M. C. Hillick

“ In learning the art of scrolling, as in learning the art of striping, it is distinctly fortunate to remember that there is no royal road—no mystic method by which one can master the art under the soothing influence of a mid-summer night's dream. The acquirement of the art, as the past masters of the school of ornamental painting understood and practiced it, is the result of patient, arduous practice. ”

“ In conducting a practical test the foremost aim of the painter should be to consider the color or pigment to be tested in relation to the object for which it is intended. Shade, brilliancy, working property, durability, etc., are entitled to a careful and chief consideration in a test for quality. And a test for quality, if conducted painstakingly and thoroughly, will disclose the real value of the material to the consumer. When extenders are added to a pigment for the sole purpose of enriching the manufacturer at the expense of the consumer, the practice becomes adulteration, pure and simple. ”

“ In the language of another, "Raw linseed oil is the king of the paint realm. There are lots of usurpers in the field but they are short lived. The true homage of the brotherhood of the brush continues to be paid to the old stand-by. It is the gold of the paint shop currency."
In the basic stage of carriage and wagon painting, pure raw linseed oil is conceded to be the life of the pigment. Impure or adulterated linseed oil—the spurious, fraudulent article, if you please—has more to do with the premature decay of paint and varnish than one at first thought might concede. ”

“ Thus the evolution of the present elaborately painted and decorated business wagon has come about. Is it not stating the truth too strongly to say that the average business man is now quite as exacting and peremptory about the style and appearance of his business wagon as he is of his much prized pleasure vehicle. He aims to have his painter achieve a distinct individuality in the painting of his (the business man's) vehicles, so that so-and-so's delivery wagons are readily distinguished from all others met with along the highways and by-ways. ”

“ A riotous jumble of colors thrown into a fine line corner piece or scroll is an abominable exhibition of bad taste. There is nothing, we dare say, that so completely stamps the cheap cutter or sleigh with a glaring badge of cheapness as the ornament constructed from an inharmonious selection of colors and dotted to beat a Baxter St. vest lining. The dotter has no business striping or ornamenting the modern cutter or sleigh. The ornamental features of sleigh work need to be of a very high order of excellence. ”

“ Imitation of the styles of expert letterers may with the beginner lead up to nobler examples of the art—for has not the sage whispered that genius knows only the right of conquest?—but to the apprentice, fired with the sacred spark of ambition, copying will not long suffice. ”

“ The blending of colors has lately become an important feature of the carriage painter's art. This was at one time considered purely a matter of business belonging to the artist, but it is not now so regarded. Artistic, and therefore harmonious, color blending consists in preserving the individuality of each color employed, while at the same time there is an almost unconscious merging of one color into another. No distinctive lines are allowed to disturb the harmony of the work. ”

“ The wagon painter is confronted by many difficulties concerning which the carriage painter pure and simple, knows little. He must know well how to build beautiful and durable surfaces. He should be a first-class colorist, understanding all the features of color mixing and fully conversant with the laws of harmony and contrast. He will likewise find it necessary to be an unexcelled master of the varnish brush, a skilled striper, wagon letterer, and decorative painter of established ability. ”

“ The time when the main requirement of a business wagon was symmetry and strength of structure has gone by. The merchant, the man of business, has found it to possess a value beyond its mere capacity as a carrier of merchandise. Its worth as an advertising medium, as an agency through which business stability and enterprise may be widely heralded, has been fully learned. ”

“ The job accurately and artistically laid out, even if lettered in a manner not strictly up to the standard, will far more effectively fulfill its mission as a work of art than will the one properly penciled but improperly designed. The key, then, to fine wagon lettering may be embraced in the work of laying out. To present rules by which the workman may at all times and closely abide in preparing a contemplated design for letter painting would be impracticable because the laying out, with its attendant features, must conform to the size, form, and general condition of the surface. ”

“ The vehicle painter requires a brush made scientifically, by the outlay of honest workmanship, and of material that is wholly above suspicion. A brush that has simply the price to recommend it is usually an unreliable article and worketh evil, like a thief in the night, unexpectedly. In making choice of a brush for putting on priming, lead, and roughstuff, and for such other features of general use as require a round or oval bristle brush, the painter may properly look at the filling of the tool. Deception, if practiced at all, is usually placed where it shows the least. ”

“ The wagon letterer essays glazing with many of the beautiful transparent pigments, and in this wise brings forth charming combinations in color seldom attempted by the sign writer.
The wagon letterer's work is done, as a rule, with quick drying colors or size, and almost invariably is varnished over. Surface smoothness is therefore with him a matter of the first importance. The art of the wagon letterer is composed of many difficulties, each of which must be surmounted ere the learner can hope to stand among the select few and quaff the foam from the beaker of success. ”

