We would advise, however, that the imperial, 15in. by 11in., folio should be carried if possible, as it gives so much more space for detail in landscape or other subjects than can be gained upon the smaller scale. With the large book the twenty-four tube colour box can be carried, with the smaller a twelve tube must be taken; and in either case weight may be economised on short trips by carrying only the lid that forms the palette with the little divisions that should always be found along its edge charged with patches of colour; in this case a slip of tin or copper must be fitted as a temporary cover to the box left at home.
We do not advise the solid sketch-block for hard service; first, because it exposes to risk an unnecessarily large quantity of paper, and next, because, with rough usage, the sheets may become loose, and cease to be a block. The folio with japanned tin frame, for confining the sheet actually in use, is the best. It should be made of strong, light, saddlers’ leather, rather than of the flimsy materials; which serve well enough for lady students a mile or two from home. The millboard surfaces may be varnished with boiled linseed oil, and allowed to dry thoroughly. Do not have them covered with paper pasted on, but with the plain surface of the milled board. We found it very convenient to mark a scale of inches along the sides of our frame, and have a movable slip of thin brass fastened upon it by simply bending the ends round, so as to enable us to draw a truly horizontal line at any height, and this would be especially useful in mapping, or the horizon in sea-views.
If a sketching-stool can be carried, it will be found a great convenience, as, when the artist has to sit upon the ground, to say nothing of possible unpleasantness from storms or dampness, the eye is lowered so much that often the grass in the foreground will hide the greater part of the landscape. The triangular stool, which folds up into a stick but little larger than a policeman’s truncheon, is the most convenient form. One of the legs may be longer, with a couple of cross-bars, on which to rest the sketch-book; or such a convenience may be made with a couple of thumb-screws to slip on when required.
In sketching a landscape it is of great importance to decide, first, what you intend to make the principal object, and how much in the way of accessory you can include beside it. About sixty degrees, or the sixth-part of a circle, is all that can be seen horizontally, without moving the head, and about forty vertically, and this may be roughly estimated by holding up the hands like blinkers on each side of the face, and observing where they shut off the view. Photographers have a little frame made specially for this purpose, and the artist may, by opening the frame of his folio, and holding it nearly at arm’s length, see how much of the landscape it includes. It must also be remembered that no one looking at a landscape can see the spot he stands on; and, therefore, if it is desired that this spot shall be the foreground, he must retire, say ten or fifteen yards, so as to bring it within the limit of his vision. In practice, however—when, for instance, he is looking over the edge of a cliff—this might deprive him of the sight of some of the most beautiful portions of the view, and it might be better to remain on the edge, leaving a sufficient blank at the bottom of the paper, and then retiring to sketch the foreground, choosing such a position as should make its characteristic features enhance the beauty of the view. It conduces very greatly to correctness if the bearings of distant hills are taken by compass and noted in pencil on the upper margin of the sketch, while nearer features are similarly noted at the bottom—if the estimated distance in miles is added, this enhances greatly the value of the sketch, as it becomes then a geographical record, in addition to its merit as a work of art. Holding up the paper steadily at nearly arm’s length, and making on its upper edge the apparent horizontal distances, and on its side the heights, assists the drawing very much; and the pencil may be held up and the distances gauged on it by the thumb-nail, and measured on the paper. Two knots on the ends of a bit of string, one held on the pencil, and the other between the teeth, will ensure the measurements being all taken at the same distance from the eye, which is of great importance. The angle formed by the side of a mountain may be estimated by making the pencil coincide with it, and then bringing it down on the paper. The perspective of receding lines may be found in the same manner; but care must be taken to hold the pencil in the plane of the picture, and not let it point away from the observer; the limits being thus ascertained, the forms may be slightly indicated, and then, after a steady and searching gaze at the object, firmly, but not heavily, drawn. When once the paper is indented by the pressure of the pencil, the line can never be entirely erased; and the surface, once injured, can never be restored. No line should be made at random; be the touches few or many, each should definitely represent some form. The merest outline accurately sketched upon the spot is preferable to any amount of indefinite filling up, which the artist had better leave to his own imagination, assisted by memory and a faithful sketch, when he finishes his picture.
In a pencil sketch, little notes, indicating the nature of the soil, the foliage, the colour or condition of the water or the clouds, may be neatly written in, in such a manner that, unless on close inspection, they blend into the forms of the objects, and rather assist the drawing than detract from its appearance: for instance, the word rocks may run alongside the shadow of a fissure, and their kind or colour—red, grey, basalt, or sandstone, &c.—grass, sandy plain, water, dark clouds, cumuli or light cirri, accidental or cast shadows, or gleams of light, are all worthy of notice; while the direction of a river may be indicated by a small arrow-head. It may also be enough if several objects of a kind are together, as a crowd of men, a herd of animals, or a flotilla of small vessels, to draw one or more carefully and simply indicate the position of the rest. If there is time, a few touches of colour on the principal parts—say the grey of distant hills and the stronger tints of the nearer ones in flat washes. If a sketch is to be finished in colour on the spot, the outlines should be made as before, with the greatest care; but no time should be wasted in attempting to shade or finish with the pencil. If the paper is of a light pearl or a warm grey tint, so that Chinese white will tell upon it, it will be less dazzling to the eye when reflecting the rays of a vertical sun; but it must be remembered that all tinted grounds impart their own character to the work, and, if strict fidelity is sought, nothing but pure white paper, with a sufficient grain or texture to take the colour well, and to give that slight broken uncertainty of touch which is of so much advantage in foliage or rough surfaces, and yet sufficiently fine to admit of the most delicate manipulation where it is required. The right side of the paper is that on which the maker’s name, pressed into its texture, is properly seen; and, if the sheet is cut, each piece that does not include some portion of this should be marked with an “R” on the right side, to prevent mistake. The pencil sketch being completed, wet the paper all over with your largest brush filled with pure water—this somewhat softens, while it fixes the pencil lines, and disposes the paper to receive colour more readily. Take up with the half-dried brush any drops of water that may hang under the edge of your sketching frame, which should, of course, be perfectly clean. Determine now what parts of your picture are to be white, or of pure and unmixed blue, and then, with the large brush, pass a very faint tint of pale orange over all the rest.
