Technique. — The science of painting consists of a variety of processes by means of which a canvas is covered with pigment, and various objects are represented thereon. The whole body of method and means is called technique; the several parts of technique are called by names of their own. That part which applies to the putting on of the paint may be generally called handling, although the word painting is sometimes restricted to this sense, and brush-work is often used for the same thing. The other technical means will be spoken of in their proper place. Let me say now a few words as to handling in general.

Where did all this technique come from?

From experiment.

Ever since art began, men have been searching for means of fixing ideas upon surfaces. But it is only within the last four hundred years that the processes of oil painting have been in existence — simply because they are peculiar to the use of pigments ground in oil as a vehicle, and the oil [100] medium was not invented until the middle of the fifteenth century.

With the invention of this medium new possibilities came into the world, and a continual succession of painters have been inventing ways of putting on paint, the result being the stock of methods and processes of handling which are the groundwork of the art of painting to-day.

From time to time there have been groups of artists who have used common methods, and who have developed expression through those methods which became characteristic of their epoch; and because the resulting pictures were of a high degree of perfection, their methods of handling acquired an authority which had a very determining effect on different periods of painting.

In this way have come those ideas as to what kind of painting or what ways of putting paint on canvas should be accepted as “legitimate.” And the methods accepted as legitimate or condemned as illegitimate have been varied from time to time-those condemned by one period being advocated by another; and the processes themselves have been almost as varied as the periods or groups of men using them.

In the long run, methods and processes have received such authoritative sanction from having been each and all used by undoubted masters, that they have become the traditional property of [101] all art, which any one is free to use as he finds need of them. They have become the stock in trade of the craft.

The artist may use them as he will, provided only he will take the trouble to understand them. He must understand them, because the manipulations which make up these different processes accomplish different effects and different qualities; and as the painter aims at results, if he does not understand the result of a process when he uses it, he will get a different one from that which he intended.

The painter should not be hampered by process; he should not be controlled in the expression of himself by tradition. He should feel free to use any or all means to bring about the result he aims at, and he should allow no tradition or point of view to prevent him from selecting whichever means will most surely or satisfactorily bring about his true purpose.

Of course there are many ways of using paint which are unsafe. Some pigments are unsafe to use because they either do not hold their own color, or tend to destroy the color of others. You should always bear this in mind; and if you care for the permanence of your work, you should not use such materials or such processes as work against it. But beyond this, the whole range of the experience and experiment of the workers [102] who have gone before you are at your command, to help you to express yourself most perfectly or completely; to represent whatever of visible beauty you may conceive or perceive.

And this is the whole aim of the painter; to stand for this is the whole purpose of the picture. [103]

CHAPTER XII

ORIGINALITY

ORIGINALITY is not a thing to strive for. If it comes, it is not through striving. The search for originality seldom results in anything worth having. It is a quality inherent in the man; and the best way of being original in your work is to be natural. Perhaps the most useful advice which you could receive is that you be always natural. Never be artificial nor insincere; never copy another person's subject, manner, or method, with the intention of doing as he does. The most original things are often the most simple, because they have come naturally from a sincere desire to express what has been seen or felt, in the most direct way.

If every one were content to be himself, there would be no dearth of originality. No two people are alike, neither are any two painters alike; they could not be. They do not look alike, nor see alike, nor feel alike, nor think alike. How, then, should they paint alike? The attempt to do a thing because another has made a success of that sort of thing is the most fruitful source of the commonplace in painting. [104]

Paint that which appeals to you most fully. Don't try to paint what appeals to some one else. If you like it, then do it; and do it in the most direct way you can find; only do it so as to fully and completely convey just what it is that you like, unaffected by anything else. And because you have seen or felt for yourself in your own way, and expressed that; and because you are not another, nor like any other that ever was, what you have done will not be like anything else that ever was-and that is originality.

But never imitate yourself, either. Be open. Be ready to receive impressions and emotions. And if you have done one thing well, accept that in itself as a reason for not doing it again. There are always plenty of things — ideas, impressions, conceptions, appreciations — waiting to be painted; and if you try to paint one twice, you fail once of freshness, and lose a chance of doing a new thing.

That is what a painter is for, not to cover/;a canvas with paint, hang it on a wall, and call it by a name. The painter is the eye of the people. He sees things which they have no time to look for, or looking, have not learned to see. The painter serves his purpose best when he recognizes the beautiful where it was not perceived before, and so sets it forth that it is recognized to be beautiful through his having seen it.

There is the difference between the artist and [105] the photograph, which sees only facts as facts; which while often distorting them does so mindlessly, and at best, when accurate, gives the bad with the good in unconscious impartiality. But back of the painter's eye which sees and distinguishes is the painter's brain which selects and arranges, using facts as material for the expression of beauties more important than the facts.

But what is a picture? I have met some strange though positive notions as to what is and what is not a picture. Some persons think that a certain (or uncertain) proportion of definite forms and objects are necessary to make canvas a picture; that it must contain some definite and tangible facts of the more obvious kind. I remember one man who asserted that a canvas in an exhibition was not a picture, but only a sketch, because it had nothing in it but an expanse of sea and sky. To make a picture of it there was needed at least a moon, and some birds, or better, a ship and some reflections. All this sort of thing is idle. A picture is not a picture because it has more of this or less of that; it is a picture because it is complete in the expression of the idea which is the cause of its existence. And that idea may be tangible or not. It may include many details or none. It is an idea which is best or only expressed by being made visible, and which is worthy of being expressed because of its beauty; and [106] when that idea is wholly and fully visible on canvas or other surface, that surface is a picture. What the contents of a picture shall be is a matter personal to the painter of it. The manner in which it is conceived and produced is determined by his temperament and idiosyncrasy.

A picture is a visible idea expressed in terms of color, form, and line. It is the product of perception plus feeling, plus intent, plus knowledge, plus temperament, plus pigment. And as all these are differently proportioned in all persons, it is only a matter of being natural on the part of the painter that his picture should be original. [107]