The Painter in oil

Don’t try to economize on your mixing. A color mixed for one place will never do for
another, so don’t try to paint another lace with it. Have the patience to proceed slowly,
and mix the color specially for each brush-stroke. On the other hand, don’t niggardly
with your paint. Don’t use less paint than you need. Mix an ample brushful and put it on;
then mix another, and use judgment as to how much you should use each time. The
variety of tone and value which comes of mixing new color for every touch of the brush is
in itself a charm in a painting, aside from the greater truth you are likely to get by it.
Corrections. - As far as you can, make corrections by over-painting when the paint is
dry, or nearly so. When I say don’t work into wet color to correct, I do not mean that you
are never to do so, but that to do it too much is likely to get your work muddy and pasty.
Of course is almost impossible to avoid doing so sometimes, but when you do, do it with
deliberation. Don’t lose your hope of getting the color by force of piling it on, you will
only get worse and worse. Get it as nearly right as you can. If it is hopeless, scrape it off
clean, and mix a fresh tint. If it is as near right as you can see to mix it now, go-ahead;
and put a better color on the place to-morrow when it is dry, if you can.
Keep at it. - But above all don’t be permanently satisfied with the almost. Don’t be
afraid to put over dry paint till it is right. Work at it day after day. Let the paint get thick
if it will, if only you get the thing right. The secret of getting it right is to keep at it, and
be satisfied with nothing less than the best you can do. When you can see nothing wrong
you can do know better. But as long as your eye will recognize a difference between what
is on the canvas and what ought to be there, you have not done your best, and you are
shrinking if you stop. Never call a thing done as long as you can see something wrong
about it. No matter what anyone else says, your work must come up at least to the
standard of what you yourself can see.
Lose painting. - Sometimes it is necessary to lay on paint very loosely in order to get
vibration of warm and cool color or of pure pigment in the same brush-stroke, or to let
the under paint show somewhat through the loose texture of the paint over it. Too much
of this sort of thing is not to be desired, but its effect in the right place is not to be
obtained in any other way. The paint may be dragged over the canvas with a long brush
charged with color more or less thoroughly mixed, as seems most effectual, or it may be
afflicted displays, or it may be had stunned with parallel strokes. All these ways will be
spoken of is a suggested sales and other chapters. Solid color, generally, is used in this
manner, and the effect of body is rather strengthened by it than the reverse.
Scumbling. - Another means of modifying the color and effect of a painting has
perhaps always been more less commonly in use. This is called scumbling, and may be
considered under the head of solid painting, as it is always done with body, never with
transparent, color. The process consists of rubbing a mixture of body color, without
thinning, over a surface previously painted and dried. Generally the scumble is of a
lighter color the under-painting, and is rubbed on with a study brush slightly charged
with the paint. As much surface as is desired may be covered in this way, and the result
is to give a hazy effect to that part, and to reduce any sharpness of color or of drawing.
Often the effects is very successfully obtained. Distant effects may be painted solidly and
rather frankly, and then brought into a general indefiniteness by scumbling. Too much
scumbling will make a picture vague and soft, and after a scumble it is best to paint into
it with firm color to avoid this.