Wonderfully vital drawings and paintings by primi­tive peoples have been discovered, which proves that many thousands of years ago the art of drawing was there, innate, in mankind. Everyone can draw, for it is an inherent human trait far more natural than writ­ing. Unfortunately most people lose this power as they grow older, or rather it is overlaid by more com­plicated mental processes. It needs only the desire to reawaken it and the courage to proceed and rapidly the power to express what one sees, in drawing and in paint, comes back again.

So take courage and go ahead.

The first thing to get is a sketch book: not too big a one but a handy pocket size that you can carry about at all times. You can of course buy a children's drawing book for a few cents, but this has a flimsy cover and has to be folded or rolled to carry, and that spoils the page, so a sketch book with thinnish cartridge paper and a good stout cover is the best investment in the end. See that the paper is not too thick or too rough in surface. Nothing harder than a 3B pencil is much use. Get a black Conte crayon or black chalk pencil with the wood round it, for this is the kind of pencil that will give you most satisfaction in sketching. Of course you will need a razor blade or sharp penknife because the breaking of points is a very frequent occurrence. Do not sharpen the pencil to a fine point—just a blunted point.

Now you have your sketch book and your pencil, what are you going to look for? What are you going to start on? Don't start straightaway on a landscape. Just focus your attention on a few simple things that are before you in the room you are in. Something the shape of which attracts your interest, say a decanter, or a wine glass, or a vase of flowers. Draw a definite shape on the blank page of the sketch book with a firm, thick line—say a rough oblong. Count this as your picture space: into this defined shape you are going to put your drawing. Then begin with the part of the selected object that interests you most. Perhaps it is the bulge of the decanter—boldly draw the curve of the right-hand side and then look across and draw the corre­sponding curve of the other side; then go upward to the lip and the stopper, drawing first one side and then the other; then look at the base, the dark curve where the decanter rests upon the sideboard. You now have the shape of the object—then relate this to the glass that is near it; notice the size of the glass in relation to the decanter and repeat the process, taking into ac­count where the two objects are placed in your oblong space.

When you are drawing flowers, half-shut your eyes and see the whole group of the flowers: don't select one and then add others, but try to see the light masses against the darker ones or against the leaves. Just sketch in vaguely the general group, in a light way, tak­ing into account the size of the jug or vase in which they are placed. Shade in with a quick scribble the dark and leave your paper white for the light parts. Note where the flowers come against what is behind them, darken where a light patch meets a darker part by an additional heavy scribble, still bearing in mind the edges of your picture space; decide where the table comes in relation to the flowerpot or vase and give this a distinct emphasis. Just as you would arrange the flowers in the pot, so arrange the whole subject of flowers and pot and table and background in the space you are dealing with, namely an oblong of a few inches, arranging them in what you think is a pleasing, har­monious scheme. You are not dealing with color when you are drawing with a pencil so try to eliminate color from your mind and just see the things in terms of either line or scribbled dark and light, making things as simple as you can. You can make many attempts at the one theme, trying again and again until you have achieved a sketch that gives you some satisfaction as re­gards the placing and spacing and the broad general massing of dark and light. I have done this in Figure 5.

figure 5. Po£ of flowers vaguely sketched in quick scribble.

2. Page 35. study of trees. Watercolor by James Holland (1800-70). Note the brushing-in of sky and general outlining, leaving foliage and light parts to the end. (Courtesy of Leger Galleries)

OUT-OF-DOORS SKETCHING

Having practiced enough with these sketches of simple things seen in the home, and feeling some confidence in seeing objects as shapes and placing them in relation to each other within the picture space, you may feel some urge to try your luck at going out to nature and sketching a landscape. It would probably be as well to treat yourself to a larger sketch book, not too large, but one about 8 inches by 10 inches, again with a good stout cover—a cover that folds back easily. Those with perforations and metal rings which permit the sheets to fold over easily and to lie flat are ideal for the pur­pose. Do not take a stool, for it is fatal to sit down-get into the habit of standing up before nature at the outset. Perhaps you might add one or two colored chalks to your pencils for this new venture: not the greasy chalks but those with more powder in them— there are very good cheap sets of chalks (pastels) which are admirable for the purpose.

Now indeed you are out on the big adventure, for there is so much to select from in nature, and a matter of primary importance is the selection of the things which can be portrayed in terms of your medium which, for the present, is a blunt-pointed soft pencil or a few crayons—and your drawing surface, a sheet of white paper in a sketching book.

