RERAMIC STUDIO 
267 
The figures on either side may have violet and white 
draperies by using same treatment except for the violet (baby 
blue and royal) laid delicately on the lights of scarf, and 
faint blue (baby blue) on the high lights of the white. The 
high lights of white on central figure would be enhanced by a 
suggestion of yellow, just enough to give brilliance without 
seeing the color applied. 
In the third figures on either side suggest blue violet by 
using a little more blue and grey, even to washing a little 
grey over the high lights of the lightest drapery, but keeping 
the rather warm shadows throughout in the few darkest folds. 
A little yellow brown with the dark shadows, or sometimes a 
wash over the whole plane of shadow often gives a fine effect 
of luminous warmth. Yellow brown and primrose will 
pleasantly suggest lights behind the figures which should take 
on grey tones by the addition of violet. 
Other schemes may be studied out on this general prin- 
ciple of combination and repeat. Green as a key note may 
be separated into yellow and blue and treated in the same 
manner using the brilliant and aggressive yellow (subdued to 
a tint) as the note for the center and fading into the quieter 
blue with plenty of grey-green as a modifier and a middle 
note in all the draperies. The same purplish-red (royal pur- 
ple and blood red) may be used to advantage in the shadows, 
either alone or with a touch of brown green. 
Every student who feels "at sea" concerning the prin- 
ciples of harmony and of contrast or complement will be wise 
if he studies out for himself the theory of the primary, 
secondary and tertiary colors. 
In these suggestions of use as a set, the panels should be 
carried forward together, and if pink and yellow intermingle 
in a brilliant center piece with delicate greys, the succeeding 
panels right and left should be gradually subdued by greys, 
thus centralizing interest and at the same time producing 
both variety and harmony. 
In the succession of panels framed as pictures, a sense of 
distance — of perspective, may with propriety, be expressed — 
but the cylinder vase must remain a cylinder, and the jewel 
box remain a box. In the decoration of these articles there 
should be no perspective that seems to encroach upon in- 
teriors which were constructed for specific purposes. The 
rounded and the flat surface should in each case be preserved 
by treating the figures in a rather flat style and avoiding, 
especially in laying in the backgrounds, any appearance of 
great distance. 
The idea might be more fully explained by saying 
the painting should express a plane with slight vari- 
ations, similar to that suggested by a modeling in relief. If 
the relief is very bold and strong it tends to destroy the sense 
of flatness of the structure which it is to ornament — and there- 
by becomes subject to question and even criticism. A study 
of the paintings or reproductions of the paintings of our best 
mineral painters will assist the ceramic decorator to under- 
stand the limitations and take advantage of the privileges 
which may be theirs in using figures as decorative motives on 
surfaces, the forms and uses of which have already been de- 
termined. To decorate is not to change structural surfaces, 
but to appropriately beautify. 
