Notebook

Notebook, 1993-

Eastlake's Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters

Eastlake, Sir Charles Lock [One-time President of the Royal Academy], Methods and Materials of Painting of the Great Schools and Masters [Formerly titled: Materials for a History of Oil Painting]. Vol. One. New York; Dover Publications, Inc. 1960 [Originally published by Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans in 1847]

Professional Essays - Depth of Light Tints
As the "depth of white" is found by spreading white very thinly over a dark [warm] ground, and imitating by a solid mixed tint the pearly depth so produced, [see Venetian Methods, page 286] so the [cool] depth of flesh, or of any warm light colour may be found in the same way. All such depths being more or less negations of the colour, or opposites to it, must consist of the three colours in some form or other, and in varied proportions--the union of the three being the characteristic and condition of negation. The purplish greys which are the result may be sometimes composed of blue and a warm red [the warm red being strictly speaking of the nature of orange]. Thus ultramarine and light red will produce a purplish grey fit to represent the cool depth of some warm lights; black, blue, lake and umber, and a hundred other combinations come to the same general result of neutrality, but more or less fineness and delicacy of tone is arrived at by imitating and matching, as nearly as possible, the ethereal tint produced by thin warm light over dark, when a flesh tint or other warm light tint is very thinly spread over a warm dark ground. As the light of this neutral coolness is warm, so the darkness opposed to it requires to be of the same warmth in an intense degree. A mellow, warm light, [which, strictly speaking, is always some degree or kind of [p. 333] orange] is, in its darkest state, the richest possible brown--the warmth and richness required may be heightened by transparency, by showing a light ground through the warm darkness, and by rendering the browns more lucid by a transparent but substantial vehicle. [pp. 332-333]







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