“ While two or more pigments may mix nicely together, they may not liquify readily, and unless the workman be thorough in his mixing operations, lack of a uniform film of color ensues, a condition which later on develops the faded and bleached out surface, and in many instances the flaking and shelly one. The painter who would become a skilled mixer of pigment will insist upon exact quantitative measurements of all the ingredients he may employ, both liquids and solids, when such measurements are possible, and he will further see that the ingredients are perfectly united. ”

“ It is seldom needful to obtain as fine and satiny a surface as is required on the panel of the jaunty brougham or the luxurious landau, the color scheme employed, united with dignified and artistic ornamentation, being depended upon as the irresistable attraction. However, this statement is not intended to belittle the importance of the surfacing system. Upon the finest class of business wagons it is a common experience to observe surfaces which in point of smoothness and general excellence are second only to those observable upon heavy pleasure carriages of the finest class. ”

“ THE MIXING OF COLORS,
in view of the fact that the manufacture of them has now reached a very high state of perfection, would seem to be a comparatively easy matter, but [31] it must be understood that in vehicle painting, business vehicle painting especially, there are many hues, tints, and shades demanded which the color maker does not furnish. Such mixtures have to be prepared by the painter, and the work becomes a skilled operation. First he must be fortified with a clear knowledge of the proportions of the ingredients required to form the desired color or hue thereof, or tint or shade. ”

“ If the fading of colors tended in one general way and to something like a uniform degree, the successful matching of colors might be controlled in due time by all painters interested in experimental work. Chemistry and other scientific aids to color-making have wrought mysterious and, to the practical man, undemonstrable factors in carriage colors. As a result, colors fade in all the varying degrees imaginable, and are subject to so many influences that their control, as a rule, is quite beyond the skill and practical knowledge of the painter. ”

“ For this purpose, a good-sized blackboard is in every way the most desirable surface upon which to work. The beginner should under no circumstances confine his efforts to learn scrolling [76] to a pad of paper and a lead pencil. As an eminent instructor of the art once declared: "Work with a lead pencil on a 2×4 paper, and the chances are that your scrolls will be of the 2×4 order." Working upon the blackboard with a chalk crayon gives the learner a freedom of reach and a valiant command of the pencil attained in no other way. ”

“ The purity of lead deserves the carriage painter's first consideration. It has been practically determined that a pure lead, endowed with all the virtues which should distinguish pure lead, when mixed and used in combination with other pigments or colors, holds its quality better and is less susceptible of change than a compound or adulterated lead. Moreover, pure white lead, with its soft, fine, elastic texture, has a natural adhesiveness, a surface-filling and leveling-up property, which the impure lead carrying a percentage of gritty, flinty ingredients does not possess. ”

“ Amid the stress and strife of competition and swift processes, these coats are often crowded on so fast that reliable drying is not assured, and then to lend additional uncertainty to the outcome of the work, rather quick and fairly unelastic varnish coats are employed, so that at the completion of the work a thread of weakness gleams through the whole paint and varnish structure. Surface building fallacies of this nature the wagon painter is forced to contend with, and his ability to surmount them is repeatedly shackled by rigid contrary decisions coming from the business office. ”

“ A color-clogged brush need not be expected to do good blending service. No arbitrary rules can be given within which to confine the work of blending—it is too closely allied to art for that. Supremely necessary aids to success in this field of work consist of plenty of practice taken in connection with intelligent study of outline, harmony, and contrasts.
If it is desirable to varnish a job of gilding the same day the leaf is laid, and it is feared that the leaf will brush mark, it is a good plan to give the gold a light coat of thin shellac, going over the work very quickly. ”

“ Camel's hair color brushes may well have a little paint, one-half oil and one-half turpentine, dropped into the heels of them. These brushes, used in japan ground colors, need to be kept suspended in water. Change the water frequently and make sure that it is clean. A brush keeper such as is recommended for varnish brushes is one of the best possible keepers for color brushes. It insures cleanliness. And vehicle painting without cleanliness is like unto a landscape painting with the beauties of nature left out. The brushes kept in water do better in rain water than in hard water. ”

“ Briefly, then, we may sum up the task of applying and manipulating varnish upon a carriage surface as a delicate job. A workman of fine notions, intelligent, painstaking and highly skilled in the handling of the proper tools, is the only successful varnisher. Such a workman is required to get all that is true and fine and lasting and lovely out of the employment of varnish. In the varnishing of a vehicle the first kind of varnish we are required to use is rubbing varnish. ”

“ The conditions and circumstances which unite to produce the varying and various color sensations have never yet been unanimously agreed upon by the eminent color theorists. The practical man may thread the remotest confines of color theories as expounded by Newton, Brewster Jones, Field, Rood, Young, and others, until his adventures bring him out on the toil-won heights and stupendous summits of the modern science of colors, and what he beholds will simply tend to confuse his intellect and more than ever convince him that the mastery of color laws remains yet to be accomplished ”