LIBRARY 
 
 ANNEX 
 
 2 
 
 DRAWING 
 
 FOR ART STUDENTS 
 AND ILLUSTRATORS 
 
 ALLEN W. SEABY 
 
CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 FINE ARTS LIBRARY 
 
3 1924 075 072 235 
 
Cornell University 
 Library 
 
 The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924075072235 
 
DRAWING 
 
 FOR ART STUDENTS 
 AND ILLUSTRATORS 
 
Jro>!fispiere. 
 
 A brilliant chalk drawing by Corregio. The modelling is broad and sharp 
 accents of dark have been avoided. The downward direction of the strokes 
 from right to left should be noted, the simplest movement for a right-handed 
 
 person. 
 
DRAWING 
 
 FOR ART STUDENTS 
 AND ILLUSTRATORS 
 
 BY 
 
 ALLEN W. SEABY 
 
 LONDON : 
 B. T. BATSFORD, LTD., 94, HIGH HOLBORN. 
 
PRINTED BY 
 
 JOHN HIGHAM & COY. LTD, 
 
 HYDE, MANCHESTER. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 In the first place I must offer humble apologies to my 
 students, past and present, whose failings I have so 
 ruthlessly exploited for my own purpose. They will, I 
 trust, pardon me for holding them up as horrid examples 
 rather than shining lights. 
 
 Next I must tender my acknowledgments to my 
 master and friend, Mr. F. Morley Fletcher, to whom I 
 owe everything in art, and especially for his teaching, as 
 I understand it, of the use of expressive line. 
 
 I have to thank Prof. Edith Morley for reading a 
 yery untidy manuscript, and Mr. C. C. Pearce, 
 A.R.B.A., for suggestions. I must also thank Mr. A. S. 
 Hartrick, R.W.S., for allowing me to reproduce two 
 Paris life studies (figs. i6 and 25A), Mr. E. S. Lumsden, 
 R.E., for several drawings (figs. 18, 28 and 44), Miss 
 Dorothy Johnston (figs. 21 and 31 a), Mr. C. C. Pearce 
 (fig. 12), Mr. H. Hampton (fig. 43), Miss Agnes Forbes 
 and other students for various drawings and sketches 
 which are only intended to serve as indications of 
 method. 
 
 My thanks are also due to the Hon John Fortescue, 
 of the Royal Library, Windsor Castle, for permission to 
 reproduce the Holbein drawings, to the British Museum 
 authorities, and to Mr. W. B. Paterson, who obtained 
 Mr. W. A. Coats' consent to use his Crawhall drawing. 
 
 The line blocks, as can be seen, are mere scribbled 
 diagrams with no pretence to draughtsmanship. 
 
Lastly, in a book planned as this is, there must 
 necessarily be a certain amount of repetition. Perhaps 
 this is not altogether bad for the student ; as all teachers 
 know, important matters need more than one telling. 
 
 A. W. SEABY. 
 University College, 
 
 Reading. 
 April, 192 1. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter 
 
 Page 
 
 I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 I 
 
 II. 
 
 THE BIAS OF VISION 
 
 7 
 
 III. 
 
 PROPORTION 
 
 13 
 
 IV. 
 
 TYPE FORMS 
 
 22 
 
 V. 
 
 CONSTRUCTION 
 
 30 
 
 VI. 
 
 TONE STUDY— PRELIMINARY 
 
 . 34 
 
 VII. 
 
 TONE STUDY— EXERCISES 
 
 . 38 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY 
 
 . 49 
 
 IX. 
 
 THE FIGURE— THE SEARCH FOR FORM . 
 
 . 61 
 
 X. 
 
 THE FIGURE— TIME SKETCHING 
 
 . 73 
 
 XI. 
 
 RELATED FIGURES 
 
 . 80 
 
 XII. 
 
 EDGE STUDY 
 
 . 85 
 
 XIII. 
 
 ARTISTIC ANATOMY 
 
 . 94 
 
 XIV. 
 
 DRAWING ON TONED PAPER 
 
 . lOI 
 
 XV. 
 
 EARLY AND MODERN REPRESENTATION 
 
 
 
 OF FORM 
 
 103 
 
 XVI. 
 
 DRAWING FROM MEMORY 
 
 . 107 
 
 XVII. 
 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 . 118 
 
 XVIII. 
 
 LANDSCAPE 
 
 . 128 
 
 XIX. 
 
 PLANT FORM 
 
 . 133 
 
XX. DRAWING AS A PREPARATION FOR 
 
 PAINTING 140 
 
 XXI. CONVENTION 151 
 
 XXII. DRAWING FOR ILLUSTRATORS 161 
 
 XXIII. THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS i66 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 In these days, when daily prophecies are made con- 
 cerning the art work required in the near future, in the 
 shape of pattern and costume designing, poster and 
 advertisement work, illustration, etc., when one sees in 
 the press a great campaign of correspondence teaching 
 with the promise of remunerative employment to every 
 student who "completes the course," with the implication 
 that no long training in art study is necessary, and that 
 there is a royal road to art, it becomes necessary to insist 
 upon the importance of draughtsmanship in the classical 
 sense, as understood by Holbein, Velasquez, Ingres, 
 Menzel, and Degas. This technical power or faculty, 
 call it what we will, is not a conjuring trick, a mere 
 sleight-of-hand to be learned as a series of "tips," but 
 must be acquired, if at all, by severe training, and by 
 intellectual visual effort. It must be searched for rather 
 than picked up, and learned from one whom the student 
 trusts, putting himself in his teacher's hands with con- 
 fidence, not regarding him as one standing behind a 
 counter ready for a fee to cut off a small snip of the fabric 
 of art teaching, to show, say, how tricks with a water 
 
2 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 colour brush are performed, or how to draw a pretty face. 
 When the student has arrived at some measure of the 
 knowledge of art, he will press into his service all the 
 refinements of technique which he can acquire from any 
 one who can teach him, but without that, he is the more 
 a charlatan, the more dodges and manipulative processes 
 he can command. 
 
 The following chapters, therefore, are concerned with 
 drawing as a study, and an attempt is made in them 
 to emphasize the importance of a student-like attitude 
 of mind, and a wise docility in carrying out tasks not 
 perhaps in themselves very interesting, but necessary if 
 the draughtsman is to be well equipped. Nor should 
 readers cavil at such a term as "tasks," for though the 
 emotional side of art is now-a-days insisted upon, and 
 rightly so, yet it is all the more necessary that the artist 
 shall be absolutely the master of his instrument, if he is 
 to possess the souls of his listeners. And if this striving 
 and study is necessary in music, still more is it in pictorial 
 art. 
 
 On the other hand the study of drawing cannot 
 proceed without the active interest of the pupil. The 
 notion still lingers that drawing is a discipline, that 
 students should be made to 'do it because they do not 
 like it. But when the eye loses its interest and pertin- 
 acity, a particular drawing is better laid aside, for 
 further work will resolve itself into tinkering, embroider- 
 ing or stippling, mere occupation without observation. 
 If the study has been made on right lines, if placing, 
 proportion, movement and construction have been 
 grappled with, the drawing has earned its place in the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 Stairway of art study, for it has raised the student a step 
 above his previous attempts. A real responsibility rests 
 on the student, who should ascertain for himself how far 
 he can take a drawing, though the art teacher can do 
 much to help him by exhortation and even example. 
 Many students are slow to recognise the necessity of 
 testing their powers of observation and expression in any 
 one drawing; some artists have only forced themselves 
 to this long after their school days were over, as witness 
 Degas, who shut himself up for two years while he 
 searched his powers of observation to the utmost in pro- 
 ducing his exquisitely finished pictures of Paris street 
 life. 
 
 After some experience of teaching drawing it seems 
 to the writer that certain essentials of study, not only 
 perhaps in drawing, but in all art are : — (i) the develop- 
 ment of the sense of proportion, and by this is meant 
 more than getting one's measurements right, but a feel- 
 ing for good proportions, such as is generally admitted 
 was innate in the Italians to a higher degree than in the 
 northern peoples, and the reason lies at hand, for the 
 former never lost touch with the classic canons of pro- 
 portion, while the architecture and sculpture, which 
 formed their environment, showed them proportion 
 embodied. (2) Hardly less important is the quality of 
 sincerity, of being oneself, of not apeing another's style. 
 Art Students, from their very temperament, are quickly 
 impressed, not least by the work of the cleverer students. 
 Later on they follow the manner of their master or of 
 artists they admire. There is not much harm in this up 
 to a certain point, and indeed art tradition has been built 
 
4 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 up in some such way. On the other hand the student 
 with character and individuality, while showing in his 
 work admiration for others, will feel within himself a 
 wish to follow his bent, to do things his own way. From 
 this comes character, a quality in art work, which is 
 spontaneous, and not to be striven for consciously. 
 
 As for "style," that comes only to a few, and an art 
 teacher has to leave it out of his calculations, happy if 
 years after, the work of a former pupil is seen to possess 
 that elusive and rare quality. But one can show one's 
 students to some extent what style means in drawing; 
 the rhythmical line of Botticelli, Ingres and the Oriental 
 masters, the veracity and clarity of Holbein, the 
 structural drawing of Durer, to name only a few masters. 
 Certainly every school should have reproductions of 
 drawings by masters, early and modern, not in order to 
 frighten students, or even that they should copy them, 
 but to instil into their minds the qualities that the best 
 drawings possess. 
 
 The student should study such reproductions, or 
 better still, the actual drawings in the British Museum, 
 at Oxford and elsewhere. He will see that each master 
 has a rhythm peculiar to himself, not only a conscious 
 rhythm, such as the marshalling of the masses as we see 
 in Rembrandt's Hundred Guilder print, with their 
 pyramidal or wave-like forms, all leading to the central 
 group, or a similarly conscious effort to achieve a 
 calligraphic flow of line as seen in the Chinese and 
 Japanese masters; but a sub-conscious rhythmical stroke 
 or accent, by which we know the artist as we might recog- 
 nise him by his handwriting. The ample curves of 
 
INTRODUCTION. S 
 
 Rubens, the sweet flowing line of Guercino, the staccato 
 rhythm of Fragonard, the square cut forms of 
 Rembrandt, as seen in his brush drawings, are examples. 
 
 But this rhythmical movement of the hand cannot 
 be taught, and the student should not consciously strive 
 for it, or he may acquire not rhythm, but merely a 
 mannered touch. 
 
 Composition has been dealt with incidentally, but 
 this is a subject which demands full treatment, while the 
 following chapters are concerned with how to draw. In 
 practice, however, the two are interwoven, and as com- 
 position comprehends all the subjects of art study it 
 stands easily first, and should be given a corresponding 
 position in any art curriculum. 
 
 Too long has art teaching been concerned with mere 
 imitation, whereas the first stroke on a sheet of paper 
 involves attention to other things. It implies a choice, 
 for it fixes the dimensions, determines the placing and 
 the movement ; in other words the first steps of a drawing 
 have to do not so much with imitation as composition. 
 It might be put this way, that the student who studies art 
 mainly through composition and allied subjects will 
 draw well enough, while the student who does nothing 
 but copy may miss the very kernel of his art. 
 
 The opening sentences of this introduction show that 
 the writer is on the side of those in authority who 
 advocate sustained effort as against slick sketching. It 
 happens that he has had to deal with art students from 
 all parts of Britain, and from abroad, and of but few 
 could it be said that they had been put upon the right 
 road, that ideas of proportion, of construction, and of 
 
6 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 movement had been steadfastly pressed upon them, and 
 he has reluctantly come to the conclusion that the teach- 
 ing of drawing is often wanting in clearness, that what 
 may be called the rudiments — ^how to set about a draw- 
 ing, how to carry out the successive stages, have not been 
 inculcated. Too often the student shows by his 
 muddling attempts that he has not been taught to draw, 
 and this applies with equal force to the more brilliant 
 students. This is a serious matter, and no number of 
 gold medals for overworked, or, on the other hand, tricky 
 drawings, will put the matter right. The kindness of 
 heart which fears to criticize with faithfulness is cruelty 
 in the end, for students are often so wrapped in their 
 own manner of work and way of seeing that only the 
 plainest speaking will shake them free. 
 
 Of course no teacher can command "good" drawing 
 from his pupils, but their work shows clearly enough 
 what sort of teaching they have received. Perhaps a 
 great part of the truth lies in this, that the teacher may be 
 thinking more of the drawing than of the pupil, more 
 anxious for the successful completion of the work than 
 that the student should proceed by logical and artistic 
 steps. A study abandoned because of wrong method 
 may lose a medal, but it may be for the student's welfare, 
 for while a drawing may be tinkered into shape, may be 
 "pulled out of the fire," yet during the process the 
 student is learning to draw badly, to attach importance 
 to dodges and contrivances for making a bad drawing 
 appear better than it is. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE BIAS OF VISION. 
 
 For good or ill the invention of perspective gave an 
 enormous impetus to art study, as distinct from practical 
 apprenticeship in the studio or workshop. When the 
 science is held to include reflections and the representa- 
 tion of shadows, it occupies the same field as that study 
 we call Drawing. Photography, erroneous as is its 
 perspective, judged by human eye standards, gave a 
 fresh lease of life to the subject, or as the Post- 
 Impressionists would put it, riveted the perspective 
 fetters yet more firmly on pictorial art. 
 
 That is to say, the study of form in the Art School 
 is necessarily based upon appearances, and at once the 
 art student parts company with his brother in the street 
 who has an absolute contempt for appearances in the 
 sense in which the term is here used. In order to 
 establish the relation between reality and experience 
 gained by the eye one may observe as far as it be poss- 
 ible an infant's visual sensations. Shortly after birth 
 it evidently notices a light as marked by the movement 
 of the eyes and head. A little later it tries to reach 
 brightly coloured objects presented to it (as the saying 
 
8 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 is, it cries for the moon), and the observer will note how 
 tentative and uncertain are its efforts, the difficulty it has 
 in reaching with its hand the exact position of the object. 
 
 If with one eye closed small objects are picked up 
 from the table, the adult will appreciate the infant's 
 difficulty, for with this handicap it is not easy to estimate 
 the exact distance the hand has to travel to grasp the 
 object. 
 
 The child has perforce to continue its investigations. 
 It hurts itself by knocking against objects, or falling 
 over them, until by dint of practice and sad experience it 
 has become at a quite early age what may be called 
 "distance perfect." It has learned to look into space 
 as compared with the artist's way of looking at space. 
 This power of measuring distances is essential to 
 the preservation of life, and the knowledge is being used 
 throughout our waking moments. From the appearance 
 of things the actual is reconstructed. 
 
 Hence a Philistine, sub-conscious contempt for 
 appearances, for light and shade, change of colour 
 caused by shadows or distance, and apparent changes of 
 form owing to foreshortening. To the non-artist these 
 are illusions, deceptions making the daily walk in life 
 more difficult perhaps, but easily to be overcome by 
 wariness, by the determination not to confound the 
 "shadow" with the substance. 
 
 Hence the teacher finds that all beginners make their 
 drawings, in a sense, too like the object; their ellipses 
 are nearer the circle, and their horizontal surfaces wider, 
 than the position of the object warrants. 
 
 Again, every art teacher knows that in a junior class 
 
THE BIAS OF VISION. 9 
 
 practising object drawing, there will be at least one case 
 where the pupil has not drawn the appearance of the 
 object as he sees it from where he is, but as it would 
 appear if he were in another position. Sometimes two 
 drawings of an object may be found almost identical in 
 appearance, yet made by students several feet apart. 
 
 In this case the student, who has evidently expended 
 some intellectual energy in thus projecting himself into 
 an imaginary position, does so because he feels that the 
 view he actually has would give but an imperfect idea of 
 the shape and function of the object, and this gives the 
 clue to so-called errors that we see in old work. The 
 Egyptian symbol of a man shows the head in profile, the 
 shoulders in front view and the legs again in profile. 
 The Assyrian bas-relief makes the king twice the size of 
 his attendants, while the mediaeval illustrator causes his 
 hero to appear several times in the same picture among 
 houses, trees, etc., rather less in height than himself. 
 Children, for the same reason, depict a profile view of a 
 face with a front view of the eye, and often add another 
 eye, nose and mouth as well, or they depict both ends of 
 a house in one drawing. In all these cases appearance 
 is ignored. The delineator is obsessed by realities, and 
 is occupied in presenting the largest possible content of 
 the objects depicted. 
 
 Similarly, if an object with which a young pupil is 
 familiar, such as a kitchen bellows, is laid upon the table 
 as an exercise in the drawing lesson, the apparent change 
 of shape due to foreshadowing is apt to be ignored, with 
 the result that a view is given of the bellows in plan, with 
 the side view tacked on as it were. The students see by 
 
10 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 a kind of mental vision, the ground plans of objects as a 
 bird's eye view, because that imaginary position enables 
 them to visualize objects more easily. Such draw- 
 ing cannot be called wrong ; it merely denotes an early, 
 and in these days of realism and photographic vision, an 
 inconvenient convention. It is not a question of diffi- 
 culty in the sense that the lines are intricate or hard to 
 follow, for these may be of the easiest, but rather a 
 misunderstanding between teacher and students, the 
 former being concerned with the modern or sophisticated 
 aspect of art, the latter still making use of traditional 
 conventions. 
 
 And indeed the historic art periods of greatest charm 
 came before perspective and light and shade had been 
 treated scientifically. One might cite the splendidly 
 alive and characteristic animals of the Egyptians, the 
 Greek vase forms with their linear purity, the early work 
 of the mediaeval illuminators, Chinese and Japanese 
 drawing, and the detailed vision of the naturalistic 
 painters of the quattrocento. In all these periods the 
 ,vision was artistic, and triumphed over inconsistencies of 
 representation as judged by later standards. 
 
 Consideration of this deference to the claims of reality 
 enables the art teacher to appreciate the difficulties his 
 students have in grappling with the figure. Beginners 
 make the head too large for the body, the face too big for 
 the skull ; the hair like string or wire, pre-occupied as 
 they are with realities, which cannot be compassed on a 
 plane surface. Their vision may be said to be anthropo- 
 morphic, for they regard everything from the human 
 standpoint. A house at the end of a long avenue of 
 
THE BIAS OF VISION. ii 
 
 trees, for instance, is likely to be drawn much larger than 
 it appears, because it is the home of man, and as such is 
 unconsciously emphasized. 
 
 In this connexion it may be noted that there are no 
 sucH beings as pupils totally untrained in drawing, for 
 all have been taught to draw in early childhood, but by 
 means of a series of recipes or symbols. How to draw 
 a man, horse, tree, etc., are questions freely asked by 
 children with the expectation of an immediate ready- 
 made answer. In later stages of drawing practice these 
 old symbols or images re-appear, and hide or fog the 
 object set before the students, who often draw, not what 
 they see, but the object coloured or biassed by this sub- 
 conscious image of long ago which, as it were, they 
 behold with an inner eye simultaneously with their vision 
 of what is before them. 
 
 This sub-conscious image plays strange pranks with 
 the drawing. Sometimes the student substitutes his 
 own features and physical proportions for those of the 
 model, or may be the features of the previous sitter 
 appear on the drawing. 
 
 Students' figure drawings often betray to an 
 amusing extent the type they fancy in the opposite sex, 
 while equally common is the inability to portray 
 an alien racial type. The usual Italian model is 
 transformed into a square-profiled Englishman. When 
 one looks for it, "the English look" on students' draw- 
 ings of foreign models is quite ludicrous. The 
 physiognomy of even an allied race like the Dutch is 
 absolutely differentiated from that of the English type. 
 
