completion of the picture for safe work. These
processes are for the modifying of color mainly; you do not draw nor
represent the more important and fundamental facts of the picture with
them. All these things are painted first, in the most frank and direct
way, and then you can do anything you want to on a sure basis of
well-understood representation. There will be structure underneath
your future processes.

=The Third Painting.=--The third painting simply goes over the picture
in the same manner as the second, but marking out more carefully the
important details and enforcing the accuracy of features, or
strengthening the accents of dark and bringing up those of the lights.
The procedure will, of course, be different, according as the picture
was begun with an _ebouch_ of body color or a _frottee_ of transparent
color. The third painting will, in either case, carry the picture as a
whole further toward being finished.

=Rough and Smooth.=--If body color has been used pretty freely in the
two first paintings, the surface of paint will be pretty rough in
places by the time it is ready for the third painting. Whether that
roughness is a thing to be got rid of or not is something for the
painter to decide for himself. Among the greatest of painters there
have always been men who painted smoothly and men who painted roughly.
I have considered elsewhere the subject of detail, but the question of
detail bears on that of the roughness of the painting; for minute
detail is not possible with much roughness of surface; the fineness of
the stroke which secures the detail is lost in the corrugations of the
heavier brush-strokes. The effect of color, and especially luminosity,
has much to do with the way the paint is put on also, and all these
things are to be considered. As a rule, it might be well to look upon
either extreme as something not of importance in itself. The mere
quality of smoothness on the canvas is of no consequence or value, any
more than the mere quality of roughness is. If these things are
necessary to or consequent upon the getting of certain other qualities
which are justly to be considered worth striving for, then these
qualities will be seen on the canvas, and will be all right. The
painter will do well to look on them as something incidental merely to
the picture. If he will simply work quite frankly, intent on the
expression of what is true and vital to his picture, the question of
the surface quality o