Fig. 9.
In the matter of pencils, different kinds and sizes will be needed. For laying on the scroll, a black sable hair pencil, the hair set in metal, running in size from No. 4 to No. 8, according to the size of the scroll, and 1 1/2 inches long, is an effective and pleasingly durable tool. For shading purposes a shorter and softer hair pencil is best; say a camel's-hair pencil 3/4 inch in length. However, a variety of pencils, both sable and camel's-hair, and of the various sizes, will be found essential in doing the large and small ornaments which the accompanying examples may suggest. Necessary adjuncts to the pencil equipment are, the palette, palette cups, and mahl-stick. An oval palette, made thin and smooth, of mahogany, walnut, or even ash, polished nicely on a shellac base, has for long been popular, and in point of excellence remains unexcelled. Make the mahl-stick of cedar preferably; work it out round and smooth and tip it with a small ball of cotton enclosed in a patch of chamois skin. Taking the accompanying illustrated section of a Roman scroll (see [Fig. 1]) as a working draft, begin by allowing the point of the pencil to touch the surface and then with a confident, easy sweep twist the pencil around so as to form, say, the first spiral or volute. Next do the stems and offshoots attached to this volute. Practice to do each spiral, and the stems putting out therefrom, with a single, and at most two, strokes of the pencil. The first principle of fine scrolling consists in getting easy, graceful sweeps, suggestive, perhaps, I may be allowed to say, of the poetry of pencil motion. The tracery of a stilted, cramped pencil sweep is fatal to the balance and grace of a scroll. In practice the student will probably choose gold bronze as the most desirable substitute for gold leaf in working out his gold-finished scroll. The figure, without its shading, affords a flat scroll of fantastic contour, as a draft of [Fig. 1], devoid of the shades, will quickly prove.
Fig. 10.
The shading of the scroll must be done in the same free, off-hand style that must necessarily mark the evolution of the general figure of the ornament. If, as above intimated, the scroll is done in imitation of or in the real gold leaf, the shading is best done with asphaltum, this pigment offering the only true shadow, authorities contend, of gold. Mix the asphaltum with good coach japan and turpentine, half and half. Reference to [Fig. 1], and to the other accompanying illustrations, will indicate more accurately than printed directions the parts of a scroll requiring shades. The inadequacy of written instructions teaching the particular portions of the ornament to be high-lighted must be apparent to the reader. Broadly speaking, where the strongest light strikes there high lights should be. For a really practical insight of this phase of the work the student should study examples of finished scrolls done in the highest style of the art. The gold scroll shaded with asphaltum invites high-lighting with white or cream color.
In the execution of relief scrolls it is needful to observe:
1.—All ornaments must have a reason—a useful thing done in a graceful way.