Maurice Prendergast 1861-1924

Selection of Colours.

This subject is extensive and full of pitfalls. Naturally, the dealer desires to sell as many different shades and hues of colour as possible. The artist's task is to select exactly the smallest number of colours which will give complete range and effect.

Three primary colours are the first necessity: red, yellow and blue. Three secondary colours complete the range : orange, violet, green. The warm colour scale is comprised in the red, yellow and orange. The complements represent the cool scale. This is the theory of warm and cool colour. If we select a rose madder for our red, an ultramarine blue and a cadmium yellow, this set of three calls for supplementary assistants. The rose madder needs a yellow red, so vermilion is added, as it helps to reach the yellow spectrum. Cobalt blue assists French ultramarine blue and a pale yellow forms the link between yellow and green. The cadmium yellow can be omitted and cadmium pale substituted in its place. Adding green deep, the artist has a complete range of colour, from deep to light and from warm to cool. Cerulean blue will also be found useful. Water-Colour Palette Rose Madder French Ultramarine Blue Vermilion Cobalt Blue Cadmium Pale Hookers Green Deep II.

Cadmium Yellow Cerulean Blue (a cold blue green) This palette will be found clear and brilliant and will enable one to paint in a very deep, full-toned manner or in a very pale and high-keyed pitch ; it also has the value of being short and easily handled. The three primary colours "carry" the picture, and the remaining colours complete the tone scale and envelop the picture.

Hooker's green, No. 2, has many advantages over other greens, since it is deep, clear, cool, and mixes readily with the other colours of this palette. It will mix with yellows without turning into mud, as most greens do. Cerulean blue melts into ultra marine and cobalt blue, and cools them. When used with ver milion it makes a beautiful grey. It is interesting to put down vermilion and then carry the cerulean to it directly from the box and mix on the paper. This gives a better variety. It also helps to make transparency in the gray, for while vermilion is inclined toward opacity, it clears when the brush is charged and flushed directly into blues. When it is desired to make rose madder flash,

cerulean blue can be charged into it in the above manner, but not if the madder has dried.

Of the eight colours above mentioned, six or seven will always be in active use. The water-colourist should resist as much as pos sible the impulse to work over a tone. If its depth at first is ques tioned, he should charge the surface again, thereby increasing its weight. It is a wise practice to establish the contrast or deepest notes at the beginning of the picture, saving all light masses, as white paper, until near the finish. This makes optional the matter of holding the contrasting masses or pressing them down with tone or warm light, as the subject may require. Save or spare the whites. Do not dull them. At the finish they can be tinted.

The picture must be carefully planned, drawn as simply as pos sible, not modelled in pencil or shade, and designed as one would design a pattern, giving due thought to the rhythm of line and mass. When the enveloping process begins, as mentioned earlier, the main masses should be preserved, since this maintains the carrying power. Light or dark masses should not be cut up too much, as this results in chaos and gives the feeling of over abundance in the picture. When a colour occurs in a mass, say red or blue, let the clear colour flash to the surface somewhere, as that produces light and brilliance. If a red appears in a mass, repeat it again elsewhere in a minor chord. Other colours should reach in like manner. Do not try to over-model clear tones; simply maintain them.

With due consideration for what has been done during the last forty years, it is evident that water-colour painting in its various branches and ways of handling, its brilliancy of colour and flexi bility, will return to its right and proper place. (See PAINTING.) BIBLIOGRAPHY.-G. B. Allen, Water-Colour Painting (1898) ; J. Mac Whirter, Landscape Painting in Water-Colour (1915) ; A. W. Rich, Water-Colour Painting (1918) ; L. Richmond and J. Littlejohns, Technique of Water-Colour Painting (1925) ; E. B. Lintott, Art of Water-Colour Painting (1926) ; George Pearse Ennis, Making The Water Colour (1933). (G. P. E.)