How to Paint a Sunset in Water-Colors.
Take a piece of Whatman’s rough drawing-paper, or a kind that is termed egg-shell cartoon, the size decided upon for your picture. Have ready a large dish of clean water, brushes, and paints. Draw a pencil-line along the centre of your paper for your horizon, Fig. 151; then directly on the line paint a streak of vermilion. Put the color on quite damp, and make it about half an inch broad, extending one-fourth of an inch on either side of the horizon-line, Fig. 152. Next, quickly paint a yellow streak above and below the red one, making each streak of the same size and parallel, and leaving a little white paper between the different colors, Fig. 153. With a clean brush dipped in clean water carefully moisten the paper between the streaks, and allow the edges of the colors to mingle, Fig. 154. Before this has time to dry, paint a blue streak above and below, about half an inch from the yellow, Fig. 155; then with the clean brush dampen the white paper between, being careful not to get it too wet; there should be just enough moisture to enable the colors to flow and mingle at the edges, Fig. 156. This may be aided by holding the paper first one side up and then the other, until the edges are evenly blended. Now, before the horizon is quite dry, while it is still damp enough to cause the paint to spread, fill a brush with Payne’s gray, which should be rather dark and not too wet, touch the point of your brush here and there along the horizon, now a little above and now a little below, and you will find that the paint will spread and make excellent trees for the distance, Fig. 157.
When your work is dry enough to paint over without spreading the color, mix some green and black, and green and brown; paint in the meadow, using the color made of green and black for the extreme and middle distance, the color made of green and brown for the foreground, leaving spaces for streams and ponds, and your sunset upon the meadow is finished. A pretty little sketch it is, too, Fig. 158.
Leaf from an Artist’s Note-Book.
A different composition can be made by proceeding as directed as far as Fig. 156 and then, instead of putting in trees on the horizon, hills running to points in the water can be painted in a flat tint with the Payne’s gray, and a vessel with masts painted in the foreground, as in Fig. 159. This also makes a pretty and effective little sketch.
Fig. 160 shows sunset notes taken while aboard a ferryboat in the winter of 1886-87. From these you can see just how the notes are made; but you must make your own notes, because what is perfectly intelligible to the writer of the sunset memoranda is an enigma to another person. For example, in Fig. 160, “Rose-tinted sky” may mean almost any shade of red, or blue and red mixed, but “Rose-tinted sky” no doubt brings before the mind’s eye of the writer of the notes the exact color of the sky at the time the notes were made.
