The Painter in Oil Part 20

Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important things here first, and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines.

Don't draw too many lines in a landscape; don't draw too many objects. Carefully study the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts. See which are the _most expressive lines_ in it. Get the swing and movement of those lines in the large; then study the more subtle movement of them. Get these things on the canvas first, and put everything else in as subsidiary to them. Have all this well placed before you begin to paint, and allow for little things being painted on to this.

Don't get too many things into one landscape. The spirit of the time and place is what will make the beauty of it, not the details nor the mere facts. This spirit you will find in a few things, not in many.

Having found which lines and forms, which ma.s.ses and relations of color and value, express this, the more carefully you avoid putting in other things the more entirely you emphasize the quality which is the real reason of existence of your picture.

In studying landscape, work for one thing at a time. What has been said of sketching and studies applies here. Landscape is the most bewildering of subjects in its multiplicity of facts and objects and colors and contrasts. If you cannot find a way to simplify it you will neither know where to begin nor where to leave off. I cannot tell you just what to do or not to do, because no two landscapes are alike.

Recipes will do nothing in helping you to paint. But there is the general principle which you may follow, and I try to keep it before you even at the risk of over-repet.i.tion. In no kind of picture can you drag in unimportant things simply because they exist in nature. In landscape more than elsewhere, because you cannot arrange it, but must select in the actual presence of everything, you must learn to concentrate on the things which mean most, and to refuse to recognize those which will not lend themselves to the central idea.

=Selection.=--When you select your subject, or "_motif_," as the French call it, select it for something definite. There is always something which makes you think this particular view will make a good picture. State to yourself what it is that you see in it, not in detail, but in the general. Is it the general color effect of the whole, or a contrast? Is it a sense of largeness and s.p.a.ce, or a beautiful combination of line in the track of a road, or row of trees, or a river? Perhaps it is the ma.s.s and majesty of a mountain or a group of trees. Something definite or definable catches you--else you had better not do it at all; and what that something is you must know quite precisely, or you will not have a well-understood picture.

When you have distinctly in your mind what you want to paint it for, then see that the composition is so placed on your canvas that that characteristic is the main thing in evidence. With this done it is a very easy thing to concentrate on that characteristic, and to leave out whatever tends to break it up or distract from it. This is the only way you can simplify your subject. First by a distinct conception of _what_ you paint it for, then by so much a.n.a.lysis of the whole field of vision as will show you what does and what does not help in the expression of it.

=Detail.=--Much detail in landscape is never good painting. Whether big or little, your canvas must express something larger and more important than detail. Give detail when it is needed to express character or to avoid slovenliness. Give as much detail _where the emphasis lies_ as will insure the completeness of representation--not a touch more.

=Structure.=--Have your foreground details well understood in drawing and value. This does not require the drawing of leaf and twig, but it does require _structure_. Everything requires structure. _Structure is fundamental to character._ If you will not take the trouble to study the character of any least thing you put in, don't put it in at all.

Nothing is important enough to put in, if it is not important enough to have its character and its purpose in the picture understood.

I spoke of structure in speaking of the head. If I said nothing but "structure, structure, structure" to the end of the section, you would get the impression of what is the most important thing in drawing. If you will look for and find the line and proportion expressing the anatomy which makes the thing fulfil its particular function in the world, you will understand its character, and that is what is important, everywhere.

=Work in Season.=--Make your picture in the season which it represents. I don't say that a good summer picture may not be made in winter; but I do say that you are more likely to express the summer quality while the summer is around you. There is too much half painting of pictures, and then leaving them to be "finished up"

afterwards.

Of course you can make all your studies and sketches, and then begin and finish the picture from them. If you are careful to have plenty of material, to acc.u.mulate all your facts with the intention of working from those facts, all right; but it would be better if you were to work your picture in the season of it, as long as you are a student at least. For until you have had a great deal of experience, you will find when you come to paint your picture that some very much needed material you have neglected to collect, and you cannot safely supply it from memory. If this occurs in the time of year represented in the picture, you can just go out and study it.

