The Painter in oil

In the meantime, everything that you have knowledge enough to express well, you can
express with the single figure.
With the model, the background, the pose and occupation, the clothing and draperies,
ad whatever accessories may be natural to the thing as elements, it is possible to work
out all the problems cannot be made with one figure, more figures will only make it
worse.
Look again at Whistler’s portrait of his mother. Consider it now, not as portrait, but as
a single figure. What are the qualities of it which would be helped if there were more in
it? The very simplicity of it makes the handling of it more masterly.
Look also at the one simple figure of painting that are likely to get themselves onto one
canvas you will find in this.
See what movement and dignity there are in it. How statuesque it is! It is monumental.
It has scale; it imposes its own standard of measurement. There are air and envelopment
and light and breadth. Are these not qualities enough for one canvas?
Nature the Suggester. - Take your suggestions, your ideas, for pictures from
nature. Keep your eyes open. Observe all poses which may hint of possible schemes of
light and shade, of composition, or of color. It is marvelous how constantly groupings
and poses and effects of all kinds occur in every-day-life. Humanity is kaleidoscopic in
its succession of changes; one after another giving a phase new and different, but equally
suggestive of a picture if you will take the hint. The picture which originates in a natural
occurrence is always true if it is sincerely and frankly painted. Truth is more various
than fiction. It is easier to see than to invent. And in the arrangement of the material
which nature freely and constantly furnishes to him there is scope for all the invention of
man.
Action and Character. - The picture comes from the action -resides in it. The
action comes from the act, and is natural to it, expressive of it. Any gesture or position
which is the natural and unaffected result of an essential action will be true and vital,
suggestive of nature, and beautiful because it will inevitably have character -be
characteristic. The beauty of the picture is not something external to the costumes,
occupations, and life which surround you, but is to be found, contained in it, and
brought out, manifested, made visible, by the mere logical working out of the need, the
custom, or the occasion.
Emphasis is only the salience of the most natural movement.
Daily life swarms with pictures. You do not need to go to other places and other times
for subjects. If you are awake to what is going on around you, if you see the essential line
of the occupation, or the mass and color which is incidental to every least activity, you
will have more suggested to you than you have time to do justice to. And it is your
business to see the beautiful in the commonplace. Everything is commonplace till you
see the charm in it. The artistic possibility does not lie in the unusual in any subject, but
in the fact that the thing cannot get done without action and grouping and color and
contrast; and these are the artists opportunities. Keep your eyes open for them; learn to
recognize them when you see them; look for these rather than for the details of the
accidental fact which brings them out. See the movement of it, and the relation of it to
what surrounds it, and you will hardly avoid seeing the picture in it.