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

Mixing.—In mixing colors you should be careful not to over mix. Don't stir your paint. Too much mixing takes the life out of the color. Particles of the pure color not too much broken up by mixing are valuable to your work, giving vibration and brilliancy to it. The reverse is muddiness, which is sure to come from too much fussing and overworking of wet paint. Don't use more than three pigments in one tint if you can help it, and mix them loosely. If you must use more colors, mix still more loosely. Put all the colors together, one beside the other, drag them together with the brush, scoop them up loosely on the end of it, and lay the tint on freely and frankly. Never muddle the color on the canvas. Don't put one color over another more than you can help; you will only get a thick mass of paint of one kind mixing with a mass of another, and the result will be dirty color, which of all things in painting is most useless.

Keep the color clean and fresh, and have your brush-strokes firm and free. Never tap, tap, tap, your paint; make up your mind what the color is, and mix it as you want it. Decide just where the touch is to go, and lay it on frankly and fairly, and leave it. If it isn't right, daubing into it or pat-patting it won't help it. Either leave it, or mix a new color, and lay it on after having scraped this one off.

Don't try to economize on your mixing. A color mixed for one place will never do for another, so don't try to paint another place with it. Have the patience to proceed slowly, and mix the color specially for each brush-stroke. On the other hand, don't be niggardly with your paint. Don't use less paint than you need. Mix an ample brushful and put it on; then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you should use each time. The variety of tone and value which comes of mixing new color for every touch of the brush is in itself a charm in a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it.

Good Bock. Manet.
To illustrate direct and solid painting.

Corrections.—As far as you can, make corrections by over-painting when the paint is dry, or nearly so. When I say don't work into wet color to correct, I do not mean that you are never to do so, but that to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty. Of course it is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when you do, do it with deliberation. Don't lose your head and pile wet paint on wet paint in the vain hope of getting the color by force of piling it on. You will only get it worse and worse. Get it as nearly right as you can. If it is hopeless, scrape it off clean, and mix a fresh tint. If it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go ahead; and put a better color on that place to-morrow when it is dry, if you can.

Keep at it.—But above all don't be permanently satisfied with the almost. Don't be afraid to put paint over dry paint till it is right. Work at it day after day. Let the paint get thick if it will, if only you get the thing right. The secret of getting it right is to keep at it, and be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. When you can see nothing wrong you can do no better. But as long as your eye will recognize a difference between what is on the canvas and what ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are shirking if you stop. Never call a thing done as long as you can see something wrong about it. No matter what any one else says, your work must come up at least to the standard of what you yourself can see.

Loose Painting.—Sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very loosely in order to get vibration of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let the under paint show somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. Too much of this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right place is not to be obtained in any other way. The paint may be dragged over the canvas with a long brush charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be flipped into its place, or it may be hatched on with parallel strokes. All these ways will be spoken of as they suggest themselves in other chapters. Solid color, generally, is used in this manner, and the effect of body is rather strengthened by it than the reverse.

Scumbling.—Another means of modifying the color and effect of a painting has perhaps always been more or less commonly in use. This is called scumbling, and may be considered under the head of solid painting, as it is always done with body, and never with transparent, color. The process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color, without thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried. Generally this scumble is of a lighter color than the under-painting, and is rubbed on with a stubby brush slightly charged with the paint. As much surface as is desired may be covered in this way, and the result is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing. Often the effect is very successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. Too much scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into it with firm color to avoid this.