LANDSCAPE AND PICTURES
For three-value studies one may use ink, charcoal or oil paint. The two latter are particularly suitable for landscape designs and illustrative work. Charcoal should be used lightly and very freely. It gives effects of vibration, atmosphere, envelope and light, but the handling requires special study and much practice.
The first few exercises in charcoal landscape may be in flat tones (see No. 55, page 85), and the student may find it well to make a scale of three values in this medium; he must learn however to feel outlines without drawing them, and to handle charcoal firmly but loosely.
Cover the paper with a very sketchy tone of soft charcoal; pass over it lightly with a paper stump or piece of cotton cloth. Be careful not to grind the black into the paper, making an opaque smoky tone. Charcoal paper is made rough, to let the [pg 84] warm white shine between the little particles of black that lie upon the points of the surface.
When a luminous middle-gray is obtained, sketch in the darks with soft charcoal and take out the lights with bread or rubber; this effect is like a mezzotint, Nos. 55, 57, and p. 57. After the principle of three values has been demonstrated, and the student can appreciate definite intervals of tone, the instructor should allow great freedom in execution, not even limiting to three notes but adding one or two others if necessary to good expression.
For oil painting, mix the three tones in quantity sufficient to paint several studies. Ivory Black and Burnt Sienna will give a good neutral gray. For the color of blue china or the Abruzzi towels, use Prussian Blue, Black and White. Opinions differ as to the use of diluting mediums, and sizes of brushes, for oil painting. I should advise thinning the color with linseed oil and turpentine (half and half), and using large flat bristle brushes. Canvas should be fairly rough in texture. If the surface to be painted on is smooth,—either wood, pasteboard, or canvas,—prepare a ground with thick paint, leaving brush-marks.
APPLICATIONS, THREE VALUES
Use of the principle of three values in out-door sketching and in illustration, has been explained above. There is one application, among others, that should be made by the student at this point—composition of a book-page.
The usual illustrated page is an arrangement in three tones,—white paper, gray type, dark picture. The value to the publisher depends quite as much upon the picturesque effect of the illustration as upon its drawing. Size and placing, disposition of type, amount of margin, are matters of Line Composition; but choice of type, and the tone of the illustration belong to Notan Composition. Hence the student will gain much from designing pages, in ink, charcoal or oil, using as pictures the copies from masters, or original studies. Picture, title, initial letter, and body of type must be so composed that the result will be effective and harmonious, No. 58.