CHAPTER XXXIV: PROCEDURE IN A PICTURE
Some pictures, particularly those begun and finished in the open air, may
be frankly commenced immediately on the canvas from nature as she is
before the painter, and without any special processes or methods of
procedure carried on to completion. But many pictures are of a sort
which renders this manner of work unwise or impossible. There may be
too many figures involved. The composition, the drawing, or other
arrangement may be too complicated for it, and then the painter has to
have some methodical and systematic way of bringing his picture into
existence. He must take preliminary measures to ensure his work
coming out as he intends, and must proceed in an orderly and regular
manner in accordance with the planning of the work. It is in this sort of
thing that he finds sketches and studies essential to the painting of the
picture as distinguished from their more common use as training for
him, or accumulation of general facts.
Preliminaries. - There must be made numbers of sketches, first of the slightest and
merely suggestive, and then of a more complete, kind, to develop the general idea of
composition from the first and perhaps crude conception of the picture. All the great
painters have left examples of work in these various stages. It is a part of the training of
every student in art schools to make these composition sketches, and develop them more
or less fully in larger work. In the French schools there are monthly concours, when men
compete for prizes with work, and their success is influenced by a previous concour of
these sketches.
This preliminary sketch in its completed stage gives the number and position and
movement of the figures and accessories, with the arrangement of light and shade and
color. There is no attempt to give anything more than the most general kind of drawing,
such details as the features, fingers, etc., being neglected.
The light and shade on the single figures also is not expressed, but the light and shade
effect of the whole picture is carefully shown, and the same with the color-scheme. It is
this first sketch that establishes the character of the future picture in everything but the
details. Sometimes this work is done on a quite large canvas, but usually is not more
than a foot or two long, and of corresponding width.