NAMES OF STRIPES.
In all the foremost carriage and wagon centres the various styles of striping are designated by specific names. This makes it an easy matter to give an order and have it accurately executed without confusion or unnecessary delay. Appended will be found the principal lines and stripes generally employed, the medium lines and stripes only being omitted. As, for instance medium fine line, medium heavy round line, and medium stripe; these being deemed irrelevant to the illustration in hand. The first, or hair, line is the finest line used, the fine line coming next, the line thus gradually increasing in size until it reaches the broad stripe. What is known as the medium fine line is simply the fine line broadened to the extent of about 1/3 increase in size. The medium heavy round line is the round line with the width of hair line added to it, while the medium stripe is the narrow stripe increased by the addition of a fine line width. A pencil tracing exceeding 1/8 in. is termed a stripe; less than 1/8 in., a line.
As herewith shown the simple lines and stripes are seven in number, and the combination lines and stripes are presented in eight examples. In the cut of the divided stripe, distance fine line, the distance line is drawn nearer to the stripe than it is customary to allow. While there is no arbitrary rule to govern the spacing of the distance line from the stripe, it is usually drawn not less than 1/4 in. from center line or stripe. Oftentimes, too, it is placed at a distance of scant 1/8 in., as here shown.
The accompanying striping designs adapted to traps, drags, stanhopes, concords, and pleasure vehicles generally (used also on business vehicles) consist of corner and center pieces. Their representation may suggest extensions or changes, through the medium of which a wide variety of designs may be evolved. To specify the colors in which each design is best illuminated would exceed the limits accorded this chapter.
The color of the panel determines the color of the design, or should. A pleasing contrast to the body color should be sought, and in this achievement the workman's taste and art sense must be exercised in lieu of printed directions.
CORNER DESIGNS.
The panel designs, if placed on any dark surface, may be placed in white and trimmed in green, blue, vermilion, etc.; or they may be placed in carmine and tricked out in any of the many neatly contrasting colors. The finest carmine effects are obtained by glazing orange or chrome yellow with carmine. Against the fashionable blue surfaces many of these designs present fetching effects if drawn in gold, white, or king's yellow. Against yellow grounds they may be effectively shown in two or three shades of red. These suggestions apply also, in the main, to the corner pieces. The three last designs on [page 184] may be laid in gold, shaded with asphaltum, high lighted with light yellow. The fine lines can be done in any harmonizing color. Some of the small solid parts of these designs can be glazed with carmine and verdigris. Some of the designs may be executed in orange, glazed with carmine and high lighted with chrome yellow. Or the broad portions may be done in some solid color and the fine lines in a slightly different shade of the same color. On blue panels the simple fine line pieces may be done with lining bronze glazed with ultramarine blue; or on green panels use chrome yellow and glaze with carmine.
In fact, there is an infinite variety of colors to be used in the development of the designs here presented, and the still other designs which it is hoped they may suggest, the controlling factor in the selection of colors being simply and at all times the color of the surface upon which the design is to be used. In connection with this must exist the law of harmony and contrast, without which any selected color scheme will prove ineffective.
CHAPTER IX.
SCROLLING: RELIEF AND FLAT SCROLLS—HOW TO LEARN SCROLLING—SCROLLS DONE IN GOLD, ALUMINUM, AND IN COLORS—EXAMPLES OF RELIEF AND FLAT SCROLLS.
Scroll painting is a feature of the trade deserving of more than a passing notice; and while it has been permitted to languish in a state of disuse for a decade or more, as compared to its former popularity, there are evidences abroad which point directly to the generous employment of the art of scrolling in wagon painting ere long.
Perhaps we shall never again observe the return of the fine old Roman scroll, bold and imperial, once so common, but a modification of this noblest Roman of them all, or, rather, a combination of this form of scroll and some other forms requiring less space for attractive display, may be expected. Indeed, the modification is already domiciled in the esteem of business vehicle users, being commonly known under the title of composite scroll.
Scroller's Line of Beauty.
