Face paint

“ The paint with which the face is covered appears to have been a subsequent embellishment, for long-continued exposure to the action of the elements would have removed the oil or other substance which serves to give body to the color, and the paint would have remained as a dry powder liable to be brushed off with the slightest touch. ”

“ Blend the paint till the face has an even tone. Watch your mirror carefully. It is better to have the grease paint a little too thin on the face than too thick, but you will soon learn to get it just right, which is what you are aiming at. ”

“ Speaking of paint reminds me of a curious custom in Russia, which may serve to show how very common its use is among the people: when a young man is paying his court to a girl he generally presents her with a box of both red and white paint, as a necessary addition to her beauty. Among the upper classes this habit is also very general, and I have often been present when ladies have most unceremoniously rouged their face before going into the drawing-room. ”

“ While in the last century face-painting was a universal fashion, it is nowadays resorted to only by persons whose skin requires some artificial help. But nobody desires that the cosmetic should be perceptible on the skin. Hence it must be laid down as a rule that paints and all cosmetics should be so compounded that it is not easily possible to the observer to recognize that some artificial means has been employed for beautifying the skin. ”

“ And that is because they are not perfectly black. Were they perfectly black, absolutely black, as it were, we could not see them--ay, not in the blaze of a thousand suns could we see them! And so I say, with the right pigments, properly compounded, an absolutely black paint could be produced which would render invisible whatever it was applied to. ”

“ If a beard or moustache is to be worn, carefully remove the paint with a clean towel from the part that will be covered by the false hair and apply a little spirit gum to the clean skin. Adjust the beard and hold it until it adheres thoroughly. Always blend the beard with the cheeks with loosely-combed crepe hair as this will help the naturalness of the appearance. Powder the face. The eyelashes are darkened by drawing a thin line along the edges of the lids. This I do with an orange stick dipped in melted paint. The eyebrows are then drawn in. The make-up is finished by colouring the lips. ”

“ Be careful to cover all the space around the eyes, also rub in on the eyelashes, using care to keep155 it out of the eyes, for it will cause stinging. Greasing the eyelashes this way makes the removal of the makeup much easier. Now rub your face with a piece of cheesecloth until all the superfluous cold cream has disappeared. If the face shines too much, you have not removed enough of the cream. The surface should give the appearance of being well oiled, but not have a sticky, pasty or greasy surface.
Second stage. Foundation Grease Paint. The quality of your makeup depends upon this. ”

“ About the age of twenty-five the women cease to use paint.... Some of the young men streak their faces with red, but grown-up men seldom now use paint, unless on particular occasions.... The leader of a war expedition is distinguished by a streaked visage from his black-faced followers.' Sproat's Scenes, p. 27-8. The manner of painting is often a matter of whim. 'The most usual method is to paint the eye-brows black, in form of a half moon, and the face red in small squares, with the arms and legs and part of the body red ”

“ When you have finished carving both the head and hands you are ready to paint them. You will need red, yellow, blue, and white oil paints. Use a piece of smooth wood or glass for a palette. Squeeze onto your palette a small amount of each color. As you know, people do not have pure-white skins. There is a tinge of yellow-orange in the white man’s skin, deep red and orange in that of the red man, brown in that of the Negro, and yellow in that of the Oriental. Begin by squeezing out onto your palette a small quantity of white paint. ”

“ They have also made a most immoderate use of paint, covering their brow, cheeks, and neck with thick coats of rouge and white. Some have even gone so far as to gild their lips, but the more modest have been content to color them with carmine, and the excessive use of paints is diminishing. ”

“ I said.
“Ah, my dear friend,” he replied, “a subtle difference in colour is very slight, but when you are standing back from your canvas and decide that a particular shade is wanted on a particular point of a particular nose, if you have the palette on your hand you can mix it at once, while if you have to walk back six or eight feet to the palette to338 prepare the paint to complete this little alteration, you may just get sufficiently off the shade to entirely alter the idea. I weigh every tone. I am not an impressionist.” ”

“ When using water-colour always work from light to dark. That is, sketch your painting with a light colour. If you sketch it with a dark tint, then that tint will either run, and spoil your delicate tints, or else it will outline the edges with a harsh dark tint like the edges of clouds in a stormy sky.
Also avoid 'body colour'—or flake white. White paint is thick and opaque. Once white paint enters our painting, there it must continue. We cannot make dabs of white paint without a patchy effect. ”

“ Then again, the pigments I have just mentioned, like Lamp Black, and which take years to harden, will crack any hard drying pigment which is placed over them, because in drying, the slow drying colors wrinkle and contract, and a hard drying color placed over them, not having sufficient elasticity will be torn asunder, and a small crack, which may widen into a fissure, will take place. The whole idea of permanent painting, then, [Pg 79] simmers itself down to one of sense and judgment. No one has ever seen a Water Color painting which is cracked. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In proceeding to paint the letters, squeeze out a small quantity of the colour on to the wooden palette, and with the flexible palette-knife mix it with a little of the pale drying oil, and a very little spirits of turpentine. The latter can be dispensed with, if the smell of it be found injurious; otherwise it contributes to brighten the colours, and makes them dry more quickly. In painting keep the brush full, laying on the colour in long steady sweeps, not in short, hasty touches, which would leave irregularities of surface. ”