=Out-of-door Landscapes.=--The most important movement in modern art, the most important in its effects on all kinds of work, is what I have mentioned as the _plein air_ movement. It was thought by some clear-headed men that the best way to paint an out-door picture was to take their canvases out-of-doors to paint it. Instead of working from a few color sketches and many pencil studies, they painted the whole picture from first to last in the open air. Working in this way, certain qualities got into the pictures unavoidably. Necessarily the color was fresher and truer. Necessarily there was more breadth and frankness, and less conventionality and mere picture-making. The spirit of the open got onto the canvas, and the whole type of picture was changed. For the first time out-of-door values were studied as things in themselves interesting and important. The result on landscape pictures was that pictures painted in the studio seemed unreal and insincere, and that men looked and studied less for the making of pictures, and more for what nature had to reveal.

It would be a good thing for you as a student if you would do as these men did whenever you want to do any work at landscape, whether for itself, or for background. If you wish to pose any kind of figure with landscape background, pose and paint your figure out-of-doors. Make sketches as much as you please, make studies as much as you please; but make them for the suggestions and knowledge they will give you, and not for material to be used in painting a picture at home. For your picture, start, and go on with, and finish it out-doors; you will get a feeling of freshness and truth in your work which you cannot get any other way. You will also acquire a power of concentration and of selection and rejection in the presence of nature which is of the utmost importance to you.

=Impressionism.=--It is not possible to speak of landscape and _plein air_ without mention of the "Impressionists." You should understand what "impressionism" really is, and what it is not, and what the impressionist stands for. Whether we like it or not, this work is not to be ignored. It has tried for certain things, and has shown that they can be much more justly represented than had before been believed to be possible, and fad or no fad, that result stands.

In the first place, impressionism does not mean "purple and yellow."

Any one who says "purple and yellow" and throws the whole thing aside, is a very superficial critic. The purple and yellow are incidental to the impressionist, not essential. It is only one of the ways of handling color by means of which it was found possible to express certain qualities of light.

Before everything else the real impressionist stands for the representation of the personal conception and method as against the traditional. He believes that if a man has anything of his own to say, he must say it in his own way; and that if he cannot find that nature has anything to say to him personally, if nature cannot give him a personal message, if he can only paint by giving another man's ideas and another man's method, then he had better not paint at all; so that whatever he may see to paint, and however he finds a way to express it, the value of it and the truth of it lie in the fact that it is _his_, his way of seeing, and his way of expressing,--that it is "personal."

=Luminosity.=--The impressionist is imbued with the fact that all the light by means of which things are at all visible is luminous--that it vibrates. He does not think that living light can be represented by dead color. He strives to make his color live also. This is the secret of the purple and yellow. By the contrast of these two colors, by the combination and contrast and juxtaposition of the complementary colors and the use of pure pigments, he can make his colors more vibrant, and so give more of the pitch of real sunlight. He actually applies on his canvas the laws which are known to hold with light and color scientifically. He applies practically in his work those laws which the scientist furnishes him with theoretically. The result in some hands is garish, crude. But the best men have shown that it is possible to use the means so as make a subtle harmony and a luminous brilliancy that have never before been attained. The crudity is the result of the man, not of the method.

=The Application.=--The application of all this to your own work is that when you want pitch and sunlight you can get it through the observance of the laws of color contrast, and such a laying on of pigment as will bring this about. Try to study the actual contrasts of color, not as they seem, but as they are in nature. Study the facts which have been observed as to colors in their effects on each other, and then try to see these in nature and to paint the results.

=The Luminists.=--This is the principle of all "loose painting"

carried out scientifically. It is the cause of the peculiar technique of those impressionists who paint in streaks and spots of pigment. The manner of putting on paint does interfere with the continuity of outline in the drawing necessarily, but there is a marked gain in the quality of light; and as these men are "luminists," and light is what they want primarily, the sacrifice is justifiable, or at any rate explicable.

