The Frottée. — If you want to be more exact with your drawing before you begin to paint, lay in your canvas with a light-and-shade drawing in charcoal. Then make a frottée in one color, and paint into and over that, as was described in the Chapter on “Still Life.”

By careful and studious use of these two methods of work you can learn the main principles of painting portraits, and modify the handling as you have need; for all the various methods of manipulation are modifications of one or the other, or combinations of both of these fundamentally different ways of working.

If you paint more than one sitting, get as good a drawing as you can the first day. Put in your frottée the next, or make your blocking in; then after that do your painting into the frottée, or the working out of such details as you decide to put in.

Titian painted solidly, probably with no details; then worked these in and glazed, then touched rich colors into the glaze.

But you had better not bother with all these ways of painting. When you can work well in the simplest way, you will find yourself making all sorts of experiments without any suggestions from me. Work first for facts of utmost importance, and technical methods are not such facts. Perception and representation by any most convenient means are the first things to be thought of, [306] and nothing else is of importance until a certain amount of advance is made along this line.

Learn to see and paint the wholeness of the thing at once, not the details, but the fact of it. Try to lay in things so that you have a solid ground to work onto and into later.

Look for the vital things. Don't try for “finish.” Finish is not worked for nor painted into a picture; finish occurs when you have represented all you have to express. When you have got character and values and true representation of color, you will find that the “finish” is there without your having bothered about it.

The masses you are to look for and emphasize are the great spaces where the light strikes and the shadows fall. Close your eyes. The lines disappear. You only see large planes of values; express these at once and simply.

Don't be afraid of rudeness, either of handling or of color, at first. Don't try for finesse. All these delicacies will come later. But you must get the important things first. Learn to be strong first, or you never will be. Delicacy comes after strength, not before.

So, too, freedom comes after knowledge — is the result of knowledge. So paint to learn. If it is rigid at first and hard, never mind. Get the understanding and the representation as well as you can, and try for other things later. [307]

Haystacks in Sunshine. Monet.
To show certain characteristics of handling in “impressionist” work. [309]