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

From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why and the how of technical expression so sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint, following the same method and processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend the meaning and the expression at the same time.

This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said before. It trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of the power of perception rather than the understanding of methods is what the young student needs. The processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he sees in nature are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as he needs it; get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he cannot see his own way. But the searching of nature should come first. The seeing of what is must precede the stating of it.

But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried for than an approximation of the right colors in the right places.

Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student makes a copy, he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing, but also in manner of treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there may be that goes to make up the "manner" of the original.

This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really having a picture which is more than superficially like the original; but in this way can be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot be gotten so easily otherwise.

Study your original carefully before and while working on your own canvas. See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the same way, touch for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a large brush when he used a large brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife, use yours; and particularly never use a smaller brush than the painter used on the picture you are copying.

The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted solidly, with full body of color, do so on your copy. Never glaze nor scumble because you can't get the colors without. Your business is to try to get the same qualities in the same way. And any other manipulation is not only getting a different thing, but shirking the problem. Because, if you can't get the effect in the way he did, you certainly won't get the same one any other way. You are not originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying another man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying to learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly, that he did the thing one way, when as a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it another way.

This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of course any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is precisely what the average person does not do when copying, and I have found it constantly necessary to insist upon these very points even to advanced students.

So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if you can, as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes used, follow absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship of the picture you copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.

In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been worked out, and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over again on a larger scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not only take too much time, but the same result might not follow. For this purpose a more mechanical process is commonly made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness with a certain freedom of hand, without which the work would be too rigid and hard.