MATERIALS

GROUNDS.-Your canvas should, except for work on a small scale, not be very highly primed ; colour slips about on a smooth surface ; it gets no hold ; a distinct tooth is a necessity. Your choice of a canvas depends largely on your method, and frequently controls it ; for instance, if you have a desire to paint fatly, a slight texture would be better than a rough surface, which absorbs too much colour to allow of an unctuous manner, at least until a later stage when the grain is partially lost under successive layers of paint.

I should advise you to try a variety of textures to find out by personal experience the most sympathetic ground. It is well to learn to feel "at home" under varying conditions, for a coarse canvas on which you might paint the head of an old man would hardly be suitable if a child's face [72] were your subject. However, it is wise for a student not to go to extremes in his selections. Except in the case of studies for more important work, do not paint on toned canvas, for the reason that it is difficult to evade the moral influence of a dull ground. It makes for dulness, while it flatters you that you are painting brilliantly ; but for rapid studies it has its uses, the background being to a certain extent already indicated.

For this purpose I have found brown paper, stretched over common canvas and then sized a delightful ground for studies in oil or guache.

The wood panels made to fit into the lid of the paint-box are of a pleasant warm tone, and are to be recommended both for landscape sketches or small figures.

If you find after some experience that your work inclines to soapiness, you may correct this objectionable tendency by using an absorbent canvas.

The thick wood panels used by the old masters are rarely painted on to-day, but for small, highly finished work they are preferable to canvas.

Let your palette be not less than eighteen inches in length ; rather more is advisable. Personally [73] I prefer the dark pear-wood to the light maple palette ; for on the light yellow surface it is hard to recognise the real nature of the colour which you are mixing.

Among your brushes, have some of the shape shown on page 72.

These flatted round brushes, coming to a blunt point, are sometimes called Leighton brushes. With them, the drawing of detailed passages can be effected, and fewer small brushes will be needed. Avoid the use of many small brushes in life-size work, and get used to large ones of an inch or more across. Try all kinds-flat and round of a medium thickness. There is no resilience in a thinly haired hog-brush, and a fat one absorbs more colour than it places.

Let your palette knife be fairly long-you will see the reason for this recommendation later on -and let it be trowel-shaped.

When painting large surfaces, you will find a painting table, like the one reproduced on page 74, very useful. It can be easily moved, lowered, or raised ; and it offers a much larger area for the mixing of quantities of colour than any palette you could hold with comfort.

With the same object a number of shallow saucers, which can be filled with colours mixed [74] to the approximate tones required with medium are serviceable.

Charcoal is used for the initial drawing on canvas.

The wire plush mat which I have already mentioned is quite the best kind of scraper. With it you can erase the paint, particularly when dry, until the canvas is bared; and at any stage it can be used to restore a texture that may have been lost. The wire plush mat can be purchased at tool shops, and is sold in lengths. The shop assistant will cut up the lengths into shorter ones [75] for you, a six-inch length being what you will find most handy.

This mat is used mostly by plumbers. Its use requires a little experience. I ought to caution you never to scrape your work until you have placed a stout cardboard between the canvas and the stretcher, for the pressure will otherwise force up ineradicable ridges in those parts of the canvas that lie over the edges of the woodwork behind. Good pictures are frequently spoilt because of the lack of this precaution.

Your easel should be the best you can afford. Let it be light and run on good castors.

COLOURS

There are two methods of painting I wish you to learn. The one is painting in "grisaille" or monochrome, and subsequent glazing and scumbling with colour ; the other is direct colour reproduction. The former method needs but a very simple palette, the other a much richer one. I shall recommend a list from which the colours for either method may be selected, I think, with safety, avoiding inclusion in it of any pigments considered doubtful by the chemists, and including the least harmful among the evanescent ones, which however are essential :-

Kremser White or Blanc d'Argent.

Flake White, and Stiff Flake White.

Yellow Ochre.

Light Red, Extract of Vermilion.

Rose Madder, Indian Red, Cobalt.

Emerald Oxide of Chromium, Raw Umber.

Burnt Umber, Ivory Black.

[76]These will be adequate for flesh painting and for most of the ordinary effects of colour.

I add a supplementary list which may be required for special purposes :-

Warm Naples Yellow, and Lemon Naples Yellow.