PREPARATION
The professional scene painter requires a very large room for his work, and it must be so situated that there is a large space below the room and an equal amount of space above it. This arrangement is necessary because, with one exception—to which I will presently refer—the scenery is painted from the top downwards, and as the scene painter finds it convenient to stand on the floor of the room while he is at work, it follows that the canvas must first be dropped through a slit in the floor. It is then hauled up to a convenient height, and when all the part which the painter can reach is covered, it is drawn upwards, so that another blank piece of canvas faces the painter. By the time the lowest part of the canvas is in place, the top is therefore well out of the painter’s reach.
If the amateur scene painter can arrange an outhouse in this way, he will facilitate his work, but if the scenery is not very large, he can work fairly well on the canvas if he spreads it out on the floor. In that case he will first roll up the canvas and then unroll a portion of it. After he has covered that he will unroll some more, and will continue the process until he has covered all the canvas. In some cases, however, the scene painter will find that the more convenient method is to suspend the canvas in some way with ropes and pulleys.
The exception to this customary plan of working to which I have alluded, is when the painter has to produce a street scene on a back cloth or some scene in which the artist’s knowledge of perspective comes into play. For a scene of that description it is best to begin in the middle of the canvas. The necessity for this plan will be appreciated when the chapter on perspective has been studied. A street scene is, perhaps, the most difficult of all scene painting to do well, because if the perspective is not right the effect will be not at all what is required; the houses depicted in the scene will appear to be in danger of toppling over, and the whole effect will be grotesque.