The Elements of Drawing by John Ruskin (smart books to read .txt) 📕

cunningly into the interstices. The more you practice this, when the subject evidently calls for it, the more your eye will enjoy the higher qualities of color. The process is, in fact, the carrying out of the principle of separate colors to the utmost possible refinement; using atoms of color in juxtaposition, instead of large spaces. And note, in filling up minute interstices of this kind, that if you want the color you fill them with to show brightly, it is better to put a rather positive point of it, with a little white left beside or round it in the interstice, than to put a pale tint of the color over the whole interstice. Yellow or orange will hardly show, if pale, in small spaces; but they show brightly in firm touches, however small, with white beside them.

174. (b.) If a color is to be darkened by superimposed portions of another, it is, in many cases, better to lay the uppermost color in rather vigorous small touches, like finely chopped straw, over the under one, than to lay it on as a tint, for two reasons: the first, that the play of the two colors together is pleasant to the eye; the second, that much expression of form may be got by wise administration of the upper dark touches. In distant mountains they may be made pines of, or broken crags, or villages, or stones, or whatever you choose; in clouds they may indicate the direction of the rain, the roll and outline of the cloud masses; and in water, the minor waves. All noble effects of dark atmosphere are got in good water-color drawing by these two expedients, interlacing the colors, or retouching the lower one with fine darker drawing in an upper. Sponging and washing for dark atmospheric effect is barbarous, and mere tyro's work, though it is often useful for passages of delicate atmospheric light.

175. (c.) When you have time, practice the production of mixed tints by interlaced touches of the pure colors out of which they are formed, and use the process at the parts of your sketches where you wish to get rich and luscious effects. Study the works of William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society, in this respect, continually, and make frequent memoranda of the variegations in flowers; not painting the flower completely, but laying the ground color of one petal, and painting the spots on it with studious precision: a series of single petals of lilies, geraniums, tulips, etc., numbered with proper reference to their position in the flower, will be interesting to you on many grounds besides those of art. Be careful to get the gradated distribution of the spots well followed in the calceolarias, foxgloves, and the like; and work out the odd, indefinite hues of the spots themselves with minute grains of pure interlaced color, otherwise you will never get their richness or bloom. You will be surprised to find as you do this, first, the universality of the law of gradation we have so much insisted upon; secondly, that Nature is just as economical of her fine colors as I have told you to be of yours. You would think, by the way she paints, that her colors cost her something enormous; she will only give you a single pure touch, just where the petal turns into light; but down in the bell all is subdued, and under the petal all is subdued, even in the showiest flower. What you thought was bright blue is, when you look close, only dusty gray, or green, or purple, or every color in the world at once, only a single gleam or streak of pure blue in the center of it. And so with all her colors. Sometimes I have really thought her miserliness intolerable: in a gentian, for instance, the way she economizes her ultramarine down in the bell is a little too bad.[49]

176. Next, respecting general tone. I said, just now, that, for the sake of students, my tax should not be laid on black or on white pigments; but if you mean to be a colorist, you must lay a tax on them yourself when you begin to use true color; that is to say, you must use them little, and make of them much. There is no better test of your color tones being good, than your having made the white in your picture precious, and the black conspicuous.

177. I say, first, the white precious. I do not mean merely glittering or brilliant: it is easy to scratch white seagulls out of black clouds, and dot clumsy foliage with chalky dew; but when white is well managed, it ought to be strangely delicious,—tender as well as bright,—like inlaid mother of pearl, or white roses washed in milk. The eye ought to seek it for rest, brilliant though it may be; and to feel it as a space of strange, heavenly paleness in the midst of the flushing of the colors. This effect you can only reach by general depth of middle tint, by absolutely refusing to allow any white to exist except where you need it, and by keeping the white itself subdued by gray, except at a few points of chief luster.