12 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Much concentrated observation and searching for the 
 accents which make up this differentiation of race forms, 
 are needed. The student has to teach himself to get, as 
 it were, outside his own personality, in which a young 
 person is often impregnably intrenched, and subordinate 
 himself to his model. He has to set himself free from 
 these sub-conscious, anthropomorphic fetters already 
 alluded to. Perhaps the only way to achieve this is 
 through sympathy with his subject. Too often students 
 barely consider the model as a human being; they are 
 quick to find some variation in the pose from what they 
 saw before, and hasten to correct it, very much as they 
 would alter a lay figure. 
 
 Apart then from dealing with faults of construction 
 and proportion the teacher's chief difficulty is to get 
 students outside themselves. The well-being of most 
 young people, their exuberant vitality, their good spirits 
 and freedom from care, make it difficult for them to 
 visualize other than in terms of their own personality. 
 In other words artists begin to see more truly as the 
 illusions of youth pass from them; they at length see 
 things as they are. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 PROPORTION. 
 
 To give the student some idea of the meaning of 
 proportion should be the teacher's early aim, and it will 
 entail endless teaching, for when proportion is felt, as 
 well as measured, little more will be left to teach. 
 
 The teachers of the humanities claim that their 
 studies give a sense of proportion in human affairs. The 
 art teacher may also contend that the practice of draw- 
 ing, rightly pursued, leads to the same end, that a child 
 who has made a well proportioned drawing has begun to 
 develop the sense of proportion, a step towards the build- 
 ing up of the good citizen, who looks at affairs with a 
 steady eye. Exercises which otherwise might develop 
 the sense of proportion are often smothered by rules. 
 Students are coached assiduously in the number of times 
 the head measures into the body, or in constructions in- 
 volving middle lines, or in blocking out details in squares 
 or triangles, while traces of the once elaborate scaffold- 
 ings of verticals and horizontals with which students 
 used to commence a drawing may yet be found. 
 
 As Mr. Water Sickert once wrote, "There are too 
 many props introduced to help the student, with the 
 
 13 
 
14 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 result that the edge of observation is somewhat blunted." 
 
 The same may be said of perspective, the formal 
 rules of which, hastily learned by rote, tend to atrophy 
 the powers of observation. Students sometimes seem 
 to think that so long as receding parallels are made to 
 vanish somewhere, all is done that need be expected of 
 them, with the result that on looking at the drawing we 
 see it to be merely a travesty of the forms of what has 
 been placed before the eye. 
 
 The writer once visited a school with some students 
 training to become teachers, to watch the drawing lesson. 
 Some children were drawing a box placed before the 
 class, and at the close of the lesson the students were 
 asked to pick out the best drawing. Papers were handed 
 in showing some knowledge of perspective rules, and 
 there was a chorus of dissent when the writer showed the 
 drawing he had chosen, for not a single line was in 
 correct perspective. But it had the right proportions, it 
 looked like the box, whereas the other drawings were too 
 long or too high. 
 
 Of course the student can always ascertain the propor- 
 tions by measurement, but the appeal to be fruitful must 
 be mainly to the eye. The living model, whether 
 draped or nude, affords practice in proportion readily 
 appreciated by students, for they know people best, and 
 are familiar with their own build and proportions. 
 
 What are known as common objects do not, to the 
 same extent, develop in the student this, critical faculty. 
 Most junior students calmly make extensive alterations 
 in vases, etc., without any qualms of conscience, while, 
 out of doors, such objects as trees make still less appeal 
 
PROPORTION. IS 
 
 to the sense of proportion, for they are assumed by the 
 beginner to have no contour or shape, and are accord- 
 ingly hacked and chopped about to fit them within the 
 limits of the paper. 
 
 With junior pupils "drawing a middle line as a com- 
 mencement causes misproportion, the drawing almost 
 invariably being too wide. 
 
 Sometimes bad proportions result from the anthro- 
 pomorphic bias. Young students generally draw the 
 hands and feet too small, because small hands and feet 
 are thought to be becoming. On the other hand they 
 make the face too large for the head because it occupies 
 a corresponding share of their attention. 
 
 But to a great extent this neglect of proportion arises 
 from bad method, which goes along with confused 
 vision. The drawing is often begun at the top and 
 worked downwards, the student trusting to his luck to 
 get the whole on the paper. Hence the legs get crowded 
 into less than their share of the space, or the feet perhaps 
 have to be omitted. 
 
 Too often the student proceeds in a random way 
 which positively stultifies feeling for proportion. One 
 often sees drawings slipping off the paper, as it were, or 
 pushed to right or left, without artistic reason for so 
 doing. 
 
 Right methods will do much towards securing pro- 
 portion. No details should be drawn at first, but a line 
 from head to foot establishing the whole form. Every 
 figure, every object will furnish some such line. This 
 line once found, the proportion of the parts can proceed 
 steadily and safely. 
 
1 6 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 The preparation of "blocking out" is often strangely- 
 misunderstood by the student, who produces a mere 
 scribble of the figure, full of badly scrawled detail, 
 features, fingers and toes dashed in anyhow, and criti- 
 cism is countered by the casual remark that the drawing 
 is "only sketched in." Such method, or want of it, is 
 vicious in every way. Every line from first to last 
 should be well considered, so that at any stage the draw- 
 ing may be workmanlike, in good proportion, and ex- 
 pressive of the model, so far as it has been taken. 
 
 Bad proportion often results from looking along the 
 contours rather than surveying, taking in the mass of the 
 object. An early attempt should be made to see all the 
 figure from head to foot. 
 
 One may put it in this way, that so long as beginners 
 are pre-occupied with detail in contour, that is, with the 
 forms, without making the necessary preparation of 
 noting their directions, failure to secure good proportion 
 is inevitable. 
 
 Obviously one corrective is to draw the whole figure 
 every time. The art teacher is familiar with the lying 
 excuse of the student who for want of room omits the 
 legs, that he did not intend to draw them. Such scraps 
 of figures defeat one of the great aims of the study. 
 
 The figure prepared or indicated, the student can 
 then concentrate on a passage that appeals specially to 
 him, but set out from head to foot it must be, if the 
 exercise is to be of any value as a study in proportion, 
 or of the action of the figure. 
 
 This method gives the clue to the treatment of the 
 vexed question of erasure. One sometimes sees a student 
 
PROPORTION. 17 
 
 rubbing out, or trying to do so, a large portion of a draw- 
 ing at a comparatively late stage. Such alteration is 
 mere vexation of spirit, and an acknowledgment of a 
 bad beginning. With a studentlike and artistic com- 
 mencement little or no erasure is necessary, for the pro- 
 portions should be fixed by the first strokes planted upon 
 the paper. This requires a certain firmness and patience 
 on the part of the teacher, and a self-denial and inhibitive 
 power not always readily at the command of the student, 
 who comes to the study of the model with the notion that 
 it is possible and commendable to transfer that figure 
 bodily to the paper. For has he not seen this done in 
 the work of the artists he most admires ? 
 
 Generally the procedure is this. The beginner com- 
 mences to draw the figure in a "blocking out" of his own 
 fashion. Horrified at the starkness of his effort, he 
 hurriedly covers over the first lines with detail, hoping 
 thus to secure likeness, with the result that a figure 
 appears represented by contour lines and looking bone- 
 less and sawdust stuffed. Hence the necessity of the stu- 
 dent learning what is at first alien from his thought, (pre- 
 occupied as he is with realizing the object or figure before 
 him), that there is a stage which comes before drawing, 
 namely preparation, in which the placing on the paper, 
 the proportions, and the directions of the forms have to 
 be studied or analysed without reference to naturalistic 
 treatment. It may be safely said that many students 
 leave art study without having secured the discipline 
 and training which rigorous search after a good prepara- 
 tion alone can give. 
 
 To some students it is an objection that these first 
 
1 8 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 strokes get in the way of the drawing", have to be rubbed 
 out, spoil the paper, etc. To this one may reply that 
 neatness is but a minor virtue in drawing study. Clean- 
 liness has been said to come next to godliness, but it 
 certainly lags a long way bi^ind. 
 
 As a matter of fact the first strokes disappear under 
 the later work, and if rightly placed are astonishingly 
 useful as part of the completed study. The form comes 
 perhaps just outside or inside the first line. In the work 
 of the genius (?) who draws his line and his detail all 
 "at one go," the result is seen in knotty swollen contours, 
 mere exaggerations of the form. 
 
 Students often use a sheet of paper upon which to 
 rest their hands in order to avoid soiling their drawing. 
 They thus compel themselves to draw piecemeal, stulti- 
 fying their feeling for proportion, and losing the inestim- 
 able advantage of seeing the whole of their work all the 
 time. 
 
 Many poses, especially where the figure is seated or 
 reclining, suggest a simple pyramidal or triangular con- 
 struction such as shown in fig. i. If the sides of the 
 triangle are right in direction, which is easily ascertained 
 by holding the pencil against the model and comparing 
 with the lines on the paper, then the triangle is similar 
 to that formed by the pose, and the proportions there- 
 fore are correct. This enables the student to proceed 
 with the drawing without hesitation and embarrassment ; 
 the mind being at rest as regards the first lines undivided 
 attention can be given to construction and artistic ex- 
 pression. 
 
 As far as possible drawings should be made sight 
 
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 Fig. I — Sketches of seated or reclining figures \vho3c proportions are easily 
 ascertained by assuming them contained in triangles. 
 
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 T3 
 
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PROPORTION. 21 
 
 size, that is the size of a tracing on a pane of glass held 
 before the model. Faults in proportion often occur in 
 drawings commenced somewhat larger than sight size, 
 for as the student works, he forgets the scale with which 
 he started, with the result that the proportions of his 
 extremities and details tend towards sight size, that is too 
 small for the general proportions of the drawing. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 TYPE FORMS. 
 
 Young students, promoted to the antique or life 
 class, are apt to shake hands with themselves on their 
 emancipation from the thraldom of perspective and 
 model drawing. No more cubes and cylinders, say they 
 in effect; we shall now feast our eyes on sinuous form 
 and subtle modelling. 
 
 They have, however, to learn that the principles of 
 appearance are invariable, and apply equally to the 
 representation of living form and inanimate objects. 
 
 For example, every time the face is drawn, unless its 
 relation with the eye level be appreciated, the student is 
 certain to have trouble. If the model's head is on a level 
 with the student's, the drawing may pass muster, even if 
 no attention has been paid to perspective, but if the eye 
 be below or above, then the law of receding parallels 
 must be observed if the features are to be intelligently 
 represented. 
 
 Again, beginners often fail to observe the planes of 
 the head. Especially is this so in regard to the three 
 planes of the front and side views, with the result that 
 the students are unable properly to place the ear, which 
 
TYPE FORMS. 
 
 23 
 
 persists in coming forward in a distressing way. (fig. 3). 
 
 All forms, omitting the 
 sphere, may be derived from 
 two type forms, the square 
 prism and cylinder. Of course 
 by multiplying the faces of the 
 prism one arrives eventually at 
 the cylinder, but it will be con- 
 venient to keep them separate 
 because each represents a dif- 
 ferent method of construction. 
 The cone and pyramid may be 
 ignored because as shown 
 
 in FIG. 4 they are derived from the cylinder and square 
 
 prism respectively. 
 
 Fig. 4. 
 
 The representation in perspective of objects based 
 upon the square prism, depends upon the apparent 
 convergence of parallels, which is another way of saying 
 
2+ DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 that things appear smaller as they are removed from the 
 eye. 
 
 But the cylinder, though for the purposes of formal 
 perspective considered as embedded within a square 
 prism, and involving a somewhat intricate construction 
 for obtaining the curve of the circle in perspective, as 
 regards its circular end, needs not the aid of receding 
 parallels, because when foreshortened, the circle appears 
 as an ellipse, which should be drawn as such without any 
 construction other than determining the direction of its 
 long axis (always at right angles with the axis of the 
 cylinder). 
 
 Most natural organic forms are based on the cylinder 
 as the trunk and limbs of animals, including human 
 beings, (though for purposes of representation these are 
 better considered as based on the square prism), and most 
 stems of plants and trees. Of fashioned objects, all 
 pottery and other objects of wood or metal produced by 
 some form of turning or lathe work, are based on the 
 cylinder, as also tinware bent or beaten around 
 cylindrical moulds. 
 
 Based on the square prism are framed structures as 
 furniture and buildings, which man finds it convenient 
 to construct with the right-angle. In the same category 
 are building materials as bricks, cement and wrought 
 stone, also boxes, books, etc. 
 
 Fig. 5 shows the principle of constructing the 
 cylinder which should be followed, no matter what may 
 be the position. It is true that some students, remem- 
 bering their lessons in formal perspective, laboriously 
 construct a prism first, but this is dreadful slavery and 
 
TYPE FORMS. 
 
 2S 
 
 unnecessary, since the two straight lines forming the 
 sides, and the two ellipses stare one in the face. Some 
 students construct the ellipse on its long and short 
 diameters, but these aids ruin the feeling for the curve. 
 Sometimes the ends appear pointed owing to the fact 
 that arcs of circles have been drawn. As a matter of 
 fact no progress in object drawing is possible until the 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 straight line and ellipse can be drawn freely in any 
 position with a single movement of the hand and arm. 
 If the student lacks this facility five minutes practice at a 
 blackboard every day for a week at squares, circles and, 
 ellipses will set him free of these forms for life. One 
 may observe that beginners are apt to draw the lower 
 half of the horizontal ellipse flatter than the upper — to 
 notice the defect is to cure it. 
 
 To the student who is content to subordinate himself 
 to authority — and all really great artists have done this 
 in their student days, — this constant reference to the 
 type forms is no trammel, but a help, supplying him at 
 once with a standard of form and a method of drawing. 
 The head has been referred to as an approximation to 
 
26 
 
 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 the prism. The wrist is another detail of the figure 
 which gives trouble to students. The teacher has con- 
 stantly to point out the way the wrist forms a link 
 between hand and arm, how it modifies the contour of 
 the arm, and the distressing effect caused by the failure 
 of the student to see the wrist. 
 
 The male wrist may be compared in shape- and size 
 with a large box of matches, and this prism coming 
 between the more cylindrical form of the forearm and 
 
 the flattened form of the hand, 
 gives this part of the arm its 
 characteristic shape, (fig. 6). 
 Coming to the figure as ia 
 whole, the student must relate 
 the great planes of the body 
 with the faces of the prism, or 
 fall under the penalty of fail- 
 ing to secure vigorous model- 
 ling. 
 
 The straight edge of the 
 prism representing the head is 
 replaced by the undulating line of forehead, cheek-bone, 
 cheek and jaw, where it turns from the light (fig. 3), and 
 this line marks the intersection of front and side of 
 head, two planes which present great difficulties to 
 beginners obsessed as they are by the features. It 
 should be borne in mind that the edge in question is a 
 contour when seen from another point of view, and that 
 it must relate with the contour of the further side of the 
 head. All this applies with equal force to the trunk 
 
 Fig. 6. 
 
TYPE FORMS. 
 
 27 
 
 and limbs. The squareness of the trunk especially 
 should be seized upon, otherwise a woolly unstructural 
 roundness is apt to result. This intersection of the 
 front and sides of the torse is very complicated and 
 broken, but must be watched for. (fig. 22). 
 
 This principle of the great planes is shown very 
 clearly in the statues of the Egyptians. Often the limbs 
 are absorbed so that the finished figure remains as a 
 block. The reason, of course, lay in the material, the 
 hardness of which prevented the sculptor from indulg- 
 ing in undercutting and over-modelling, (fig. 7). 
 
 Ruskin, whose prac- 
 tical art teaching is always 
 worth consideration, gave 
 close attention to type 
 forms. His remarks in 
 "Modern Painters" on 
 the construction of trees, 
 etc., should be read care- 
 fully. His analyses of 
 cloud forms is also very 
 interesting and useful. 
 
 All cloud systems 
 should be considered as 
 horizontal. The vanish- 
 ing line presents some 
 difficulty, as owing to 
 the earth's rotundity, the 
 cloud horizon line is a 
 little lower than that of 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 the earth, but the point is not of much importance. A 
 
28 
 
 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 good exercise is a sky full of cumulus clouds, which may 
 be likened to a number of match boxes held at a level 
 above the eye. (fig. 8). 
 
 The landscape painter, Boudin, should be studied 
 for his simple systems of clouds in which the horizon- 
 tality is carefully observed. An example of his work is 
 to be seen in the National Gallery. 
 
 f^^ lO;^ 
 
 a::^. 
 
 Fig. 8. 
 
 When clouds are approaching the eye or receding 
 directly from it, the appearance is sometimes that of a 
 "vertical" sky, but even in this case every effort should 
 be made to determine the horizontal surfaces, without 
 which the effect of distance cannot be secured. 
 
 Students often lose their grip of type forms when 
 drawing from a pose more or less recumbent. The 
 bench upon which the figure is lying will, if carefully 
 observed, supply the general directions of the latter. 
 (fig. 2). Neglect of these simple lines accounts for 
 
TYPE FORMS. 
 
 29 
 
 many failures to secure correct fore-shortening. The 
 same may be said of quadrupeds, as dogs and horses, 
 drawings of which often look vague and unstable 
 
 Fic. 9. 
 
 because their relation with the type prism is not suffi- 
 ciently appreciated, (fig. 9). A well-known advertise- 
 ment depicts in an alpine landscape a cow much too long 
 for its height, because the prism which forms its under- 
 lying shape has not been properly foreshortened. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 CONSTRUCTION. 
 
 No word is on the art teacher's lips more constantly 
 than "construction." Therefore, as with other technical 
 terms, it is most necessary that the student shall under- 
 stand the word in the sense that the teacher uses it. All 
 specialists are apt to utter a jargon, when they imagine 
 themselves to be talking with the utmost simplicity, and 
 only by constant questioning and discussion can teachers 
 be sure that they and their students are in agreement as 
 to the meaning of the terms used. 
 
 This word "construction" has two distinct meanings, 
 both used indiscriminately by artists. First "construc- 
 tion" may mean the actual build of the object. To take 
 a tin pail as example we may note that it is made from 
 a sheet of metal bent into a cone, the two edges being 
 lapped and soldered, that a flat strip is bent into a 
 cylinder, lapped and riveted to form a base, and that 
 the handle is semi-circular in form, composed of a strip 
 bent on itself to give rigidity. One might continue in 
 detail until the entire construction has been investigated. 
 
 The second use of the word refers to the construction 
 of the drawing, an entirely different thing. When one 
 
 3° 
 
CONSTRUCTION. 31 
 
 speaks of a drawing being well-constructed, one means 
 that it is built up of lines and tones which suggest the 
 actual construction of the object depicted. 
 
 Nothing is more difficult to the beginner than the 
 advice to construct the drawing. He sees the model in 
 all its complexity before him, and with a preconceived 
 notion that drawing is imitation, cannot abstract his gaze 
 from the details in order to search for the long enclosing 
 lines of the figure, and those which indicate its build. 
 
