ky; in hundreds of such instances the most beautiful and
truthful results may be obtained by laying one colour into the other
while wet; judging wisely how far it will spread, or blending it with
the brush in somewhat thicker consistence of wet body-colour; only
observe, never mix in this way two _mixtures_; let the colour you lay
into the other be always a simple, not a compound tint.

B. Laying one colour over another.

If you lay on a solid touch of vermilion, and, after it is quite dry,
strike a little very wet carmine quickly over it, you will obtain a much
more brilliant red than by mixing the carmine and vermilion. Similarly,
if you lay a dark colour first, and strike a little blue or white
body-colour lightly over it, you will get a more beautiful grey than by
mixing the colour and the blue or white. In very perfect painting,
artifices of this kind are continually used; but I would not have you
trust much to them; they are apt to make you think too much of quality
of colour. I should like you to depend on little more than the dead
colours, simply laid on, only observe always this, that the _less_
colour you do the work with, the better it will always be:[240] so that
if you have laid a red colour, and you want a purple one above, do not
mix the purple on your palette and lay it on so thick as to overpower
the red, but take a little thin blue from your palette, and lay it
lightly over the red, so as to let the red be seen through, and thus
produce the required purple; and if you want a green hue over a blue
one, do not lay a quantity of green on the blue, but a _little_ yellow,
and so on, always bringing the under colour into service as far as you
possibly can. If, however, the colour beneath is wholly opposed to the
one you have to lay on, as, suppose, if green is to be laid over
scarlet, you must either remove the required parts of the under colour
daintily first with your knife, or with water; or else, lay solid white
over it massively, and leave that to dry, and then glaze the white with
the upper colour. This is better, in general, than laying the upper
colour itself so thick as to conquer the ground, which, in fact, if it
be a transparent colour, you cannot do. Thus, if you have to strike
warm boughs and leaves of trees over blue sky, and they are too
intricate to have their places left for them in laying the blue, it is
better to lay them first in solid white, and then glaze with sienna and
ochre, than to