So you are now out in the presence of nature: by road, afoot, or by car or bus or rail, you have arrived out in the heart of the country. Your modesty would naturally make you seek a spot that was not over­looked, that was away from likely prying eyes. You stop: there before you is a scene you love—your emo­tion warms and goes out to the essential beauty of what is before you. This is the place to halt. This is the scene of your effort and the chief problem is, how are you to convey what you feel and see on to the page of your sketch book?

In order to select from the view that lies before you just what parts you are to put into your sketch, it is a good idea to have with you a piece of cardboard, about the size of your sketch book, with a hole cut in it, say 5 inches by 3 inches. You can put this "view-finder" up before your eyes and through it you can search round for just that right part of the large landscape that seems to fit in with your idea of the beauty of the scene, and yet on a scale that can be translated to your small page. You now see that a group of trees on the right just comes in at the angle necessary to lead you to the haystack in the middle distance and the cottage building on the left just leads again toward the central theme of the rolling hills with the farm and haystacks nestling beneath them. So your composition is roughly settled and you can now begin on your sketch. Remem­ber to half-shut your eyes, and always to take the big masses first and then work from them to the details. Scribble in the darks, leaving the light parts faint and the highest lights, such as the sky, your white paper. Then if you wish to make a note of color take your crayons and go over the sketch, putting in just one or two tints, giving the broad suggestion of the color scheme of the whole scene.

THE VALUE AND USE OF THE NOTEBOOK

From what has already been experienced there is prob­ably no doubt left in your mind that the sketch book is invaluable. But in addition to the use of the sketch book for making drawings of things directly, there is another use that will be found helpful—as a notebook to jot down constantly anything that strikes you, at any time, as being suitable for picture making. These notes can be made either in written form or in simple dia­gram style and with written notes added about color or massing. The notebook can be just a tiny diary or a small book with ruled lines—anything that you can carry without noticing it. This should always be handy. You may notice the happy grouping of two or three people standing at a bus stop, the strong deep yellow of one coat contrasting with the purple-gray of another and "foiled" by the black of a third. You may see a large dark group of trees silhouetted against greenish blue sky and perhaps a cart track leading to the trees from a gate in the foreground. These things just need putting down ever so roughly in your book. It is out of the constant series of notations that you will gradually build up the pictorial vision; and you will begin really to see things—making all life round you of constant interest and giving you the wish to ex­press with a pencil the things you have seen, first in terms of written notes or drawn line, and then later with added washes of color. You are on your way to make pictures for your own pleasure in the first in­stance and—perhaps, later—for others as well.

MAKING A START WITH WATER COLORS

You have made your sketches, you are keeping con­stant notes and you now feel a wish to branch out into a more ambitious medium. You summon up enough confidence to go and purchase some water colors and the necessary accessories.

WHAT YOU HAVE TO GET

First the paints. I advise starting off with a few tubes of water colors—just the minimum that will enable you to paint most things. The simpler the palette the better. The many new tints, with fancy names, are not at all necessary. There are, of course, boxes of paints in pans which many beginners at water-color painting use, but I don't advise these, as the colors are not chosen or arranged to your own choice or discretion. Moreover, the box gets messy and the paints dry. If one buys tubes, just those which one really wants and gets used to using, they can be squeezed out freshly each time and arranged in your own order so that you know exactly where they are each time. This is most important, for when paints are in use they soon get covered with colored water and become almost indis­tinguishable, and it is so necessary to know just where to find the color one wants at a given moment.

The colors I suggest you buy are as follows: cobalt blue, ultramarine blue, burnt sienna, burnt umber, viridian green (otherwise known as emerald oxide of chromium), rose madder (otherwise known as madder lake), light red, yellow ocher, cadmium yellow, sepia, and Naples yellow. As chrome yellow and Vandyke brown are quite fugitive I suggest you leave them out always and also black and white. These two extremes are useful only in an emergency, and if Chinese white is used it gives an opaque surface which spoils the, whole effect of the other transparent colors. You can get any deep dark color with brown, red, and blue without using ivory black, but sometimes this color is valuable for indoor work or figure subjects. But I certainly would advocate that it be left out altogether to begin with.

Having acquired the tubes, put them in a handy tin box that shuts tightly, and do make yourself screw in the tops of the tubes tightly after each time you use them, otherwise the colors will get dry and useless.