 A great deal will have been learned if the beginner 
 has been already taught to set up work in clay. In a 
 way, the modeller is obliged to "construct" his study, for 
 he cannot at once arrive at a contour. He has to build 
 his model up in simple planes before he can think of the 
 surface modelling, though even here teachers of 
 modelling speak with sorrow of the way students 
 evade the problems of constructive modelling, and the 
 haste with which they attempt the more superficial 
 qualities before their study has been carefully set up 
 with the great planes. On paper it is fatally easy to 
 begin with surface markings before setting down the 
 main lines of construction. There are two classes of 
 students inclined to ignore construction — first the 
 beginners who can see nature only as a mass of detail, 
 and secondly those students, clever with their fingers, 
 who fancy they can draw well enough without the trouble 
 of "blocking out," and who arrive at a result, by means 
 of their facility, which they think justifies them in ignor- 
 ing construction. To the latter class of students one 
 may say that a judge of drawing can tell unerringly how 
 it was produced, and can see, through the facile execu- 
 
32 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 tion, the wealcnesses owing to lack of construction. 
 Further, the greater an artist, the more likely is he thor- 
 oughly to construct his drawing. 
 
 Constructive drawing really means concentrated 
 intellectual vision in the early stages, and presents this 
 difficulty, that it is precisely at this time that students, 
 owing to want of training, are looking at the model with 
 embarrassment and uncertainty, which result in slurred 
 and fumbling drawing. Many students, indeed, begin 
 to draw after a cursory glance. The model should be 
 well scrutinized for some little time before drawing is 
 commenced. It is during the first few minutes that the 
 drawing is made or marred. Further work adds detail, 
 but substantially the drawing remains the same. This 
 is perhaps the most important caution that can be written 
 about drawing. As already mentioned, what generally 
 happens is that students begin to sketch out the pose and 
 proportions t)f the model in a more or less haphazard 
 way, and being stricken with horror at its aspect, add 
 detail after detail in the hope of making it "more like." 
 
 To some extent the preliminary construction of a 
 drawing has been dealt with under the head of type 
 forms. The essential lines are those which give at once 
 the movement and the mass : these are not necessarily 
 based on actual outlines. A standing pose is best com- 
 menced with a line from the pit of the neck to the heel 
 of the foot supporting the weight. Shoulders are often 
 drawn as two isolated forms, the result of aimless 
 wandering round the contours, giving the impression of a 
 boneless figure, a rag doll stuffed with sawdust. 
 Attention to the lines of the collar bones, sternum, arch 
 
CONSTRUCTION. 33 
 
 of ribs and pelvis will correct this as regards the torse. 
 The legs are especially prone to look like Christmas 
 stockings, because the inner lines of structure have been 
 omitted. The bulk of the knee, the line of the tibia (in 
 the front view), the lines defining the ankle, and suggest- 
 ing the stirrup-like movement of the foot within the 
 ankle, and the backward swing of the heel are important. 
 Especially should be noted a forward direction in the 
 side view of the leg above the ankle, due to the tendon 
 of the tibialis anticus. This escapes many students, 
 with the result that the leg takes on a lumpy, Indian 
 club-like look. This change of direction, though slight 
 in the leg, is to be seen clearly in the forearm, where the 
 thumb muscles crop up varying the contours in harmony 
 with that from elbow to wrist. It should be noted that 
 the angle forming the crook of the arm is considerably 
 above the elbow, owing to the position of the supinators. 
 In the knee joint the hamstring tendons cause the angle 
 at the back to come lower than that in front. In both 
 cases students often show great perseverance in trying to 
 place these angles at the same level with distressing 
 results. It should be added in regard to these torsions 
 and variations that at almost any point a hollow is 
 balanced by a swelling on the opposite contour. 
 Examples of the above constructional points may be 
 observed in the figure drawings reproduced in these 
 pages. 
 
 The student who wishes to progress should constantly 
 submit his drawing to those more advanced for detailed 
 criticism of his construction. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TONE STUDY— PRELIMINARY. 
 
 Young students, especially if they have been kept at 
 outline work, consider it a great privilege to be allowed 
 to "shade," and the unfortunate distinction they draw 
 between "drawing" and "shading" is responsible for 
 their oftentimes slow progress in the study of form. 
 
 First the terms used must be explained and adhered 
 to. Here, as in ordinary speech, the "shadow" is cast by 
 the object on a surface, while the "shade" on the object 
 is divided from the light portion by the "line of shade." 
 
 It should be noted that if the object rests on the 
 ground the line of shade is continuous with the shadow 
 edge and encloses a space of dark. (fig. 14). This is 
 often ignored by beginners, who divide the area into two 
 portions, shade and shadow, which to their sharp sighted 
 eyes is clearly separated by the reflected light on the 
 edge of the rounded object. Thus students under the 
 influence of that anthropomorphic bias already men- 
 tioned, will draw the shade area of a limb yet leave its 
 cast shadow adjoining, to be completed later because 
 they deem a shadow to be negligible compared with an 
 object. 
 
 H 
 
TONE STUDY— PRELIMINARY. 35 
 
 The line of shade is of great importance because it 
 represents a contour seen from the direction of the light. 
 It may be grey and indefinite when the light-area is ex- 
 tensive, as a large window admitting daylight, or sharp 
 and dark when the luminant is a point of artificial light, 
 but it is always present. Students sometimes shade as if 
 the dark gradually merged into the light. This is a con- 
 vention which is not supported by observation, and 
 should be discouraged. 
 
 A certain amount of light is reflected to the object 
 from the floor, walls, etc. This is not traceable on the 
 side towards the light, but may be observed in the shade 
 area, especially a contour in shade. It follows that the 
 shade area appears darkest as it approaches the light 
 area, that is to say near the edge of shade. The rule as 
 stated in art school diction is that "the darkest dark is 
 near the lightest light." This is clearly seen in small 
 isolated darks. 
 
 The forms within a shade area often present great 
 difficulties to beginners, who see them necessarily by 
 reflected light. They outline these forms with black, 
 or darken unduly the concavities, and are distressed to 
 find that these lines and darks persist in coming forward, 
 and ruin the unity of the shade area. To remedy this 
 they should note an interesting contrast between the 
 conditions of the expression of forms in (i) areas in light 
 and (2) areas in shade. 
 
 First, the surface forms in the light are expressed 
 by darks, excepting, of course, the high lights. The eye- 
 lids are defined by darks below the brows, the nose and 
 lips by darks, and the ear by lines and patches of dark. 
 
36 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 In the shade areas, however, forms are expressed by 
 reflections or lights. If this region is indicated by a 
 general tone, the forms within need little more attention 
 than the careful working of the reflected lights. Of 
 course, an actual cavity receiving no reflected light, such 
 as the nostril or ear orifice, may have to be darkened, 
 but otherwise the principle holds good. 
 
 Between the two areas there is another important 
 .difference. According to the intensity of light the forms 
 in the light areas are well defined, and show clearly. In 
 the shade area forms are ill-defined, edges are soft, 
 somewhat as we notice shapes in twilight when men look 
 "like trees walking." All painters from Rubens onwards 
 have been well aware of this. Rubens used his impasto 
 for his light areas, but was particularly careful to keep 
 the forms within his darks quiet. 
 
 Similarly the student when working at the shade area 
 must remember to hold the reflected lights under con- 
 trol. Too often he emphasizes them until they actually 
 look like "lights" blazing out of the darkness, as if the 
 figure were lit from within, or made of glass or china. 
 Or again he strengthens with dark the outlines of the 
 forms within the shade area, with the result that they 
 refuse to retire, and obstinately stand forward. There 
 can be no hard lines in the shade, owing to want of 
 illumination. 
 
 As the luminant is generally from above, the darks 
 in light areas occur below the forms, while the main 
 reflection, coming from below, the reflected light is seen 
 in the upper part of the concavities of the forms, much 
 as the footlights illuminate those parts of the actor's 
 
TONE STUDY— PRELIMINARY. 37 
 
 features. Fig. ioa shows the general principle of work- 
 ing both light and dark areas. The drawing was made 
 by artificial light. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TONE STUDY— EXERCISES. 
 
 The art student takes great interest in materials, as 
 witness the prosperity of the artists' colourmen, and 
 certainly the proper selection of materials and their right 
 use will go far to assist him in his career. It will be well 
 to glance at the commonly used drawing materials 
 found in the art schools. 
 
 The drawings of the masters of the renaissance show 
 the use of charcoal, black and red chalk, the pen and 
 sometimes gold and silver points, and these continued to 
 be the main weapons of the art student until the intro- 
 duction of plumbago or black lead, although the black 
 chalk point remained a favourite implement, the 
 enormous cartoon by Maclise in the Diploma Gallery 
 of the Royal Academy, of the meeting of Wellington 
 and Blucher, being drawn with it; So much time, how- 
 ever, was wasted by students stippling up their chalk 
 drawings with a finely pointed crayon that the stump 
 was adopted as tending to broader work. Unfortunately 
 this result was not achieved, for students found that by 
 a Hexterous and continued manipulation of the stump 
 on suitable paper, a lustrous and pearly texture was 
 
 38 
 
TONE STUDY— EXERCISES. 39 
 
 obtained. This could be again refined upon, by touch- 
 ing with a finely pointed chalk, and by "breading out" 
 black spots, prodigies of industry being performed on 
 such drawings. Thus did the misapplied industry of 
 students defeat the efforts of teachers. 
 
 The stump has also other disadvantages besides this 
 great one, of enabling a drawing to look better than it is 
 in the eyes of its producer. The stump touch is always 
 indeterminate or "muzzy," and where a sharpened edge 
 is required bread or indiarubber must be used. This 
 handicap causes an indirectness in the method. The 
 student fumbles with the stump and then corrects with 
 rubber, whereas a weapon capable of more direct and 
 trenchant action must be put in his hand if he is to gain 
 mastery over line and form. Also in spite of its 
 indirectness the stump, with its ally the rubber, can be 
 made to produce drawings hard and tinny in character, 
 and students have been known to apply paper masks to 
 the drawing and then rub vigorously with bread, thus 
 obtaining that clear hard contour which they supposed 
 the authorities wanted. 
 
 What then is the best material for drawing practice ?, 
 The student, it must be remembered, requires an imple- 
 ment which will allow him to search for form ; it must be 
 to some extent tentative, allowing him to withdraw some- 
 what if he has overshot the mark. The black crayon 
 does not meet this need, for any erasure alters the char- 
 acter of the tone, making it smoky or smeared. This 
 applies also in some measure to the lead pencil, an 
 implement capable of producing beautiful effects, but 
 hardly one for study. It must be used directly or 
 
40 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 greasiness results, also it misses the definite black of the 
 chalk. Moreover the pencil is the implement for 
 writing, and students when using the lead for drawing 
 still go on writing, making zigzag, scratchy marks with 
 the fingers, often closely resembling written words, which 
 the teacher may pretend to decipher much to the disgust 
 of his pupil. 
 
 Charcoal meets most of the requirements very well. 
 It is easily removed, allowing several trials of the first 
 stage of a drawing if reasonably used. It varies from 
 the soft velvety black of a well burnt stick to one under- 
 burnt, and as hard as an H pencil. From a dense black, 
 by a sweep of the finger, the tone can be lightened in a 
 beautiful gradation up to the tone of the paper. No 
 other implement gives gradation without great labour, 
 and this labour, as mentioned above, is apt to degenerate 
 into stippling. 
 
 By using the softer grades of charcoal in the early 
 stage of the drawing, full emphasis of form and rich con- 
 trasts of tone can be readily obtained, while for .detailed 
 expression, harder charcoal will give all the definition 
 that can be obtained with a pencil, chalk or stump. 
 Chaircoal is, of course, sharpened backwards, like a chalk 
 point. It should be used with a paper of square grain 
 like that known as Michallet or Ingres. Lights may be 
 emphasized with bread, ordinary indiarubber being use- 
 less with charcoal, though "putty" rubber and tinder 
 ma,de from fungus may be used. 
 
 The student commencing the study of light and 
 shade is often kept to the whitened models and casts 
 whereas what he requires for the development of his per- 
 
Fic. 10 — A drawing in charcoal from an anticjue head. 
 
 Fig. Ioa is a diagrammatic drawing showing the difference in 
 treatment between the forms in light and shade areas respectively. 
 
4^ 
 
TONE STUDY— EXERCISES. 43 
 
 ception of tone is work from objects of varying tones and 
 textures. The ordinary still life group fulfils these con- 
 glitions fairly well. 
 
 If a simple group, say of three or four main tones, is 
 set up, the student is at once faced with an exercise in 
 composition. Any group may be treated as a square, 
 upright, or oblong composition. The square being 
 generally the refuge of the weak-minded composer and 
 eliminated, a series of small sketches should be made 
 until a satisfactory solution is obtained. 
 
 Now will come a tussle between the student's utili- 
 tarian or anthropomorphic tendencies, and his artistic 
 vision. He is very apt, from past experience and pre- 
 judices, to grade the objects he sees according to the 
 agreed value set upon them by mankind. A bottle being 
 an object made by man to hold liquid necessary or 
 grateful to him, the student ranks as the most important 
 object present, and if allowed, will work away at it 
 supremely indifferent to the remainder of the group. 
 Another difficulty crops up here. The student from his 
 childhood has been constantly exhorted by his parents 
 and teachers to "do one thing at a time." This maxinl 
 he is apt to carry out by drawing an'd finishing the various 
 items in a group one after another. He has to be taught 
 that in artistic practice "one thing at a time" though just 
 as important as in everyday life, means something quite 
 different from what is in his mind. 
 
 Therefore the student will not make much progress 
 until he sees the parts of the group as tones of various 
 shapes. Especially should he refrain from carefully 
 outlining each object by itself without relation to its 
 
44 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 neighbour. At first he will probably find it difficult to 
 put down indications of the objects in order to place 
 them as desired. These first steps in a drawing as 
 mentioned elsewhere, demand all the teacher's patience 
 and the pupil's willingness to accept admonition, for they 
 do not accord with the latter's preconceived notions. 
 Above all he must not for a moment be allowed to 
 imagine that charcoal being a substance allied with ashes 
 and soot will not allow of delicacy and refinement of 
 handling, and that these preparatory steps of placing 
 and sketching in the main masses may be taken care- 
 lessly. 
 
 The masses having been indicated before any 
 elaborate contouring is attempted, the main tones of the 
 group should be set down firmly, with a soft stick of 
 charcoal, and now the student should enjoy the effective 
 use of tone which can be readily obtained with charcoal. 
 Placed near the group, the drawing should give the same 
 tone effect even in this early stage. 
 
 The forms of the objects may now be attended to, 
 ellipses and other forms being carefully drawn. Atten- 
 tion should also be given to the flan of the group. It 
 is easy enough to indicate the vertical aspects of things, 
 but the position they occupy on a horizontal surface, that 
 is the plan, is apt to be ignored. The student might be 
 required to indicate the plan of his group on a scrap of 
 paper, and to compare it with the actual position of the 
 objects. By this means interpenetration of the objects 
 is detected. 
 
 In order more completely to express the surface 
 forms one of two methods may be followed. The char- 
 
TONE STUDY— EXERCISES. 45 
 
 coal may be sharpened and the whole gone over, until it 
 is well worked into the grain of the paper. This is a 
 laborious process and calculated to disgust an ardent 
 student. The second method consists in rubbing in the 
 tones with the finger, stump, rag or brush, always re- 
 specting a very dark tone such as that representing the 
 black of a bottle. If rubbed, this becomes smeared and 
 dull. Some darks will now require strengthening, and 
 the pellet of bread pressed between the fingers into a 
 chisel shape may be used to take out lights, not as is 
 often supposed, to make alterations or correct errors, 
 which should have been done in the earlier stages of the 
 drawing. Just as the charcoal makes with readiness 
 dark forms, so the bread is an implement for shaping 
 lights. 
 
 Lastly comes careful edge study. It should be noted 
 that the places where the edges melt into the adjacent 
 tone demand as much study as the definite edge. For 
 instance a black bottle will probably have some part 
 adjacent to shade, and the edge in this area may appear 
 lighter (owing to reflection) than the tone behind it. All 
 the edges must be followed and dealt with on this prin- 
 ciple, yet the study should show the aim with which it 
 was commenced — the representation of a few masses of 
 varying tones. If these tones have become confused in 
 the progress of the work, the study will have fallen short 
 of success as an exercise in tone. 
 
 The exercise may seem humdrum to those like 
 Rosetti, who scorned pots and bottles, and wanted to 
 paint angels, yet it may safely be said that to attempt oil 
 painting without the discipline afforded by a course of 
 
46 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 form and tone drawing on some such lines as these, is 
 to court failure. The problems of tone are here pre- 
 sented in the simplest way, and solved by the simplest 
 means. The student who commences to study tone by 
 means of oil monochrome, has such a varied equipment 
 to contend with, that a great deal of his time and atten- 
 tion is occupied with his implements, his paints, palette, 
 brushes and palette knife, paint rag, vehicles, etc. In 
 charcoal he has a simple material which gives at once the 
 most velvety blacks and palest greys, is amenable to 
 varying degrees of manipulative skill, and lends itself to 
 the rough sketch or complete expression. Also, unlike 
 the stump, it does not delude the student with an ex- 
 traneous beauty of surface. Anything approaching ex- 
 cellence to be seen on the paper, is deserved, and, unlike 
 watercolour, it affords no lucky accidents. Figs, ii, 12, 
 13 are examples of still life studies made with charcoal 
 on Michallet paper, and show that this medium allows 
 of the drawing being carried as far as may be desired. 
 
Fif-. 12 A charcnal stuJ\- \\hich sIioh's how far the material will allov\' 
 
 of a drawing being carrieel. 
 
 47 
 
Fic. 14. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Students usually pass through the antique before 
 being promoted to the life class. It is held that by 
 working from casts they have time to gain facility in 
 method, and also some knowledge of human propor- 
 tions, both' very needful, before attacking the living 
 figure. 
 
 That this latter study requires all the equipment the 
 student can command need not be questioned, but though 
 young students may not be able to use their materials 
 skilfully, and may not have a keen sense of proportion, 
 they are familiar with the living figure, for they are 
 human themselves, and acquainted in a practical way 
 with their own structure. 
 
 On the other hand all art teachers must be aware of 
 the disadvantages of using the antique as a sole means of 
 training. The student cannot see the classical figures 
 as the sculptor creatqd them in marble or bronze, cannot 
 see them as part of an architectural whole, and viewed 
 thus, torn from their past, in the antique classroom, the 
 3ull plaster does not stir his artistic consciousness. He 
 (does not perceive the. subtle variations from the living 
 form, by which the sculptor sought to express his idea of 
 a god-like person. The fine proportions and flow of line 
 
 49 
 
so DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 escape him, and above all the statues stand so quietly 
 that he finds himself quietening in his attack ; he invol- 
 untarily slows down and loses that touch of fever which 
 counts for so much in the study of drawing. 
 
 In ordinary school life educationists postpone an 
 abstract study like grammar until the child mind has 
 developed sufficiently to take interest in the train of 
 thought. So it is with art students, who, after working 
 from the living model, willingly turn to the antique, and 
 study it with more profit and more enthusiasm for its 
 noble qualities than would have been possible to them 
 coming to it without preparation. The problems of the 
 human figure they now see presented in typical form, and 
 they recognise a canon of proportion which they can more 
 readily grasp, after having observed the great variations 
 in a series of living models. 
 
 Coming now to the study of the living figure, the 
 student should understand that a great deal more than 
 mere copying is implied, for it embodies many aspects of 
 art study, spacing, composition, structure, and especially 
 proportion. 
 
 There are certain difficulties which will surely meet 
 the beginner, and these it may be well to discuss. First 
 the anthropomorphic attitude of mind on the part of the 
 student already referred to must be combated by the 
 teacher. The former is likely to be obsessed by the 
 figure before him to the extent that the necessity for 
 imitation seems all important. The drawing, he thinks, 
 must be made as like the figure as possible. In other 
 words the student's power of selection is dormant. 
 There are so many things to be attended to that the 
 
THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY. Ji 
 
 drawing is apt to be a mere assembling of members, 
 trunk, limbs, etc., to say nothing of details such as 
 fingers and toe-nails. 
 
