and on the different kinds of painting,
and I think you will see what I mean, and understand better what I
say, about these combinations.

Of course you do not need all of these colors on your palette at the
same time. Some are necessary to certain flowers whose richness and
depth you could hardly get without them. The colors you should have as
a rule on your palette are these:--

WHITE. STRONTIAN YELLOW.
ORANGE VERMILION. CADMIUM YELLOW.
PINK MADDER. YELLOW OCHRE.
ROSE MADDER.
COBALT.
ULTRAMARINE.
VERIDIAN.
EMERALD GREEN.

To add to these when needed, you should have in your box, pale and
deep cadmium, Chinese vermilion, madder carmine, and purple madder.

CHAPTER VI

VEHICLES AND VARNISHES

A vehicle is any liquid which is mixed with the color to make it
fluent. The vehicle may be ground with the pigment or mixed with it on
the palette, or both. Oil colors are of course ground in oil as a
vehicle; but it is often necessary or convenient to add to them, in
working, such a vehicle as will thin them, or make them dry better.
Those which thin or render more fluent the paint are oils and spirits;
those which make them dry more quickly are "dryers" or "siccatives."

All vehicles must of necessity have an effect on the permanency of the
pigments. Bad vehicles tend to deteriorate them; good ones preserve
them.

=Oils.=--The most commonly used oils are linseed and poppy oil. They
are neither of them quick dryers, and are usually mixed with sugar of
lead, manganese, etc., to hasten the drying. These have a tendency to
affect the colors; but if one will have recourse to none but the pure
oils, he must be patient with the drying of his picture. For this
reason it would be well to use vehicles with the colors on the palette
as little as possible--and that is against thin and smooth painting.

Oil has the tendency to turn dark with time, thus turning the color
dark also. The only way to reduce this tendency is to clarify the oil
by long exposure to the sunlight. The early German painters used oil
so clarified, and their pictures are the best preserved as to color of
any that we have. But the drying is even slower with purified oil than
with the ordinary oil.

It would be best, then, to use oil as little as may be in painting,
and if you need a dryer, use it only as