ss Spinning," at the head of this chapter,
as an example of _contre jour_.

=Figures Out-of-doors.=--In painting, an object is always a part of
its environment. So a figure must partake of the characteristics of
its surroundings. Out-of-doors it is part of the landscape,
characterized by the qualities which are peculiar to landscape. The
diffusion of light, the vibration and the movement of it, the
brilliancy and pitch, the cross-reflections and the envelopment,--all
these give to the figure a quality quite different from that which it
has in the house. There is no such definiteness either of drawing, or
of light and shade, or of color. The problem is a different one. You
must treat your figure no more as something which you can control the
effect of, but as something which, place it in what position, in what
surroundings, you will, it will still be affected by conditions over
which you have no control.

Textures and surface qualities, local or personal colors, lose their
significance to the figure out-of-doors. They become lost in other
things. The pose, the action, the mass, the note of color or
value,--these are what are of importance. The more you search for the
qualities which would be a matter of course in the house, the more you
will lose the essential quality,--the quality of the fact of
out-doors.

When in the house, you can have things as definite as you wish;
out-doors you will find a continual play of varying color and light.
The shadows do not fall where you expect them to. The values are less
marked. The stillness of the pose is interfered with by the constant
movement of nature. The color is influenced by the diffused color of
the atmosphere and the reflected color of the grass, the trees, and
the sky. The light does not fall _on_ the face so much as it falls
_around_ it. The modelling is less, the planes are not precise. The
expression is as much due to the influence of what is around it as to
the face itself.

All this means that you must study and paint the figure from a new
point of view. You do not make so much of what the model is as how the
model looks in these surroundings. You must not look for so much
decision, and you must study values closely. Look more for the
modelling of the mass than for the modelling of surface. Look more for
the vibration of light and air on the flesh and drapery colors than
for these colors in themselves. Look for color of contours in the
model. Study the subtleti