 The teacher, therefore, has to point out the aims of 
 drawing from the figure. These are not necessarily to 
 recreate a material person by the accumulation of parts, 
 and especially not to emphasize the nakedness of the 
 figure, as beginners are prone to do. The figure is 
 selected as a special subject of study because the nude 
 form presents problems of line and structure more 
 'directly and trenchantly than any other material which 
 can be set before him. 
 
 What should the teacher emphasize as the first step 
 in studying the living figure? The answer may be 
 given in a word — movement ! The living figure is 
 posing in a state of suspended animation, and a sense of 
 movement there must be in any position of the figure. 
 Either the movement has preceded the pose, or the 
 latter is about to pass into action. 
 
 Beginners are often oblivious of this sense of arrested 
 movement. Their figures are lumpy and stiff, and they 
 rarely or never give as much action as the figure displays. 
 If, say, the torse leans, they diminish the amount of 
 inclination so that the figure seems to be sitting upright, 
 or nearly so. Especially is this seen in the pose of the 
 head, which often inclines in order to balance an 
 obliquity of the torse or limbs. The novice rarely sees 
 this. To him all heads are upright at attention. It may 
 be said here that what the student suffers from in every 
 branch of drawing is not, as he supposes, an unskilled 
 hand, but an untrained eye. The teacher's efforts are 
 
52 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 constantly directed to the development of the visual 
 faculty, the power of analysing, judging inclinations, 
 measuring proportions, finding the lines which indicate 
 the structure, in all of which the eye needs to be trained. 
 Cleverness, a kind of juggling, which produces effects 
 akin to the lightning sketches at an entertainment, may 
 be deemed essential by an indiscriminating public, but 
 such ideas must be gently laughed out of a school of art, 
 if they ever find utterance there. 
 
 It is to the eye then that the main course of direction 
 and criticism should be directed. Even plumbing and 
 measuring should be used only as a secondary aid, to 
 corroborate criticism, for if these mechanical aids are 
 employed too freely, the eye suffers and loses self-reli- 
 ance. 
 
 Coming to the question of movement we realise at 
 once that it is represented through direction. All 
 figures, torses or limbs have a general direction, and 
 these inclinations can be suggested by lines. A seated 
 figure can be represented in direction by three lines. 
 (fig. 15.) Students unwilling to commence a study 
 with such simple preparation generally show in their 
 work a lack of vitality and movement; they begin by 
 seizing on the forms, and consequently the general idea 
 escapes them. The mischief occurs at the commence- 
 ment of the drawing. No amount of delicate detail, if it 
 be drawn piecemeal, will compensate for the lack of 
 intelligent construction. The whole figure should be 
 surveyed at the outset. Too often the eye wanders 
 round the contours, with the result that the drawing lacks 
 proportion and movement. 
 
Fig. 15 — Sketches showing the first lines or "directions" which settle the 
 movement of the figure and its proportions. 
 
 53 
 
Fig 1 6 — A drawing made with charcoal on Michallet. The 
 
 appearance of weight and solidity is due as much to the quality 
 
 of the line as to the shading. 
 
 54 
 
THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 55 
 
 The student then should 
 determine a line on which to 
 build the figure, this line occur- 
 ring perhaps within the contour, 
 or again coinciding with it. 
 
 When drawing a standing 
 female figure, the student is often 
 attracted by the rich and ac- 
 cented forms of the contours of 
 the breast and hips, with the 
 result that these features are ex- 
 aggerated. The figure should 
 be built on a simpler line, in this 
 case a vertical through the pit of 
 the neck and ankle of the sup- 
 porting leg. It should be noted 
 that this is not an arbitrary line, 
 but one actually existing in the 
 pose, being traceable in the 
 median line of the torse, and 
 again between the legs., (fig. 
 I 6a). 
 
 Such a simple commence- 
 ment is unpopular with thi 
 student, for it is head work, an 
 requires studious analysis of the 
 forms. 
 
 Unfortunately also the be- 
 ginner has often acquired, from 
 old habit and force of tradition a 
 method of drawing which con^ 
 
56 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 sists generally in beginning at the top and de- 
 scending piecemeal till the feet are reached, that is if 
 there is room for them. Such a vicious method is 
 common even among students possessing great facility. 
 The case may be compared with that of a language 
 student who has never heard French spoken, and is 
 surprised when his tutor tells him he has a wretched 
 accent, though he is entirely unconscious of having 
 acquired it. Ingres used to say "Don't draw one by 
 one and in succession, the head, then the torso, then the 
 arms, and so forth. If you did you would be bound to 
 fail in reproducing the harmony of the whole effect. 
 Rather set yourself to fix the relative proportions exist- 
 ing between the several parts, and to gain the mastery 
 over the life and motion, and in giving expression to this 
 action, don't be afraid of exaggeration. What you have 
 to fear is lukewarmness." 
 
 The teacher has another difficulty to face. He should 
 not impose his own way of seeing on his pupils, and 
 thus deprive them of their individuality, nor seek to bias 
 their own self-expression. A student's feeling for form 
 may perchance be somewhat stark, indeed may verge on 
 ugliness, to the point of exaggerating or caricaturing the 
 form, but the wise teacher will be shy of admonishing' 
 such a student, of advising him to look for smoothness^ 
 grace or beauty, because character, individuality and 
 strength may be the chief note in that pupil's future 
 work. There is room in the world of art for all manner 
 of individual expression. The touchstone is whether it 
 is sincere. Imitation, posing, conscious seeking after a 
 
THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY. S7 
 
 Style on the part of students cannot be too loudly con- 
 demned. 
 
 But where the student's work is wanting because of 
 his lack of method or of knowledge of materials, the 
 teacher is on firm ground. The student must be taught 
 everything, even how to hold a pencil or brush. In 
 matters of method and of the use of the implements of 
 his craft, he should put himself entirely in the hands of 
 his teacher, who cannot guide his students unless they 
 trust him. 
 
 That introduces the question whether the teacher 
 should work at the model before or with his students, or 
 confine himself entirely to the ofi&ce of adviser and critic. 
 The exponents of the new modes of teaching, as 
 practised in junior schools, incline to the latter view. 
 They say that directly a teacher demonstrates before his 
 scholars, he is biassing their vision, is preventing their 
 seeing the object for themselves, and is obtruding his 
 own vision of things to the detriment of their personal 
 expression. This is very true provided that the teacher's 
 inhibition does not extend to method, which, as pointed 
 out above, must be taught; but there is another aspect 
 of the relations between teacher and pupils, an aspect 
 which is of special importance in dealing with art 
 students who are spending all their hours at the same 
 study. They are apt to be discouraged after long toil- 
 ing, and consequently may be tempted to look upon their 
 teacher as he visits them on his rounds, merely as critic, 
 carper and fault-finder. This is a real danger, and it is 
 in die power of the teacher to overcome it. If he is wise 
 he will regard himself not as one aloof, in another sphere. 
 
58 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 that of the professional artist who occasionally con- 
 descends to criticise the efforts of the novice, but in the 
 much closer relationship of an elder brother, who is 
 willing to work at the same tasks as his pupils. It is 
 certainly dangerous always to paint and draw before the 
 students, but to work with them occasionally is to exhibit 
 a spirit of comradeship which at once stimulates the class 
 to its best efforts. 
 
 Again a student sometimes confesses inability to pro- 
 ceed with an exercise, and if the teacher is convinced that 
 the case is genuine, and works on the drawing, showing 
 in what ways the pupil's vision has fallen short, and 
 giving a demonstration of how far a drawing may be 
 carried, much good may result. 
 
 From this it follows that the student should not flag 
 or sulk at the continuance of his task while the teacher is 
 willing to interest himself in it. R. A. M. Stevenson, in 
 his life of Velasquez, has some interesting comments on 
 the methods of the great teacher Carolus Duran, which 
 should be read by all students, weak-kneed or otherwise. 
 
 In order to secure proportion students should work at 
 a distance of some yards from the model. Then the 
 natural tendency to draw sight size can be utilized. By 
 holding up the drawing alongside the model (fig. 17) 
 the proportion may be checked very effectually. 
 Students should never be admonished to "draw large," 
 "to fairly fill the paper," because violence is thus done 
 to the natural scale of the drawing, the eye and hand 
 travelling, as it were, at the same rate. This is the most 
 direct road to good proportion, and, as Mr. Walter 
 Sickert has pointed out, was the method of the masters. 
 
THE FIGURE— INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 59 
 
 If the drawing is too small in scale to allow of adequate 
 treatment, the student should go nearer the model or 
 use a finer point. 
 
 Fig. 17. 
 
 The drawing should be frequently viewed at arm's 
 length. Students often hold the drawing too close, sa 
 that the lower half of the paper is practically out of sight, 
 with a consequent detriment to the proportions. 
 
 A few words may be said on the vexed question of 
 
6o DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 backgrounds. Some teachers, in their zeal for complete 
 expression, insist that their students shall indicate the 
 tone of the background, with any accessories that may be 
 present. This it must be contended, is a mistaken view, 
 for backgrounds imply tone study, but drawing from the 
 figure is not merely an exercise in tone; structure, flow 
 of line, composition, etc., demand their share of atten- 
 tion. The student is not concerned with the photo- 
 graphic aspect of the figure, nor is he studying tone as 
 such ; other exercises can be devised for that side of art 
 study. To make tone studies of the figure with its back- 
 ground is to degrade it from its high purpose ; but this 
 does not imply that it should be drawn as existing by 
 itself — isolated in space, for by the use of expressive line 
 the tone of background can be suggested. The degree of 
 emphasis of the edge treatment will show whether the 
 background is darker or lighter than the general tone of 
 the figure. This aspect is considered in detail in the 
 remarks on Edge Study. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE FIGURE— THE SEARCH FOR FORM. 
 
 The beginner often shares the general opinion of the 
 outside public that drawing is a kind of legerdemain, a 
 conjuring trick done with clever fingers, a tour de fqrce 
 thrown oiEE lightly with no trouble or study. Of course 
 there are varying degrees of facility among students, and 
 where one accomplishes a task with seeming ease, others 
 may flounder or fail. But the history of art shows 
 clearly that a want of facility has not prevented men from 
 achieving fame, while among good judges the exhibition 
 of cleverness and of smart handling, removes a painter 
 from the highest place. 
 
 The facility of a master of drawing has been attained 
 by close study, and by what has been called the "search 
 for form." That is to say mastery over technique does 
 not come by gaily tracing contours with a pencil, but by 
 more or less painful efforts to track down the subtleties 
 of form. It is difficult to make students understand this, 
 for they suppose that mere practice will give facility, 
 whereas the eye should be trained by exercises demanH- 
 ing a rigorous scrutiny of form, and needing all the 
 intellectual capacity which can be brought to bear. 
 
 Drawing from the figure may be divided into two 
 
 6i 
 
62 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 main types of exercise. One, very important, is the time 
 sketch, recording the main facts of the figure, and vary- 
 ing the method and visual search according to the time 
 at one's disposal. Generally the time sketch deals 
 mainly with movement, flow of line, and character as 
 shown in the pose. Such work requires supplementing 
 by more searching and detailed expression of form, 
 which indeed enables the student to arrive at the more 
 summary methods of the time sketch. The student 
 who sketches only on a small scale, and for limited 
 periods of time, will not be sure of himself, nor be aware 
 of how far he can pursue his scrutiny. In other words, 
 he has not really learnt \o search for the form. 
 
 The materials with which to engage in this detailed 
 expression of form have not been agreed upon gener- 
 ally. The pencil or crayon point leads to redundancy of 
 strokes, and is wanting in breadth. Further, neither 
 allows of the tentative technique necessary in this kind 
 of exercise. To mention the stump is to condemn it, for 
 it is incapable of making a definite stroke. 
 
 Charcoal, as indicated elsewhere, supplies the best 
 weapon for this particular kind of attack. With it can 
 be produced with ease broad masses of tone, and also, 
 when well pointed, lines can be drawn as finely as with a 
 pencil. It has a full range of tone from velvety black 
 to palest grey. 
 
 Figs, io, etc., were drawn with charcoal on Michallet 
 or other square grained paper, the sheets of which, 
 measuring about 19" x 24", are of the dimensions most 
 suitable for normal eyes. If one draws to a larger scale 
 it is difficult to keep the whole of the drawing under 
 
^■^UJ^ 
 
 M 
 
 Fig. I 8 — A charcoal drawing much rubbed and otherwise ill-treated since 
 
 its completion. An example of edge stud)-. Every inch of the contour 
 
 has been carefully studied. 
 
 63 
 
p,f,^ ,g This drawing, with all its defects, shows a great interest taken 
 
 in the pose by the student and a determination to secure an expression of it. 
 
THE FIGURE— THE SEARCH FOR FORM. 65 
 
 surveillance, and errors in proportion, and in gradation 
 of accent, are apt to occur. Even if drawings, say for a 
 large mural decoration, were wanted, they should be 
 drawn first to this scale, and then enlarged by squaring 
 or other method. There are some life drawings by 
 Albert Moore, at South Kensington, drawn full size or 
 nearly so, but the method does not seem to possess com- 
 pensating advantages. 
 
 The procedure is the same as indicated elsewhere. 
 The student should, as always, mark top and bottom of 
 his drawing, and at once find the main line from head to 
 foot. Next follows the general structure of the figure 
 with a plan lightly sketched in of the masses of dark 
 tone. It is at this point that the proportions of the draw- 
 ing should be scrutinized, and if found wanting, the char- 
 coal strokes, which at first should be light and delicate, 
 can be obliterated with a few flicks of a duster. It 
 cannot be emphasized too strongly that this stage is most 
 crucial, and tests severely a student's powers of selection 
 and analysis. The drawing, no matter how many hours 
 or days are required for its completion, will be substan- 
 tially in proportion, and general scheme of light and 
 (dark, what it is at an early stage. Hence the importance 
 of self-criticism, and if necessary of beginning afresh. 
 No alterations of moment should be made at a late stage. 
 The time for erasure has then passed, and if great errors 
 of proportion reveal themselves as the drawing pro- 
 gresses, they convict the student of heedlessly slurring 
 over his first steps, and of failing to build on a sure 
 foundation. Hints on further procedufe are given else- 
 where. 
 
66 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 With regard to extremities, hands and feet, the char- 
 coal drawing on Michallet paper gives opportunity for 
 iworking these out in detail. In some schools such 
 studies are made full size, and certainly the difficulties 
 of constructing properly the head, hands and feet 
 pemand that considerable time shall be spent on them. 
 (Dn the other hand the nude figure should be used prim- 
 arily to give right notions of proportion, construction and 
 movement, and until the student is well grounded in 
 these, it seems a pity to distract his attention from the 
 main lines of the figure in order to focus it on detail, 
 however important. A great deal can be done, as 
 indicated elsewhere, in showing that the action and con- 
 struction of the figure demand the consideration of the 
 extremities, and involve at least construction of their 
 mass forms. Poor drawings of hands and feet always 
 show a lack of construction, and of articulation with the 
 limbs. 
 
 Studies from the nude are sometimes almost porno- 
 graphic in appearance because the student is (quite 
 innocently) doing the wrong thing. He tries to repro- 
 (duce a naked person, making a sort of inventory of 
 physical characteristics, so many fingers, toe-nails, etc^ 
 Such drawings usually lack the higher interests of the 
 figure, the flow of line, the rhythm of the accents of light 
 and dark, the unity of the long line of shade running 
 down the figure and revealing the "cubist" typical shape. 
 These things sought after, the student cannot go far 
 wrong, no matter how much he hankers after realism. 
 
 Unfortunately this wrongly realistic drawing has in 
 
THE FIGURE— THE SEARCH FOR FORM. 6j 
 
 the past been rewarded, on the ground that the student 
 has been honest and sincere, qualities however which 
 students evince rather by what they omit than by what 
 they put in. 
 
 Another evil resulting from insistence on reality is 
 loss of rhythm. One often sees a figure with carefully 
 shaded details, all of about the same weight of tone, and 
 the dark masses monotonous in character. The drawing 
 looks fussy and over-elaborated, while reference to the 
 model gives an impression of simplicity and breadth. 
 The student has been too busy to catch the rhythm of 
 the modelling. The darks have been referred to as 
 accents, and certainly tone rhythm is akin to that of 
 music. The figure, perhaps, has dark hair, the contrast 
 between that and the white brow giving the strongest 
 accent. Lower, on the face and neck the accent of dark 
 is weakened, to be strengthened again, say, at the armpit, 
 while the shade areas on the torse and lower limbs again 
 diminish in strength — an ebb and flow, or rhythm 
 throughout the figure, giving at once variety and breadth. 
 This supplies a method of procedure. The main masses 
 of middle accent should be struck, the stronger and 
 weaker accents following in their places, and keeping 
 their relative pitch. Mention has been made of the 
 (division students arbitrarily make between drawing and 
 shading. They often show that they do not consider 
 shading as drawing. They work away laboriously at 
 some dark patch without ever exploring its borders, its 
 varying contour, or indeed without considering the struc- 
 tural use of their darks. Shading is only useful where it: 
 is expressing structure and revealing form. It should 
 
68 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 be busy, that is giving due emphasis to the line of shade 
 which emphasizes the meeting of the planes. 
 
 Form is expressed by light against dark, and this 
 form should be drawn and then be backed up by shading. 
 Shading without drawing may be compared with bring- 
 ing bricks into a field without attempting to build with 
 them. 
 
 As pointed out elsewhere, any object is seen divided 
 into two areas, light and dark. In the former are planes 
 and forms sharply defined under usual conditions of 
 lighting. In the shade area which under normal lighting 
 is the further removed from the eye, the forms are quiet 
 and subdued. Hence an equal distribution of focusing 
 is destructive of unity. There is no need to pore into 
 the crannies of the dark area, for Nature forbids it, while 
 the light area affords abundance of opportunity for 
 searching study. Often, however, the would-be finished 
 drawing shows that the eye has not fully explored forms ; 
 the test may be applied to the meeting of angles, such as 
 the line of armpit, where it meets its shade edge. The 
 lines may have been brought together in some fashion, 
 but what happens at the junction? What is the actual 
 shape of the dark patch? The student must ask him- 
 self these questions as he approaches such passages, for 
 unless he exercises a vigilant scrutiny his drawing will 
 be full of insufficiently observed shapes. Lastly, light 
 and shade is not merely utilitarian, does not serve only to 
 reveal the forms, but has a beauty of its own well worth 
 the closest attention. If we look say at an interior by 
 Velasquez, we are conscious of a subtle yet clearly 
 marked series of beautiful passages of light and shade, 
 
i 
 
 Fig. 20 — An unfinished drawing showing the use oi eharcoal in expressing 
 
 varying textures. 
 
