Sidor som bilder
PDF
ePub

as the prints dry they will gradually drop off, each one being beautifully polished. If any of the prints stick, they can be removed by loosening the edges with a knife.

MOUNTING.

The final process of mounting is one requiring only care and cleanliness. There are any number of good mountants in the market, although it may be well to give a formula in case one may desire to make their own. Dissolve one ounce of gum arabic in three ounces of water and mix in a mortar with one ounce of starch. Heat in a dish until clear.

When the mountant is ready for use lay the prints face downward upon some oiled paper and carefully apply the liquid to the back. Then place it on the mount or cardboard and squegee it so as to make sure of it adhering firmly. Laid on top of each other with glass plates and small blocks of wood between, the cards soon dry and are sure to be perfectly flat when unpacked. We now have our photograph ready for any purpose, having gone through all the various processes necessary to perfect it.

OUTDOOR PORTRAITURE.

A few additional hints may serve to smooth the way of the amateur, and among them may be given something about the taking of various kinds of pictures which require special handling in order to insure good results.

Objects in motion can be photographed successfully by observing a few common sense rules. For instance, in every action there is a position which may be defined as essentially characteristic. It is to seize this opportunity that the operator must wait and watch, obtaining an exposure just at the moment the object can be caught to best advantage. When the position of the object is oblique, either from or toward the camera, results will be obtained much more easily and satisfactorily than otherwise. This rule should always be remembered when an attempt is made to photograph animals, vehicles or vessels in motion. The shorter the exposure made for this purpose the better the results will be.

Marine negatives are very beautiful if properly taken. The composition of them should be the reverse of that for a landscape, because the more spirited it is the more pleasing the result. The crested waves at a vessel's bow and the glimmer of the sunlight on the waters lend the necessary enchantment to a good marine view. Care should be taken not to overexpose in such cases, or blurring will result.

to

The way that fancy pictures are made and tricks performed with the camera is scarcely worthy attention, but may be worth mentioning. A square piece of black paper is placed in front of the lens at a distance equal of the back focus, so as to hide half the range of the lens. One exposure is made, and the piece of paper is then turned over so as to cover the other half of the range. Then another exposure is taken, any objects in the exposed part of the range having been meanwhile transferred to the other half before the lens was uncapped. Care should be taken not to move the instrument while the exposures are being made. This is how spirit photographs are obtained.

One of the first experiments that the amateur will probably make with the camera will be to take a familiar object in the vicinity of home. One's back garden is frequently the scene of the first experiment. The victim, either a neighbor or a member of one's own family, should be cautiously lured into the garden, and seated facing the north, out of the direct sunshine. Employ the services of a friend to hold a large umbrella at such an angle as will shade one side of the sitter's face and the top of head. The exact positioning in summer and winter. Quicker plates, as a for the umbrella can be ascertained by finding at what angle a good modeling of the features is obtainable. For a background an old yellow blanket, kept moving while the exposure is made, will serve very well, and a good picture can be obtained with little trouble.

Landscape photography will doubtless be one of the earliest things attempted by the amateur. The easiest method to pursue, until one desires to attempt more ambitious things, is what photographers term "natural focusing." The main point of this method is to focus the principal object in the view, allowing all other points to be subordinate to it. The result on the negative is a picture which exactly represents the scene as it appears to the naked eye. Pretty and effective pictures can be obtained in this way, but the rules given concerning exposures made according to the laws regulating the foci will prove generally safe to go upon.

The beginner will do well to bear in mind the different conditions which prevail in regard to photograph

rule, will be found more advantageous in the winter and a larger stop can be used on the camera. In developing plates or films it will be found advisable to warm up the developer slightly in very cold weather, so that it will work on the negatives more quickly and effectively.

With these few hints, for they are scarcely more than that, on the important subject of photography, the amateur should be able, by asking a few questions now and again, to acquire considerable skill in the use of the camera. By observing the working of the necessary tools many things will be learned which reading would never teach. Of course much of the work could be simplified, if desired, for the amateur, by buying readymade developers and adopting the short cuts afforded by the numerous new inventions which are always crowding the market.

