Page:Landscape Painting by Birge Harrison.djvu/68

LANDSCAPE PAINTING has the still greater advantage of being wonderfully supple and responsive—lending itself not only to the infinite variations of technique demanded by differing temperament in the artist, but allowing endless latitude for any and all desired changes in composition or mass after the picture is placed on the canvas; for all of these changes can be made in the undertone itself before the overtone is applied, and therefore before any attempt to secure vibration has been made. Indeed the whole picture in all its exact values can and should be built up in this preliminary covering of the canvas, for the value of the overtone must in every case exactly match the value of the undertone. While we wish to secure broken color, we must avoid broken values, for they utterly destroy atmosphere. Any one who wishes to prove this to his own [40]