178. Secondly, you must make the black conspicuous. However small a point of black may be, it ought to catch the eye, otherwise your work is too heavy in the shadow. All the ordinary shadows should be of some color,—never black, nor approaching black, they should be evidently and always of a luminous nature, and the black should look strange among them; never occurring except in a black object, or in small points indicative of intense shade in the very center of masses of shadow. Shadows of absolutely negative gray, however, may be beautifully used with white, or with gold; but still though the black thus, in subdued strength, becomes spacious, it should always be conspicuous; the spectator should notice this gray neutrality with some wonder, and enjoy, all the more intensely on account of it, the gold color and the white which it relieves. Of all the great colorists Velasquez is the greatest master of the black chords. His black is more precious than most other people's crimson.

179. It is not, however, only white and black which you must make valuable; you must give rare worth to every color you use; but the white and black ought to separate themselves quaintly from the rest, while the other colors should be continually passing one into the other, being all evidently companions in the same gay world; while the white, black, and neutral gray should stand monkishly aloof in the midst of them. You may melt your crimson into purple, your purple into blue, and your blue into green, but you must not melt any of them into black. You should, however, try, as I said, to give preciousness to all your colors; and this especially by never using a grain more than will just do the work, and giving each hue the highest value by opposition. All fine coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate; and so delicate that if, at last, you see the color you are putting on, you are putting on too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the general tone, by touches of color which individually are too pale to be seen; and if there is one atom of any color in the whole picture which is unnecessary to it, that atom hurts it.

180. Notice also that nearly all good compound colors are odd colors. You shall look at a hue in a good painter's work ten minutes before you know what to call it. You thought it was brown, presently you feel that it is red; next that there is, somehow, yellow in it; presently afterwards that there is blue in it. If you try to copy it you will always find your color too warm or too cold—no color in the box will seem to have an affinity with it; and yet it will be as pure as if it were laid at a single touch with a single color.

181. As to the choice and harmony of colors in general, if you cannot choose and harmonize them by instinct, you will never do it at all. If you need examples of utterly harsh and horrible color, you may find plenty given in treatises upon coloring, to illustrate the laws of harmony; and if you want to color beautifully, color as best pleases yourself at quiet times, not so as to catch the eye, nor look as if it were clever or difficult to color in that way, but so that the color may be pleasant to you when you are happy or thoughtful. Look much at the morning and evening sky, and much at simple flowers—dog-roses, wood-hyacinths, violets, poppies, thistles, heather, and such like,—as Nature arranges them in the woods and fields. If ever any scientific person tells you that two colors are "discordant," make a note of the two colors, and put them together whenever you can. I have actually heard people say that blue and green were discordant; the two colors which Nature seems to intend never to be separated, and never to be felt, either of them, in its full beauty without the other!—a peacock's neck, or a blue sky through green leaves, or a blue wave with green lights through it, being precisely the loveliest things, next to clouds at sunrise, in this colored world of ours. If you have a good eye for colors, you will soon find out how constantly Nature puts purple and green together, purple and scarlet, green and blue, yellow and neutral gray, and the like; and how she strikes these color-concords for general tones, and then works into them with innumerable subordinate ones; and you will gradually come to like what she does, and find out new and beautiful chords of color in her work every day. If you enjoy them, depend upon it you will paint them to a certain point right: or, at least, if you do not enjoy them, you are certain to paint them wrong. If color does not give you intense pleasure, let it alone; depend upon it, you are only tormenting the eyes and senses of people who feel color, whenever you touch it; and that is unkind and improper.

182. You will find, also, your power of coloring depend much on your state of health and right balance of mind; when you are fatigued or ill you will not see colors well, and when you are ill-tempered you will not choose them well: thus, though not infallibly a test of character in individuals, color power is a great sign of mental health in nations; when they are in a state of intellectual decline, their coloring always gets dull.[50] You must also take great care not to be misled by affected talk about colors from people who have not the gift of it: numbers are eager and voluble about it who probably never in all their lives received one genuine color-sensation. The modern religionists of the school of Overbeck are just like people who eat slate-pencil and chalk, and assure everybody that they are nicer and purer than strawberries and plums.

183. Take care also never to be misled into any idea that color can help or display form; color[51] always disguises form, and is meant to do so.

184. It is a favorite dogma among modern writers on color that "warm colors" (reds and yellows) "approach," or express nearness, and "cold colors" (blue and gray) "retire," or express distance. So far is this from being the case, that no expression of distance in the world is so