;?m;^.--r':-^:--^^^ ";' 
 
 
 Fig. 2 1 — Dr.ivN ing with charco;il on Michallet paper. 
 70 
 
THE FIGURE— THE SEARCH FOR FORM. 71 
 
 of rich velvety darks against liquid lights, or of light 
 edges melting mysteriously into background tones. He 
 showed us how to look at the beauty of tone in nature, 
 and the seeing eye discerns it everywhere. What can 
 be finer, for example, to be seen in any wood or clump 
 of trees, than a trunk in full light with a dark spray cut- 
 ting across it, or some such passage in constantly varying 
 sequence as the eye examines the scene. Equally beau- 
 tiful are the tone passages in the nude figure posed 
 before a quiet background. The semi-translucency of 
 the flesh seems to enhance these contrasts, and presents 
 some of the most subtle and varied effects that light 
 reveals. An arm in strong tone against a gleaming 
 chest, or the darks of a hand or knee against a thigh 
 fully illuminated are things to wonder at, and not merely 
 because they are striking examples of the relief of one 
 form against another, of what one may call the stereo- 
 scopic appearance, but because they are beautiful 
 passages of light and shade. To judge from students' 
 drawings they sternly ignore beauty of tone. They say 
 in effect that they are not to be turned ^ aside from their 
 purpose, which is to draw a human being, to fix the pose 
 and the proportions, to indicate the structure, and to 
 express the details. If they really were selecting from 
 the model, the teacher would be delighted, even though 
 they omitted what he considered an essential part of their 
 training, the study of tone. But he finds tha;t these 
 effects of light and shade are ignored because the 
 students fail to see them, or to be attracted by their 
 beauty. Shading, to them, consists in industriously 
 striping or stippling their study with tone, monotonous 
 
72 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 yet full of the wrong variety — too many lights in the 
 (dark areas, and too many darks in the light — ^while their 
 shading has often no drawing in it; they fail to follow 
 the boundary of the shade patch, nor do they give the 
 variety of its edge, for they do not perceive the 
 "invisible" spots, the places where the outline melts 
 away, nor, on the other hand, the trenchant, brilliant edge 
 where a dark comes sharply against the light, or where 
 the contour of the figure in light contrasts with the darker 
 background. 
 
 On the other hand there are passages of the utmost 
 subtlety generally in the lighter areas where a well-lit 
 form comes against another similarly illuminated. A 
 common example is that of the thighs and knees of a 
 seated figure. The near thigh and top of the knee seen 
 against the further thigh presents a border hardly visible 
 except to a keen eye, so little difference is there in the 
 tones of the two thighs, yet the edge of the near thigh is 
 there, and though faint, must be expressed by a clear 
 line, or in some cases by the sharp edge of a delicate 
 tone suggesting the upper plane of the thigh. 
 Students often represent this delicate edge as a 
 thick black line like a cart track, partly because they do 
 not perceive the refinement of the passage, but also 
 perhaps because they do not realize the different inten- 
 sities their drawing implement is capable of. They 
 should understand that a 6 B pencil, if used delicately 
 on the right paper, will draw a line as lightly as a 6 H. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE FIGURE— TIME SKETCHING. 
 
 The time sketch, as it has come to be called, is with- 
 out doubt the really vital and testing exercise of the 
 whole course of drawing study. 
 
 The search for form, by means of the antique and 
 life, the study of tone, vigorous and prolonged as they 
 may be, are deliberate and experimental. They corre- 
 spond somewhat with the slow accumulation of know- 
 ledge in a science laboratory, but in the exercise under 
 discussion the student has to set down his impressions 
 directly, in a limited time, and therefore practically 
 without erasure. In the result his artistic personality 
 exhibits itself on the paper plain to any judge. The 
 point to which he has trained his observation, his know- 
 ledge of structure, and of the principles governing 
 plastic representation, are embodied in the drawing, and 
 his weakness, his failure to profit by teaching are there 
 also. It is a simple test — to make a drawing, but it 
 stands in judgment on the student's previous study. His 
 careful drawings, which have taken days and weeks to 
 produce, are now seen to be not so much drawings as 
 searchings for form more or less tentative, though with- 
 
 73 
 
74 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 out their discipline he would come ill-prepared to the 
 more direct exercise. 
 
 As suggested above, the figure should be drawn about 
 sight-size, and the whole figure always, not merely those 
 portions which seem the most interesting, or which 
 chance to occupy the paper. It is true that Alfred 
 Stevens, Leighton and others often drew fragments, but 
 they were not studying, but accumulating facts they 
 wanted for a particular job. Reference may be made 
 here to Mr. C. H. Holme's comments on this point in his 
 "Science of Picture Making," where he deprecates 
 students having to work all parts of a drawing to the 
 same dead level of finish. That is also condemned 
 emphatically in these pages, but it is true also that a 
 course of art study, like any other, is bound to include 
 much serious continuous study. It cannot all be at 
 fever heat. 
 
 Art and art study is perhaps best looked upon as a 
 game, a long, vigorous pastime, affording a few moments 
 of ecstatic pleasure, with interludes of close application 
 — but nevertheless a sport — and many sportsmen will 
 accept the above as a pretty close description of their 
 own favourite pursuit. And as such it is necessary to 
 play the game properly, to have the sporting tempera- 
 ment — to hold on, to observe the rules, and to keep one's, 
 temper under all circumstances. 
 
 Therefore, given the essential condition of the exer- 
 cise, that the figure is to be doing something, standing 
 firmly erect, sitting passively, or lying prone, it will be 
 seen that there is no hardship in indicating the whole of 
 the figure. The sense of proportion is the more fully^ 
 
THE FIGURE— TIME SKETCHING. 75 
 
 exercised, and also it is extremely important that the 
 student should see that the pose nearly always demands 
 the representation of the whole figure. This is shown 
 clearly in the erect pose. It is necessary that the lines 
 should be brought down to the feet — that these shall be 
 clearly indicated, so that the figure stands firmly and with 
 weight. How often does one see in the drawings of 
 students, standing figures which sway, which could be 
 blown over with a breath, or seem almost to float ? 
 
 In many cases the composition of line is shattered by 
 the omission of the extremities. Further, by drawing 
 the whole figure, the student is obliged to -place it, to see 
 that it goes on the paper nicely. The effect of piece- 
 meal drawing often shows itself very plainly. A glaring 
 instance is the absence of an extremity for which there is 
 no room. Another is the biassing of the student's sense 
 of proportion by the proportions of the paper — the inan- 
 imate sheet which is often allowed to dictate and 
 dominate the proportions of the drawing. If the figure 
 occupies the long way of the paper it is often drawn too 
 long; if it occupies the short way of the paper it is 
 disproportioned in the opposite direction. The fewer 
 rules the better, but one at least is necessary, that in com- 
 mencing a drawing of the figure the extreme limits shall 
 first be settled. The first lines not only suggest the 
 movement, they also fix the limits and the placing. 
 Then come the main facts, the essential structure, ex- 
 pressed by lines of direction. No attempt at detail or 
 the refinement of outline should be made at this stage. 
 
 Next comes the establishing of the chief planes, the 
 division of the figure into dark and light, or rather the 
 
76 
 
 DRAV/ING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 determining of the edge dividing these planes. This 
 edge again should be simplified, for it is quite as com- 
 plex as the actual contour, being indeed a contour from 
 another point of view — that of the light. The stage is 
 difficult for the novice, obsessed as he is by his own divi- 
 sion of the study into drawing and shading. It would 
 be well if the term "shading" were dropped altogether, 
 
 Fig. 22. 
 
 as its use by the teacher is apt to cause confusion, the 
 student understanding it to mean shading of details. 
 Expression by tone, however, follows a parallel course 
 with line expression. As the contour must first be 
 grasped as a "direction," which later will be resolved 
 into the subtle line created by the overlapping of muscu- 
 lar and bony contours, so shading or expression by tone 
 must first be seen as a mass or plane without variation, 
 this and the subtleties of edge being left to a later stage. 
 Fig. 22 shows the form divided into two planes under the 
 
THE FIGURE— TIME SKETCHING. 77 
 
 influence of sunlight, which maps out the figure in this 
 trenchant way. Study of the nude in sunlight is valuable 
 because of this clear division of planes. Also the half- 
 tones and darks lose the dull, sooty quality they are apt 
 to take on in the studio. All is definite and lucid with- 
 out blackness. 
 
 Students often spend much time on minutiae of 
 shading while oblivious to the general plane of tone, just 
 as great variety of curve and hollow in the contours of a 
 drawing of the figure may be accompanied by neglect of 
 directions and proportion. 
 
 The figure now being set out in its essentials of direc- 
 tion and plane, the drawing should be held alongside the 
 model for self-criticism. This is the stage for second 
 thoughts, for alterations, the next stage will be too late. 
 
 The student should now retrace his steps and set out 
 on these simple indications, the structural lines giving 
 the general build of the figure. Next comes general 
 work in expressing form. The line is drawn and then 
 backed up by the adjoining tone. 
 
 Lastly comes the edge study referred to in detail 
 later. The subtleties of the contour and shade edges 
 are worked at, and the influence of the background on 
 the contour of the figure. 
 
 In each of these stages the figure has been worked 
 over from head to foot, and the resulting finish is not that 
 of piecemeal tinkering, but of right method and artistic 
 treatment by logical steps. Further, the method ensures 
 that the interest is sustained during the exercise. Too. 
 often the student, after completing the head or other 
 
78 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 interesting passages, turns to the remainder with some- 
 thing akin to disgust or weariness. 
 
 Of course it is not to be supposed that the method 
 suggested above should be adopted continuously. The 
 time allotted to a pose may vary. Quite short poses of 
 ten or even five minutes force the students to attempt the 
 figure as a whole, otherwise when time is called they find 
 themselves left with a fragment. In these brief attempts 
 the stages suggested above have to be compressed, but 
 even if omitted they must be kept in mind. As a rule 
 a beginner requires from 20 to 30 minutes to set down 
 his impressions in order. The following arrangement 
 for a two hours' session has at any rate met with the 
 approval of students after several years' experiment. 
 First a sitting of forty-five minutes, followed by ten or 
 fifteen minutes' rest. Next a pose of twenty minutes 
 or the same time given to a memory exercise. The 
 remainder of the sitting is occupied with ten or five 
 minute poses, these being taken last because they 
 engender a certain excitement which makes a longer pose 
 seem dull and slow. 
 
 Referring again to the question of movement, men- 
 tion may be made of the theory of Dynamic Symmetry 
 as set forth by Mr. Jay Hambidge. It is not proposed 
 to enter on a discussion of the theory here; it will pro- 
 bably provoke much discussion and controversy, but tw© 
 points of interest in drawing from the life arise out of it. 
 First it would appear that a maximum amount of move- 
 ment obtains when the figure is contained within a 
 square. If the rectangle enclosing the figure is narrower 
 than a square, the action subsides, the figure shuts up as 
 
THE FIGURE— TIME SKETCHING. 79 
 
 it were. If the rectangle on the other hand is wider than 
 a square, the action begins to partake of a creeping char- 
 acter which is emphasized as the rectangle is widened. 
 
 Secondly, the division of the enclosing rectangle 
 whatever it may be, by diagonals and other oblique lines 
 to important points give the maximum of movement 
 within that rectangle. If the directions pass to less 
 important points the action flags and weakens. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 RELATED FIGURES. 
 
 When the pupil has learned to draw a figure with 
 some sense of proportion of line and appropriate ex- 
 pression of detail, it is time to devise other exercises. 
 Too often students plod at the single figure year in and 
 out. For their compositions they take a figure from 
 their sketch book, add others, and then wonder why they 
 do not come together happily. They will not because 
 they have been seen isolated, and remain so even if a 
 number are crowded together. When we watch people 
 in real life or in the cinema, constantly their gestures 
 and movements form a link between them. In dancing, 
 which is the art of movement, the line is consciously 
 rhythmical, but in ordinary intercourse, and all the more 
 so because movements and gestures are unstudied, the 
 line expresses also emotion in varying degrees. Two 
 people meet, and their heads incline in conversation, the 
 more earnest speaker laying a hand on the other's 
 shoulder. These movements establish a sympathetic 
 line or bond of union which creates a unified and con- 
 trolling form. The speakers are not now two but one, 
 and the lines pass from one to another. In a more 
 
 80 
 

 
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 <, 
 
 
 -J " 
 
 4)i4%N 
 
 \ 
 
 1\ 
 
 •tei . ~-»S3k2.;-,(^Q 
 
 
 
 V, 
 
 X 
 
 
 
 
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 *^-««sr^7^,-j»— 
 
 I', ■ 
 
 : '-"7 
 
 -fe'tJ 
 
 F"ic.. 23. 
 
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 # 
 
 
 Fig. 24 — A chalk drawing li\ Wattcau. 'flic lines of the arms flow 
 together, conlinucel hv the lines of the drapery on the lady's shoulders. 
 One alniojt expects the lady to rise. 
 
 82 
 
RELATED FIGURES. 83 
 
 obvious case, one figure bowed in grief, and the other 
 bending sympathetically towards her, the lines flow 
 together so obviously that the idea of consolation in 
 sorrow is complete without the necessity for appropriate 
 facial expression. The lines of the figures express the 
 emotion. 
 
 In such exercises these controlling lines must be 
 sought for at an early stage. It is worse than useless to 
 'draw first one figure and then the other, for the eye is 
 then seeing the figures detached. The combination 
 must be looked for. (fig. 23 — 25). 
 
 In such associations as two figures pulling or holding 
 hands, the lines formed by the united arms and hands 
 must be drawn, and the two hands as one. 
 
 Two figures seated or standing with arms entwined 
 furnish a good instance of the controlling line. 
 
 The sympathetic relations of the feet should be 
 noted, and the variations in their position. Attention 
 should be given to the hands which in the figure in grief 
 form a cup in which the face is held, or where clasped 
 round the knees follow the shape of the latter, (fig. 
 23). Or again they form a bowl when they are used to 
 'drink from. 
 
 These exercises may be followed by combinations of 
 three or more figures. There is no need to wait for pro- 
 fessional models, for pupils in turn will be ready, for a 
 few minutes, to act their parts. 
 
 Such work will enable the student to face the uncon- 
 scious emotional gestures and combinations of real life, 
 whether sympathetic or antagonistic. 
 
 A friend once told the writer that when making 
 
84 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Studies for' a series of compositions of wrestling, so 
 violent were the movements that he had only time to 
 select a contour, say pyramidal in shape, indicating the 
 figures locked together, with perhaps a suggestion of the 
 space between the legs. Afterwards, with the aid of 
 models posed to fit into the sketch, the structure and 
 detail of the wrestlers could be examined. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 EDGE STUDY. 
 
 If a white ball be placed before a grey background, 
 the contour of the light side will tell against that grey. 
 The contour of the dark side will tell also, the back- 
 ground being a tone midway between light and dark. 
 
 Then, at two points, where the light contour melts 
 into the dark one, the outline disappears, ceases to exist 
 to normal sight, (fig. 14). Drawings or paintings of 
 objects can only be made to relieve, to take on roundness 
 or solidity of appearance by following natural lighting, 
 by noticing where the outline is lost. This is difficult to 
 see and to represent, so accustomed are students to 
 searching not for form, but for contours. 
 
 It need hardly be discussed at this stage whether the 
 achievement of such relief to the point of losing the 
 sense of the flatness of the plane on which the object is 
 'depicted, is necessary or artistic. The really vulgar 
 portraits in the galleries are those which the admiring 
 public declares to be almost "coming out" of their 
 frames. But the art student has to learn the use of all 
 weapons. For the poster he uses the broad outline 
 which reveals everything, but flattens it also. In these 
 
86 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 pages the student is not considered as composing, but as 
 striving to acquire a mastery over structure and move- 
 ment by means of the appearance, and to do this he must 
 know how far he can go in the way of realistic treatment. 
 
 Experiment will prove to the student that whenever 
 the whole contour is clearly defined, a flatness results. 
 If the figure is viewed with the light behind it, it shows 
 dark and flat; if the light is behind the spectator the 
 figure is seen all in light without shadow, and again a flat- 
 ness results. All realistic painters have used strong 
 light and shade , from Caravaggio onwards, and all such 
 have made use of this melting of the contour at the half- 
 way points. In other words a continuous outline implies 
 an incompletely expressed figure. 
 
 This paradox supplies the clue to the study of form 
 by light and shade, in its simplest terms. 
 
 The object, whether cast or living figure, should be 
 placed before a background midway in tone between the 
 light and dark, that is, equal in tone to the half tone of 
 the object. 
 
 Now in nature there are no outlines — only edges. 
 Yet one must use outlines; one cannot be always 
 smudging in backgrounds in order to reveal the form. 
 The outline is not a part of the object, nor of the back- 
 ground, but an imaginary line sensed by the eye, and re- 
 presenting the degree of contrast in tone between the 
 object and its background. This contrast can be repre- 
 sented by a line varying in intensity or even width. The 
 line takes the place of a more or less mechanical back- 
 ground tone, and gives opportunity for close edge study 
 
EDGE STUDY. 87 
 
 which is practically absent where backgrounds are 
 insisted upon. 
 
 From the character of the outline it should be 
 possible to determine the tone of the background. One 
 can see on looking at fig. 18 that the model was posed 
 before a low toned background, although this back- 
 ground has been omitted intentionally. This is ex- 
 pressed by the strength of the line where the light falls 
 on the contour, and by the softness of that part of the 
 contour in shade, which approached the background so 
 nearly in tone that a clearly drawn outline would have 
 falsified the relations. 
 
 To put backgrounds behind studies of the antique or 
 living model is to waste time better spent on edge study, 
 and confuses drawing with painting, which consists 
 essentially in spreading tone. 
 
 Drawings by students who overlook this principle of 
 expressive contour, have a vague indeterminate effect. 
 The contour of the light side is often drawn timidly and 
 faintly with the mistaken notion that any line on that side 
 is too dark. Or worse still, a hard line is drawn all 
 round the contour. In this case students are trying to 
 draw the figure by itself as if it could exist without an 
 environment, which is unthinkable. Expressive draw- 
 ing implies not only the figure but its background. All 
 other drawing is mere diagram making, very necessary at 
 times, but alien to the aim in this connexion, of realising 
 the figure as completely as direct and student-like 
 methods will allow. 
 
 The old way of simplifying the student's task was to 
 place a white screen behind the object. This was 
 
88 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 supposed to represent the whiteness of the paper drawn 
 upon, thus freeing the student from any trouble in regard 
 to the background. 
 
 But a moment's consideration will show that this 
 ruined the exercise. First, the glare of the background 
 unduly forced forward the contour in shade, which was 
 furthest from the spectator (because generally the light is 
 behind him, though to the left or right). Also the black- 
 ening of the edge by contrast destroyed the effect of 
 reflected light, which students had been taught to allow 
 for, and still did, though they saw it not. 
 
 Lastly, and most important, the emphasis of the pose 
 is determined by the way the light falls on the figure, and 
 this emphasis was destroyed by the white background, 
 the contour on the light side being rendered ineffective, 
 thus spoiling the pose, and making unity of treatment 
 impossible. 
 
 Another feature of edge study which should be men- 
 tioned is the nature of the edge, both of the light and 
 'dark areas. How shall it be drawn or painted so as to 
 express the volume of the form ? The beginner looks at 
 the edge of an object, and puts down a line accordingly. 
 But solidity or mass is not to be compassed in that way, 
 for if one looks at any round object, as a flower pot, the 
 eye is naturally attracted to the line of shade dividing the 
 light area from the dark that is, the eye forgets to look at 
 the contours. Hence in representing solidity, the 
 student should follow the action of the unbiassed eye, 
 and should not, when drawing the contours of the object, 
 
EDGE STUDY. 89 
 
 look directly at them, but at the line of shade, when these 
 contours will at once fall out of focus and blur somewhat, 
 
 Here one comes upon a very important and interest- 
 ing controversy already mentioned, which has agitated 
 art schools of all periods. Not seldom the student is 
 implored to be honest; to draw what he sees, to follow 
 nature faithfully. But before a student has worked at 
 a drawing five minutes he finds it quite impossible to 
 follow this advice, for the conventions of his materials, 
 and especially the limitations of pictorial representation, 
 restrict his efforts, and he will be wise to try to under- 
 stand these limitations. Honesty one can rule out of the 
 argument ; it is for greengrocers, not for artists, at least 
 in this connexion. 
 
