The Painter in oil

long as you care to paint from them, and need not be moved at all. This fact of “staying
power “ in still life is one of importance in its use, as it reduces to the minimum the
movement and change which add to the difficulties in any other kinds of work. The value
of the antique in drawing lies in its unvarying sameness of qualities from day to day. In
still life you have the same, with color added. You can give all your attention and time
unhurriedly, with the assurance that you can work day after day if you want to, and find
it just the same tomorrow morning as you left it to-day. This as it applies to drapery is
only the more useful. You can hardly have a lay figure of full size, because of its cost. To
study drapery on a model carefully and long, is out of the question, because it is
disarranged every time the model moves, and cannot be gotten into exactly the same
lines again.
Still life steps in and gives you the power to make the drapery into any form of study,
and to have it by itself or as a part of a picture.
In draperies you should try to have a consider- able variety just as you have of the
more massive objects, -variety of surface, of color, and of texture. Do not have all velvet
and silk. These are very useful and beautiful, but you will not always paint a model in
velvet and silk. Satins and laces are also worn by women, and cloth of all kinds by men,
and so you should study them. Sometimes you want the drapery as a background, to give
color or line; and yet to have also marked surface qualities (texture), would take from the
effect of those qualities in the other objects of the group.
As to color, in the same way you should have all sorts of colors; but see to it that the
colors are good, -in themselves “good color,” not harsh nor crude. It does you no good as
a student to learn how to express bad color. Neither is it good training for you, in
studying how to represent what you see, to have to change bad color in your group into
good color in your picture.
Good useful drapery does not mean either large pieces, or pieces with much variety of
color in one piece; on the contrary, you should avoid spotty or prominent design in it.
Still, the more kinds you have, the more you can vary your work. If your drapery is a
little strong in color, you can always make it more quiet by washing or fading it to any
extent.
There is very little material which is absolutely fast color. But when it is so, and the
color is too strong, don’t use it.
Don’t scorn old and faded cloth, especially silk and velvet, or plush. The fact that it
would look out of place on furniture or as a dress does not imply that it may not be
beautiful as a background or as a foreground color. These old and faded materials
furnish some of the most useful things you can have j a fact the reverse of what is true in
general of other still-life things.
The Use of Still Life. - There is no way in which you can better study the principles
of composition than by the use of still life. The fact that you can bring together a large
number of objects of any color and form, and can arrange and rearrange them, study the
effect and result before painting, and be working with actual objects and not by merely
drawing them, gives a positiveness and actuality to composition that is of the greatest
service to you. You can use (and should at times) the whole side or corner of a room, and
so practise composition on the large scale, or you can make a small group on a table.
That you are using furniture and drapery or vases, flowers, and books, instead of men