The Student's Book of Water-Colour Painting

By Claude Muncaster

This instructive book is complete in its unabridged, original form, extensively illustrated and full of instruction that is as useful and practical today as it was when originally published. This work would prove very useful to beginners who wishes to further their ability or improve their knowledge in this form. Contents include - A Picture Is Painted - Drawing In - Materials - Monochrome - Colours And Colour Mixtures - Notes On Skies, Foregrounds And Water - From Start To Finish And A Word On 'Composition'. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Sep 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781473351998

Book preview

PAINTING

CHAPTER I

A PICTURE IS PAINTED

SO many people have said to me on looking at a picture: How on earth did you begin a thing like that? that I have decided to take the bull by the horns and start right away by telling you very briefly how I set about a picture. You will then have in your minds at the outset some idea of the process. In the later stages of this book I shall deal in detail with the various stages as they occur.

As a representative illustration I have chosen Windy Afternoon in a Sussex Cornfield. This is quite a simple subject, dependent, as so many pictures are, of course, on the particular lighting effect of the day. (See Frontispiece.)

First of all, I probably spent half an hour or so drawing in, drawing firmly and quickly the main essentials in pencil. I started colouring by painting the sky first, as this was the lightest part of the picture. The sky usually gives the tonal key to work on, and is in fact the chief deciding factor of the spirit of the day. The white of the sky is to all intents and purposes white paper, for so slight a wash of colour was washed over it that it can scarcely be distinguished. But the moisture of this first wash was important, for into it, while it was still wet, were floated the darker greys of the clouds. These darks were put in with much stiffer and much darker colour than I wanted them to dry out. You will find that colours dry out almost half as light again as when they are first put on. The touches of blue were put in last and when the sky was dry. Notice how much deeper the blue is above than below.

So much for the sky. Now the same wash as was originally used for the light of the sky was washed all over the drawing, being done, of course, as a continuation of the sky wash. This wash set the pencil work and acted as a slight tone so that any little flicks of light which might be preserved in the course of the painting of the later stages would not stand out unpleasantly. The principle of water-colour painting is working from the lights to the darks, whether in the picture as a whole or in any individual passages. The walls of the buildings in this case were the lightest parts after the sky, whilst the cornfield came next. If you half-close your eyes you will be able to see that there is a definite difference between the tone of the stubble of the field and the corn stooks. It is more than anything a slight difference in colour.

But dominating it all is the general yellowish colour of the wheat and stubble. In view of this I put on a full wash of warm colour—yellow ochre, light red, and possibly a touch of ivory black and cobalt blue to vary the wash as I worked it down to the bottom of the paper. When this had dried, and not before, I put on the slightly darker tones of the stubble but avoided colouring the stooks, which in consequence stood out a little from the ground. The next stage was to put in the shadows on the stooks, generally leaving some of the original wash round their edges untouched, in order to help separate them still farther from the rest. Any other correspondingly warm tones similar to the first warm wash of the cornfield, such as the distant fields on the right and the haystacks on the left, I washed in at the same time. The dark tones appearing on these were inserted later, just as were the darks on the stooks.

The next lightest things were the greenish fields in the middle distance. The same principle worked here, care being taken to avoid washing over any places where warm colours such as the roofs of the buildings would afterwards be inserted. Where you have a complete contrast of colour such as the green fields and the red roofs, work the contrary colours round each other. That is to say, do not bring the green over any passage where the red will occur. Red superimposed on green is apt to turn the green black in appearance. Red, on the other hand, with green put on top will have the same effect. Muddling colours in this way leads to loss of transparency and turns colours