Page:Cyclopedia of Painting-Armstrong, George D (1908).djvu/340

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CYCLOPEDIA OF PAINTING

pink, burnt sienna and indigo. For grass, use pure greens, mixing more or less yellow chrome for high lights. In painting dead leaves use chrome and burnt sienna. For stone buildings, mix yellow ochre, umber and indigo, or ochre, celestial blue and red. For bricks, Venetian red, and for shadows add ultramarine. Where fire is reflected use orange lead.

Great care should be taken in mixing tints, for some colors like Prussian blue are so strong that a very little will suffice, so if used without due thought it becomes necessary to add more of the other colors.

Some painters mix molasses or golden syrup with their size, which makes the colors work more freely. In painting a scene on a new cloth the first thing to be done, after the canvas is strained, . is to size it all over. This is done with strong size, size melted in a kettle with just water enough to prevent burning.


MEDIUM FOR BINDING DISTEMPER COLORS.

Size is sold in firkins or by weight. That called best double is to be preferred and when melted must be mixed with water in the proportion of one pint of size to four pints of water to make what is called working size. Another called strong size, for sizing and priming a cloth or any piece covered with canvas, may be made by dropping the size, exactly as it comes from the shop, into a size kettle in which there is just sufficient water to prevent the size adhering to the bottom of the kettle. The size is ready for using as soon as it is completely melted, without having been allowed to boil. Use is frequently made of what is called half-and-half size, a mixture of working size and strong size in equal quantities.

Should the painter be unable to procure manufactured size, the best carpenters' glue is a good substitute for it. This can be obtained almost anywhere, and, in an unmelted