The Painter in oil

Color of Contour. - An important thing for you to look for and to study is the color of
contours. You will not find it easy; not easy even to know what it is that you are looking
for. But consider it as a combination of contiguous values and color vibrations, and
things will reveal themselves to you.
No form is composed of unvarying color. No combination of color surrounding it lacks
variety. All along the edge of forms and objects, of whatever kind, the value and color
relation constal1tly change. The outline is not constant. Here and there it becomes lost
from identity of value and color with what surrounds it, and again defines itself. The
edge is not sharp. The color rays vibrate across each other. The inevitable variety of tint
and value, of definiteness and vagueness, gives a never-ending play of contrasts and
blendings. These are qualities which go to the harmonizing of color, to the expression of
light, and particularly to the feeling of atmosphere. This constant variety of contrasting
edges is the constant movement and play of the visual rays, and the study of it gives life
and vibration to the picture, and all the objects represented in it. Outdoors, particularly
when the play of diffused light and the movement of all the objects is continually felt,
either through their own elasticity or because of the heat and light waves, this study is
most necessary, if you would get the feeling of freedom, space, and air.
Skies. - In the painting of the sky there are several points to be kept in mind. The sky,
even on the quietest day, is full of movement. Cloud masses change continually. If there
are no clouds there is constant vibration in the blue; constant variety in the plane of
color, - a throb of color sensation which is not to be expressed by a dead, flat tint.
Paint the sky loosely. Lay on the color as you will, with a broad, flat brush, or with a
loose, smudgy handling; put it on with horizontal strokes, or with criss-cross touches,
but never make it a lifeless tone. Have variety in it; keep a pulsation between the warm
and cool color. You can work in the separate touches of half-mixed color, warm and cool,
all through the sky, so that the whole tone will be flat and even, but not dense and dead.
So far as the sky is concerned, the atmosphere is essential, and is to be represented not
by dense color, but by free, loose, vibrating color.
Clouds. - If you have clouds to paint, do not draw them rigidly. Get the effect of the
mass and movement, and the lightness of them. As they constantly change in form, any
one form they may assume cannot be characteristic. The type form is what you must get,
and the suggestion of the motion and lightness. You can suggest, too, the direction of the
wind by the way they mass and sway and flow. The direction of the sun’s rays, too,
counts in the color of them. The outline of a cloud mass is never hard, never rigid.
The pitch and luminosity and subtlety are what give you most of the effect of it.
Study the type of cloud, of course. It is a cumulus, cirrus, stratus or what not. This
character is important; but the character lies ill the whole body of the cloud form, not in
the accidental outlines or the special position of it for the moment.
Sky Composition. - The massing of cloud forms is a very useful factor in the
composition of the landscape. The cloud bank or cloud line is capable of giving accent or
balance to the picture. As it is not constant in position any more than in form, you can
place it with truth to nature pretty nearly always where it will do the most good as an
element in the composition. Make use of them, then, and study the forms and the
possible phases of them so as to make the best use of them.