Copying may well be spoken of here, as it is in a sense a kind of
manipulation. It is a means of study to the student, and a useful, sometimes
necessary process to the painter. In the transferring of the results of his
sketches and studies to the final canvas, the painter must be able to copy, and
to know all the conveniences of it. Before the painting begins on a picture, the
main figures in it must be placed and drawn on the canvas with reference to the
plan of it, and their relation to that plan. This calls for some method of exact
reproduction of the facts stored in the artist's studies for that purpose. The
process of copying is that method.
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From the side of study, the copy gives the student the most practical means
of understanding the intent and the expression of the painter whose work he
wishes to know. There is no way of understanding the why and the how of
technical expression so sure and complete as to study with the brush and paint,
following the same method and processes as the master you copy, and trying to comprehend
the meaning and the expression at the same time.
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This is not the best means of study for a beginner, as I have said before. It
trains the understanding of processes rather than the eye; and the training of
the power of perception rather than the understanding of methods is what the
young student needs. The processes with which he may put on canvas the effect he
sees in nature are secondary matters to him. Let him really see the thing and
find his own way of expressing it, clumsily, rudely most probably, it is still
the best thing for him. He may take such help as he can find, as he needs it;
get such suggestions as the work of good painters can give to him, when he
cannot see his own way. But the searching of nature should come first. The
seeing of what is must precede the
stating of it.
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But when you do undertake to make a copy, there is something more to be tried
for than an approximation of the right colors in the right places.
Certainly to get out of copying all there is to get, one must try for
something more than a recognizable picture. When a serious student makes a copy,
he not only tries to get it like in color and drawing, but also in manner of
treatment, peculiarities of technique, and whatever there may be that goes to make
up the "manner" of the original.
This is not only for the sake of the copy, for the sake of really having a
picture which is more than superficially like the original; but in this way can
be gained much real knowledge of technique which cannot be gotten so easily
otherwise.
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Study your original carefully before and while working on your own canvas.
See how it was done if you can (and you can), and do it in the same way, touch
for touch, stroke for stroke, color for color. Use a large brush when he used a
large brush; if the original was done with a palette-knife, use yours; and
particularly never use a smaller brush than the painter used on the picture you
are copying.
The same thing holds as to processes. If your original was painted solidly,
with full body of color,
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you can't get the colors without. Your business is to try to get the same
qualities
in the same way. And any other manipulation is not only getting
a different thing, but shirking the problem. Because, if you can't get the
effect in the way he did, you certainly won't get the
same one any other
way. You are not originating, you are not painting a picture, you are copying
another man's work; and common honesty to him, as well as what you are trying to
learn, demands that you shall not belie him by stating on your canvas implicitly, that he
did the thing one way, when as a matter of fact his canvas shows that he did it
another way.
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This may seem commonplace, because one would think that as a matter of course
any one would naturally make a copy this way. But this is precisely what the
average person does not do when copying, and I have found it constantly
necessary to insist upon these very points even to advanced students.
So in the pigments, the vehicles, the tools, and even the canvas if you can,
as well as in the handling of the paint and the processes used, follow
absolutely and humbly, but intelligently, the workmanship of the picture you
copy, if it is worth your while to do it at all.
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In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. It
takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact
enough. When a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to
his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or
character which the model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much
smaller than they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the
characteristics of the sketches. These are problems which have been worked out,
and to copy them freehand makes the work to be done over again on a larger
scale on the canvas of the picture. This would not only take too much time, but
the same result might not follow. For this purpose a more mechanical process is
commonly made use of, which combines the qualities of exactness with a certain
freedom of hand, without which the work would be too rigid and hard.
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"Squaring up."—This process is called "squaring-up," and consists of
making a network of squares which cut up the study, and map out its lines and
proportions, and make it possible to be sure that any part of the original will
come in the same relative place in the copy no matter what the size may be, and
at the same time leaves the actual laying out of the thing to freehand
drawing.
The process is a very simple one. You mark off a number of points
horizontally and vertically on the study. Make as many as you think best—if
there are too few, you will have too much of the study in one part; if too many,
it makes you more trouble. It is not necessary that there be as many points one
way as the other; make the number to suit the lines of the study.
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Draw straight lines across the study from each of the points, keeping them
carefully parallel, and seeing to it that the horizontal lines cross the
vertical ones exactly at right angles. These lines cut the study into
right-angled parallelograms,which may be squares or not according as the vertical lines are
the same distance from each other that the horizontal ones are, or not.
Number the spaces between the lines at the top, 1, 2, 3, etc., and at one
side the same.
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Now if you square off a part of your canvas with the same number of spaces at
the top and the same number at the side as you have done with the study, and
keep the relation of the spaces the same, you can make it as large or as small
as you please, and you can draw the outlines within those squares as they fall
in the study, and they will be the same in proportion without your having the
trouble of working to scale. The squares furnish the scale for you, and the
proportion is not of the study to the picture, but as the vertical spaces are to
the horizontal, in both the study and the picture.
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By numbering the squares on the canvas to correspond with those on the study,
and noticing in which square, and in what part of it, any line or part of a line
comes, you can, by drawing that line in the same part of the corresponding
square on the canvas, repeat the line in the same relation and with exactness,
while still leaving the hand free to modify it, or correct it.
In this way the simplest or the most complex, the largest or the smallest
study sketch or drawing may be accurately transferred to any surface you
please.
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