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nature only in colours, attempt to steer away from everything associated with

drawing and practice seeing and feeling the colour only and applying

it to the canvas in the proportions You think the spots of colour

demand, [–] the colour will eventually define the drawing itself.

That is why “charcoal” is such a good medium – one applies

light and dark, and semi-light and semi-dark spots to

the paper and the whole comes together into a picture little by little.

The gradation of tones from black via all the grey nuances to

white – are the same as with colour – in a different

way. Use a brush to create the tones in charcoal.

From a living model one learns very much about lines.

To labour over one’s weakest points is what one learns the most from

If You wish to work at length ^{labour over} something you should not ^use turpentine or

other “thinning agent” in the paint – paint instead with

nearly impasto paint (in a quick sketch, where the aim is

to capture an atmosphere turpentine may also <be> necessary –

to achieve certain <tones>.)

<We> are all explorers in art – no one can say “I have

found the correct way”. Yet there may be things one feels and believes

one has achieved. – Study nude drawing. –

“By squinting one’s eyes”, one can see all the painterly elements

You do not study portraiture or nature in order to become a photographer.

Think of the “painterly aspect”

one has to economise on one’s means (tones colours.) –

and utilise them in the best possible way by allocating each “plane” <with> the correct

local value in the “stepping stones” between the lightest and

darkest of them, and then one must continuously compare the “values” that

are situated far from each other which one may perhaps think

are similar – (the same applies to the study of colours.) and one will

through this comparison discover: that they are perhaps not as

“similar” as one first thought.

Written in Sandahlstrand Jölster <in> 1925.

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