9 P.M.
TAKE the kind of picture youâve always wanted to do and see. Tackle something you know darn well you canât doâand by golly youâll do it! Donât think youâve got to know a lot more before you can do something good. The best picture you make, you deserve the least credit for. When you make a really swell picture, you donât go around with your chest thrown out, Iâll bet. No; you say: âHow do you suppose that happened? I was around when it took place, but I donât know how.â Your good pictures belong to the world. The bad ones are all yours. When you got into this one, you probably thought: âI guess I donât know enough to do this.â It isnât that at all. Itâs that youâve left the idea you started with. You started transcribing Nature, and Nature has nothing to do with pictures. Make use of nature, but donât let it use you. Yes, I know that it hangs on like death to a mummy! Let your figures be unconscious of their audience. If she turned her head up, alright. But if you turned it up, it wonât do.
As long as you hold on to your statement of light and dark and of values, you can run the gamut of color any way you like. You must have a little more finesse. Donât make one picture do everything.
Avoid the unusual and far-fetched. We wish to live lives like othersâ lives. Do the usual thing and do it obviously with all the artistry in you, and it will be just as artistic and individual as you are.
When a manâs careless, it means he doesnât care. Thatâs an awful indictment. When you say heâs careless, thatâs something you feel can be forgiven. But when you say it this way: âHe does not care,â thatâs unforgivable.
Look up the word substance, and also subject in Websterâs (a great book).
This looks like a fragment because the picture is not so designed as to lead to a centre. In every group of people thereâs a centre of interest. There should always be a lion. Design the canvas so that strong lines lead you. Thereâs as much activity in a crowd like this as there would be in a horse race. Action in a picture is the muscular action in the eye of the beholder. It should be so designed that the eye is leaping here and there, all over, and the onlooker says: âIt has action.â Yours is silent when it should be noisy with small talk and laughter. The fewer spots you have in the picture the better. You know you can have a dozen people in one spot. One form, but a regular centipede of people. Join themâin conversation.
If you want to be clever, donât let anybody catch you at it. If they catch you at it, youâre not clever.
If you make the rest flat, make the head as round as a berry.
I repeat and repeat. Yet thereâs little to say. Little to know to make pictures. But that little seems very hidden from those who need it.
I try to find an entrance into your minds. Reminds me of the time we stopped for lunch at a very nice teahouse along the way, and Jerry the dog was left outside. First thing we knew, he was wagging his tail beside us, and no one knew what hidden entrance he had found to get to us. But he had hunted around, trying all the doors and finally found him a loophole to get in. Iâm doing my best to find a little unguarded entrance into your minds, to get you the few simple ideas necessary.
Try and make your picture so that a single word, or at any rate very few words, would be its title.
You havenât got to make pictures different. Theyâre bound to be different because you make them.
If youâre going to make a picture of a fortuneteller, concentrate on the idea of the fortune-teller. Surround her with all the darkness and mystery that those people seek to surround themselves with.
Picture-making is like flyingâyou get off field and go straight for the place you want to go. Itâs like shooting, too. You donât hear of rifles that the owners brag about as being a very fancy shooterâshoots in a arc of eighty degrees. No. They advertise rifles as being trued-up. You aim straight at the target and then slightly contract your handâand itâs bound to hit somewhere in a very evident manner. Donât be like the old man who couldnât understand why everyone should be so alarmed because: âHe pulled the trigger as softly as he could.â Get the idea in mind. Picture it strongly. And shoot right at it.
The idea is not to âsimplifyâ a picture. Keep your thoughts about it simple.
I wish you werenât so far-fetched. Think pictures more and thoughts less. Take a usual situation and make an unusual picture. Because unless itâs usual, people wonât understand it and people wonât like it because it doesnât feed their egotism. A man takes it as a compliment to himself if he understands your picture immediately. Here the confusion of ideas works against our seeing the excellence of the work. Take something obvious and present it unusually and dramatically.
Usually I take two or three days on a picture, getting my facts in. Like a foundation of form and effect to the building. Then I tear into it. Youâre likely to keep it comprehensible that way. If you had gotten the head round, you could have painted the coat and vest with a few swipes of the brush, and it would have been perfectly adequate. Form is relative. Instead of thinking so much, let down the portals of your mind and look at it. Youâll see this old fellow, leathery skin, wrinkles, and youâll see the way the skin is drawn over his bald skull, and so on, and how swell it would be; then youâd know just how dark to make the coat...But you didnât know it here. Make no effort to be artistic. Truth is stranger than fiction. Tell the truth about it. Make the manâs head solid, and donât you care what you have to do to make it that way.
In a thing so delicate as Spring, be careful about the shadows. Iâd like to see you develop this, show that you see itâs more spirit than matter. Paint with the strength of a crowbar and the lightness of a feather. Love is never forgetful of loveliness.
Donât make it necessary to ask questions about your picture. Howard Pyle used to say itâs utterly impossible for you to go to all the newsstands and explain your pictures.
We see things because of the light that is reflected from, absorbed by, or obstructed by them. Things get their color from light. We see things because they absorb and obstruct and reflect light.
You thought the chap reading the newspaper was the only important thing, so you painted the background so it wouldnât interfere; and it does interfere. Itâs the one thing that draws your attention. Because itâs a false thing. Canât ever add strength to your picture by adding something negative, untrue. A false note in your picture is like a stone in your shoe. It may be a comfortable shoe, but a little pebble destroys all the comfort. So donât think you can paint a âtone that wonât interfere.â Youâve got to make it positive, an honest true statement. You donât like that tone yourself, because itâs negative. And you knew what to do with it but you were too lazy to do it. Be positive from one end of your canvas to another. Otherwise your picture will not be a statement of conviction, and if your picture is not a statement of conviction, there will be no one to look at it.
Art schools teach differently. But Iâm telling you the easiest way. And the easiest way of doing a thing is to do it.
It doesnât seem to me you painted this thing because it was in you, clamoring to get out.
I said to someone who was seeking earnestly to learn what other people know so that he could paint: âI have a picture, and you have a picture, and almost everyone has a picture. So no one needs another. Therefore the only reason for making one is the fun you get out of it. Or the fun you have getting it out of you.â In this I feel too much striving, and wondering if this or that should be this or that way. If, in a flight of fancy, you conceived the idea of a young lady sitting out there in the spring, the bees and birds around, odor of growing things in the airâkind of symbolizing by her being, all the warmth and sweetness of the day, something romantic and colorful, something you appreciate so much you must picture itâthen youâll say to yourself: âI have to spend my time in the studio, but Iâm going to go out there in imagination and Iâm going to paint the most beautiful girl in the most beautiful spot, lush and living, alive with the buzz of bees and the waving of grass and leaves, etc. T...