Studio: international art (49.1910)

Pictorial Stencilling

are feasible in transparent colour by a method to
be presently described.

By a convention I first adopted from the old
Arras when designing tapestry, Chiaroscuro serves a
double purpose, and so far takes precedence of
Contour. It defines form (for the shadow-edge on
a partially lighted object, as on the new moon, is
contour, obliquely viewed); and also colour, by
concentrating local tint in shadow, as though
drained from the lighted surface. Strong or rich
colours, thus broken by intervening light, are more
precious than in large masses ; the deep glow in
the heart of a pale rose kindles imagination more
than a diffused though vivid hue; and this reserve
and focus of colour is aptly expressed by stencil,
where the shadows lie in the depths of the tracery.
The coloured shadow is a formula, but derived
from nature and justified by purpose.

For the frieze illustrated on this page (suggested
by a part of the old Pilgrims’ Way, a level em-
banked tract bordered by great yews), I cut a
series of figures, and independently, a repeating
landscape, in stencilling which the figure contours
were screened and kept blank by movable silhou-
ettes ; the yews were separately silhouetted and
stencilled, the sloping bank requiring a fourth set
of plates. This process, in repetition, gives a free
hand for spacing and redistribution. The subject
permits, for all the figures are on the same errand,
and there is no reason against their changing com-
pany now and again, and re-appearing differently

grouped; and the yews being also free, can be
made to divide the frieze into panels of any
length, thus adapting it to walls of any plan, with
continual variety of combination.

In operation, a paper copy of the landscape
is fixed over the canvas stretched upon the table,
and upon this the silhouettes of trees and figures
are arranged at will. This done, the silhouettes
are all pinned down, through register-holes corres-
ponding to those in the stencil plates, the paper
background withdrawn, and in its place the
landscape plates are worked off, over the silhouettes.
The broad tints of the hill-side are brushed without
a plate (which their expanse renders unnecessary)
around the silhouettes; these, acting as an internal
stencil, preserve a white contour against the tinted
background, which, by its continuity, regulates
the subsequent evolution of the colour-scheme.
Where figures are massed, some partly hiding
others (as in Fig. i), the silhouettes are lifted after
stencilling the background, note being taken of
their register-holes in the canvas, into which they
are again pinned in reverse order (see Fig. 2, a),
those of the nearest underneath, those only partly
visible above. Beginning with the last the sten-
cilling proceeds, silhouettes are peeled off and
plates substituted (Fig. 2, b, c, d) until the lowest
layer is reached, when their contours will be
found intact for stencilling in full, the silhouettes
having done their work of limiting each plate used
over them to such parts as they do not block.

FIG. I—“COHORS LAETA VIATORUM.” STENCILLED PANEL COMPOSED FROM FRIEZE “THE PILGRIMS’ WAY”

BY HERBERT A. BONE

I92