Now if you understand the scientific principle, and the practical application and its result on canvas, you have in your hands one of the main instrumentalities in the rendering of one great quality of out-of-doors. How far you adopt it is a matter for you to decide for yourself. If the complete adoption of it implies too much of a sacrifice of other things of equal or greater value to you, then modify it, or take advantage of it as much as will give you the balance of qualities you most want. There is one way to get light and brilliancy and life into your color: adapt it to your purpose if you need it.

This is the application of color juxtaposition to mixing. The placing of complementaries so as to increase contrast is another way of adding to the brilliancy of light. You will find this most useful when you want to give the greatest possible emphasis to the effect of sunlight and shadow. If you keep your shadows cool, your lights will be the richer and more sparkling because of that contrast. If you want more strength in a note of color, get its complement as near it as you can.

Look for their iridescence of edges of shadow, and of the contours of objects. You will get greater relief of light and shade by contrast of warm and cool than contrast of light and dark.

Do not misunderstand me. I am not advising you to be an impressionist.

I wish only that you shall see what there is in this way of looking at nature and of representation of certain effects of nature, which will be of use to you in the painting of landscape. I would have you know what means are at your command, what is possible to accomplish in certain directions, and how it is possible to accomplish it; then I would have you make use of whatever will most directly and completely serve your purpose.

Do not use any color or colors, any method or point of view, because of any advocacy whatsoever. Know first what you want to paint and why.

Let nature speak to you. Go out and look at landscape. Study and observe; see the effect which makes you want to paint it, and then use the means and method which seem most entirely adapted to it. Don't ask yourself, nor let any one else ask you, Is this So-and-So's method?

or, Does this belong to this or that school? Don't bother about schools or methods at all. Look frankly to see, accept frankly, and then work to render and convey as frankly as you have seen. Be sincere--sincere with yourself and with your painting: then you will surely work at whatever you do from conviction, and not from fad; and whether it makes you paint as an impressionist or not is a very minor matter, because sincerity of purpose is the most important thing in painting, and method of representation one of the least.

=Atmosphere.=--A universal characteristic of nature will be a fundamental one in landscape. A landscape which you cannot breathe in is not a perfect one. We live and breathe in atmosphere, and the expression of atmosphere will go far to make your landscape true. But atmosphere is not haziness. Neither is it vagueness nor negativeness of color. Truth of color-quality, and justness of relation will do most in getting it. You had better not try for atmosphere as a thing, but as a result. Anything so universal and so indefinite can be expressed by no one thing. If you try to get it by any one means you will miss it. Study, then, the subtlety of color relation and justness of value. Try to be sensitive to the slightest variety of tone, and be satisfied with no least falsity of rendering, and you will find that your picture will not lack atmosphere.

=Color of Contour.=--An important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of contours. You will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking for. But consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and things will reveal themselves to you.

No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color surrounding it lacks variety. All along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color relation constantly change. The outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost from ident.i.ty of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself.

The edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The inevitable variety of tint and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and blendings. These are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant variety of contrasting edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it.

Outdoors, particularly when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt, either through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, s.p.a.ce, and air.

=Skies.=--In the painting of the sky there are several points to be kept in mind. The sky, even on the quietest day, is full of movement.

Cloud ma.s.ses change continually. If there are no clouds there is constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of color,--a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead, flat tint.

Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a loose, smudgy handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches, but never make it a lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm and cool, all through the sky, so that the whole tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead. So far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.

=Clouds.=--If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get the effect of the ma.s.s and movement, and the lightness of them. As they constantly change in form, any one form they may a.s.sume cannot be characteristic. The type form is what you must get, and the suggestion of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of the wind by the way they ma.s.s and sway and flow. The direction of the sun's rays, too, counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud ma.s.s is never hard, never rigid. The pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what give you most of the effect of it.

Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a _c.u.mulus_, _cirrus_, _stratus_, or what not. This character is important; but the character lies in the whole body of the cloud form, not in the accidental outlines or the special position of it for the moment.

