26 
KERAMIC STUDIO 
ROSES— RUSSEL GOODWIN 
THE CLASS ROOM-FLOWER PAINTING 
Maxie Thomas Sisk. 
I WILL assume that this article will be used by a person 
who has not the advantage of personal instructions, 
and I will endeavor to put things as briefly and concisely 
as these conditions will admit of, not confusing the mind 
with too much detail. I do not think it facilitates matters 
to draw the study on the piece before beginning to paint, 
other than just to indicate the principal masses and get 
the general direction or movement of the study. In fact, 
it is often hampering, I think, to have the drawing all put 
on in detail before beginning to paint, you are very liable 
to sacrifice spontaneity and movement which is worth 
more than slavish correctness of detail. Have everything 
in beautiful readiness to go right ahead, from flowers, 
foliage, background and stems. I always put my stems 
in last, that is where I let the stems show. Some I make 
by wiping out the background, others by painting on right 
over the background color either before the first fire or 
afterwards. And again I wipe out a stem and paint it 
in again while the background color is still open; that is, 
where I want a real warm color for a stem, and the back- 
ground of that part of the study is cold or vice versa. 
Try to carry as much of the study along together as 
possible, by that I mean not to paint all the flowers first, 
then all the leaves, etc., but begin with the principal mass 
or bunch and paint flowers and foliage. Try to keep a 
separate set of brushes for the flowers and in any event 
rinse your brushes thoroughly when you go from one color 
to the other. Have a large-mouthed bottle into which 
you can occasionally empty your cup and renew your tur- 
pentine, thus insuring clean brushes. The turpentine 
that you thus pour up will be settled by the next day and 
you can pour it off into your cup using it over again. Rosa 
is an especially easily affected color, and unless it is 
put on with immaculate brushes, it will not come out the 
shell -like transparent color that it should. 
After having gotten in the principal flowers and leaves, 
put in your background, having a separate brush for each 
color used in it. 
Do not bring the colors always right up to one another 
but let the dauber do that, otherwise you will get a flat 
lifeless background with no vibration to it. Often in put- 
ting in a background one uses gold and iron colors in jux- 
taposition. If you paint these colors right up touching one 
another, then you will find it difficult when you come to 
pad them not to get muddy, dingy tones, but don't quite 
join them in painting them on, then with a little careful 
manipulation of the padder or dauber, having separate 
dauber for each color, you can weave them into one another 
without actually mixing them. 
Don't try to do too much for first firing, only try for 
the general character of the study, but being careful to 
preserve your high-lights, for once they are lost they are 
gone for good. Do not forget or overlook the value of 
keeping the direction of the light, not only the high-lights 
on the individual flowers, but the general direction of the 
light as it seems to fall upon the whole mass. For the 
second firing work up the flowers and leaves, by studying 
and developing their form. Every flower has its charac- 
teristic marks or we may say, its peculiarities, study these 
and in a very few of the most prominent ones bring this out. 
Add shadow flowers and leaves by greying and paint- 
ing very thin with the flower color or the leaf colors. A 
very nice way to make flowers take a more subordinate 
ROSES— A. F. DALRYMPLE (Treatment page 49) 
