River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1903-11-19
MAKING FASHION PLATES.
Kind of Art That Affords Young Girl
Artists a Means OF Making
a Living.

A girl who paints water color heads
very well, but does not always get orders
for them, paints heads for fashion plates
in the intervals of waiting. 1t is very
easy and not uninteresting, says the New
York Sun.
She works in one of the many estab-
lishments in New York where the MAX
ing of fashion plate pictures goes on,
those pictures of swishing skirts and the
delicate draperies that are scattered
broadcast over the country This is how
the work is done.
A girl who &c an excellent artist visits
the openings, wherever they are held.
She carries with her surreptitiously a lit
tie pad about the size of her palm and
pencil. She studies a gown, takes out
her pad and jots down her notes of it
before watchful eyes can see her.
Or If the fates are propitious and no
body interferes she draws the entire gown
in miniature. Then she brings it back to
the place of working which is, as often as
not, the two parlors of some downtown
boarding house. There she enlarges the
drawing.
There are sometimes other girls in the
same room with her; but oftener the girl
who paints the heads and this particular
artist who does the original sketch from
the real gown sit in the front room
alone; as, being superior artists, by
rights they should.
Then In the next room gather the 9TH
ers, ten or dozen of them, copying the
first sketch. One, nimbIe with her pen,
inks in the original drawing, another
colors 1t, another paints in raised
splotches which when finished consti-
tute the decoration of the gown, another
sketches in the lace, while still another
finishes out the picture with a bit of land
scape calculated to give it atmosphere.
Then at the two windows kneel girls
who are busily engaged all day long in
tracing copies of the original drawn by
the girl in the front room. If the sun
shines, that is good; it brings the lines
out better for the eyes, but if the day is
gray the tracing is more difficult and
hard on the eyes, The arms, too, con-
stantly raised up to the light in the draw-
ing room, soon tire. But compared with
the drudgery of machine work it is play.
Figures are sketched and painted in old
rose, in mauve and in blue, but no face
adorns them. That is left for the fingers
of the genuine artist
When the gown is quite finished, the
coloring laid on, the decorations touched
UP with high lights and the bit of land
scape added, then is the picture forward
ed TO the girl who sits in a nook of her
own by the front window, where the light
is best, painting heads, some with dreamy
eyes, blue, black and brown; some with
saucy look, and some calm, as BELTS
the splendor of the gowns to which they
are attached, but all very beautiful.
And the girl does it contentedly, too,
for she has learned sense. If this pedes-
tai is not one of the highest, she is to set
upon it. She is praised, and she has
learned by experience more or less bitter
that it is better to do work that is praised
and paid for, if 1t does seem to partake of
the every day work of the work-a-day
world, than to sit in her studio and
StarVe.