[graphic]

"UNDER THE GREENWOOD."-FROM THE PAINTING BY ADRIEN MOREAU.

[merged small][ocr errors]
[graphic][subsumed]

LANDSCAPE PAINTING.

JANDSCAPE painting is comparatively a
modern art. Titian, who lived in the
16th century, is generally looked upon
as its founder. By landscape painting
one means the representation of natural
Now, of
scenery for its own sake.

up

course, long before Titian, you find painters painting sky, and sea, and mountains, and trees, and painting them with extreme beauty and skill. But you will not find a single instance amongst the early Italians of a picture existing wholly or primarily for the sake of its landscape. Nay, more than this; you will find scarcely an instance in which the landscape is much more than a beautifully designed surrounding for figures; a surrounding founded indeed on love and observation of nature, but painted primarily for exactly the same reason as still earlier, the gold pattern back-grounds were painted, that is to say simply as a beautifully designed surrounding for figures. Titian commenced a new order. Natural scenery had for him a meaning and a fascination in itself apart from human beings. And so Titian commenced the modern art of landscape; the art with which we connect the great names of Holbein and Ruysdale and Gaspar Poussin, These men and and Crowe and Courdette and Turner.

their followers rejoiced in natural scenery purely for its

own beauties, and tried to represent it as they saw it under its different aspects; they tried, as we may say, to give portraits of it, to give its genuine effect; they did not use it simply as material from which to work out beautiful designs; but they went to it that they might know its appearance, and bear record of that. And this is true landscape painting.

It is a matter of wonder that the art of landscape painting, which is now so popular, should have been such a late development of art! The answer to that question would lead us probably into a somewhat difficult discussion hardly suited to these pages. But we may say this-in early times, nature, as we call it, was not rejoiced in by the people as it is nowadays, because it was for them full of known or dreaded perils, and they cared neither to visit it, nor to look at its repre

sentation. Many of these perils were real, such for instance as those of a robber or a wild beast;, some were imaginary, such as those from supernatural beings. If every time you went up to a mountain you were in dread of meeting a spirit, and every time you went into a forest you were in dread of meeting a robber or a wild beast, you would not much care about going up mountains or into forests, nor would you care about paintings of these dreadful places. But bye-and-bye civilization increased, superstition passed away, people came to be more and more at their ease with nature, and able to gaze on her with enjoyment.

TECHNIQUE.

The first business of a student is to learn how to re

Do not be content

produce with exactness the scene before him or her.
When you go out to draw, determine that you will do
your best to match the colors and the tones of the land-
scape as nearly as ever you can.
with imperfect knowledge and resources. Do not try to
make pretty pictures; endeavor simply to make a study
which shall be like the thing before you. Bye-and-bye
you will get command over your materials, and then it
will be time enough to commence painting pictures.
But over your materials get command so soon as ever
you can. Grudge no time or trouble which helps you
on with this. Learn how to do whatever you want to

do, to imitate whatever you want to imitate; this is

studentship, and do not shirk it.

DETAIL.-MASS.-TONE.

The great difficulty which most peopple find when they begin landscape painting from nature, arises from detail. Detail is a terrible task. Let us by way of iilustration try and imagine some simple scene. Supposing then, we want to paint-shall we say a cottage, with some trees in the back-ground, and in front a stream in which they are reflected. Now, in the trees there will be visible innumerable leaves, no doubt, and branches, and variations of color, In the roof it is perfectly certain that there will be a thousand tints, and in the walls a thousand streaks and reflected lights and tours and then all this more or less over again in the water with increased intricacy.

Most amateurs when they sit down to paint such a

thing, begin trying bit by bit to copy each leaf and twig, and tile and stain. One knows so well the result -a thin, toneless unproportional drawing, that has no true art-value whatever. Well, the first thing is to forget absolutely all detail, and to aim simply at mass and tone; to aim simply at getting down a ground-work of the general color, which shall be true in its broad relation of light and dark, and of tint. Into this you may work any amount of detail you choose; but unless you have got this, all detail is worthless, and when you have gotten it, when your tone acquired by broad relation of light and dark and of tint; true, even supposing, that you carry the drawing no further, it has real value as a representation of the scene, and as a a piece of art.