 The immediate problem before the student is 
 whether he shall emphasize the edges of his object, with 
 the result that he loses the effect of roundness, the object 
 appearing as if cut out of card, or whether he shall con- 
 centrate on the volume of the object by blurring his 
 edges. The primitive Italians and Netherlandish 
 painters adopted the earlier method, and we see their 
 work to be essentially flat in spite of much pains taken 
 to model the form. Leonardo da Vinci, and those who 
 followed him, have chosen to accentuate the roundness 
 by blurring the contours. If the Venus of Velasquez in 
 the National Gallery be examined, it will be seen that the 
 contour of the cheek and shoulder has been brushed to 
 and fro so that the edge is almost lost. Sir Joshua 
 Reynolds often made edges wonderfully enveloped. 
 
 Early portraits (three-quarter view), however, show 
 the hard edge of the further cheek; consequently the 
 
90 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 nose, weakened by contrast, appears pressed against the 
 face. If the contour of the cheek be covered by the 
 hand, the nose at once relieves or comes forward. 
 
 Holbein's lines are hard because he was drawing 
 with the definite purpose of providing himself with exact 
 contours from which to paint. His drawn portraits were 
 to be translated into painted ones, and he wanted exact 
 form. The Windsor Holbeins show the contours marked 
 by tracing on to the canvas. 
 
 The moral of all this seems to be that success in 
 modelling form does not depend on keen eyesight. 
 Extreme keenness of sight is often a disadvantage to 
 young students, and not always taken into consideration 
 by teachers, whose sight is losing its first sharpness. We 
 see the result of powerful sight in Holman Hunt's 
 pictures. Doubtless he saw like that, for he could dis- 
 tinguish the moons of Jupiter with the naked eye. 
 
 Fig. 1 8 shows that the contour of a figure need not 
 consist in an unvarying line such as is produced by a 
 piece of wire. It should be noted that the expressive- 
 ness of the line is conditioned by the way the light falls 
 on the contours. Students wishing to give variety and 
 interest to their outline often accentuate it in an arbitrary 
 way, especially where bony forms crop up, without refer- 
 ence to the lighting. But natural lighting will give this 
 emphasis more truly than any invented and artificial 
 method. 
 
 Judged by this standard many careful and well con- 
 structed drawings are yet mere diagrams, because the 
 variety of the edge is disregarded. This is seen, too, in 
 cases as mentioned above where the contours of two 
 
91 
 
Fig. 2 5a — A drawing made with charcoal on Michallct. 
 An example ot variet\' of edge treatment. 
 
 9^ 
 
EDGE STUDY. 93. 
 
 forms both in light, overlap, the nearer contour being 
 delicate and perhaps scarcely visible. These delicate,, 
 sharp-edged contours demand the most refined handling.. 
 Appreciation of variety of edge may be stimulated by" 
 consideration of the dogma that "the opposite contours, 
 of an object vary in emphasis." The fault generally- 
 consists in drawing the contours say of a limb with lines, 
 of the same strength. Observation will show that they- 
 vary. Further, if two contours come together so that a Y 
 shape occurs, the three arms of the Y are never of equal- 
 strength ; the line of emphasis will ignore one arm, other- 
 wise the eye would be pinned down to the meeting point 
 of the three lines. These irregular Y's, of course, occur 
 at many points in any pose, as armpit, neck and shoulder,, 
 ankle, and various creasings and overlappings. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 ARTISTIC ANATOMY. 
 
 Artistic Anatomy, so-called, like perspective, when 
 ill- digested, often leads a student astray. Many draw- 
 ings from the figure are mere anatomical diagrams, look- 
 ing as if the model had been flayed. Fresh from their 
 books of diagrams students search the figure for anatom- 
 ical details. They even ask the model to tighten the 
 knee or the armpit, so that they may mark more definitely 
 the forms of those regions. This does not mean that 
 anatomy should not be studied, but that it should be used 
 as a key to the construction of the figure, rather than dis- 
 played for its own sake.. Moody, in his "Lectures and 
 Lessons on Art," a book now out of print, but one well 
 worth the careful study of the art student, says : — 
 
 "Intellectual work is the hardest work of all. . . . 
 Just consider, for instance, the result of avoiding the 
 effort necessary to master the position and details of 
 the ankle. The want of that knowledge will probably 
 plague you at least twice a week : it will delay your 
 work, you will get into trouble every time you draw the 
 figure, making altogether a sum total of annoyance, 
 ^unsatisfactory work and feelings a hundred times 
 
 94 
 
ARTISTIC ANATOMY. 9S 
 
 greater than the expenditure of time and thought which 
 would have been necessary to surmount the difficulty 
 at first." 
 First in importance is a clear knowledge of the bony 
 framework and its articulations. It settles the move- 
 ment and the proportions, and at the joints where the 
 bone crops up and shows almost its actual build, it 
 indicates the important accents of form by a squareness 
 and clear cut shape, which must be appreciated if the 
 drawing is to avoid wooliness. On the other hand the 
 muscular masses fill up the gaps and suggest the first 
 great lines of the pose. 
 
 All the parts of the skeleton which determine the 
 surface forms should be carefully studied, and especially 
 the shoulders and hips. The former may be described as 
 a floating girdle, for they are attached only by the collar 
 bones (to. the notches in the breastbone), the remainder 
 being free except for muscular and tendinous attach- 
 ments. Hence the comparative freedom of action, while 
 the complexity of structure, the combination of clavicle, 
 humerus and scapula, add to the difficulty of expressing 
 the forms. The hips, on the other hand, form a fixed 
 girdle, firmly attached to the backbone. The two halves of 
 the shoulder girdle can move independently, but the hip 
 girdle moves only as a whole, like a basket tilted. When 
 in a standing pose the hips are aslant, this means that the 
 model is resting the weight on the leg to the side where 
 the hip basket is higher, and therefore a vertical line 
 'drawn, say, through the pit of the neck, will pass through 
 the ankle of that leg, which slants inwards in order to 
 .support the weight. The other leg, v/hich carries little 
 
96 
 
 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 or no weight, droops 
 with the lower side of 
 the hips, hence the 
 knee of that leg is 
 lower than that of the 
 supporting leg. And 
 by way of compensa- 
 tion the head and 
 shoulders often slant 
 in the opposite direc- 
 tion, forming a series of 
 radiating lines which cross 
 the long lines of the pose at 
 right angles, and steady it. 
 (fig. 26). 
 
 The main articulations 
 may be reduced to their 
 simplest terms by a diagram 
 such as is shown in fig. i6a, 
 similar to fig. 26. Some- 
 thing like this construction 
 must form the commence- 
 ment of every drawing of 
 the figure which has any 
 claim to movement and 
 structure. All the articula- 
 tions including the should- 
 ers are represented by cross 
 lines. It is for want of the 
 study of these crossings or 
 articulations that the draw- 
 
 FlG. 26. 
 
ARTISTIC ANATOMY. 
 
 97 
 
 ings of beginners look boneless and yet wooden, for they 
 appear to have no ankles, and wrists, to say nothing of 
 hips. It should be noted especially, and the skeleton 
 largely supplies the reason, that these crossings of the 
 
 extremities are ob- 
 lique. This is seen 
 clearly in the elbow 
 and ankle. In the 
 latter the obliquity 
 is caused by the fact 
 that the inner ankle 
 is higher than the 
 outer, a matter of the 
 bony construction. 
 In the elbow the 
 slant comes from the 
 origin of the supi- 
 nators being higher 
 than those of the 
 flexors. 
 
 Fig. 26 shows 
 these slanting cross- 
 ings at an early stage 
 in the drawing. The 
 point to be borne in 
 mind is that anatom- 
 ical construction cor- 
 
 FiG. 27. 
 
 roborates right procedure in drawing the figure. 
 
 In poses with some degree of torsion as in fig. 27, 
 these cross lines, all marking the bony or muscular struc- 
 ture, radiate from a point at no great distance from the 
 
98 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 figure. The greater the movement the closer in is the 
 point of radiation. The matter has an interest for 
 students as showing a structural basis for the composition 
 of line which sometimes mystifies them. They are apt 
 to think that these rhythmical lines, whether in the 
 direction of or across the figure, are imagined by the 
 teacher, and a real service is rendered by showing them 
 cause and effect. 
 
 The old fashion of learning the muscles singly and 
 detached is answerable for much of the wrongly applied 
 anatomical drawing mentioned above. Usually they are 
 seen in groups, and should be studied as such. 
 
 Too often the only glimpse students have of the nude 
 figure in action is when the model walks to and from the 
 throne. A regular exercise should consist in the model 
 moving freely at will, the students marking the changes- 
 of form which take place. 
 
 This is not a book on artistic anatomy, for which 
 students should study the regular manuals. 
 
 An anatomical detail often misinterpreted is the 
 function of the neck muscle (sternocleido mastoid) in 
 turning the head. When the neck muscle on the right 
 contracts, the skull rotates, the mastoid process of the 
 skull being brought forward, and it follows that the head 
 is turned to the left. It is often supposed that the 
 contraction of a sterno-cleido turns the head to that side, 
 but observation of what takes place will correct the error. 
 
■^«ir"»««J**«<?=«MMi(f>?«»i'^' 
 
 Fig. 28 — A drawing with black and white chalk on gre)' Michallet paper. 
 The reticent use of the white chalk should be noted. 
 
 99 
 
Fjg. 20 — A drawing on blue paper with hlaclv and wliitc chalk by ]. M. 
 Swan. The simplicity of the work should be noted and the way the 
 white chalk is used to divide the figure into a few planes. Large areas are 
 untouched. [British Museum. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 DRAWINGS ON TONED PAPER. 
 
 Toned paper with black and white chalk is often 
 used by painters, when making studies, for carefully- 
 chosen, it provides a ready-made middle or half tone, 
 and hence saves time and labour. Especially is it suit- 
 able for drapery studies, and Lord Leighton's drawings 
 in this medium are well known. 
 
 Students of painting should use this method some- 
 times when drawing, for it fosters modelling "in the 
 light." With pencil or black chalk on white, as the tone 
 of the object approaches the tone of the paper, so work 
 has perforce to cease. That is to say, on white paper 
 most of the modelling is done on the dark side, and the 
 tendency is to leave the lighter tones more or less empty. 
 Work on toned paper is concerned as much with the light 
 passages as with the dark, and hence follows more 
 closely the method of painting. 
 
 One common error may be noted here. It is that of 
 first making a completed drawing in black on. the toned 
 paper, (and owing to its completeness the eye has sub- 
 consciously disregarded the tone of the paper and 
 assumed it to be white), afterwards using the white chalk 
 freely for the lights, with the result that all the tones are 
 falsified. 
 
 When drawing on toned paper the figure should be 
 
 lOI G2. 
 
102 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 examined in order to determine which areas may be 
 assumed to be equivalent in tone to that of the paper. 
 The black chalk may be used first to place the figure, to 
 indicate the chief darks, and to suggest the main struc- 
 ture, then the white chalk should be substituted in order 
 to place the lights. Generally the white chalk should 
 not touch the black (except for cases of special 
 emphasis), a space of plain paper being left between the 
 two, representing the tone chosen as standing for the tone 
 of paper. 
 
 Often when working on toned paper the student 
 darkens unduly the parts approaching half tone, only 
 finding at the close of the exercise that the tone of the 
 paper would have sufficed. The untouched -paper is the 
 best part of the drawing if it is in the right place and 
 corresponds with the tones of the model, (fig. 29). 
 
 In drawing from draped figures evidence should be 
 sought of the form beneath. Beginners draw the 
 drapery only, as if on a clothes horse. They sometimes 
 stop short at a sleeve, having omitted the continuity of 
 arm and hand. Even in a fully clothed figure much of 
 the form is suggested by the planes and by the pull of 
 the drapery from the points of support, this often result- 
 ing in a beautiful series of radiating curves. It should 
 be remembered that the deep parts of the folds repre- 
 sent the figure, for there the stuff rests upon it, and these 
 shapes should be carefully searched out. (fig. 28). A 
 good deal of interesting matter concerning drapery will 
 be found in Leonardo da Vinci's "Notes," and in 
 Moody's "Lectures on Art," while the subject is dealt 
 with in Lanteri's "Modelling," Vol. II. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 EARLY AND MODERN REPRESENTATION 
 
 OF FORM. 
 
 If an early painting be examined, even one so late as 
 Botticelli's Venus, certain mannerisms are noticed which 
 are of great interest to the student of form. 
 
 The painter has evidently not worked directly from 
 the model. The treatment is "sympathetic" rather 
 than the result of observation. He has perhaps drawn 
 on his reminiscences of classic sculpture, or even from 
 contemporary engravings of the nude. 
 
 Judged by modern standards, there is a lack of con- 
 struction in the figure generally, and especially is this 
 seen in the feet, which, like those in contemporary work, 
 never seem to stand firmly on the ground, perhaps 
 because extreme foreshortening forbids the clear repre- 
 sentation of all the toes, which were invariably shown. 
 All this in no way detracts from Botticelli's beauty of 
 line and suavity of form. He might be said to claim 
 kinship with the Chinese and Japanese masters, so easy 
 and fluent are his contours. 
 
 Italian Art of the Trecento and Quattrocento periods 
 exhibit generally lightly shaded forms. The expression 
 is empirical rather than that of personal observation, a 
 convention derived from wall painting. 
 
 103 
 
104 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci changed all that and formulated 
 the rules governing the expression of form by light and 
 shade. In his work are seen the "lines of shade" and 
 their soft or smoky (sfumato) appearance. He was the 
 first notable academic, and on his work the teaching of 
 light and shade, as now taught in schools of art, was 
 founded. 
 
 Since Leonardo the study of drawing has depended 
 upon "appearance." The photograph, essentially 
 light and shade as it is, and simulating the endless 
 gradations of natural lighting, has tightened the chain of 
 tradition. Consequently students are told to be truth- 
 ful, honest, to draw what they see, to copy nature — 
 impossible task and misleading advice. Moral issues 
 are needlessly dragged in. The main thing is for 
 students to be artists. But if the test of appearance be 
 conceded, if the object with its environment is to be 
 represented, what are the limits of the convention which' 
 is called drawing? 
 
 First it is clear that it is quite impossible to show on 
 a plane surface all the gradations of light occurring on a 
 curved surface. In attempting to do so the student 
 merely deceives himself, loses his way, and consequently 
 all profit from his study of drawing in line and tone. 
 
 The great realistic painters, such as the Dutch and 
 the Spaniards, chose a few tones. They painted in the 
 general tone, and into this they brushed the dark and the 
 light tones. On the latter they placed the high light, 
 and in the dark the reflected light. Their practice shows 
 that these few tones are the essential ones. 
 
 Drawings made with the stump are specially open to 
 
EARLY AND MODERN REPRESENTATION OF FORM. loj 
 
 the objection that by continuous working, students 
 delude themselves with the idea that they are making a 
 complete expression of the tones of the subject, whereas 
 the fictitious relief, apparently destroying the plane 
 surface of the paper, is a vulgar and meretricious 
 quality, crushing the student's powers of artistic appre- 
 ciation. 
 
 Students should understand that all drawing is a 
 convention, and that it is impossible fully to realise any 
 object, except by means of a trick, (the history of Art is 
 full of instances, from the grapes of Appelles onwards), 
 and should be urged not to cofy the object, but to 
 express those essentials of form which they can discern. 
 In a sense the more they try to make their drawings like, 
 the more they cloud and confuse their artistic intelli- 
 gence. Every drawing done should be an artistic effort, 
 and made with artistic intention, for drawing cannot be 
 divorced from art. 
 
 This disposes at once of the old-fashioned practice 
 of outline drawing. Outline or contour drawing, such 
 as the outlines of ornament (with sections) drawn by art 
 architect for a carver to follow, is a convention used pro- 
 fessionally, but as study, pursued for long periods, it is 
 destructive of interest in the appearance of things. 
 
 Nothing written above is intended to relieve the 
 student from the responsibility of taking his drawing as 
 far as possible. We have only to look at the great 
 masters, at the early work, say, of Velasquez, 
 Rembrandt, Franz Hals, and at the drawings of 
 Holbein, to see what an amount of eyesight they put: 
 into their work, what an incredible amount of pains they 
 
io6 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 took with mere details of dress, etc. Velasquez spent 
 himself in studying the effect of light on homely pots 
 and pans, to a degree which hardly any modern student 
 has felt necessary. A friend of the writer once reported 
 a conversation with a great living sculptor and decorator 
 who, speaking of the modern pseudo-decorative effect 
 obtained by the slurring of detail, declared that he would 
 exhibit the very pores of the skin on his figures if it 
 could be done. He meant that the most realistic mode 
 of expression is possible in the hands of a true artist, 
 and not only not incompatible with but enhancing the 
 'decorative effect he may wish to secure. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 DRAWING FROM MEMORY. 
 
 Many professional artists from necessity have had 
 to train themselves in drawing from memory long after 
 their student days were over. The translation of the 
 writings of Lecocq de Boisbaudran has had some share 
 in the interest now taken by schools of art in the subject. 
 Lecocq especially emphasized the necessity for the 
 visual retention of a definite form, and drawing being 
 taught in those days from flat copies, he naturally used 
 them, thus obtaining the clear precise statement of fact 
 which he desired. His first exercise was the outline of a 
 nose, and from this his teaching extended over the whole 
 field of representative and imaginative art. 
 
 Memory drawing as practised at present often takes 
 lines quite other than those of Lecocq, sometimes 
 missing his basis of definite form. Pupils are some- 
 times shown an object of intricate construction for a few 
 moments, and are then expected to reproduce it from 
 memory. They may have looked at it superficially, but 
 they have not really examined it and made themselves 
 thoroughly acquainted with its proportions and 
 structure. Consequently after their memory vision has 
 
 107 
 
io8 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 become dim, they elaborate their so-called drawing from 
 memory, with imaginary details. They must know the 
 object intimately before they can draw it from memory; 
 its construction, and especially its proportions, should 
 be ascertained; it should be scrutinized from various 
 points of view, and, if need be, handled. 
 
 A class of students drawing from memory gives the 
 art teacher some puzzling moments. The slackest art 
 student is often found to be far ahead of his fellows in 
 the power of visualizing, and reproduces seemingly with- 
 out effort, while students with more developed sense of 
 form may find the memory exercise very difficult. 
 
 Galton, in his "Inquiries into Human Faculty," tells 
 how in a "series of queries related to the illumination, 
 definition and colouring of the mental image" addressed 
 to "lOo men, at least half of whom were distinguished in 
 science or in other fields of intellectual work," he asked 
 them to visualize "the breakfast table." The answers 
 showed that while some saw the scene perfectly clearly, 
 in full light and colour, with the objects so sharply 
 defined that they could, as they said, have drawn them 
 had they the power, others experienced gaps in their 
 memory, a dimness of illumination, an indistinctness of 
 form, while a number would not admit that they had any 
 power at all of vizualizing. 
 
 Whether the power of drawing from memory be a 
 "gift" or not, there is no doubt that the best results are 
 obtained when memory work is regarded not as merely 
 part of the study of drawing, but as a system in itself, 
 such as, for instance, that practised by the Japanese. 
 (figs. 30, 30A). 
 
