Page:Cyclopedia of Painting-Armstrong, George D (1908).djvu/206

198 colors, putting plenty of color where the knots are to be shown. The best tool for this purpose is a well-worn flat mottler, having a thin, uneven row of hairs, and it should be dipped first in one color and then in another. To form the knots, dip the brush into the burnt umber made thin with turpentine. The knots can be further shaped by taking out the lights with a brush moistened with turpentine. Small fitches rinsed in turpentine will take out sharp lights. When this color is set, put on in a curly direction a thin glaze of burnt umber. There must be enough oil in the color to bind and keep it open so that it may be easily worked. The softener must be liberally used. A cork is sometimes useful for forming knots on the dark part of the color, and it should be twisted with the finger and thumb to give the light and shade. The heart and sap of the wood should be taken out with a fitch, in the same way as for light oak, but there is not much of the ordinary figure in pollard oak. A flat graining brush, well filled with thin black, will produce the top grain in a curly form, and finally the work should be glazed with Vandyke brown, with a touch either of black or of burnt sienna. The knots and dark parts may be finished with a camel-hair pencil. The glazing may be done either in oil-color or water-color. If done in oil, the lights can be wiped out with rag. The color is made up of Vandyke brown, with a little burnt sienna or black, according as warm or cold tones are required. Really, final glazing is the same as in the distemper process, except that the colors do not require binding.

Root of oak is similar to pollard oak. The grain, however, instead of flowing from each set of knots, encircles the masses of knots in irregular rings of overgrain, and the dark pencil veins are more in evidence.

Knotted oak, so called, combines the knotted and figured portions of the wood. It is often employed, when graining oak in oil, for the panels, with ordinary oak stiles. It has a warm buff ground, containing a dash of umber, whilst