PAINTING THE CANVAS
The first step towards converting the canvas into scenery is to sketch out a rough design on the canvas with a stick of charcoal, but before this is done it may be as well to make a design of the scene required on paper. With this copy before him the amateur can go to work with his charcoal. If he is going to paint a tree it will be as well to have a stick of charcoal fastened to a long stick.
No words can tell the artist exactly what colours he should use, for everything depends on the mixture of the colours. The best plan for learning this part of the work is to get an old piece of scenery and try to copy it. At the same time the learner should make a note of the colours that have been used to produce such effect. The artist must remember that the effect he has to produce must not be that which he sees himself, but that which the scenery will present when it is hung up and shown by artificial lights.
In the painting of a tree or any outdoor scene the artist is sure to want to produce the effect of sunlight and shadow. The former is generally produced by painting with a mixture of yellow ochre and chrome yellow. The effect of shadow is produced by painting with a mixture of crimson lake, Prussian blue, and a very little ivory black. When this mixture is made and applied, the artist will probably imagine that it contains far too much crimson, but when the scene is lit by artificial light this effect is subdued. Nevertheless, one often does see a shadow effect on a stage in which far too much crimson has been used.
The exact proportions of these mixtures and the various shades needed to paint a tree can be determined only by experience.
The artist may have to paint over a scene three times. He will always have to do it twice, but the first coat is very light, merely a sketching in of the outlines made by the charcoal.
After a tree has been painted, the foliage must be cut out very carefully. When the scene is finished and the leaves and branches have been cut out, this part of the scene is laid out flat with the painted side to the floor and a piece of fine black gauze is pasted at the back of it. This has the effect of holding out the foliage; without the gauze at the back of it the foliage would fall ‘in a heap’ at all the places where it had been cut. The black gauze is not seen ‘from the front’ when the lights are on the stage.
The painting of a fence for an outdoor scene is simple enough. After the fence has been painted, the canvas is pasted to one or more other pieces to stiffen it and the parts of the canvas not painted are then cut out with an ordinary saw. The painted fence is then stiff.
Having produced his piece of scenery the amateur is strongly advised not to neglect one important precaution, and that is to paint the back of the canvas with a fireproof solution. It is now a rule at all theatres and music halls throughout the country that all scenery and properties must be fireproofed. Things prepared in this way do not readily catch alight: when heat is applied they only smoulder; they do not burst into flames. Many a theatre fire has been stopped at the outset through one of the ‘props’ having been fireproofed.