The full Roman scroll, defined as an imitation of carved work in relief, which Raphael and other great masters have so magnificently executed, is of large and shapely proportions, and with its fine sweeps, graceful curves, beautiful examples of leafing, and endless variety of twists and turns, cannot be confined to a restricted space. It is pre-eminently a scroll of stately style, and amid dwarfish surroundings or when reduced to less than its natural size, its identity is lost and its character as one of the earliest forms of ornamentation, completely destroyed. Hence the modification above referred to.
Fig. 1.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 3.
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. 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 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 easy, free-hand work, although it may be lacking in certain highly desirable features of gracefulness, compels the favorable attention of the critic to an extent of which the copy plate design, mathematically precise in general execution, may fall lamentably short. There is a sort of an indefinable naturalness about the original, free-hand scroll quite foreign to the ornament drawn to rule and square measurements. It possesses a quality that elicits admiration, just as madam's tea gown,
"That floats away where it properly may,
And clings where it ought to cling,"
is looked upon as a dainty creation, wondrous fair to see.
Fig. 4.
The blackboard and chalk crayon exercise is valuable in imparting to the learner a natural and unstudied twist of the wrist, together with a whole arm movement that most assuredly must be at the command of the scroll workman. Only by such exercise can the quick, artistic hand be acquired along with an eye trained to correct proportions.
Fig. 5.
Hogarth's line of beauty can be more expeditiously mastered under the stimulus of blackboard practice than is possible through the aid of most other mediums. Make the figures big and reaching, in sweeps backward and forward, up, down, and in a variety of outlines. This practice will be hard and irksome at first, and, unless one is naturally gifted in this particular line of work, the results accomplished may appear crude and awkward even after weeks of patiently applied toil. But in the realms of art few things to speak in the noble lingo of the Bowery, are "dead easy." Therefore, blackboard work should be studiously adhered to, the work of eminent exponents of ornamental painting studied, as the mariner studies the ocean chart, and advantage taken of all the other aids promotive of a rare degree of skill. The scroll painter able to discard pounce pattern and tape line measurements is licensed to impart a charm and novelty, a grace and variety, to his work, not effected otherwise. The spiral may be termed the basis of scroll work. Intersecting the spiral are the leaves and stems, which, shaded, lighted, and high-lighted, give form and color to the relief scroll.
Figs. 6 and 7.
Fig. 8.
The learner, having become sufficiently proficient to outline fairly good scrolls with the crayon, should procure some large sheets of paper—manilla paper will do—and paint them in some dark color and then proceed to draw the scrolls with the pencil.
Fig. 9.
In the matter of pencils, different kinds and sizes will be needed. For laying on the scroll, a black sable hair pencil, the hair set in metal, running in size from No. 4 to No. 8, according to the size of the scroll, and 1 1/2 inches long, is an effective and pleasingly durable tool. For shading purposes a shorter and softer hair pencil is best; say a camel's-hair pencil 3/4 inch in length. However, a variety of pencils, both sable and camel's-hair, and of the various sizes, will be found essential in doing the large and small ornaments which the accompanying examples may suggest. Necessary adjuncts to the pencil equipment are, the palette, palette cups, and mahl-stick. An oval palette, made thin and smooth, of mahogany, walnut, or even ash, polished nicely on a shellac base, has for long been popular, and in point of excellence remains unexcelled. Make the mahl-stick of cedar preferably; work it out round and smooth and tip it with a small ball of cotton enclosed in a patch of chamois skin. Taking the accompanying illustrated section of a Roman scroll (see [Fig. 1]) as a working draft, begin by allowing the point of the pencil to touch the surface and then with a confident, easy sweep twist the pencil around so as to form, say, the first spiral or volute. Next do the stems and offshoots attached to this volute. Practice to do each spiral, and the stems putting out therefrom, with a single, and at most two, strokes of the pencil. The first principle of fine scrolling consists in getting easy, graceful sweeps, suggestive, perhaps, I may be allowed to say, of the poetry of pencil motion. The tracery of a stilted, cramped pencil sweep is fatal to the balance and grace of a scroll. In practice the student will probably choose gold bronze as the most desirable substitute for gold leaf in working out his gold-finished scroll. The figure, without its shading, affords a flat scroll of fantastic contour, as a draft of [Fig. 1], devoid of the shades, will quickly prove.
