In a bottle containing alcohol the brushes and the dabbers are cleaned after each day’s work. To preserve these useful instruments it is indispensable never to leave any color in them; you must take care to wipe them well after this washing, and even to blow a little on them, to make the spirits of wine evaporate, for if any were to remain it would spoil the color and take away the painting already finished. With a few drops of spirits of wine, the most loaded palette can be instantaneously cleaned, and the driest painting can be effaced. For this reason I recommend that the little bottle of spirits of wine be kept always far away from you during your work; if a single drop were to fall on the painting, it would immediately smear and obliterate the work done.
Cleaning brushes with spirits of wine has to be done every day. From time to time a more thorough cleaning with soft soap is resorted to; the brushes are steeped in the soap, and are washed the next day only.
PORCELAIN AND EARTHENWARE.—COMPOSITION, USE AND MIXING OF THE COLORS.
GENERAL INFORMATION.
We borrow from M. Lacroix his classification of colors, which is very practical with regard to their employment in painting:
“Classification of colors with respect to iron.—Iron plays an important part in the composition of a great many enamel colors; for this reason I have taken it as a standard for my classification of colors into three groups.
“First Group.—Colors that do not contain any iron: First, the white; secondly, the blues; thirdly, the colors from gold.
“A horn or ivory knife is preferable for the use of colors of this group.
“A glass muller is still better than knives.