The Painter in oil

Scraping. - The seconds painting will be well dry before the third begins, especially if
the paint be more rough and uneven than is for any reason desirable. Almost every
painter scrapes his pictures more or less. There is pretty sure to be some part of it in
which there is roughness just where he doesn’t want it. For the third painting, that is to
say, after the main things in the picture are practically entirely finished, there remains to
be done the strengthening and richening and modifying of the colors, values, and
accents, and the bringing of the whole picture together by a general overworking. Before
this begins, the picture may need scraping more or less all over. If it does need it, you
may use a regular tool made for this purpose; or the blade of a razor may be used, it
being held firmly in such a position that there is no danger of its cutting the canvas.
It is not necessary to scrape the paint smooth, but only to take off such projections and
unevenness of paint as would interfere with the proper over-painting. The third painting
represents any and all processes that may be used to complete the picture. There is no
rule as to the number of processes or “paintings.” You may have a dozen paintings if you
want them, and after the first two they are all modifications and subdivisions of the third
painting; for they add to furthering the completion of the picture. They are all done more
or less from nature, as the second painting was. There should be very little done to any
picture without constant reference to nature.
If you glaze your picture, glaze one part at a time. Don’t “tone” it with a general wash
of some color. That is not the way pictures are “brought into tone,” nor is that the
purpose of the glaze. The glaze, like any other application of paint, is put on just where it
is needed to modify the color of that place where the color goes.
The use of scumble is the same; and both the glaze and the scumble will be painted into
and over with solid color, and that again modified as much as is called for. The thing
which is to be carefully avoided is not the use of any special process, but the ceasing
from the use of some process or other before the thing is as it should be, - don’t stop
before the picture represents the best, the completest expression of the idea of the
picture.
This completeness of expression may even go to the elimination of what is ordinarily
looked upon as “finish.” Finish is not surface, but expression; and completeness of
expression may demand roughness and avoidance of detail as it demands more detail
and consequent smoothness at another.
An this final completeness comes from the last paintings which I group together as the
“third.” Scumble and glaze and paint into them, and glaze and scumble again. Use any
process which will help your picture to have those qualities which are always essential to
any picture being a good one. The qualities of line and mass, composition that is, you get
from the first, or you never can get it at all. Those qualities of line and mass, composition
that is, you get from the first, or you never can get it all. Those qualities of character of
meaning, you get in the first paintings, together with the more general qualities of color
and tone. Emphasis and force of accent, such detail as you want, and the final and more
delicate perceptions of color and tone, you get in the third or last painting, which may be
divided into several painting.
Between Paintings. - When a painting is dry and you begin to work on it again, you
will probably find parts of its surface covered with a king of bluish haze, which quite
changes its color or obscures the work altogether. It is “dried in.” In drying, some of the