Sargent, Paul

English

Eastern Illinois University

Eastern Illinois UniversityThe KeepLetters and Correspondence Paul Turner Sargent1-5-1932Paul to Sam, Jan 5, 1932Paul SargentFollow this and additional works at: http://thekeep.eiu.edu/paul_sargent_lettersThis Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Paul Turner Sargent at The Keep. It has been accepted for inclusion in Letters andCorrespondence by an authorized administrator of The Keep. For more information, please contact tabruns@eiu.edu.Recommended CitationSargent, Paul, "Paul to Sam, Jan 5, 1932" (1932). Letters and Correspondence. 62.http://thekeep.eiu.edu/paul_sargent_letters/62Jan 5, 1932 Dear Sam,  I can’t find your letter so I will have to guess at what you wrote.  You asked me how to get rid of pencilmarks with watercolor.  You should get pencils of the right degree of hardness, an H pencil or harder I think will be about right.  Make the lines as light as possible and if they are too dark use an eraser made for use with watercolor so as not to scape the paper too much and also won’t have any grease in them.  Sponge or ????? rubber won’t do.  Art gum might, but there ae others still more delicate, light in color and soft.  In an exhibit of water colors in most cases the pencil marks show through when seen close.  If they do not disturb when seen at the proper distance away, what is the difference. That Chinese pirate junk must be interesting.  Is there any chance get more pictures of it? Tonight there is a steady drizzle.  It is a queer winter, only occasionally does temperature go below freezing, no snow since the small one in Nov.  Christmas day I was at Abernathys and picked a bundle of dandelions and put them on the Christmas tree, can you beat it?  Yesterday I saw dandelionls here in  orchard.  Some of the garden stuff left in the ground, carrots and things that stand cold, were commencing to grow again.  The 18th od Dec. I saw a butterfly flying and the 11th I saw three large flying grasshoppers here in raspberries, and caught one of them.  How is that for a hard winter? A night or two ago Bryan Leland and others treed a coon In the large white oak by the garden (west).  It was in a hole so it is left to hunt another night.  I and Leland have been helping J. McMillan make some clapboards for the log shed at Bryans. I offered to help and furnish the timber to put boards in it again.  If they last 90 years, s the others did, I probablyh won’t need to worry about the job again.  It is some job to find Jack oaks that will make boards.  I did not want to cut a white oak. ` If you want something good to eat soak some wheat over night or longer, then boil it about one hour, or less.  I have been living on that lately not because I have to, for I have “means” as Bill Nye says, but because it is good to eat, and for you.  While I think of it, if you find any second hand books by Bill Nye, any that he wrote –at a reasonable price, I want them, as I know a girl who wants any of them to keep—He wrote a comic history of England, and one of the U.S.  Japan has commenced the big doings.  Getting condtgrol of that part of China and its resources is the first step in its fight with us.  Stalin of Russia says Japan and U.S. will be at it next summer, but I don’t look for it that soon.  Bill Rogers says most of the Banditry in Manchuria is committed by the war correspondents there.  If that U.S. Consul in ????Nukhien did as the Japs say he ought to be handled by us, instead of them.  Things are working around just as the Housbaums believed these years.  Japan is preparing for the big day just as Germany did.  Luke Gossett lost some chickens awhile back, and found them in possession of his second neighbor east/  Three or four young fellows are in jail and the family will be on the township I guess.  Ulha has it to worry about.  Corn is .23 cents  I sold a $100 picture (25X30) before Christmas to a lawyer in Urbana, a birch tree picture.  He has a larger one (30X36) and I think he will buy another if I can show him one he likes.  I am getting several ready to take up there.  His name is Carson.  He said his grandmother on his mother’s side was a Sargent.  I am planning to go to Fla. This month.  Have sent for my auto license but it does not arrive.  Am also waiting to get some pictures off to the Hoosier show and also trying to sell another to this lawyer, Carson. Maybe I will have enough money when I am ready to go.  Pearl and Palmer and Miriam went Wed. before Christmas.  Palmer is back now, but I haven’t seen him.  There doesn’t seem to be much else to write about. Yours truly Paul P.S.  Water color artists when making a large picture paste the paper to a drawing board of the right size.  Get a good tough water color paper of the right surface, I like them medium rough.  I used to work on Whatman’s water color paper 140 lbs. cold pressed.  Get the paper thoroughly wet then put it on the drawing board, turning the edges over the board and paste down.  When it dries if the paste holds it will be tight as a drum.  Work on it this way, and cut loose when finished.  Some keep paper we with blotting paper underneath, soaked with water.  Others wet surface with large brush to make soft edges when color goes on.  Some work dry to keep it from ???spending.  Take your choice.  Try to get your effect directly, as working over usually spoils a water color. Burnt sienna is a good color for dark warm shadows.  I can’t remember all the colors I used in water color but you will need about the same as in oil—about eight of them.  You need that many to get the range—from a purple dark blue, to a very light greenish yellow.  The ones I remember are these indigo blue, bunt sienna, gambagi (yellow), vermillion, yellow ochre, carmine.  The colors now are different, more of them.  Water colors in tubes are best. As they stay moist.  If you use the pans and they are hard, drop some water into them and let them stay over night.  Put the color on directly, get it as dark as it is in the dark parts, and drop pure color with other color and let it spread, and put color brighter than you see it as you can’t well make it brighter (in water color) with some gray underneath, but is easy to gray it if too bright.  Learn to work with lots of water, as a dry brush will look that way when finished.  Put on a full brush stroke, let the color run down some into bead at bottom.  Change that by putting in some color in more water, but keep it very wet. You did not say what you were painting but be sure you work from something real before you.  Still life is good practice and will stay put.  Until you have done years of painting don’t waste time painting except with the thing before you. Of course you can make a sketch from nature and make a picture from that, and you can make things from memory and imagination any time, and is good to do it—but let your main work be direct from nature.  

Paul to Sam, Jan 5, 1932

https://thekeep.eiu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1056&amp;context=paul_sargent_letters

Paul to Sam, Jan 5, 1932

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