Fig. 10.
The shading of the scroll must be done in the same free, off-hand style that must necessarily mark the evolution of the general figure of the ornament. If, as above intimated, the scroll is done in imitation of or in the real gold leaf, the shading is best done with asphaltum, this pigment offering the only true shadow, authorities contend, of gold. Mix the asphaltum with good coach japan and turpentine, half and half. Reference to [Fig. 1], and to the other accompanying illustrations, will indicate more accurately than printed directions the parts of a scroll requiring shades. The inadequacy of written instructions teaching the particular portions of the ornament to be high-lighted must be apparent to the reader. Broadly speaking, where the strongest light strikes there high lights should be. For a really practical insight of this phase of the work the student should study examples of finished scrolls done in the highest style of the art. The gold scroll shaded with asphaltum invites high-lighting with white or cream color.
In the execution of relief scrolls it is needful to observe:
1.—All ornaments must have a reason—a useful thing done in a graceful way.
2.—Every line should be boldly, clearly, and elegantly drawn.
3.—Harmony of design, balance of proportions, sympathetic formation of the various parts, demand vigilant maintenance.
4.—Originality of design, with every part having an intimate relationship, an indivisible connection with every other part, is indispensable.
In the execution of a relief scroll, or any style of scroll for that matter, it is a factor of the first importance that the surface be smooth and thoroughly dry.
A great deal of business vehicle scrolling is necessarily done upon the color-and-varnish coat or upon clear rubbing varnish. To prevent the gold leaf (in case gold is used) from adhering to the varnish coat, various expedients have been resorted to, among which the whiting pounce figures as the most effective and the easiest applied. Other recipes include rubbing the surface with a thin solution of starch and water, or glazing it with the white of an egg, or washing it with whiting and water, or applying a thin film of potato starch upon it. Good gilding size is very essential in the art of scrolling. The light and easy whirls of the pencil cannot be done with a size unsuited for the purpose. Moreover, shop requirements have to be met, and they may impose a limit of two hours in which the size must dry today, and tomorrow that limit may be extended to four hours or even longer, and perhaps—although in these days of ocean racers and Black Diamond flyers this may be a remote possibility—the size will be expected to hold over night, after its application, before being gilded.
Quick size.—Gold size japan, 5 parts; fat oil, 1 part. With a dash of japan ground chrome yellow, this size will dry to safely leaf over in 1/2 hour.
Medium quick size.—Gold size japan, 4 parts; fat oil, 2 parts.
Four-hour size.—Gold size japan and fat oil, in proportions of 2/3 japan to 1/3 oil.
Over-night size.—Fat oil with a few drops of gold size japan added.
The slow drying size works better and affords a more satisfactory job of gilding than does the quicker mixture, the gold invariably taking a fine burnish over the slow, fat oil size.
The best obtainable fat oil is made by confining boiled linseed oil in a bottle and exposing for a long time to the sun.
To paint relief scrolls in colors is, in some respects, more difficult than doing them in gold or aluminum leaf, and while the radiant combinations of pigments furnish striking effects, there is lacking in the painted scroll a richness, an elegance, an aristocratic display, that constitute distinctive attributes of the gilded scroll. The color of the surface upon which the scroll is to be painted should, of course, govern the color in which the scroll is to be laid. For example: If the ground be a light canary color, first fill the outlines of the scroll with a pale shade of brown. Then deepen the brown fully three shades, and begin the shading of the scroll, blending the deeper color into the lighter so that a gradual melting away from dark to light is the result. Next deepen the brown a shade or two and place the darkest shades, blending them carefully into the lighter ones, but taking care not to extend the blending into the parts previously blended. Next take a little black and run a rather fine line of the color as a shadow to the scroll, the shadow usually being placed to the right of the scroll and at the bottom. This shadow line, to be properly developed, should increase and diminish as the curves and twists are defined. A thin, fine glaze of asphaltum is then placed inside the black to shade and modulate it. Some lights of medium chrome yellow are next thrown in, and the high lights following are but a shade or two removed from white. To lend piquancy and a bit of warmth to the scroll, a few touches of vermilion, flicking the spirals here and there but invariably well removed from the lower edge of the pattern, are added. Instructions, however carefully they may be worded, are of but comparatively meagre helpfulness to the novice in painting scrolls in colors. Correctly colored illustrations of scrolls done by such masters as Weber, Kuenzel and Redmond, should be diligently studied.
The harmony of colors is the controlling factor in the art scheme of a color-wrought scroll. Once perfectly familiar with this, the ambitious student should encounter no insurmountable hindrances to success as a scroll worker in colors. Referring to the relief scrolls which illustrate the text of this chapter, we would call attention to [Fig. 1]. If this be executed in gold it may, as previously suggested, be shaded with asphaltum, or asphaltum and yellow lake can be used, and the high lights done in a light tone of Naples yellow. Perhaps the workman may wish to impart to the deepest shading a look of remoteness. This can be done by giving the dark shades a thin wash of some transparent glazing color, as, say, carmine, purple, and crimson lake, or ultramarine blue of the different shades. In [Fig. 2] we have a panel design composed in small part of the original Roman scroll and in large part of the more modern style. Lay this scroll in gold, and then apply a coat of clear rubbing varnish over the ornament before shading, high-lighting, etc. A scroll of this pattern, cast in somewhat delicate outlines, must be very carefully shaded, and if the shading be done over the rubbing varnish, the tendency to cloud and blur will be overcome. In shading, care should be taken to preserve the form and outlines of the design, and this can best be done by making the shade color decidedly semi-transparent. To high-light this scroll, cream, orange, canary chrome, or pure white may be used to advantage. An ornament of this style looks very catchy and handsome done in aluminum leaf. It is strikingly neat on almost any dark ground, with the single exception, perhaps, of black; and it is especially pleasing against the numerous yellows so popular nowadays. Used on the pale yellow grounds, however, it is seen to the best advantage with portions of the design glazed with a wash of verdigris, ultramarine blue, or carmine. The fine line is then done in orange or Tuscan red. [Fig. 3] is a rather showy design, of easy form, having for a small space none of the heavy appearance of the Roman scroll. This scroll is intended for the panel of a business wagon. If done in gold, the directions for its execution have already been advanced. The broad line striping environing the scroll gives an admirable effect if done in aluminum. The distance fine line can be drawn in the high-lighting color used on the scroll, or it affords an illuminating effect done in orange and glazed with carmine. The size of the panel should govern the size of the broad stripe here shown. It may run from 3/8 inch to 5/8 inch. [Fig. 4] illustrates a corner ornament for a large business vehicle or omnibus panel. It can be laid in gold and shaded and lighted as per directions above. If upon a deep yellow, orange, or buff ground, it can be done to the charm of a rich effect by casting it in aluminum, shading with gold, and picking out with dainty flicks of black. [Fig. 5] looks effective on the ends of small panels. On yellow or creamy grounds the fine lines may be drawn in orange glazed with carmine, and the ornaments in aluminum. Shade with burnt umber and burnt sienna, and the shade side of the shading splash lightly with deep blue and the high-light borders with light blue. On dark grounds the fine lines may be done in orange, carmine, blue, aluminum, etc., and the relief ornaments in gold. [Figs. 6 and 7], ornaments for panel ends, and [8] and [9], corner ornaments, all light up a surface radiantly placed in gold or aluminum, or they render a pleasing effect done in colors. Ornaments of the order of Figs. [7], [8], and [9] display a dashing appearance done in three or four shades of green against pure white, gold color, light sulphur yellow, Naples yellow, or canary yellow grounds, black shadings being used to touch off the correct effect. Such ornaments, to be sure, when painted in colors should properly be made to respond closely to the laws of harmony and contrast. Too glaring colors or tints used upon goodly sized surfaces are violently detrimental to artistic decorative effects. [Fig. 10] is chiefly of the flat ornament style, the center shell only being thrown in relief. This corner piece is done in gold with the shell shaded and lighted, or, as is frequently the case, the shell may be done in aluminum, and washed out with the proper relief colors.
