Underpainting

“ PREFACE THE observant visitor to the great art galleries is astonished and pained to see the large number of pictures of the highest artistic excellence gradually being ruined on account of decomposition as shown by fading, darkening, cracking and peeling of the paint films. This is all the more deplorable because the cause of the deterioration is well known and pigments, vehicles, canvas, in fact all the materials needed by the painter to make absolutely permanent paintings are equally well known and require only intelligent choice and use by the artist. ”

“ As a rule, it may be said that the colors are intensified by firing. This is also true of other kinds of under-glaze painting, but not in so great a degree as in the case in question. The harmonies and contrasts of color can be kept only in the mind of the artist, and every part of the work must be done with a view to the [Pg 44] result when finished, which, as has been said, will differ materially from its appearance during the progress of the painting. ”

“ Loose Painting.—Sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. Too much of this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right place is not to be obtained in any other way. The paint may be dragged over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. ”

“ This defect is well recognized among house painters and piano and cabinet varnishers, and therefore it becomes necessary to roughen the surface, so that the new coat of paint will adhere. There are some mediums on the market for this purpose, but with a little care no medium is needed other than pure water; and I have heard the statement that by rubbing the surface of a painting with a stiff brush that has been dipped in water and allowing that surface to dry thoroughly, new paint will take over the old as if by magic. ”

“ If you are painting a red man’s face, you must add more red and a bit of blue. For the face of an Oriental, add yellow to your white paint and the least bit of red and blue. For the black man’s face, use black paint instead of white paint and into it mix a very small amount of orange and blue. Use a palette knife for mixing oil paints and turpentine for thinning them. Do not be timid when you begin to paint. Strong and vigorous painting is as important and necessary as strong and vigorous modeling in bringing out the features and expression. ”

“ B. If it need not be cut work, but only the reproduction of a drawing, what methods of executing a light-and-shade drawing will be best? [Pg 8]
C. Is the shaded drawing itself to be considered only as a deficient or imperfect painting, or as a different thing from a painting, having a virtue of its own, belonging to black and white, as opposed to color?
17. I will give you the answers at once, briefly, and amplify them afterwards.
A. All engraving must be cut work;—that is its differentia. Unless your effect be produced by cutting into some solid substance, it is not engraving at all. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A very chaste and pleasing effect may be produced by painting the whole design in varnish, without color.
It is an advantage to this style of painting, that but few colors are required; as from the nature of the subjects, and their purpose as ornaments, brilliancy is more desirable than a nice gradation of tints. The work must, of course, be carefully dried, but may afterwards be cleaned with a sponge and cold water.
PAINTING ON VELVET.
Painting on velvet as well as on glass is an old art revived. No art that is really beautiful in itself will pass away entirely. ”

“ I have escaped one mistake, into which the most famous painters have sometimes fallen; in my canvas the whiteness shines through the densest and most persistent shadow. I have not marked out the limits of my figure in hard, dry outlines, and brought every least anatomical detail into prominence (like a host of dunces, who fancy that they can draw because they can trace a line elaborately smooth and clean) , for the human body is not contained within the limits of line. In this the sculptor can approach the truth more nearly than we painters. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In painting, endeavor to lay on your colors steadily and boldly, with as few strokes of the brush as possible. Keep your tints pure and distinct, each in the place you mean it to be. Do not, by going over and over them with the brush muddle and mix the tints, for some tints destroy each other, and the transparency and beauty of the painting will be lost. In softening or uniting the tints, it is best either to use an intermediate shade, or else, with a clean brush and no color, to melt them together. Much depends on the first painting. ”

“ The gilding satisfactorily accomplished, the artist or amateur has only to add the finishing tints and touches to his work, and then either to leave it alone, or to varnish it in accordance with the directions which will be given presently. If the work has been executed on canvass, it will remain only to apply it to the surface for which it may have been destined. This may be done by painting that surface with thick white lead, in two or three coats, and by also similarly painting the back of the canvass. ”

“ The heads and costumes are brushed in broadly, the hands are sometimes passed over with a mere suggestion of form or value, the accessories are still more vague in line, in bulk, in texture. Nothing but things of vital importance are given. By suppression of the parts the painter gets concentration on certain salient features of surface, or light or color. With thin painting in the ground and shadows and fat painting in the high lights the picture takes on the look of a large and easily done sketch. ”

“ There is no other choice. You may introduce as little color as you choose—a mere tint of rose in a chalk drawing, for instance; or pale hues generally—as Michael Angelo in the Sistine Chapel. All such work implies feebleness or imperfection, but not necessarily error. But if you paint with full color, as Raphael and Leonardo, you must either be true or false. If true, you will paint like a Venetian. If false, your form, supremely beautiful, may draw the attention of the spectator from the false color, or induce him to pardon it—and, if ill-taught, even to like it ”

