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I use the new flake white (see p.10), which, I think, has some of the good qualities of both without their drawbacks. If you have used this white, which dries from the bottom, you can, where necessary, scrape off any obtruding brush marks that have been left in the excitement of making the debauche, or first rub in. If you use the ordinary flake white, which dries from the top, you must be careful in scraping lest, you make an ugly scar, which will afterwards be difficult to disguise. A cuttlefish bone is safer to employ than a scraper, since it,grinds down the surface evenly. You must now "oil out" your picture with a little poppy oil, rubbing it well in and wiping off all that is superfluous. Then, with as big a brush as possible, you may recommence the correction of your masses. In this stage of your picture, keep it well under your command. Do not under any consideration attempt to finish it or any part or portion of it. Still direct your chief attention to the ensemble, and disregard details. Keep the whole thing as simple and as fresh and spontaneous as possible. Do not be afraid, and do not hurry; and if your progress is apparently slow, never mind,. You have made a real advance. A bad work is more often the result of hasty and ill-considered finish than of defective skill. Continue to paint thoughtfully, closely observing the essentials, the big facts of the truth of light and shade, of the relation of colour to colour, of contour to contour, modelling the branches of your trees, painting with broken colour your foreground of grass with plenty of paint, so treating it that the brush marks will suggest the material. Always remember that each touch must have a meaning, some useful purpose to serve towards your desired end. As you paint you also draw. The brush must develop the truth of form as well as of colour. You are, at this stage, building up as it were the various surfaces for the reception of a final finish, and that will evolve itself without effort. Your picture will finish itself, for finish is simply the climax of self criticisms and of careful balancing of effects and relations in comparison with Nature.
The treatment of Nature in art is greatly a matter of the personal temperament of the painter. If an artist is attracted by the small things in Nature, which are no doubt in themselves very beautiful, he will seek to reproduce them, and the result will, in the estimation of those who are in the habit of looking for little things, be very satisfactory and highly finished. But if these details are of no service in the expression of the large essential verities, then they are worse than useless. Aim at the great things, which include the details, making them subordinate as in Nature, and placing them in due relation to the whole.If on the other hand you concern yourself with petty though possibly charming trivialities, they may worry and fret you because they hinder yourappreciation of what is great.
In correcting the surfaces where the brush marks are not consistent with the material represented, you must bear in mind that there is a perspective of texture. For instance, the extreme distance in the sky and landscape must not show the coarse texture of the foreground.The remote sky always gives one the feeling of having a fine surface which changes as it rises to the zenith. That is my impression, and I paint it so. The same principle holds good in the landscape itself; I feel the- texture of the distance to be smoother than the foreground, and the difference, expressed on the canvas, increases the sense of aerial perspective. You will of course have a knowledge of the elementary rules of linear perspective, but the perspective of the landscape painter is not so much concerned with actual lines as with imaginary ones. He must bear in mind that the land is more or less flat, and not an upright diagram with the diminishing objects as the only proof of distance. The one great strong line in Nature is that which is felt rather than seen, upon which the mountains base themselves, and the
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