How To Paint Permanent Pictures
INTRODUCTION
IT is astonishing that, in these days of progress, no corresponding advance has been made in practical instruction in the composition of pigments, mediums and all material necessary to the production of permanent works of art, whether they are easel paintings, or water colors for the adornment of the home or public places, or in tempera and fresco for decorations.
There is not, to my knowledge, a regular course of lectures on this subject at any of the Art Schools in England, Italy, France or America, in which students are taught what materials to use and what to avoid.
During an experience of more than thirty years in the manufacture of pigments and mediums for all types of painting, I have investigated the methods, analyzed the material and demonstrated the folly of most of the procedures in common use to-day, and feel that there is a demand for a little book of this kind, which painters can use, and from which art students can acquire a sane method of producing permanent results.
If the painter once knows, either mechanically or unconsciously, the pigments that are absolutely permanent, and the principle involved in producing paintings which will not crack, fade, darken, peel, blister or decompose, his or her mind can be taken up completely with the artistic effect to be produced, without thinking for a moment of either the mechanical or the scientific side of the question, and without his or her artistic feeling being disturbed during the process of painting. It is quite natural that a man in my position, who has met many painters and who has discoursed with them on this subject, has had many of them confess time and again that the practical and technical side of painting has always disturbed their peace of mind whenever they have been in the midst of serious work.
And so, the object of this book is to convey to the painter, in simple language, and without going into any abstruse science of any kind, the reasons why certain materials should be used and certain materials should be avoided. I wrote a book which went into the subject of all the pigments and all the mediums in a more scientific manner[1] and in that book I gave what is regarded as the simple permanent palette. But it is obviously essential that a more complete and practical dissertation on this subject will be of benefit to those who have selected artistic painting as their life work. I have heard, time and again, the statement that we do not know in this age how to make the materials which the older and great masters used. It has been dinned in my ears frequently that our materials are so worthless that uniform and permanent results cannot be obtained. Nothing is further from the truth, and all one has to do is to see the enormous amount of permanent painting that exists outside of the artistic field to realize that the science of paint making is more perfect to-day than it ever has been.
The manufacturers of ordinary house paints in the United States all, more or less, guarantee, within reasonable limits, that the paints which are applied to the exterior of buildings will last five years. I have a case in mind where four huge smokestacks were painted, near the seashore, and at the end of ten years the paint was still in perfectly good condition. I ask anyone who reads this, and who is an artistic painter, how long does he or she think an artistic painting would stand, exposed to the sea air, to the sun, rain, frost and winds? The chances are that no artistic painting, executed with the same thickness of coating as structural paint, would last three months. This is fair evidence of the fact that structural paint, which is really simple paint, contains the inherent quality of permanence, for reasons which I will explain later. Take the case of entrance doors in France, England and the United States, which are painted and varnished and exposed to the elements, and see how perfectly these stand for several years. It is on this principle that artistic painting must be based for absolute permanence, for artistic painting is never subjected to the elements and is never subjected to the extremes of temperature which menace the longevity of house or automobile painting. In fact, there is no reason why a painting on the interior of any building, or suitably framed or covered in any gallery, with reasonable care should not last for an unlimited time. I have seen the fresco decorations in Italy, which are as good to-day, so far as I know, as the day they were applied. Many of the primitive Italian paintings are simply remarkable for their permanence, even though the wooden panels on which they were painted are worm-eaten and rotted; and I have seen any number of paintings executed within my time by prominent painters that have cracked, faded and deteriorated because wrong materials were applied and insufficient care was exercised in the application and proper sequence of the pigments and mediums employed.
There are not more than fifteen pigments necessary for the painting of a work of art; and, out of these fifteen, nine or ten are sufficient for every purpose. To show the folly of so many colors, you can pick up any catalogue and find the following Green Pigments: