Page:Cyclopedia of Painting-Armstrong, George D (1908).djvu/198



The distemper or water color method for ordinary oak graining has little to recommend it. For graining in imitation of pollard oak, however, this method is invaluable. Pollard, or rather pollarded, oak belongs to the same natural class of oak as the ordinary figured variety. Its sticking appearance is brought about by combined artificial and natural means. When a young oak tree has its branches lopped off, and provided that loppings take place at intervals of a few years, the wood that comes from the mature tree will show clusters of knots—gnarled and twisted grain, with intervening spaces of plainer grain—in which condition it is known as pollard oak. The importance of working from and studying natural specimens of this wood cannot be too strongly emphasized, and really good imitations cannot be executed without such previous study.

The brushes required for this imitation are a large thick mottler, a large sash tool such as that used for overgraining oak, the badger softener, a piece of old open sponge, a wash-leather, medium and small round fitches, sable pencil, and sable overgrained in tube. The ground color should be made from white-lead, ochre, a little Venetian red, and, when the graining is to be quiet, a little burnt umber.

A recipe for pollard oak ground is to mix together 2 parts of ochre, 2 parts of orange chrome, 1 part of Venetian red, 1 part of burnt umber, 20 parts of white-lead, and 2 parts of patent driers, and to thin for use with equal parts of raw linseed oil and turpentine.

In imitating pollard oak, there are two slightly different methods of treatment, the first aiming at reproducing the general effect of the wood in a broad and natural manner on a buff oak ground, and the other aiming at a