“ When you have painted a bit of which you are doubtful, wait till the moment when it will be possible for you to take it out. Judge it; and if it is condemned, remove it firmly with your palette-knife, without rubbing by rags which spoil the limpidity of the pigment. You will have left a delicate foundation, to which you can return and finish with little labour, because your canvas will have received a first coating. Loading and massing the pigment is an abomination. In twenty-four hours gold turns to lead.
Puvis de Chavannes. ”

“ On the other hand, overglaze painting, while not subject to the changes produced by the fire, to so great an extent, is more difficult as regards the manipulation of the painting upon the glazed surface. The facilities for the practice of overglaze painting are greater than those afforded for painting under the glaze, which last, requires not only the handling of an artist who [Pg 27] has acquired facile use of the brush and some experience of pottery clays and colors, but also the assistance of an intelligent and skillful potter. ”

“ So much is the artist in love with his deep reds and blues, which he nearly always uses for the backgrounds of his figures, that he seldom insults them by painting on them except in so far as is necessary to the drawing, reserving his enamel mainly for the decoration of his whites and paler colours, keeping them in their places by a delicate fret of line and pattern work. ”

“ The painter's palette, charged with color, is the instrument with which he thrills a melody to the eye, even as the magniloquent organ or the sigh-breathing flute speak to the ear. And just as the compass of all instruments is constructed on the diatonic scale, so should the range of the palette depend upon the tinges of the spectrum.
While artists of a certain school pretend to imitate Nature, who paints literally with a pencil dipped in rainbow, they make use of a complication of tints, at which their goddess would shudder. ”

“ The paleness or freshness of the tempera may have been sometimes calculated for this brown glazing (for such it was in effect) , and when this was the case, the picture was, strictly speaking, unfinished without its varnish. It is, therefore, quite conceivable that a painter, averse to mere mechanical operations, would, in his final process, still have an eye to the harmony of his work, and, seeing that the tint of his varnish was more or less adapted to display the hues over which it was spread, would vary that tint, so as to heighten the effect of the picture. ”

“ They make another complaint against the public, that it desires painting to be lifelike. Of course it does! The statement is accurate, but the complaint is based on an illusion. It is you and I and all the world that want painting to imitate its object. There is a wonderful picture in the Glasgow Art Gallery, painted by someone a long time ago, in which a man is represented in a steel cuirass with a fur tippet over it, and the whole point of that picture is that the fur looks like fur and the steel looks like steel. ”

“ For if it be opaque, and clay cold, and colorless, and devoid of all the radiance and value of flesh, the lines of its true beauty, being severe and firm, will become so hard in the loss of the glow and gradation by which nature illustrates them, that the painter will be compelled to sacrifice them for a luscious fulness and roundness, in order to give the conception of flesh; which, being done, destroys ideality of form as of color, and gives all over to lasciviousness of surface ”

“ The general feebleness of the effect is increased by the insertion of the figures as violent pieces of local color unaffected by the light and unblended with the hues around them, and bearing evidence of having been painted from models or draperies in the dead light of a room instead of sunshine. On these deficiencies I should not have remarked, but that by honest and determined painting from and of nature, it is perfectly in the power of the artist to supply them ”

“ That, it may be urged, remains to be proved, but the enamel painter practically undertook to prove the contrary, and failed. Admirers of consistency object to it, that it succeeds so ill in reconciling the delicacy of painting aimed at with the brutality of the glazing employed. That, again, is a question of artistic appreciation, not so easily proved to those who do not feel the discord. Lovers of good work, of work that will stand, object to it that it is not lasting. ”

“ A finished coloured drawing or painting of the design, to a smaller, or even to the same scale as the fresco painting, must be prepared, and the artist should endeavour to make an exact copy of this on the plaster surface, as there is no time to experiment in colour schemes, or to make alterations from the original coloured design in the short period that is at the disposal of the painter when he is at work on the wet plaster. ”

“ Such gauzy painting is inadequate; it hides nothing. You see always the thick black lines of lead, cruel enough, but clinging in a cowardly way to the edges of weak forms, sneaking into shadows, and foolishly pretending to pass themselves off as the continuation of painted outlines not one-twentieth part so strong as they. ”

“ In studying even the best of the antique statues, the painter must consider and avoid many things which are not connected with the art of the sculptor, but solely with the material in which he worked. I may mention particularly the difference in the shading. In nature, owing to the transparency of the flesh, the skin, and the cartilages, the shading of many parts is moderated, which in sculpture appear hard and abrupt, for the shadows become doubled, as it were, owing to the natural and unavoidable thickness of the stone. ”