tube. This is a mistake. The tubes of color that are actually
necessary for almost every possible tint or combination in nature are
very few. But they must be used to advantage. Now and then one finds
his palette lacking, and must add to it; but after one has
experimented a while he settles down to some eight or ten colors
which will do almost everything, and two or three more that will do
what remains. When you work out-of-doors you may find that more
variety will help you and gain time for you; that several blues and
some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular
outfit. Still even then, when you have got beyond the first frantic
gropings, you will be surprised to see yourself constantly using
certain colors and neglecting others. These others, then, you do not
need, and you may leave them out of your box.
=Too Many Tubes.=--If you have too many colors, they are a trouble
rather than a help to you. You must carry them all in your mind, and
you do not so soon get to thinking of the color in nature and taking
up the paint from different parts of your palette instinctively--which
means that you are gaining command of it. Never put a new color on
your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special
reason for it. Better get well acquainted with the regular colors you
have, and have only as many as you can handle well.
=Mixing.=--Use some system in mixing your paint. Have your palette set
the same way always, so that your brush can find the color without
having to hunt for it. Have a reasonable way too of taking up your
color before you mix it. Don't always begin with the same one. Is the
tint light or dark? strong or delicate? What is the prevailing color
in it? Let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors
together for mixing. Let these things have to do also with the
proportionate quantity of each. Suppose you have a heavy dark green to
mix, what will you take first? Make a dash at the white, put it in the
middle of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? How much
paint would you have to take before you got your color? Yet I've seen
this very thing done, and others equally senseless. What is the green?
Dark. Bluish or warm? Will reddish or yellowish blue do it best? How
much space do you want that brushful to cover? Take enough blue, add
to it a yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color.
Don't stir them up; drag one into the other a little--very little. The
color is crude? Another color or two will bring it into tone. Don't
mix it much. Don't smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab
of it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in
quantity, then you will have to take more of the others again to keep
it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly the right proportions of
each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every
time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its
vibration and life.
Now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? White?
Wait a minute. Think. Will white take away the richness of it? White
always grays and flattens the color. Don't put it into a warm, rich
color unless it belongs there. Then only as much as is needed.
Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value on a forehead in
full light? White first, then a little modifying color, yellow first,
then red; perhaps no red: the kind of yellow may do it. When you have
a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first. Then gray it
as much as you need to, never the reverse. But when you want a
delicate color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it
cautiously.
These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary to take the trouble to
write it down? But common-sense is not always attributed to artists,
and the beginner does not seem able always to apply his common-sense
to his painting at first. To say it to him opens his eyes. Best be on
the safe side.
=Crude Color.=--The beginner is sure to get crude color, either from
lack of perception of color qualities, or inability to mix the tints
he knows he wants. In the latter case crude color either comes from
too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors brought
together, which is only another form of the same, for an added
complementary would make it right. For instance, Prussian blue and
chrome yellow mixed will make a powerful green which you could hardly
put anywhere--a strong, crude green. Well, what is the complementary?
Red? And what does a complementary do to a color? Neutralizes, grays.
Then add a very little red, enough to gray the green, not enough to
kill its quality.
Or if you don't want the color that makes, take a little reddish
yellow, ochre say, and possibly a little reddish blue, new blue or
ultramarine; add these, and see how it grays it and still keeps the
same kind of green. This is the principle in extreme. Still, the best
way would be not to try to make a green of Prussian blue and chrome
yellow. It is better to know the qualities of each tube color on your
palette. Know which two colors mix to make a crude color, and which
will be gray, more or less, without a third.
=Muddy Color.=--Dirty or muddy color comes from lack of this last. You
do not know how your colors are going to affect each other. You mix,
and the color looks right on the palette, but on the canvas it is not
right. You mix again and put it on the canvas; it mixes with the first
tint and you get--mud. Why? Both wrong. Scrape the whole thing off.
With a clean spot of canvas mix a fresh color. Put it on frankly and
freshly and let it alone--don't dabble it. The chances are it will be
at least fresh, clean color.
Over-mixing makes color muddy sometimes, especially when more than
three colors are used. When you don't get the right tint with three
colors, the chances are that you have got the wrong three. If that is
not so, and you must add a fourth, do so with some thoughtfulness, or
you will have to mix the tint again.
=Dirty Brushes and Palette.=--Using dirty brushes causes muddy color.
Don't be too economical about the number of brushes you use. Keep a
good big rag at your hand, and wipe the paint out of your brush often.