“ This is a stroke lightly and quickly painted, where the brush just grazes the surface of the canvas. The paint is put on in a manner that is very brilliant, and at the same time of a soft quality. If the brush is only moderately full, such touches will not have any hard edges, but be of a light, feathery nature. It is a most useful manner of putting on paint when freshness of colour is wanted, as it prevents one tone being churned up with another and losing its purity. And in the painting of hair, where the tones need to be kept very separate, and at the same time not hard, it is very useful. ”

“ When the paint is beginning to dry, so that it is sticky, take some dry color of a corresponding tint, dip into it a clean, dry, square-ended bristle brush of good size, and twirl it about until it becomes filled with the dry powder, then, with light and delicate strokes, apply it directly upon the painted surface so that the dry color will fall upon the wet paint like a shower of colored dust. ”

“ After the hairbrushing, which is performed by means of a rude hand brush, the women adorn the men’s faces with paint; if in mourning they put on black paint, and if going to fight, sometimes put a little white paint under the eyes, which assists in contrast to the other in giving a savage expression. The women paint each other’s faces, or if possessed, as sometimes occurs, of a fragment of looking-glass, paint their own. ”

“ And then you will find, as the plaster sucks in the colour which you have first laid on, that there will be—it may be in the course of half-an-hour, it may be an hour, that depends upon the temperature of the atmosphere—a pleasant suction from your brush, the colour going from it agreeably, and you will find that it will cover better. Now is the time to paint rapidly, and complete the work you have in hand. When the colour leaves your brush as though the wall was thirsty for moisture, you should cease painting ”

“ If your eyebrows and hair are dark, you can tinge them gray by rubbing the hair with mascaro and then combing. If they are light, white and black grease paint, applied alternately and then combed, will do the trick. Beards and bushy eyebrows are made of crêpe hair and glued on with spirit gum. As a matter of fact, if you are really serious about making a career of movie acting, it is best to grow, so far as possible, the hirsute appendages required in your parts. ”

“ If you try to clean off all your color every day and polish your palette nicely, you will not only take up more time with your palette than you do with your painting, but the fact that some left-over paint may be wasted will make you a little stingy in putting on fresh paint, which is one of the worst habits a beginner can fall into. You cannot paint well unless you have paint enough on your palette to use freely when you need it. ”

“ Mix your color a little thinner than for painting. Have ready a small ball of a piece of clean rag, or bit of chamois leather, so as to present a smooth surface about the size of a silver dollar or a little larger. The part where it is tied will form a convenient handle. Use the wide brush mentioned in the list of materials, and paint over the surface to be grounded, keeping your strokes as even as possible, and working quickly. The grounding tint will necessarily cover the design also. ”

“ The method of preparing the colors is to squeeze a very little paint from each tube upon your palette or plate; take a tiny drop of oil-of-lavender on the palette-knife, and with it rub the paint smooth. It [page 60] should be thinned just enough to work smoothly; every drop of oil added after that is a disadvantage. Use a separate brush for each color, and wash them thoroughly with soap and hot water before putting them aside. The painting should be set away where no dust can come to it, and it will dry rapidly in forty-eight hours or less. ”

“ The artist has laid one pigment on his palette, and he is criticised before it is known what others he intends to mix with it, to procure what shade, to produce what effect. Wait until all the paint is on the canvas, and the artist has washed his brushes and drawn the curtain from his picture ”

“ When you look as much like the part as you possibly can without the aid of artificial disguise, begin to apply nose paste, paint and powder. Obliterate one characteristic and accentuate another. Alter the shape of your nose, paint your eyebrows out and redraw them, altering their form. Change the colour of the skin. Cover eyelashes and lips with paint and note the difference. Put shadows round the eyes, sinister lines running from the nostrils. ”

“ Without attempting to give a hard and fast definition, it may be said that a paint consists of any pigment, such as white lead, mixed with linseed oil, and thinned by means of turpentine to render it in such a condition that it may be readily applied to the surface of wood, iron and other work by means of a brush. Paint serves the purpose first of preserving the material to which it is applied, and secondly, but not always, a decorative object where the colour is of importance. ”

“ Water-colours.—The manufacture of water-colour paints is more simple than that of oil paints, the pigments being first ground extremely fine and then mixed with a solution of gum or glue. The paste produced in this manner is allowed to dry, after having been stamped into the form of cakes. As soon as the hardened mass is rubbed down with water, the gum softens and dissolves, and if the proportion of water be not too great, the pigment will remain suspended in the solution of gum, and can be applied in the same manner as oil-paint. ”

“ A common fault into which young artists often fall is to paint the white clouds in a landscape with white paint. But the delicate colouring of the clouds should be sketched with the faintest tint (the prevailing tint of the landscape) , and the white paper left to give the effect of the white clouds.
Never be afraid of using pure colour. To enrich or deepen shadows, to sharpen high lights, to lend sparkle or brightness, place the pure tint straight on the paper without mixing or putting it first on the palette. ”

“ You can paint a picture with three colours, and you can use all that are in the colour list; only have a method and reason for everything you do, and if a good reason, it will be the proper thing to do. We set our palette thus, because our tints are thus in harmonious gradations from us; and also, if by mistake our brush comes into contact with two colours at once, it will not do so much damage as it otherwise would if such colours as yellow and blue were placed side by side ”