You will find it an excellent plan at the commencement of a drawing to half-close your eyes as you look at the landscape; in this way you will shut out all detail and will see the scene before you as a whole; you will see it in its broad relations, that is, of light and dark, and of tint. It is exceedingly useful too, when you have the time, to first of all make a pencil sketch of the scene on the same principle, attending, that is, wholly to masses and tone. You will get these down rightly with greater ease, because you will not have to be thinking yet of what the colors are and have to match them. When you have got your black and white study correct, using your pencil, we should advise you, as one uses charcoal, rubbing it, that is, with your finger, then on a new piece of paper begin coloring, keeping the pencil study by you as your scheme of mass and tone.

BLOCKS.-BODY COLOR.-INK.-COLORS. Unless you have a long while before you, and can return to your subject again and again, so as to work it carefully out, we advise you not to make your landscape studies too large. For a morning's or an afternoon's work a block the size of a piece of note-paper folded out, or even of a piece of note paper folded in two, as we ordinarily write on it, is large enough. Paint on white paper, and on white paper that has a tolerable but not too rough grain. You will find it useful to use body-color with a fair sized brush, and in a fluid state; when you are commencing your drawing, when you are getting in the broad relation of light and dark, and of tint. Into the body-color, while it is still fluid, work different tints more or less pure as you want them; then, when the ground-work is dry, draw into it the main form, with a pen charged with indelible brown ink, and then work on towards finishing with pure colors. You need not in this way fear that your drawing will look chalky; it will not in the least, if you work your pure colors in with tolerable skill. And as for the brown pen-lines, also they will disappear if you like to work on them enough.

As to colors, it is well to have a moderate number only in one's box. The following list will serve you for painting most ordinary landscapes. Raw umber, burnt sienna, raw sienna, light red, rose madder, brown madder, aureolin, cobalt blue, visidian, olive green, black and chinese white. Every artist, of course, has special colors that he or she is fond of, just as he or she has special methods; but with these colors you will be able to do most of what you find to do as soon as you get a tolerable facility in combining them.

SKETCHING.

Amateurs are exceedingly fond of what they call sketching. We all know what that generally comes to -to going out and choosing some large piece of landscape, and then making nonsense of it; spoiling a piece of paper with something which has no drawing, no tone, no color, but which is purely rubbish. Fly from the temptation to sketc, has you would fly from the evil one itself. If you do not really feel that you can muster energy enough to learn how to draw and how to color, do not set your hand to the business at all. But if you do, go to nature and to the masters reverently continuing, and try to let this witchery work on you, You may not do grudging no pains or no sacrifice. great things, but if you have any true art instinct at all you will in time do some beautiful things, things which however small and quiet, it is well to do; they will bring you happiness, and they will bring some others, for whom it is worth thinking, happiness also.

PAINTING ON TERRA COTTA.

In painting on terra-cotta it is best to treat your whole subject first of all in light and shade, with white enamel, using it thinly for the shadows, and thickly in the light. As the unglazed pottery is more absorbent than the glazed, more oil is required in the enamel when used for this purpose than for ordinary work. Remember that the brush must never be filled with enamel, but take as much on the tip as it will hold, and you will begin to replenish it for every brush-mark. It will not be found at all easy to do this well, as white enamel is difficult to lay on cleanly and smoothly, until the student has had a good deal of practice. When the whole design has been painted in this manner, it must be fired, and then, if the white has been put on sufficiently thickly, the design will be glazed. You may then tint it with the ordinary china-painting colors and have it re-fired.

The chief difficulty in painting on terra-cotta will be overcome if your subject is well chosen. Let the flowers be of a simple, open nature, such as daisies, harthorn, blackthorn, wild roses, any sort of fruit blossoms, buttercups, or primroses. Any of those and many others are very appropriate, and look well; but if the stu

« FöregåendeFortsätt »