The Painter in Oil / A complete treatise on the principles and technique necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors

by Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst

The Third Painting.—The third painting simply goes over the picture in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights. The procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture was begun with an ébouch of body color or a frottée of transparent color. The third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a whole further toward being finished.

Rough and Smooth.—If body color has been used pretty freely in the two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in places by the time it is ready for the third painting. Whether that roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the painter to decide for himself. Among the greatest of painters there have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly. I have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the heavier brush-strokes. The effect of color, and especially luminosity, has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these things are to be considered. As a rule, it might be well to look upon either extreme as something not of importance in itself. The mere quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any more than the mere quality of roughness is. If these things are necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. The painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to the picture. If he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of the surface quality of his canvas will not bother him beyond the effect that it has upon his attaining of that expression.

Scraping.—The second painting will be well dry before the third begins, especially if the paint be more rough and uneven than is for any reason desirable. Almost every painter scrapes his pictures more or less. There is pretty sure to be some part of it in which there is roughness just where he doesn't want it. For the third painting, that is to say, after the main things in the picture are practically entirely finished, there remains to be done the strengthening and richening and modifying of the colors, values, and accents, and the bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking. Before this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all over. If it does need it, you may use a regular tool made for that purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it being held firmly in such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas.

It is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off such projections and unevenness of paint as would interfere with the proper over-painting.

The third painting represents any and all processes that may be used to complete the picture. There is no rule as to the number of processes or "paintings." You may have a dozen paintings if you want them, and after the first two they are all modifications and subdivisions of the third painting; for they all add to furthering the completion of the picture. They are all done more or less from nature, as the second painting was. There should be very little done to any picture without constant reference to nature.

If you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. Don't "tone" it with a general wash of some color. That is not the way pictures are "brought into tone," nor is that the purpose of the glaze. The glaze, like any other application of paint, is put on just where it is needed to modify the color of that place where the color goes. The use of a scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be painted into and over with solid color, and that again modified as much as is called for. The thing which is to be carefully avoided is not the use of any special process, but the ceasing from the use of some process or other before the thing is as it should be,—don't stop before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of the idea of the picture.

This completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what is ordinarily looked upon as "finish." Finish is not surface, but expression; and completeness of expression may demand roughness and avoidance of detail and surface at one time quite as positively as it demands more detail and consequent smoothness at another.

And this final completeness comes from the last paintings which I group together as the "third." Scumble and glaze and paint into them, and glaze and scumble again. Use any process which will help your picture to have those qualities which are always essential to any picture being a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it at all. Those qualities of character, and truth of representation, and exactness of meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more general qualities of color and tone. Emphasis and force of accent, such detail as you want, and the final and more delicate perceptions of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be divided into several paintings.

Between Paintings.—When a painting is dry and you begin to work on it again, you will probably find parts of its surface covered with a kind of bluish haze, which quite changes its color or obscures the work altogether. It is "dried in." In drying, some of the oil of the last painting is absorbed by what is beneath it, and the dead haze is the result. You cannot paint on it without in some way bringing it back to its original color. You cannot varnish it out at this stage, for this will not have a good effect on your picture.

"Oiling Out."—You can oil it all over, and then rub all the oil off that you can. This will bring it out. But the oil will tend to darken the picture; too much oil should be avoided. Turpentine with a little oil in it will bring it out also, but it will not stay out so long, but perhaps long enough for you to work on it. If you put a little siccative de Harlem in it, or use any picture varnish thinned with turpentine, it will serve well enough. There is a retouching varnish, vernis à retoucher, which is made for this purpose, and is perfectly safe and good.