BRUSHES

You will need about four or five brushes; these are an expensive item as, unfortunately, the cheaper types of brush are of no use at all. It is also no use having small sizes in brushes; they only encourage you to do niggly work. You will have to take a deep breath and go for a size 12 red sable and also a size 8—nothing under size 6. These are the round style with a point. If looked after well and cleaned and wrapped in a soft cloth after use they should last for years. They should be cleaned fre­quently by washing in warm water and soap. Put a lit­tle soap in the palm of one hand and gently work the wet brush against this, rinsing it constantly under the tap until it is quite clean up to the ferrule. You will also need some of the flat style in squirrel hair, i/2 inch, i inch, and even 2 inches in width. These are for big broad washes, and their use will keep you from getting "tight" in your handling—in other words, they will give good big broad washes of color, which are so neces­sary to good water-color painting.

PAPER

Having the paints and the brushes, you now need something to work on, and the best thing is good cart­ridge paper which you can buy by the sheet and cut to any size you wish. I do not advocate the use of sketch­ing boards or blocks. Many of them warp, and all are a nuisance in use. But you will need a drawing board to fasten the paper to, and for this purpose you can get a good three-ply board for a few cents—I suggest one about 23 inches by 16 inches. The method of fastening the paper to the board is very important. Do not rely on drawing pins. First dampen your paper and then with pieces of gummed paper (which you can get in rolls) firmly fasten the damp paper to your board. It will dry perfectly taut and that is what you need, for there is nothing worse for water-color painting than a wrinkle on the surface of the paper.

PALETTE

You can get white enameled palettes or china dishes with special troughs into which you can squeeze the colors, but I suggest that you use a child's large enamel plate. You can get used to holding it flat on the palm of your hand, and round the edge you can place your colors, always in the same order. The palettes and gadgets you buy are usually not large enough for the purpose. The ideal palette for the water-color painter has yet to be devised.

PORTFOLIO

You will definitely need a portfolio, one that will take your board and a few sheets of paper—about 25 inches by 1 g inches is a good size—and it should have flaps to keep everything together.

EASEL

You can get a strong wooden easel, about 4 feet 9 inches high, at a reasonable price. Select one that has no loose pegs, for these are a nuisance. The simpler the make of easel the better, but it must be strong; remember that you have to stand up and paint at it and not sit down, so get the largest one you can find.

You will of course need plenty of water, so that a bottle with a good screw top, that holds at least half a pint of water, is necessary, and a 1 pound jam jar, which should have a stout string fastened round the rim with enough to spare to fix it firmly to your easel.

All these things, barring the easel and the portfolio, should go into a haversack large enough to carry the brushes wrapped in cloth, the tin of paints, the bottle, and the jam jar. You must make yourself as light to travel as is possible—experience will enable you to cut everything down to the minimum. You have your hav­ersack, containing all your small things, slung over your shoulder, your easel neatly tied up, your portfolio containing prepared board and paper; and so you set forth. There is one other thing—you need "canvas pins," which are small pieces of wood with a pin stick­ing out at either end; you will need these in case it is windy, when you should pin the board to your easel with them. You may need to fix a stone to a piece of string and attach it to the easel to weight it down, or use any other sort of expedient if the weather condi­tions are difficult. There is always a struggle with the elements when you are painting from nature.

WHAT THIS MEDIUM OF WATER COLOR CAN DO

Now you have all your equipment for painting at home or out of doors, so we can look at the particular strength and weakness of the medium you propose to use. Water-color painting is governed by the fact that you are using water as a fluid medium. Water runs downhill, therefore the board with your paper must be on a slight slope, not too great a slope. You are out to govern the flow of your water, which is the vehicle for your color, down the slope of your paper. That is the art, remembering always that the white paper must represent your whitest light. From this it follows that you must have a full brush—plenty of liquid in it to make it "run"—but not too full, or it will get out of con­trol. The next thing to remember is that you must let one wash of color dry before you put another wash over it—that is the tantalizing part of water-color paint­ing—so the warmer weather is the best time for the out-of-doors painter. At home you can dry the tints off very gently by the radiator. Water color, by its nature, is fitted for quick evanescent effects, not for the full-toned subjects proper to other media: the quick fleet­ing effects of sky or cloud, atmospheric effects that no other medium can give. But there must be a lightness of touch, a delicacy of handling. Heavy-fisted work in water color is an abomination. See Plate 2.

