CHAPTER XXVII: THE STUDY
The qualities which make a good study are the reverse of those which
make a good sketch. In the sketch all is sacrificed to the effect, or to the
one thing which is its purpose. The study is what its name implies, and
its purpose is not one thing, but many. In a study you put in everything
which may be valuable. You store it with facts. You leave out nothing
which you wish to put in. it is all material. You and take and leave in
using it afterwards, as you could from nature. Of course every study has
some main intention, but you must take the trouble to give everything
that goes to the making of that.
A study is less of a picture than a sketch is. For unity of effect is vital to both a sketch
and a picture. But this quality is of no essential value in a study - unless it be a study of
unity. For you can make a study of anything, from a foreground weed to a detailed
interior, from a bit of pebble to a cavalry charge.
But in a study of one thing you concentrate on that thing, you deliberately and
carefully study everything in it, while in a sketch you work only for general effect. The
study is the storehouse of facts to the painter. By it he assures himself of the literal truths
he needs, collecting them as material in color or black and white, and as mental material
by his mental understanding of them, only to be gained in this way.
In making a study you may work as long as you please, timing yourself by the difficulty
and size of the thing you are studying. A study of an interior or a landscape may occupy a
week or two; one of a simple object for some detail in a picture may be a matter of only a
few hours. But in any work of this kind you should be deliberate, and remember that
what you are doing is neither sketch nor a picture, but the gathering of material which is
to be useful, but which can be useful only so far as it is accurate.
In making studies, don’t try for surface finish; get the facts, and leave all other
qualities for the picture. Don’t laze and scumble, but work as directly as you can. Study
the structure and texture of whatever you are doing. Understand it thoroughly as you go
on, and search out whatever is not clear to you. This is no place for effects; nor for
slighting or shirking.
If you do not do work of this kind thoroughly, you might as well not do it at all - better;
for you are at least nor training yourself to be careless.
There are places where you may be careless, but the making of a study is not the place.
Take plenty of trouble with preliminaries. Get all your foundation work true. Have a
good drawing, get the groundwork well laid in, and then build your superstructure of
careful study. Don’t be afraid of over-exactness, nor of hardness and edginess here. All
that is only an excess of precision, and it is just as well to have it. You can leave it out if
you want to in your picture, but a groundwork of exactness is not to be despised.