CHAPTER VIII

MONOCHROME STUDY

I SHOULD certainly not advise you to paint in full colour in the first instance.

Monochrome painting is by far the best initial practice ; you will no doubt have to put some restraint on your longing to use colour, but you will be amply rewarded for not venturing to run before having learnt to walk erect and with a firm step. And since it is clearly seen that nearly all the great masters made something like a monochrome preparation for their pictures, and they knew what they were about, a knowledge of the use of monochrome will be invaluable to you in your after practice, besides enabling you to master most of the technical difficulties by degrees.

Get a cast of an antique head. If it is very white, tone it down with a thin solution of raw umber and oil to something like the colour of old ivory. It will then not take so many reflections m the shadows, and its general effect will be broader-that is to say, more simple. Place the cast hi a fairly strong light, so that its shadows are definitely marked. Your canvas might be [82] about 24 inches by 20 inches or a little larger. You will rarely need a canvas smaller than this.

Although little attention is usually paid to the lighting of your canvas, it is really very important that no glare of light be upon it; not only because the paint might shine, but for the reason that if the painting is more highly illuminated than the object to be painted, you will imagine that it is more brightly painted than it actually is.

Let me give you an example from my own experience-a somewhat extreme example, it is true, but the principle to be learned from it applies in all circumstances. I was sketching at Pompeii; the sun shone fully upon my canvas, and my sketch seemed to me to be bright and warm in colour. When I took it home I saw that it was both dull and cold. Out of doors the sketch was illuminated by the brilliant and warm light of the sun, and so appeared to partake of those qualities ; but the normal light of the room showed me that I had made a great mistake to work in the sunlight. Similarly, if your painting is too brilliantly lighted, your study will suffer as my sketch suffered.

You cannot, of course, work in a dull light, but you can slightly moderate it with a screen or curtain. Where there is a top light, this precaution is not necessary, for your study will be equally lighted with the model ; but with a side light, when you are working, as you probably [83] will, nearer the window than your sitter is placed, some sort of screen is necessary.

It is well also to let the area of light be much smaller than obtains in most studios. It is the quality, not the quantity, of light that tells.

Now proceed to draw the cast in the manner I have endeavoured to impress upon you, in charcoal, and take some pains to place it well on the canvas. A good study is often spoilt by being badly placed. A few hints on the arrangement of your work will be found in a subsequent chapter, but as a general rule you might, when painting a head on the canvas of the size given, find the chin somewhere about the centre. When you are satisfied that the drawing is good, particularly in proportion, after having compared it throughout the various stages with the cast in your hand-glass, blow off all but the faintest indications of the line. You cannot expect to keep your picture clean and bright otherwise. Then with a sable brush go over the lines with a thin mixture of raw umber and turpentine.

Your palette need only be laid with Kremser or Flake White and Raw Umber. The study of a man in Chapter VI. was done in these two pigments. On the same lines proceed with your study. Use an oil-pot of the shape and size shown on page 84, containing some spirits of turpentine.

Mix up in fair quantities three tones-that of the background, the middle tint, and the general tone of the shadow.

[84] Paint the background, not too solidly, in its tone relation to the cast, half closing your eyes to judge its depths; and cover all the canvas up to the outline of the cast.

Now take your middle tone-that is, the general aspect of the cast-the tone next in value to the higher lights, and paint fairly thinly with a good size brush over the whole surface of the drawing, leaving essential indications intact, and right up to the background, so that the edges melt. Now place your study beside, or in line under, the cast, referring to your glass, to see what you may have to do to get the relation of the general tone of the cast and background still nearer; for now that your canvas is completely covered, you are in a better position to judge these things.

FIG.17