The three primitive colours, red, blue, and yellow, in their greatest obtainable purity, should now be placed on the pallette, which ought to be clean, and if possible unencumbered by other colours. Suppose you have Indian yellow, carmine, and cobalt. With a little diluted cobalt wash in the clear blue spaces in the sky, carrying a tint downward on any part of the ground in which grey is to predominate, so as to impart depth of colour as speedily as possible, and reduce the distracting effect of the white paper as seen in opposition to the parts you are painting; if the lights on the clouds are to be pure white, form a grey with a little cobalt and carmine and paint their shadow sides, then with a clean half dry brush soften the harshness of the edges, and reduce them to the form you wish, bearing in mind that the more correctly and evenly you can lay the edge of the original wash, and the less it wants re-touching the better for your picture. If the sky is to be cloudless, turn the picture bottom up, take a very faint wash of cobalt and carmine and lay it along the horizon, letting the lower edge hang full and wet, so as to give you time to work on it before it dries, and yet not so full as to run down in a drip, and so produce unequal lines across the sky; then take up a little pure cobalt and wash in another line of colour a little deeper than the first, the wet edge of which will run imperceptibly into your second line, and thus in succession keep working in lines of deeper blue, until by an imperceptive gradation you reach the zenith. If sunset or sunrise is to be represented, keep a pure white space for the sun, round this lay a wash of Indian yellow, round this another of carmine, and beyond this another of cobalt with a little carmine in it, keeping the picture still reversed, so that in graduating the tints the most brilliant colours may run into those that are less so—as the yellow into the red and the red into the blue, rather than that the colder colours should run into the warm, and thus impair their purity. The sun may then be tinted as required, remembering always that the source of light must be brighter than the atmosphere through which it shines—though, if the sun be setting in a bank of cloud or haze, great effect may be gained by painting it of a deep and lurid red; while its clear and nearly white light shines on the light clouds in the zenith above the influence of the haze.
Calm water will reflect the colour of the sky according to the angle at which it is viewed; if you look down on it, it will reflect the dark blue of the zenith, but at the same time, if it be transparent, it will also transmit the broken colours of the ground beneath, and thus many beautiful effects are produced—the yellow sand of the tropics imparting a brilliant green to the shallow sea, while rocks or sea-weed will give rich tones of brown. If the spectator is low down, the water will reflect the colour of the horizon, and its own local colour will be lost or much diminished; the reflection of objects on its banks will also appear more perfectly in proportion to its stillness; but never fall into the error of making the reflection an inverted facsimile of the real object—it is in reality an image as seen from the level of the water at a point midway between the spectator and the object. Get a good photograph showing a reflection, or lay a looking-glass horizontally and place an object on it, and you will see at once what we mean.
The distant hills may either melt into the soft tints of the sky, partaking of roseate light and faint sky shadow, or may rise cold and dark against a clear horizon, or may be shown in full light against a heavy storm cloud; in any case, the tone of colour proper to their respective distances must be preserved, and in this respect there can be no better rule than to copy those that nature herself presents. Objects in the middle distance will be more strongly coloured; and if any particular object be selected as the subject of the landscape, the attention should be directed to this, and the remainder made subservient to it, by having somewhat less finish bestowed upon them. Fix the eye steadily upon the chosen object, and observe how all detail becomes indistinct towards the limits of the vision, and then in like manner, having worked up the detail around the centre of interest, let the colours become a little fainter, and the work less definite toward the corners of your sketch. In foliage, take the lightest tint, say Indian yellow and French blue, or Prussian blue toward the foreground where intense green is required, and lay in the masses, keeping the forms large and broad, and blending a little more blue with the parts that are to represent the farthest side of the tree; then, when this is dry, take a darker tint and somewhat more minutely represent the forms of those portions that take the middle tint or local colour; and lastly, take a third for the deeper shadow, strengthening this with touches of rich warm brown or cool grey as you wish the masses to advance or to retire. Even pure crimson may be used with advantage as a shadow to cool clear green in the foreground; in like manner the proper shadow for a yellow sandhill on a beach is not a deeper yellow, but a cool purplish grey, composed of the complementary colours blue and red.
To give some idea of the work that may be done with three well-chosen colours, we append the following list, which might be much enlarged:—
| Primaries | Yellow and red produce orange. Yellow and blue, green. Red and blue, purple. | |
| Secondaries | Orange and green, citrine. Orange and purple, russet. Purple and green, olive. |