The Colors used are Indigo, French Blue, Cobalt Blue, Purple Lake, Indian Red, Indian Lake, Pink Madder, Indian Yellow, Gamboge, Yellow Ochre, Vandyke Brown, Brown Madder, Sepia, Burnt Sienna, Venetian Red, Olive Green, Brown Pink, Vermilion. One of the principal points in which water-color painting differs from oil, is the laying on of the flat tints by means of washes.
THE ART OF
LANDSCAPE PAINTING
IN
OIL COLORS.
Technical Names and Materials Used. Mixing of Tints, and how to Apply Them.
No doubt you are sufficiently acquainted with the general principles of Drawing and Perspective at the time you reach this branch of art work, as to be able to apply them with facility and certainty to the representation, in outline, of a given view or subject. The rules here laid down will place within your reach the power of securing to yourself one of the most delightful and agreeable of accomplishments.
In the production of a painting in Oil Colors, there are certain modes of operation, in introducing a beginner to the practice of the art, the operations are distinguished by the technical names of glazing, impasting, scrumbling, and handling.
A Glaze is a thin transparent film of color, laid upon another color to modify the tone, or to aid the effect of the latter, the work thereby appearing distinctly through the layer of glaze, from which it receives a characteristic hue. This process of glazing is effected by diluting proper transparent color with megilp, or other suitable vehicle. Thus diluted, these colors are laid upon portions of the work, either in broad flat tints, or in touches, partially and judiciously distributed. The object is to strengthen shadows, and give warmth or coldness to their hue, to subdue lights that are unduly obtrusive, or to give additional color and tone to those that are deficient in force and richness.
Impasting. In oil painting, the dark shadows, or dark portions of the picture, are painted thinly, while the lights are laid on, or “impasted,” with a full pencil and a stiff color. In the lights of the foreground, and of parts not intended to be remote or to “retire,” the impasting should be bold and free; while in the more brilliant lights it cannot well be too solid. The palette knife has always been a favorite instrument of this “impasting,” or laying on of color, capable as it is of producing an agreeable brightness on, and of giving an appropriate flatness to, the pigment. A clear and appropriate tint, skillfully swept across a sky by these means, often produce a brilliant and charming effect which is surprising.
Scrumbling, the opposite process to that of glazing, is done by going lightly over the work with an opaque tint, generally produced by an admixture of white. For this purpose a hog-hair brush is used, charged with color but sparingly, and with it the tints are drawn very thinly, and somewhat loosely, over the previous painting, which should, as in the case of glazing, be dry and firm.