USING YOUR COLOR TUBES

Put out a small "squirt" of paint from each tube, in order on your palette or plate. Start at the left-hand side and put out the lightest tints, your yellows and burnt sienna, then go to your middle colors, your mad­der and crimson, and then to your green, blues, and browns. Always keep the same order. You must know just where your colors are placed so that you could find them in the dark. Lightly draw in your subject with a 2B pencil, then wash in the colors of the lightest parts with a big flat brush and let the water run down gently.

Have plenty of soft rag handy and take all the color out of the brush with it and guide the flow of the liquid pigment—guide it into place, just the right place.

In water color always start from the lightest parts, leaving any pure white bits untouched by color. Grad­ually work up toward the dark areas and always remem­ber that your water and pigment will dry lighter than it looks when you mix it up on the plate. Do not let your water get too dirty in the jar, keep throwing the dirty water away and putting fresh water into the pot, keep your brushes well cleaned off on your rag—let everything be as fresh and clean as you can make it, for a dirty-looking water color is no good to anyone. Remember that you cannot easily alter a water color once you have put a brush stroke down. So you must make up your mind just exactly where you are going to put the wash of paint and just what shape it should be, before you lay it down with the brush. If you happen to make a grave mistake wipe it out quickly with a clean piece of soft rag. If it is not a bad mistake, leave it as it stands—such mistakes often make happy acci­dents in the end. Look at Illustration 2.

MIXING COLORS

The primary colors are, of course, red, blue, and yel­low. Theoretically, by mixing these primaries together, all other colors can be obtained. Red and yellow give orange. Blue and red give purple. Blue and yellow give green. The intensity of the colors used makes all the difference as to the resulting mixture. For instance, yellow ocher and cobalt blue will give a very different green from cadmium yellow and ultramarine blue. Ex­perience is the only guide in this matter of mixing col­ors. I have included in the suggested colors viridian green, which is a wonderful color, especially for mix­ing a neutral tint such as gray, which is composed of red, blue, and yellow. By mixing viridian green with rose madder you get a warm gray tint that makes an ex­cellent gray for toning down all the other colors if you wish to give the effect of a shade upon them. Try a few experiments of mixing your various primary colors to­gether and placing them in squares upon a sheet of white paper. You will soon begin to see the various ef­fects that the mixtures give. The gray tint is probably the most important of all colors to understand. Every local, or bright, color has its shadows, and these can be made by adding a percentage of gray to the color itself—if you want a cool gray, you put more viridian green than red, if you want a warm gray you reverse the procedure. Again a series of squares on a plain sheet of paper filled with these various admixtures of gray with the bright local colors will soon give you experience.

When mixing colors be sure that you have enough mixed to give you your required wash of color, in or­der that you do not have to stop and mix up more color in the middle of laying a wash. Have more than you think you will need rather than less. Each wash should be laid on freshly over the one that has dried, if you wish for a deeper tone. The first principle in the technique of water-color painting is to put down good crisp, even, clean washes of color—not muddy, messy ones. Plenty of clean water and plenty of wiping rags are the secret, allied to good big brushes; and, of course, plenty of courage always.

LANDSCAPE

Water color is just the medium for certain landscape effects, and it is therefore understandable that the ma­jority of water-color paintings should be of landscape subjects. In fact the English school of painting is fam­ous throughout the world for its water-color landscape artists. Starting with the early topographical pictures, in which artists painted detailed views of country man­sions in their parkland settings, or recorded castles, monuments, and definite beauty spots for patrons who wished to have pictorial records (just as photography is now used), this art later developed into a broader and broader technique, until we have swift, fresh pictures of the fleeting effects of nature: windy skies with float­ing clouds, rain storms blowing up in the hilly country, sunset and sunrise, boats in sail on sea or estuary or river. It is naturally unwise to use a medium such as water color to give all the full tones of actuality, for its charm is in the very lightness and transparency of the liquid washes of paint put upon the sparkling white­ness of the paper surface. Look at Plate 2 for a good example of fast work.

