Then, while the water-colour hurricane was drying, I would get my hen’s feathers and hog-haired softener in order, with the fitches and colours required; for the next stage, as it is done in oil-colour, a hog-hair softener is required.
Then for materials. A hog-hair softener, two or three small flat brushes—i.e. fitches, with a small sable brush, half a dozen stiff hen’s feathers, a mixture of Japan gold size, turpentine and oil, and some lamp-black and white-lead.
The black and white spread upon your palette separately from each other, the medium make thin with the turpentine, something in this proportion: one-third oil, two-thirds turpentine, and a sixth portion of Japan gold size.
The rust markings or gold-tinted veins in this marble usually take the form of a shallow, half-dried stream of water meandering amongst boulders and pebbles; fill in these boulders and pebbles, large and small, with your black paint, leaving the underground like a rich golden stream to follow its course between them. Then, when you have done this to your satisfaction, blend a little white with the black so as to produce an unequal grey over the black markings; soften very slightly so as not to break the sharp edges, which must be kept firm and hard at this stage; next take a sharp-pointed stick—i.e. your brush-handle will do if it is pointed like a blunt pencil, and scratch out some small veins through the larger masses.
By using the Japan gold size the paint will very soon set and become ‘tacky’—that is, when you touch it with your finger it will be found sticky, therefore dry enough for the next working, the scumbling with the feathers.
Dip a feather into the thin mixture and draw it across the white so as to get a thin film; flip this in a free way over the marble, half obscuring some parts, leaving others clear and hard, and only a thin semi-transparent and milky-like film over other portions; soften these films as they run, and the result will be an exceedingly rich effect, like shells and fossils and grey veins passing over and through the black and gold.
When this is dry, varnish it, and you will have produced a marble which for richness and lucidity cannot well be surpassed. The method which I describe is old-fashioned, and rather slow, but where time and prices are not to be considered, it is well worth the extra labour in the satisfaction it gives to the worker, and its infinite superiority over the other method, which will always lack purity, richness of detail, and all the other added beauties of variety; for to paint light colours over black is always bad form, and a mistake, as the black absorbs the light colours and gives them a dull and heavy appearance.
DOVE MARBLE
This is another lovely marble if properly done, as it is filled with fossils of all kinds, and the imitation of these natural curiosities is an artistic task which brings out the best qualities of the grainer.
Generally the ground for this is stone-colour, and the materials are the same as for the black and gold marble—i.e. black and white in oil-colour.