DRAWING FROM MEMORY. 109 
 
 The late Joseph Crawhall was an example of a train- 
 ing in art exclusively through memory work. His early 
 studies were directed by his father, who taught him to 
 observe, and then make records from memory. India- 
 rubber was not allowed, and attempts, one after another, 
 were thrown aside until the desired impression was 
 secured. All through life this habit of seeking after a 
 completely artistic expression of his visual memory, per- 
 sisted, and his friends have told their sorrow at seeing 
 him destroy beautiful drawings, which, however, lacked 
 some quality he sought. His desire to express himself 
 was spontaneous, and overwhelming when it manifested 
 itself, and often at the most inconvenient times. Another 
 interesting feature was the sudden emergence of impres- 
 sions which had lain dormant for a long period. One of 
 his latest drawings, the subject of which was an episode 
 from the Spanish bull-ring, was made fifteen years after 
 he had actually witnessed such a scene, (fig. 31). 
 
 His choice of subjects, animals and birds, and of his 
 medium of expression, watercolour on linen, show him 
 to have been much influenced by the Japanese. It is 
 significant that at his death his studio was empty save 
 for two partly finished drawings. There were no 
 records of study, no bundles of notes, and no stacks of 
 'drawings, for as mentioned above, he destroyed all 
 imperfect work. His drawings are hard to see, no public 
 galleries having acquired any, but a good many repro- 
 ductions of his work can be seen scattered among the 
 volumes of the "Studio." 
 
 But while Crawhall may have been a case of a special 
 gift, it is evident that all art students can profit by a 
 
no DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 training in memory, and gain from it certain important 
 benefits. 
 
 Whistler is an instance of an artist who trained him- 
 self to draw from memory, and Menpes' account of the 
 way he studied his nocturnes on the spot with a friend, 
 turned his back on the scene, and described the effect; 
 kept it before his consciousness during the evening, 
 and painted the picture the following morning, makes 
 very interesting reading. We may almost consider him 
 a pupil of Lecocq, some of whose students he knew. 
 
 Millet is another example of a painter, who lounged 
 about Barbizon, apparently the laziest man there, but all 
 the time absorbing the form and spirit of the peasant life 
 around him. Afterwards in his studies he "squeezed 
 the sponge" and produced those paintings, of which the 
 simplicity of the composition, the largeness of the forms 
 and the unity of the whole, make it certain that they were 
 not produced out of doors under an umbrella, and amid 
 the distractions of details and variety, which invariably 
 occur when one is painting from nature. 
 
 When one looks at the drawings and paintings of the 
 Chinese and Japanese — all memory work — one is 
 amazed at the intimate character of the expression of 
 form. The familiarity with the structure extends to the 
 minutest detail. Early exercises in memory drawing 
 should take note of this quality and insist on the 
 exercises being of objects with which the students are 
 familiar, or which they can examine closely. The pro- 
 cedure of examination might follow some such steps as 
 these : — (i) general proportions; (2) type form, as cube 
 or cylinder, on which the object is based ; (3) main line of 
 
DRAWING FROM MEMORY. iii 
 
 enclosing shape; (4) construction in detail of the object. 
 
 Quite another type of exercise consists in asking the 
 students to visualize a familiar object, which, however, 
 is not produced at the time. An interesting exercise is 
 one which Mr. Catterson Smith has initiated, consisting 
 of drawing with the eyes closed. The exercise allows 
 the following of the mental image by the hand without 
 the embarrassment of seeing how far short the drawing 
 comes. Certainly this method gives good results in 
 composition, the movement being generally animated 
 and rhythmical. 
 
 In drawing the figure from memory, it will be well to 
 take into account its powers of movement. Most really 
 interesting pictorial material is evanescent, moving, 
 shifting. The clouds chase one another across the sky, 
 birds fly, animals walk, trot or gallop, water flows, breaks 
 into foam, or marshals in waves, people meet and 
 separate, all the time constantly moving. If drawing is 
 attempted in presence of this living cinematographic 
 picture, too often one finds one's sketchbook full of 
 shreds and patches. One is lucky to secure a line 
 suggesting the movement without the detail. 
 
 A training in memory drawing of the right sort is 
 wanted, and it should consist in approximating the con- 
 ditions to those of the world outside the studio. 
 
 The life model is posing, say for time sketching. 
 Every period of such work should include at least one 
 memory exercise, and it is well to consider what will be 
 most suitable. All art students will remember attack- 
 ing a pose which captivated them, but which the model 
 -was unable to keep. It is these poses full of action 
 
112 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 which are required for the memory exercise. The 
 model should be required to take up a vigorous attitude, 
 such as throwing, running or thrusting, where the limbs 
 and torse are extended to furnish a fine general line, a 
 pose which, as a rule, is the despair of the life room, but 
 in this case to be kept for a few seconds only. The 
 student meanwhile watches the figure, searching the 
 pose for the long line which shall establish the propor- 
 tions and movement of the drawing, (fig. 32). 
 
 The model then rests, while the students seek to 
 express their first generalization. The pose may need 
 to be resumed several times before a firm foundation for 
 the drawing is obtained. During repetitions of the 
 action the students examine the construction, and 
 especially the placing of the feet if the model is stand- 
 ing. Even the light and shade, so far as it explains the 
 structure, may be memorized. The exercise has the 
 further advantage of forcing the students to draw on 
 right constructive lines. This method also secures 
 good proportion, for working on the right principle,, 
 from big to little, the proportions are seized from the 
 commencement, and are often better from this point of 
 view than those of drawings made with the model sitting 
 continuously. 
 
 Another advantage is that the student sees what is 
 too rarely found in the life room, the model in strong" 
 action. When a model is put up for a long period, the 
 pose necessarily degenerates, because other muscles are 
 brought into play. An experienced sitter is often an 
 adept at making slight compensating alterations in the 
 pose. With a view to assisting the model, aids such as 
 

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 ings' of every natural or fashioned object existing in their country. It is 
 see what an asset this is to a system of memory drawing. The west 
 is without such a legacy. 
 
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 114 
 
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DRAWING FROM MEMORY. 117 
 
 a wedge placed under the heel when off the ground, are 
 often used, or a hand in the act of pushing is supported, 
 both cases a complete contradiction of the original idea. 
 Students, seeing these devices used, become imbued 
 with the notion that the model posed is a fixed object, 
 and feel aggrieved if they detect the slightest devia- 
 tion. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 ANIMALS. 
 
 Animals, including birds and insects, are excellent 
 material for study, because, by reason of their rapid 
 movements, they quicken the eye. The student who 
 can follow the changes in position which even a captive 
 dove makes, will find the movements of the larger 
 quadrupeds and of human beings comparatively slow 
 and easy to record. 
 
 The bird's plumage is at once a complexity and a 
 simplification. The feathers, by reason of their con- 
 tinuous overlap, unify the contour, but, on the other 
 hand, tend to hide the bodily structure, which, however, 
 may be discerned by careful watching. 
 
 A common dove, which requires only a small box or 
 cage, a handful of dari, or other seed corn, daily, and 
 lives for years in captivity, apparently in perfect health, 
 is one of the easiest of creatures to keep. It has none 
 of the nervousness of most other domesticated birds, 
 and may be fondled and examined without fright or 
 suffering. In its plumage it is a model of the beauty of 
 order, and its movements being more sedate than those 
 of smaller birds, render it eminently suitable for study. 
 (fig. 33). 
 
 118 
 
'yiMnA^-^ 
 
 Fig. 32 — A memory drawing of a figure in strong action. The upper 
 
 figure indicates the movement by establishing the long curve running down 
 
 the trunk and right leg. 
 
 119 
 
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ANIMALS. 
 
 IZI 
 
 It should first be impressed upon the student that 
 birds in their structure approximate to that of animals — 
 are more like than unlike. The wing, for instance, is a 
 specialized arm, and if a dove is handled, the humerus, 
 radius, wrist and thumb can be detected. The butt of 
 
 the wing corresponds with the human wrist, but it is 
 capable of doubling or flexing more fully than the latter, 
 so that the bird when at rest can pack the wing into 
 a small compass, the humerus, forearm and hand taking 
 the form of a Z. The hand and fingers have coalesced, 
 providing attachments for the strong pinions or 
 primaries which beat the air; the secondaries, softer 
 and weaker in structure, grow from the fore-arm and the 
 
122 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 so-called scapulars from the humerus. The bases of 
 the long feathers are covered, by smaller plumes or 
 coverts, the whole being bound strongly together by 
 ligaments, so that the removal of the flight feathers from 
 the wing of a large bird demands great force. 
 
 Especially should it be noted when handling a bird, 
 that the feathers are not distributed all over the body 
 but occur in tracts, leaving naked areas. If the dove be 
 turned over carefully and its breast feathers blown 
 aside, the large area of the breast, void of feathers, will 
 be seen. Again all the feathers of the upper surface, 
 with the exception of the smaller wing coverts, overlap 
 like the tiles of a roof, so that the uppermost feather 
 might be said to be that next its beak and the lowest the 
 outermost tail feather. As regards the wing, it should 
 be noted that the first primary is the lowest in point of 
 overlapping, and if one watches a bird close its wings 
 the secondaries will be seen folding over the primaries. 
 In examining the living wing care should be taken to 
 hold it by the wrist, and not by the tips of the flight 
 feathers, as a sudden movement on the part of the bird 
 might dislocate a joint. The elbow may be distinctly 
 felt on the reverse side of the wing, but is never seen 
 from above. The thumb may be felt, and its little 
 group of feathers noted, (fig. 34). 
 
 What is known as the leg or shank is a specialized 
 foot, the joint above corresponding with the human 
 ankle. The knee cap may be felt higher up under the 
 skin of the flank. 
 
 The back claw is more like the human thumb than 
 the big toe, acting as it does in opposition. It should 
 
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ANIMALS. 125 
 
 be noticed that this claw has two joints only, counting 
 its articulation with the foot, the second claw three joints, 
 the third four, and the fourth or outside claw five joints. 
 This is usually the smallest and weakest digit, like the 
 human little toe. 
 
 The neck of the bird commonly takes an S shape, 
 slipping in and out of a notch in the sternum. When at 
 ease the S is emphasized with a corresponding fulness 
 in the neck, while when alarmed the neck is stretched 
 the S losing its curvature and the neck its fulness. As 
 everyone knows who has carved a fowl, the lower back 
 or dorsal area of, a bird is determined by a fixed bony 
 framework, and hence is quite incapable of change of 
 shape. 
 
 The anatomical structure of mammals corresponds 
 more closely with that of man. As in birds, however, 
 the hands and feet are specialized. What is called the 
 knee of the foreleg of the horse corresponds with the 
 human wrist, the hock of the hind leg being analagous 
 with the heel of man. As in man the shoulder girdle is 
 connected with the trunk mainly by muscular attach- 
 ments. Hence the horse jumping off with the force 
 afforded by the bony continuity of the trunk, and pelvis, 
 lands with an impact of, say, four tons, on its fore feet, 
 which, by reason of the elasticity of the attachment of 
 the shoulders to the trunk, sustain the shock without 
 injury. 
 
 This freedom of the shoulder girdle shows itself very 
 markedly in loose limbed creatures like the cat when 
 walking, the slinging of the body between the front legs 
 causing it to sway. When a fore foot is advanced the 
 
126 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 shoulder on that side is depressed, because the foreleg on 
 the other side is supporting the weight, the arrangement 
 reminding one of the slant of the hip-basket when a 
 person rests the weight on one leg. (fig. 35). In the 
 case of broad backed animals as the horse, when a hind 
 leg is advanced or raised from the ground the tilt of the 
 pelvis is very pronounced. 
 
 When studying quadrupeds in motion, the student 
 should first try to represent the walk of a slowly moving 
 animal like the cow, which uses its limbs exactly as a 
 crawling child would do. A hind leg moves forward 
 followed immediately by the foreleg on the same side. 
 Then the other hind leg moves, followed by its foreleg. 
 (fig. 35). 
 
 Manuals of comparative anatomy should be con- 
 sulted for detailed statements of the bony and muscular 
 structures. Here it will suffice to point out that just as 
 in man the arm is continuous with the shoulder and the 
 leg with the hip, so with quadrupeds. The legs should 
 not be considered merely as those parts which protrude 
 from the trunk, for the foreleg includes the shoulder 
 blade, which moves with it, and similarly the hind leg is 
 involved with the pelvis. In both cases structural lines 
 reach to the back. (Fig. 35). 
 
 In the case of shaggy and hairy animals like the bear 
 and wolf the set of the hair and the influence of the hair 
 whorls should be studied. 
 
 Speaking generally the mental attitude of the 
 student is often shown by the too irregular lines of his 
 drawings of animals. He aims at depicting a large 
 content of forms, where he should look for controlling 
 
ANIMALS. 127 
 
 lines, orderly arrangement and structure. This is 
 especially true in regard to birds and insects, creatures 
 which fly. The power of flight implies regularity and 
 symmetry. Not seldom a drawing of a bird purporting 
 to be alive, shows, by its raggedness, and by the feathers 
 sticking out in odd places, that it has been drawn from a 
 stuffed specimen. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 LANDSCAPE. 
 
 Drawing from still life from the living figure, and 
 from the antique, gives practice in construction, line and 
 tone, but these subjects all suffer from the defect of 
 being relatively small. When students work out of 
 doors, whether at buildings or landscape, new problems 
 crowd upon them. The difficulties of estimating relative 
 proportions, of, as it were, dilating the eye to embrace a 
 large object such as a tree or tower, have to be grappled 
 with, as also the question where one has to begin, what 
 area is to be taken in, and whether the angle of vision is 
 to be wide or narrow. For example. Degas, in his 
 interiors with dancers, embraced a large area, so that one 
 feels oneself amongst the figures, whereas Corot kept his 
 figures much of a size, that is, he surveyed the scene from 
 a distance. Then there is the difficulty of aerial per- 
 spective, as it is called, quite wrongly, the weakened 
 accent and blurred detail of distant forms as compared 
 with those nearer the eye. A distant cow, for instance, 
 should not be drawn as a foreground object in miniature. 
 At a certain distance the legs and horns disappear. 
 Lastly, there is the more prosaic but immediately press- 
 
LANDSCAPE. " 129 
 
 ing problem of the vanishing of receding parallels of 
 building, etc., especially those above the eye. 
 
 For discipline in all these matters, buildings afford 
 excellent material. Turner, by his early studies of 
 country mansions and ruins, laid the foundation of his 
 facility in handling masses of architecture. 
 
 It has often been remarked that the most difficult 
 thing to draw out of doors is the earth's surface — the 
 horizontal plane. Upright things are comparatively 
 easy. Houses, trees, mountains and people correspond 
 in position with the vertical plane on which in theory one 
 is drawing, but fields, roads, rivers, clouds, flights of 
 birds, etc., at right angles to this plane are apt to give 
 trouble. The bias of vision causes such objects to be 
 drawn as if they were oblique planes sloping upwards to 
 a high, vanishing line. Clouds suffer especially, and a 
 "vertical sky" is very common in student's work. 
 
 In this connexion a flock of sheep would be a good 
 test of a student's power to depict a horizontal surface. 
 Their backs form a level plane which persists although 
 the individual elements move to and fro. Anton Mauve 
 and Jacque drew sheep well constructed, both anatomic- 
 ally and in the mass. 
 
 In reference to this question of the representation of 
 the horizontal plane, it should be noted that ancient art, 
 such as the Egyptian tomb paintings and Assyrian bas 
 reliefs, ignored it in favour of the processional form of 
 composition, in which the feet rest on what corresponds 
 with the ground line of formal perspective. One often 
 finds children doing the same thing; their figures walk 
 along the bottom edge of the paper, the ground plane 
 
130 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 being assumed. Some of the great Italian decorators 
 adopted this device, which gave dignity and loftiness to 
 their compositions. It is to be seen in Mantegna's 
 "Caesar's Triumph," at Hampton Court. 
 
 One of the most fruitful causes of a failure to obtain 
 horizontality is beginning the foreground too close to the 
 eye. Corot should be studied in this respect, for, as 
 remarked above, he generally began his foreground some 
 distance ahead. In this way his figures are much of a 
 size without the enormous disproportion between fore- 
 ground and middle distance figures, which constantly 
 startle us in modern work, and which the layman instinct- 
 ively resents, — and rightly, because such work betrays a 
 failure to understand the necessity of a convention of 
 representation. 
 
 Art students too often think of landscape not as 
 material for study of form and composition, but as a mere 
 sketching ground. Incidentally they add to their difficul- 
 ties by working outdoors only in fine weather, and gen- 
 erally in July and August, choosing also the middle 
 hours of the day. They should remember Corot, who, 
 soon after the sun had risen, shut up his painting box, 
 remarking that the beauty of the scene had vanished. 
 Painting in bright sunlight and heat tax the powers of a 
 well-trained artist, but these very conditions lend them- 
 selves to drawing, to a certain precision' and fixity of 
 form, and yet few art students are seen drawing out of 
 doors, compared with the numbers sketching with water 
 colour. 
 
 Masters of landscape have studied out of doors with 
 the point from Claude onwards. If composition is the 
 
LANDSCAPE. 13 r 
 
 theme, washes of grey or black will give opportunity for 
 study, which the gay water colour pigments the student 
 loves to dip in do not allow. They divert his attention 
 from the fundamental masses of his composition. Such 
 material as trees, rocks, the surface of water, rough or 
 smooth, the varying aspects of cloud systems, often con- 
 fuse the student because its appearance, while based on 
 well-defined structural laws, yet in its apparent irregular- 
 ity of contour, or its f ugitiveness, presents great difficul- 
 ties, and he often fails to discern the underlying structure 
 and order. But if the student is to realize the meaning 
 of draughtmanship, which, however, is of no value unless 
 one has something to say, a message to express, all 
 visible natural phenomena are profitable exercises. 
 
 The landscapist, for instance, must make himself 
 intimately acquainted with tree structure, must know 
 one species from another, and must devote much time to 
 drawing rather than painting, because by drawing one 
 arrives at a clearer analysis of structure, the bones, or 
 branching structure as seen in winter, the way this is 
 clothed in summer by foliage, the masses of which have 
 a characteristic form for each species. Even the kind of 
 stroke by which the edges of the masses are expressed 
 must be sought, for example, the saw-like edge of the oak 
 or the more lobate edge of the walnut or horse chestnut. 
 The old drawing books of trees were not so much off the 
 mark, though now considered out-of-date when they 
 began their study of tree forms with a page of scribbled 
 foliage — a recipe as it were for each tree, but which the 
 student will arrive at as a result of his own striving. 
 
 The study of rocks, hills and mountains, of reflec- 
 
132 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 tions in water, and the forms of waves and tumbling 
 water must be studied by the same searching eye, always 
 watching for structure and orderliness of form. Ruskin's 
 "Modern Painters" contains much that is of great value 
 in this respect and, apart from its art philosophy, should 
 be studied for its practical art teaching. Ruskin was a 
 great art teacher, and his exercises were always well con- 
 ceived. 
 
 This is not a manual of perspective, and indeed 
 students who use their eyes, and occasionally hold up 
 their paper to cover the scene they are working from, will 
 not make outrageous mistakes. 
 