=Sky Composition.=--The ma.s.sing of cloud forms is a very useful factor in the composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is capable of giving accent or balance to the picture. As it is not constant in position any more than in form, you can place it with truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as an element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the forms and the possible phases of them so as to make the best use of them.

=Diffused Light.=--Much of the characteristic quality of out-door light is the result of the diffusion of light due to both the refraction and the reflection of the sky. The light which bathes the landscape comes in all directions from the sky. Necessarily, then, the sky will be in most cases far higher in value than anything under it.

Even the blue of the sky, which looks darker than some bit of light in the landscape, you will find, if you can manage to get them to tell against each other, will be the more luminous of the two, and will look lighter. There are times when the sun glares on a white building or a piece of white sand, when the white tells light against the blue.

But these are exceptions, and if we could get a blue paint which would give the intensity of color, and also the brilliancy of the light, even these cases would be most truly represented with the sky as the higher value. It is a case of whether to sacrifice value to color, or the reverse, as we cannot have both.

Sometimes, however, in a storm, the dense dark of the storm sky is really lower in value than some white object against it, especially if there be a bit of sun breaking through on it.

But in general, nevertheless, you should consider the sky as always lighter and more luminous than anything under it.

=Three Planes.=--It will help you in understanding the way the light falls on landscape to consider everything as in one of three planes, and these planes taking greater or less proportions of light according to the position of the sun with reference to them.

The position of the sun changes from a point immediately over, to a point practically at right angles to all objects in nature. Everything that can exist under the sun will come in one of these planes, and at some time in the day in each. The vertical, the horizontal, or some sort of an oblique between these two. If the sun is overhead exactly, the flat ground, the tops of trees and houses, will get the full amount of sunlight. The vertical planes, sides of houses, depths of foliage, etc., will get the least, some of them being lighted only by diffused and reflected light. The planes lying between these two extremes will get more or less, according as they are more or less at right angles to the direct rays of the sun. And as the sun declines from the zenith, the vertical planes get more and more and the horizontal planes less and less of the light, till in the late afternoon the banks of trees and sides of buildings and cloud-ma.s.ses are gilded with light, and the broad horizontal plains of land and water are in shadow.

However obscured the sun may be, this principle holds more or less; and it makes clear and helps you to observe and notice many facts in landscape light and shade which it is necessary to know.

Millet said that all the beauty of color and value, and the whole art of painting, rested on the comprehension and observance of these facts.

He said that as the planes of any form turned towards or away from the light and so got more or less of it, and as one form stood more or less far back of another and the atmosphere came between, the color and value changed; and in the observance of this, and its representation as applied to any and every object or group of objects, lay the whole of painting. All the possible beauties of the art rested on it. He showed a painting of a single pear in which these things were most subtly observed, and said that that painting was as complete and perfect as any painting he could do simply because in the observance of these relations was implied the observance of everything which was vital to painting.

=Short Sittings.=--This characteristic, and the steady change of position of the sun and its effects on all the objects which are directly lighted by it, make it necessary, whenever you are painting from nature out-of-doors, that you should not paint at one thing very long at a time. The light changes pretty rapidly; at high noon it only takes a few moments to exactly reverse the light. It is seldom that you can do any just study for more than an hour or an hour and a half at a sitting. Some men do work two or three hours, but they are not studying justly all that time; for that which was light is dark three hours later, and any true study of value and color is impossible under these conditions. Of course on gray days this is less marked, but you must suit your sittings to the time and facts.

It would be better if you had more canvases, and worked a short time on each, and many days on all. You would have the truest work.

Monet works never more than a half-hour on one canvas; but when he starts out he takes a half-dozen or more different canvases, and paints on each till the light has changed. Theodore Robinson seldom worked more than three-quarters of an hour, or at most an hour, on one canvas; but, he worked for twenty or thirty days on each canvas, and sometimes had a single canvas under way for successive seasons.