If the color is getting muddy, clean your palette and take a clean
brush. Your palette is sure to get covered with paint of all colors
when you have painted a little while. You can't mix colors with any
degree of certainty if the palette is smeared with all sorts of tints.
Use your palette-knife--that's what it's for. Scrape the palette clean
every once in a while as it gets crowded. Wipe it off. Take some fresh
brushes. Then, if your color is dirty, it is your fault, not the fault
of your tools.
=Out-door and In-door Colors.=--There is one source of discouragement
and difficulty that every one has to contend against; that is, the
difference in the apparent key of paint when, having been put on
out-of-doors, it is seen in the house. Out-of-doors the color looked
bright and light, and when you get it in-doors it looks dark and gray,
and perhaps muddy and dead. This is something you must expect, and
must learn how to control.
As everything that the out-door light falls upon looks the brighter
for it, so will your paint look brighter than it really is because of
the brilliancy of the light which you see it in. You must learn to
make allowance for that. You must learn by experience how much the
color will go down when you take it into the house.
Of course an umbrella is a most useful and necessary thing in working
out-of-doors, and if it is lined with black so much the better for
you; for there is sure to be a good deal of light coming through the
cloth, and while it shades your canvas, it does to some extent give a
false glow to your canvas, which a black lining counterbalances.
Mere experience will give you that knowledge more or less; but there
are ways in which you can help yourself.
When you first begin to work out-doors try to find a good solid shade
in which to place your easel, and then try to paint up to the full
key, even at the risk of a little crudeness of color. Use colors that
seem rather pure than otherwise. You may be sure that the color will
"come down" a little anyhow, so keep the pitch well up. Then, if the
shade has been pretty even, and your canvas has had a fair light, you
will get a fairly good color-key.
=Predetermined Pitch.=--Another way is to determine the pitch of the
painting in some way before you take the canvas out-of-doors. There
are various ways of doing this. The most practical is, perhaps, to
know the relative value, in the house and out-doors, of the priming of
your canvas. Have a definite knowledge of how near to the highest
light you will want that priming is. Then, when you put on the light
paint, if you keep it light with reference to the known pitch of the
priming, you will keep the whole painting light.
=Discouragement.=--We all get discouraged sometimes, but it is
something to know that the case is not hopeless because we are. That
what we are trying to do does not get done easily is no reason that it
may not get done eventually. Often the discouragement is not even a
sign that what we are doing is not going well. The discouragement may
be one way that fatigue shows itself, and we may feel discouraged
after a particularly successful day's work--in consequence of it very
probably. Make it a rule not to judge of a day's work at the end of
that day. Wait till next morning, when fresh and rested, and you will
have a much more just notion of what you have done.
When you begin to get blue about your work is the time to stop and
rest. If the blues are the result of tire, working longer will only
make your picture worse. A tired brain and eye never improved a piece
of painting. And in the same spirit rest often while you are painting.
If your model rests, it is as well that you rest also. Turn away from
your work, and when you get to work again you will look at it with a
fresh eye.
=Change Your Work Often.=--Too continued and concentrated work on the
same picture also will lead to discouragement. Change your work, keep
several things going at the same time, and when you are tired of one
you may work with fresh perceptions and interest on another.
Stop often to walk away from your work. Lay down your palette and
brushes, and put the canvas at the other end of the room. Straighten
your back and look at the picture at a distance. You get an impression
of the thing as a whole. What you have been doing will be judged of
less by itself and more in relation to the rest of the picture, and so
more justly.
When things are going wrong, stop work for the day. Take a rest. Then,
before you begin again on it to-morrow, take plenty of time to look
the picture over--consider it, compare it with nature, and make up
your mind just what it lacks, just what it needs, just what you will
do first to make it as it should be. It is marvellous how it drives
off the blues to know just what you are going to do next.
TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_.
2. Passages in bold are indicated by =bold=.
3. Illustration captions are indicated by =caption=.
4. Images have been moved from the middle of a paragraph to the
closest paragraph break.
5. The word d'oeuvre uses an oe ligature in the original on page 242.
6. In the List of Illustrations, page number for "Descent from Cross"
is corrected to 163 (original text is 165).
7. The following misprints have been corrected:
"heavvier" corrected to "heavier" (page 16)
"interor" corrected to "interior" (page 141)
"arrangemen" corrected to "arrangement" (page 171)
"analagous" corrected to "analogous" (page 190)
"freeest" corrected to "freest" (page 216)
"naeivete" corrected to "naivete" (page 289)
8. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies
in spelling, punctuation, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been
retained.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Painter in Oil, by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst