Watercolor

“ In all the representative arts the vague expressiveness of the medium is reinforced through emotions aroused by ideas which interpret sensation as an element of a thing. The green in the painting is not only green, but green of the sea; the red is not only red, but red of the sky; the curved line is not a mere curve, it is the outline of a wave. The totality of colors and lines is not a mere color and line composition, but a marine landscape. ”

“ The remedy, therefore, is to patronize only the most reliable makers.
Water-color has many of the charms of pastel, with practically no demerits. Its permanence is amply demonstrated by the cartoons of Raphael and Leonardo, while it gives to our work an airy delicacy that can be secured by no other means. Its only disadvantage is also one of its chief attractions—the element of uncertainty always present, for the color dries out a tone lighter than the freshly applied wash, and of course only long training enables one to discount with absolute certainty this subtle change of tone. ”

“ As an artist's color, it replaces almost all the other red pigments which we have inherited from the past. The same chemists have an equally powerful yellow and blue under careful observation, and it is highly probable that in another year or two these, also, will be given to the world. Now it is evident that if painters can secure these three primary colors in two values, a light and a dark shade, they will, with the addition of white and black, have a perfect palette ”

“ The blue has so much of the property of light in it, and of the tint of air—is so purely a sky-colour, and hence so singularly adapted to the direct and reflex light of the sky, and to become the antagonist of sunshine—that it is indispensable to the painter. Moreover, it is so pure, so true, so unchangeable in its tints and glazings, as to be no less essential in imitating the marvellous colouring of nature in flesh and flowers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Variety may be given to the local color by taking up on the point of the brush when charged with the compound tints portions of pure pigment such as madder, lake, blue or gray.
Water is most difficult to represent, and the suggestions given for different tones and tints may be varied indefinitely. The colors which appear in both running and still water are largely the result of the reflections of sky, cloud, and surrounding objects, but they are also produced by the light or shade reflected from its surface, and by the color of the objects over which it flows. ”

“ Water-colour painting is the use of transparent colours with the ground or paper serving as our white. The treatment may either be by wash or stippling and hatching.
Stippling and hatching is the going over our work with dots or crossed lines. Like engraving, its chief merit is the vast labour it costs, if that is a merit; yet at times it has to be done where washes fail to bring the effect.
Opaque or body colour, like fresco painting, is the mixing of Chinese or zinc white with the colours. ”

“ You can tint paper with water-color in much the same way that you put on landscape washes. Dampen a sheet of paper, and then apply a very little red, blue, and yellow, washing the three colors down the sheet. A little practice will teach you how to use the color to get a green-gray, a yellow-gray, or a blue-gray tint. Tint several sheets at one lesson.
Using a sheet of your tinted paper, make a brush drawing in color, from a growth of grass or sedge. Draw in large size, and make a "finder" picture from your sketch. ”

“ On this I begin my color scheme in both opaque and transparent color, recognizing the "natural facts" already explained to you, that is, the skies and high lights being solidly opaque, the shadows being equally transparent. This process requires certain modifications to be made in the darks of the original drawing. The dense black shadow under the eaves of a roof, for instance, are not in nature as black as the charcoal, but perhaps a rich, warm brown. If the ground is in sunlight, it is a dull, golden yellow and reflects the yellow glow of the sand beneath. ”

“ Whereas it often happens that the whole beauty of two colors will depend on the one being continued well through the other, and playing in the midst of it: blue and green often do so in water; blue and gray, or purple and scarlet, in sky: in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and truthful results may be obtained by laying one color into the other while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-color ”

“ For all our artificial pigments are, even when seen under the same circumstances, dead and lightless beside her living color; the green of a growing leaf, the scarlet of a fresh flower, no art nor expedient can reach; but in addition to this, nature exhibits her hues under an intensity of sunlight which trebles their brilliancy, while the painter, deprived of this splendid aid, works still with what is actually a gray shadow compared to the force of nature's color. ”

“ I have selected the medium of water-color because I believe that more can be done with that than most people are aware. I can work faster with water-color and secure just as brilliant effect as I could in oils. People in general do not know how much can be done with water-color, and I hope that I may live to show them. ”

“ LANDSCAPES IN WATER-COLOURS Sketch the outlines faintly with a black-lead pencil. Then colour.
Colours.—The most useful are: lake, burnt ochre, gamboge, indigo, light red, sepia, Prussian blue, sienna, and burnt umber.
The gray colour is made of burnt umber, indigo, and lake; each rubbed separately in a saucer, and then mixed in a fourth saucer as to produce the exact colour—a warm gray. This is thinned for the light tints, as sky and distances. Deeper is to be used for the shadows and near parts, softening with water till the exact effect is produced. ”

“ Your water-colour painters are becoming every day capable of expressing greater and better things; and their material is especially adapted to the turn of your best artists' minds. The value which you could accumulate in work of this kind would soon become a most important item in the national art-wealth, if only you would take the little pains necessary to secure its permanence. I am inclined to think, myself, that water-colour ought not to be used on paper at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken care of, the drawing would be almost imperishable. ”

“ To mix a wash of the color selected, put two or three tablespoonfuls of water in the water-cup and add a little paint until the desired tone is produced, being quite sure to have enough to cover the whole surface. Try to have the wash clean, not muddy, and beware of too much paint! The colors should be soft, not crude, and somewhat neutralized by the addition of the complementary color. The best results are produced by the use of green, pale yellow, brown, dull orange, and red. Blue is very likely to streak and is seldom satisfactory. ”

“ We must expect, then, in painting, to find that neutral gray will be more altered by pale tints of red, orange, or yellow, which are slightly lighter than itself, and that the gray will be less altered by these colors when differing considerably from it in luminosity; analogous conclusions with regard to green, blue, violet, and purple, can also be drawn. Saturated or intense colors in a painting have less effect on white or gray than colors that are pale; this was shown in the preliminary experiment when gray was placed on a ground of strong color. ”

“ As this whole question of values is a matter of translation, and of delicate adjustment inside of fixed conventional limits, there is practically no effect in nature that cannot at least be suggested by a wise and skilful use of pigments. Take, for instance, the familiar effect where the sun, high in the heavens, is reflected in a brilliant pathway of scintillating light across the surface of the sea. In this case it is evident that the actual color-scale of nature is a thousand times more powerful than that of the artist's palette ”

“ I have called the color silvery, but that is only one of the tints which the sand assumes. An artist has jotted down the names of the colors used in an effort to copy the hues on an expanse of desert before him; beginning with the foreground, these were brown, dark red, violet, blue, gold, rose, crimson, pale green, orange, indigo blue, and sky blue. Colors supply the place of shadows, for there is no shade anywhere; all is wide open and light ”

“ The three primary colors must always be present in a picture to produce harmony. Colors are divided into what are called warm and cold colors, the yellow and red being termed warm, and the blue cold. Yellow and red produce light and warmth, and it is impossible to produce coolness without the use of blue. In painting we [Pg 104] use the three terms, light, shade and color, because they best express the qualities of color. Light is expressed by yellow, shade by blue, and color by red. ”

“ More than one professional artist has already worked successfully from nature in oil colors with a palette consisting of only close approximations to the six standard colors with white and a few grays. A person whose color perception has been trained by the use of the color disk in six standard colors with [Pg 121] colored papers to correspond, will undoubtedly be able to more truthfully reproduce the colors which he sees in nature, on the canvas or paper by means of such a pallette than if he had been taught by any other system and used the ordinary pigments. ”

“ In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of representing depth of color by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of gray than a pattern of yellow.
23. And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use of the brush; and necessary for you to do so in order to provide yourself with the gradated scale of color which you will want. If you can, by any means, get acquainted with any ordinary skillful water-color painter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a brush, by all means do so ”

“ The combinations were poetical, the foregrounds minutely finished, even to the painting of flowers, and the fine invisible veil of ether that covers the natural landscape given as I have never before seen it. The peculiarity of these pieces is, that they are painted in green—a most common arrangement in God's landscapes, but very uncommon in those of great masters. Painters give us trees and grounds, brown, yellow, red, chocolate, any color, in short, but green. The reason of this is, that green is an exceedingly difficult color to manage. ”

“ The progress of the true art of Water-colour drawing, must necessarily receive a check from the adoption of such a practice, which will doubtless be sanctioned by the idle or the hurried; and attempts to carry out the original prospects and genuine advantages of the transparent medium, will probably become rare, if they should not cease entirely. ”

“ Any of the ordinary non-corrosive pigments or liquid colours, thickened with a little gum, may be employed in this art; preference being, however, given to those that possess the greatest brilliancy, and which dry without spreading. See Stains, &c.
Painting, Water-colour. In its strictest and modern sense, ‘water-colour painting’ means the painting on paper with colours diluted with water. The English school of water-colour painting has produced works which bear comparison with the great masterpieces in oil, and even surpass them in the delicacy of atmospheric effects. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The tone you desire must predominate in making all your neutrals. If you want a greenish neutral, the yellow lake must predominate, if you wish a bluish neutral, the blue must predominate, and if reddish neutral, the crimson lake must predominate. Having selected your shade, be sure to have it about the right strength before beginning, as it is difficult to avoid a patched appearance on the mountains with varnish color, especially on the second and third coating, unless you are quick in your work. ”

“ 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. ”