The Painter in oil

The pitch of daylight is one of these facts. Light and luminosity may not be qualities
which appeal to your temperament. You may therefore not make them the main theme
of your painting of landscape; but you cannot paint a daylight picture without in some
way making it obvious that luminosity is a fundamental characteristic of day light. There
is no other quality so universally present and pervasive. In sunlight it is the most vital
quality. You might as well paint water with. out recognizing the fact that water is wet, as
to paint daylight without recognizing the fact that diffused sunlight is brilliant.
A Help. - You will find it very useful as a help in seeing pitch as well as color to have a
card with a square hole cut in it to look through at your landscape. Have one side
covered with black velvet and the other left white. Compare darks with the black, and the
lights with the white, and make the picture compose in the opening as in a frame.
Key and Harmony. - But you should remember that the high key for out-of-door
work does not mean crude nor unsympathetic color, neither does it mean that there is
nothing but sunshine and shadow. Your picture may be as high as you please in pitch,
and yet be harmonious and pleasing. I have seen impressionist pictures of most
pronounced type hung in the same room with old pictures and in perfect harmony with
them. It means that good color is always good color, and will always be harmonious with
other good color, whatever the pitch of either. One picture is simply a different note from
the other, that is all. The color in nature is not crude in not being dark. The relations of
spots of color are just; you have only to be as just in observing them, and your picture
will be harmonious.
Make your notes just all over your canvas. Have some of them just and the rest false,
and of course it will be wrong. Or if you try to make crudity take the place of brilliancy,
you will not get harmony. The harmony which comes from the presence in just relation
of all the colors is none the less beautiful because more alive. You need not try for the
most contrasting and most sparkling qualities of out-of-door color, but you should feel
for the out-of-doorness of it.
The space, the breadth, lack of confines, the largeness and movement, vibration and
life, - these are the things which the modern painter has discovered in landscape and has
emphasized; and this is what has made modern landscape a vital force in modern art.
Whatever you do or do not see, feel, and express in your painting, these you must see,
feel, and express j for once these qualities are recognized and accepted they are as
universal as the law of gravity, and can be as little ignored.
Landscape Drawing. - Landscape is more difficult to draw than is generally
thought; not only is the character affected by the scale of the main masses, but there is
great probability of overdrawing. The curves that mark the modelling of the ground are
very difficult to give justly. The altitude and slope of mountains are almost invariably
exaggerated. The twists and windings of roadways and fences are seldom carefully
drawn; yet the most exquisite movement of line is to be gained by just representation of
them. To give the character of a tree, too, without making out too much of the detail of it,
needs more precise observation than it generally gets.
Get the character; get the sentiment of it. Search for the important things here first,
and be more particular about the placing of each line than about the number of lines.
Don’t draw too many lines in a landscape; don’t draw too many objects. Carefully study
the scene before you till you have decided what parts are most essential in giving the
character that you want to express, and then draw most carefully those parts.