It is always well to be prepared for the vagaries of climate. If you can manage to strap a rolled-up um­brella onto your easel it is a good thing, for then should a sudden rain squall develop you can hide your pic­ture under its shelter until the weather clears again. If the day is windy, see that you are near shelter with a wall or thick hedge or group of trees to give protec­tion from the gusts. It is unfortunate that these windy, changeable days are often the ideal ones for water-color pictures. Hot days of glorious sunshine are not really the best ones for this medium in many respects, for the very energy in the changeable day gives impetus to the painter, and it is the quick emotional effect that water color can convey so well. Admittedly on damp days the washes of color do not dry quickly, but that is one of the snags of the art, and one has to learn great patience from the outset. It is no use trying to hurry the drying or to start on a new wash with the old ones still wet. Every medium has its particular difficulties which only experience can overcome—trial and error all the time. The proportion of sketches you may start and have to tear up for one reason or another will gradually de­crease as you gain experience, but never mind the tear­ing up—each effort that seems to be wasted has really been a gain—it is probably true that the failures are even more important than the ones that "come off" triumphantly.

FOREGROUND, MIDDLE DISTANCE, AND DISTANCE

You will remember the diagram relating to perspective (Figure 4). You are standing at a given spot: look straight ahead at the horizon, put your pencil, your brush stem, or the edge of your drawing board up to your eyes in a horizontal position. That will show you your eye-line. All parallel lines, in whatever direction, will appear to converge toward various points situated on this line, which is also, of course, your horizon line. Some few feet or yards from where you are (according to how much you are including in your picture) will be the foreground, which is seen in more detail than any other part. It also has more definite, distinct, "lo­cal" coloring than any other portion of the picture. The "middle distance" is that part between your foreground and your distant sky line. As your scene re­cedes from you the colors become increasingly inter­mingled with gray until in the far distance you get blues and purples and very much gray in the color; and, of course, the small objects are less distinctly seen.

Having used your view-finder, you have now a fairly good idea of your "subject." You decide to have so much sky as against so much land. Do not make the space of sky exactly equal to the space of land. You can have a lot of sky or a lot of land, but preferably not equal amounts. Your group of trees will be on the right, perhaps a large darkish mass, and on the other side, more to the forefront, will be a sprightly young tree that will balance the mass by its more energetic lines or by its strong silhouette against the sky. You will notice that, although much smaller in reality, it rises to the same height as the large trees, because of the perspective.

You must realize clearly what is your central "motif" —the part that all the lines and masses in the subject are tending toward. This should be some group of ob­jects, shapes, or colors of especial interest—for it is no use leading the eye to an object of no interest or even a mere haze.

If you find that you prefer to have a very clear out­line of your subject drawn in on the paper before you start with your color washes, you can experiment with an outline drawn in waterproof ink. You can get bot­tles of these inks in several colors. Perhaps blue is a good tint to work with as it is not as heavy as black and keeps a lighter tone to the whole picture. You can use an ordinary pen with any medium-running, smooth point. Do not attempt any shading in this ink sketch but just mark the outlines of the masses and chief forms and shapes. It is probably as well to leave the sky and the far distance without any pen and ink lines.

MOUNTING AND FRAMING

As water colors are fairly fragile it is as well to consider the mounting and framing of any picture you may be definitely pleased with. You can cut out a mount your­self from fairly thin cardboard if you use a very sharp penknife and a rule with a metal edge. Draw in the size you wish the mount opening to be with delicate pencil lines and see that you have true right angles at the cor­ners. The difficulty of cutting, of course, is in the cor­ners, for you will at first be apt to overrun the line —but with a bit of practice you will get quite expert at this cutting job. A fraction away from the opening you have cut, draw again delicately in pencil two paral­lel lines round the rectangular shape, and you can fill in the space thus made with a very pale tint of gray or blue-gray or any light color that you think will "go" with your picture.

To "back" your picture you will need another piece of thin cardboard just a little smaller than your "mount," but larger than your water color. Dampen your picture slightly on the back and with a stiffish brush carefully cover the whole back with photomountant or a good paste, being particularly careful about the edges. It is as well to place the picture on a piece of clean blotting paper when doing this work. Place your picture the right way up just exactly where you want it to be on the cardboard "backing" and with an absolutely clean rag begin from the center and smooth out to the edges, seeing that there are no wrinkles any­where and that the whole painting has gone down per­fectly flat on the board; then place a heavy book or weighty object on it, first covering it all with clean blotting paper. When the "laid" drawing is quite dry, apply paste around the exposed border of the "backing board" and place this against the back of the mount. After making sure that it is correctly placed in rela­tion to the mount opening, apply firm pressure and again leave to dry under a heavy weight.

To avoid dust getting at the surface of the mounted picture it should be framed, with passe-partout or in a narrow frame with glass.

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