The Painter in oil

blues and some secondaries it is well to have in tubes besides the regular outfit. Still even
then, when you have gone beyond the first frantic gropings, you will be surprised to see
yourself constantly using certain colors and neglecting others. These others, then, you do
not need, and you may leave them out of your box.
Too Many Tubes. - If you have too many colors, they are a trouble rather than a
help to you. You must carry them all in your mind, and all you do not so soon get to
thinking of the color in nature and taking up the paint from different parts of your
palette instinctively - which means that you are gaining command of it. Never put a new
color on your palette unless you feel the actual need of it, or have a special reason for it.
Better get well acquainted with the regular colors you have, and have only as many as
you can handle well.
Mixing. - Use some system in mixing your paint. Have your palette set the same as
always, so that your brush can find the color without having to hunt for it. Have a
reasonable way too of taking off your color before you mix it. Don’t always begin with the
same one. Is the tint light or dark? strong or delicate? What is the prevailing color in it?
Let these things affect the sequence of bringing the colors together for mixing. Let these
things have to do also with the proportionate quantity of each. Suppose you have a heavy
dark green to mix, what will you take first? Make a dash at the white, put it in the middle
of the palette, and then tone it down to the green? How much paint would you have to
take before you got your color? Yet I’ve seen this very thing done, and others equally
senseless. What is the green? Dark. Bluish or warm? Will reddish or yellowish blue do it
best? How much space do you want that brushful to cover? Take enough blue, add to it a
yellow of the sort that will make approximately the color. Don’t stir them up; drag one
into the other a little - very little. The color is crude? Another color or two will bring it
into tone. Don’t mix it much. Don’t smear it all over your palette. Make a smallish dab of
it, keeping it well piled up. If you get any one color too great in quantity, then you will
have to take more of the others again to keep it in balance. Be careful to take as nearly
the right proportions of each at the first picking up, so as to mix but few times; for every
time you add and mix you flatten out the tone more, and lose its vibration and life.
Now, if the color is too dark, what will you lighten it with? White? Wait a minute.
Think. Will white take away the richness of it? White always grays and flattens the color.
Don’t put it into a warm, rich color unless it belongs there. Then only as much as is
needed. Treat all your tints this way. Is it a high value on a forehead in full light? White
first, then a little modifying color, yellow first, then red; perhaps no red: the kind of
yellow may do it. When you have a rich color to mix, get it as strong as you can first.
Then gray it as much as you need to, never the reverse. But when you want a delicate
color, make it delicate first, and then strengthen it cautiously.
These seem but common-sense. Hardly necessary to take the trouble to write it down?
But common-sense is not always attributed to artists, and the beginner does not seem
able always to apply his common-sense to his painting at first. To say it to him opens his
eyes. Best be on the safe side.
Crude Color. - The beginner is sure to get crude color, either from lack of perception
of color qualities, or inability to mix tints he knows he wants. In the latter case crude
color either comes from too few colors in the mixture, or from inharmonious colors
brought together, which is only another form of the same, for an added complementary