 Much of what is known as parallel perspective is 
 worse than useless, but a course of formal perspective on 
 common-sense lines, the conditions approximating to 
 those of ordinary vision and including reflections and 
 shadows, will be of the greatest assistance, because the 
 student's attention will be drawn to the broad planes 
 which form the surfaces of the earth, sea, and sky. These 
 planes being the groundwork of pictorial composition 
 perspective enables the student to define their relations 
 and interpenetration, under the simplest conditions. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 PLANT FORM. 
 
 Mr. R. G. Hatton, in a passage in one of his books, 
 speaks of the difficulty he finds in conveying to his pupils 
 his own sense of the peculiar beauty of flowers — a beauty 
 all their own and quite distinct from that of children or 
 women. 
 
 Students' drawings of plants often betray their lack 
 of appreciation of the beauty of the form they think they 
 are depicting. Like trees and shrubs, they are invested, 
 by a careless eye, with the same untidy irregularity. Yet 
 this is merely the superficial view. If we consider the 
 delicacy of a seedling, so frail and so liable to all sorts 
 of accident, the wonder is not that it is irregular, but that 
 a plant's appearance is in any way orderly and beautiful. 
 Exposed to a careless foot, cold winds, attacks of insects 
 or plant parasites, and, above all, to the accidental de- 
 velopment caused by varying distribution of light, yet it 
 always shows itself true to the laws of its growth, 
 arranges itself according to its order among plants, and 
 in spite of caterpillar holes or broken stems it succeeds, 
 for only a careless eye fails to see this order, and beauty 
 of growth, which we call structure. 
 
 133 
 
134 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 A plant in flower may be compared with a beautiful 
 woman putting on her most alluring raiment, and cer- 
 tainly to succeed in expressing this beauty we must allow 
 the plant personality, almost we must imagine that we 
 ourselves are plants, that we desire to ignore the ravages 
 of insects, etc., so that we may see the flower as it desires 
 to be. 
 
 To ensure some measure of success in securing order- 
 liness, we must understand that the method of drawing 
 previously used is here of the same value. It is drawing 
 bit by bit, flower, stalk, leaves, as they happen to come, 
 that produces irregularity and ugliness; and unfortu- 
 nately flowers lend themselves to this method or want of 
 it. The plant rather invites a separate scrutiny of its 
 parts and seems to remain quite like a model sitting 
 passively, prepared for a long pose. It should be noted, 
 however, that the flower is not really passive, that it 
 exhibits energy of growth in all its structure, in the un- 
 folding of its leaves and flowers, in the new growth from 
 the axils and in the line or curve of its stems, which varies 
 in each species, (fig. 38). 
 
 This energy in the most delicate of plants is often 
 unheeded. For instance, the springing forth of the petals 
 from their base is often rendered with a slack curve quite 
 unlike the vigorous form of the corolla which the flower 
 reveals, just as in the case of human action we have seen 
 that often the drawing makes it tamer and more inclining 
 to the passive. In this connexion Japanese drawings anjd 
 prints should be studied. Their renderings of the chry- 
 santhemum, for example, have all the vigour and move- 
 ment that can be desired. The petals unfold and twist. 
 
PLANT FORM. 135 
 
 and yet show the subordinating power of radiation. A 
 student's drawing of the same flower often misses this, 
 the dominant impression being that of slack untidyness. 
 
 Therefore, as the first strokes of a drawing of the 
 human figure should show its inclination, and the direc- 
 tions of the torse and limbs, so here the characteristic line 
 of stem and general contour of mass of foliage or flowers 
 should first be set down. (figs. 36 — 38). Mr. Walter 
 Crane once called this the "invisible" line, to which the 
 blossoms or leaves conformed. It is a remarkable fact 
 that if the hand be passed over the flowers or leaves of a 
 plant, it describes a curve varying according to the type, 
 exemplifying the law of growth that parts of a living 
 structure tend to merge into a single form. The authority 
 just mentioned was fond of drawing a bunch of downy 
 ducklings squatting together in the farmyard, producing 
 in the jnass a strong resemblance to a full-grown duck. 
 The rounded lines of the elm and chestnut produced by 
 myriads of small leaf forms, and a similar curve formed 
 in winter by the leafless twigs are further examples of the 
 law. 
 
 Given a drawing of a plant commenced with main 
 structural lines, it should proceed to the expression of the 
 details in the same manner. The groups of leaves being 
 set down, each leaf may be seen to have its main shape, 
 no matter how many lobes or divisions into which its edge 
 breaks up. Each flower, too, has its type form, often 
 cup-shaped, like the buttercups and wild roses, and no 
 matter how tormented by wind, etc., the separate petals, 
 nor how irregularly they are turned or twisted, the main 
 lines of growth should be carefully looked for, if one 
 
136 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 dared to say it, a drawing of a plant should at the com- 
 mencement be more orderly and regular in its forms 
 than the plant appears. 
 
 A^ to a knowledge of botanical structure, it may be as 
 valuable to the student as artistic anatomy when drawing 
 from the figure, though, as Lewis Day once wrote of 
 plant drawing, if the eyes are well used the structure will 
 not go far wrong. 
 
 For purposes of study of form, how far should one 
 take a drawing? There is some difference of opinion 
 here, but one may say that the limit is reached when the 
 student's observation fails him. One sees sometimes 
 plant drawing full of shading that is not so much the 
 result of observation as of industry. 
 
 Drawing from the plant in outline is an attempt to 
 express the form as it may be required for purposes of 
 design. But this flat, would-be decorative treatment, 
 defeats itself, for such a drawing is of use only for cer- 
 tain kinds of work — flat pattern. A study can never be 
 bodily appropriated for design purposes. Every etcher 
 knows that his drawing must contain much more than the 
 needle can use. 
 
 Therefore the suggestion is made here that the plant 
 drawing instead of being expressed by outline merely, 
 however careful and deliberate, should be carried as far 
 as the student's powers allow, first because as an exercise 
 it is beneficial, showing what degree of refinement and 
 detailed structure is possible in a drawing, and secondly 
 because the more completely a student expresses his 
 drawing, the more likely is he to have mastered the 
 
Fig. 37 — ^This sketch of a branch of the tulip tree shows that leaves 
 apparently irregular and wayward in arrangement, conform to underlying 
 rhythmical shapes, in this case ellipses. The flower is beautifully cup-shaped. 
 
 '37 
 
Pic. 38 — ^These sketches of plants show that each species has its own curve 
 or line of growth, too often disregarded by the designer. 
 
 .38 
 
PLANT FORM. 139 
 
 Structure of the plant, and the more useful will the draw- 
 ing be for reference. 
 
 Design and composition can be treated here only inci- 
 dentally, but it may be said that the principles underly- 
 ing these studies, while they may be discovered in all 
 natural form, may perhaps be seen most clearly in 
 plant form. The principles of repetition, contrast, 
 radiation, continuity of line and variety are all clearly 
 exemplified, which perhaps accounts for the instinctive 
 way in which assent is given to its appeal to the sense of 
 beauty, and the general acceptance of plant form as the 
 universal motive for design. 
 
 To take one principle, that of radiation, as an in- 
 stance, it will be noted how the lines of the plant seem 
 consciously, as it were, to obey this law, which is clearly 
 seen in the arrangement of the stems, flowers, leaves, etc. 
 The structure takes cognizance of all the principles, but 
 the plant seems to acknowledge radiation as its first law 
 of beauty in form. 
 
 Speaking generally the student of plant form is apt 
 to produce snippets of detail rather than a carefully com- 
 posed rendering. Without taking liberties with the 
 plant the space at one's disposal and the arrangement of 
 the forms on the page should be carefully considered. 
 Every drawing should be an exercise in composition. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 DRAWING AS A PREPARATION FOR 
 PAINTING. 
 
 "Make a careful drawing before commencing to 
 colour," is a maxim art students hear very often, yet in 
 «pite of it (or because of it ?) the advice does not always 
 or often ensure success. It may be conceded, nay 
 demanded, that the study of colour by painting must be 
 guarded by careful search after form, without which 
 colour can hardly be said to exist, and it will be well to 
 ■discuss what constitutes a useful preparation for paint- 
 ing. The difficulty which confronts a student is that for 
 this groundwork, he must, as a rule, use an implement 
 other than the brush, thus dividing the work into two 
 stages, first a drawing made with a point, then a painting 
 with a brush. With charcoal or pencil one is seduced 
 into doing the sort of work characteristic of the imple- 
 ment. Assuming the exercise to be a portrait in oil, a 
 more or less complete expression of the model is often 
 made with charcoal, pencil, or chalk, outlines of features, 
 etc., being firmly drawn, outlines which one is dismayed 
 to find, disappear under the first broad strokes of the 
 "brush, or if one firmly resolves to keep within one's 
 -edges, the paint shows hard and meagre at the edges, 
 
 140 
 
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 142 
 
DRAWING AS A PREPARATION FOR PAINTING. 145 
 
 and, on the canvas being held up to the light, the con- 
 tours appear as haloes surrounding the forms, indicating 
 an absence of paint, and consequently a poor way of 
 painting, a wretched technique. 
 
 Now it is precisely along those contours that much of 
 the work lies. Here are the "passages" of colour, where 
 tone and colour change or pass across. The student 
 should weld his edges, here melting into a broad envelop- 
 ment, there being brought sharply together. In the 
 Venus of Velasquez as already mentioned, the contours 
 of cheek and shoulder are blurred, whereas in passages 
 round the knees the edges are well defined, because 
 these areas are more sharply focused. 
 
 Therefore, if the student is interested in the painting 
 of his edges, it will be seen that a preparatory drawing in 
 another medium may be a positive hindrance. Further, 
 if he concentrates too early on the details, his planes will 
 suffer. Whether the painting is to be finished "au 
 premier," or in successive stages matters not, the fact 
 remains that a detailed initial drawing of the forms is 
 worse than useless. Nothing written here, however, 
 must be seized upon as an excuse for haste or careless- 
 ness ; the placing made with charcoal should be carefully 
 considered, and the strokes dusted out if need be, until 
 lines significant of the planes, and showing the general 
 direction of the forms and their proportion one to 
 another have been settled. This is not easy if the 
 student, as is often the case, is gloating over the 
 "portrait," which should be achieved, however, by right 
 method and not consist in tips for securing likeness. 
 Especially should the torse be considered. It is in work- 
 
144 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 ing out these broad planes that the student really learns 
 to paint : for, with the background, they afford ample 
 space wherein to wield the brush. The planes, of course, 
 are to be seen in the head also, but they are smaller and 
 more complicated. Unfortunately, students are not 
 seldom so preoccupied with the portrait that the torse 
 receives but a small share of attention. It is perhaps the 
 desire to make a portrait rather than to learn to paint that 
 brings about the distressing medley of colours on face 
 and body often seen on the beginner's canvas. Colour, 
 instead of being united, is isolated, in spots of many 
 hues, unrelated, like a patchwork quilt. But the study 
 of colour, like that of drawing, should concern itself first 
 with the big facts. The novice fails to see that every 
 person has a complexion varying in each individual case, 
 and showing not only in the face, but in the hands and 
 throughout the body. Whatever variations are made in 
 local colour should be carefully considered in relation to 
 this general hue. Hence the value of painting from the 
 human figure, giving as it does practice in generaliza- 
 tions in regard to colour, and in looking at colour in the 
 mass, just as in drawing, it demands search for main 
 directions and chief planes to which the detail should be 
 subordinated. 
 
 When a study for oil painting is being prepared, 
 charcoal should first be used to search out the com- 
 position, the relations of the masses and the directions of 
 the forms, all details being disregarded, (fig. 39). This 
 can then be lightly dusted off, so as to leave no 
 extraneous matter on the canvas, and a brush dipped in 
 umber and rubbed on the palette until nearly dry, may 
 
DRAWING AS A PREPARATION FOR PAINTING. 145 
 
 be employed to fix the main forms, and carry the prepara- 
 tion a stage further. The brush should be dragged over 
 the surface so as not to fill up the tooth of the canvas with 
 paint. This broad edge suggests envelopment and dis- 
 courages tight painting. If desired, a clean brush 
 dipped in turpentine may be used to sharpen the contour 
 where contrast is required. That is, the whole of the 
 passages may be studied in line before painting begins. 
 
 It is however in water colour that the evil effects of a 
 bad preparation are most clearly seen. The drawing is 
 done according to tradition with the lead pencil, the 
 seductive influence of which leads the student to make a 
 study comflete in itself, the addition of colour resulting 
 in a muddled and inartistic performance. This con- 
 fusion comes from making a sharp distinction between 
 drawing and painting, as earlier it has been seen to be 
 made between drawing and shading. But whereas oil 
 painting is painting, it is better to consider water colour 
 as drawing, especially when used transparently on a 
 white surface, a method which should be practised by 
 every student before attempting gouache or mixed 
 methods. All judges speak of water colour drawings, 
 and in the early artists' colourman's catalogue, the water 
 colour brush is referred to as a "pencil," a name which it 
 would be useful to resuscitate, for beginners seem to 
 regard a brush as an implement for sf reading or flooding 
 colour, ignoring its chief merit and one which its makers 
 show most care in obtaining, a flexible point surpassing 
 even the pen in incisiveness and fluency. It may be 
 noted here that while in the west, one or two brushes, all 
 of the same shape are generally considered sufficient 
 
146 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 equipment by the student of water-colour, in Japan 
 brushes are made specially for certain effects, wide flat 
 brushes for broad washes, long pointed ones for drawing 
 and writing, etc., so that the outfit comprises many 
 brushes. 
 
 It might be mentioned, also, that students are often 
 the proud owners of brushes that while effective once 
 have long outworn their usefulness. A watercolour 
 brush, the point of which has disappeared, can only be 
 used for rough work. For successful drawing, a student 
 must periodically add to his stock of brushes. 
 
 The Japanese painter does no preliminary sketching. 
 He at once makes his drawing, and backs it up widi 
 washes of colour. The western student, aiming at other 
 results feels the necessity for a more tentative method, 
 and certainly, if the caution that he is throughout making 
 a drawing in colour be insisted on, there is no reason why 
 the pencil preparation should betray a lack of unity with 
 the following stage in colour. And as it is to be a draw- 
 ing done in transparent colour, directly and without 
 rubbing or washing out, there is need for this preparation 
 to be more intimate and complete than in the case of the 
 oil study. 
 
 But students, ever anxious to indulge their taste in 
 colour, are prone to slur over this preparation. They 
 have a notion that the strokes of the brush need not show, 
 forgetting that every time it is laid upon the paper it 
 makes a mark of definite shape, whether dark or light. 
 The most frequent cases of insufficient preparation occur 
 in outdoor landscape composition, where the boundaries 
 of the forms are hastily sketched without regard to their 
 
DRAWING AS A PREPARATION FOR PAINTING. 147 
 
 Structure or their edge contrasts. In such study the 
 students are faced with a fresh complication. In their 
 studio work, from the figure or still life, the compara- 
 tive simplicity of the forms has allowed of a fairly com- 
 plete rendering. But out-of-doors there are numberless 
 small shapes which, though merging into larger ones, yet 
 distract the eye by their multitude and complexity. The 
 multitudinous forms, such as blades of grass, leaves of 
 trees, cloud forms, etc., present a real difficulty to the 
 beginner. Often he solves the problem in a utilitarian 
 and inartistic fashion by stroking, spotting or dashing 
 irregular splashes on the paper to imitate this apparent 
 irregularity, and in the process loses the orderliness, the 
 series, the radiating arrangements of leaves and 
 branches. 
 
 Here an insistence on a right preparation may save 
 the student from falling too low in the artistic scale. He 
 can be shown that the more complex the subject the more 
 necessary is it to search out the significant forms, that 
 likeness must be got through choice and not through 
 'dashing the brush on the paper in the hope of securing 
 happy shapes, and that everything that is to be coloured 
 should first be plotted out. Some of Turner's unfinished 
 drawings should be examined from this point of view. 
 Such importance did he attach to a good preparation, and 
 so sure was his colour sense, that he not seldom made his 
 drawing in pencil, giving all the time to this stage, and 
 coloured it when away from the subject. Close scrutiny 
 shows that his lines really prepare for the colouring ; the 
 work is not a drawing painted over. 
 
 In beginners' work one often finds pencilling which 
 
14-8 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 is of no use to the colouring, but rather a hindrance; 
 features, hands, etc., are sketched in carelessly and with 
 a profusion of strokes that takes no count of the subtlety 
 of the brush point and its power of definition. Shading 
 especially is out of court, leading, as it does, to dirty 
 colour. 
 
 On the other hand, all should be carefully drawn, 
 as for instance the space for two hands clasped in the 
 lap of a female sitter, (fig. 40.) Every portion 
 of the composition should be prepared, the main 
 masses and their relations, the directions of forms, while 
 the position of details, such as the features, should be 
 indicated without being completed in terms of a pencil. 
 Such preparation strengthens the composition, gives 
 emphasis to the connecting lines, and finally gives the 
 brush full play in its charming power of elaborating 
 detail. 
 
 The pencil work, of course, may be carried very far 
 30 long as it does not interfere with the right function of 
 the brush. 
 
 A simple exercise would be a still life group (fig. 
 41), and it may be noted here that a subject which suits 
 oil painting, revelling as it does in rich dark colour, is 
 quite unsuitable for water colour if its quality and charm 
 are to be considered. That is to say, if the student is to 
 be given opportunity of studying his medium, in this case 
 water colour, the masses should approach lighter tone 
 rather than darker. Rich, glowing hues in water colours 
 are only possible if the study is kept small in scale. 
 
 Finally, the contour of the dark area should be drawn 
 within, that of the light, outside the form. 
 
Fig. a I A water colour stud)- of still lite with a pencil preparation. The 
 
 pencil lines are emphatic where strong passages occur, but are lighter or 
 
 even disappear according to the degree of envelopment of the edge. The 
 
 pencilling is not a drawing, but a preparation. 
 
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 Fic, ^2 — A drawing b) Holbein. 
 150 
 
 [Windsor Castle. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 CONVENTION. 
 
 Hitherto drawing has been treated as based on 
 appearance. "Is it like?" has been the test, though 
 always accompanied by the proviso that selection must 
 be the student's aim. To draw everything the eye can 
 discern is impossible, and it has been shown that the 
 beginner's mass of unselected detail reveals his low level 
 of artistic outlook. Though truth to nature has been 
 insisted on in so far as the planes of the figure, and 
 indeed, the beauty of its pose are revealed by light and 
 'dark, yet constantly in these pages the student has been 
 cautioned that absolute fidelity to nature is impossible, 
 and that any attempt in that direction leads only to a 
 pseudo-photographic presentment essentially vulgar and 
 inartistic. But if it be assumed that the student has some 
 control over his vision, that he can face his subject calmly 
 and set down with some precision his selected facts, the 
 time has now come for him to see that this is only the 
 beginning, that the practical convention of the particular 
 form of art he has chosen will compel him still further to 
 select and co-ordinate his facts in harmony with the 
 necessary simplifications which his art demands, whether 
 
 151 
 
152 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 it be painting, engraving, mural decoration or illustra- 
 tion. 
 
 Of course drawing may be an end in itself. The 
 portrait drawings of Ingres show that. One might have 
 added those of Holbein, but for the fact that these were 
 made as studies for portraits. Here is a typical instance 
 of what is meant by convention. Holbein, following the 
 custom of his day, and a very good one, understood it to 
 be his business to master the forms of his portrait, 
 especially the features of the face. Whether he intended 
 to transfer them to the canvas is a secondary matter. He 
 certainly drew as if he did. What he wanted was the 
 actual limiting lines of his subject's features — all includ- 
 ing the construction of the planes was subordinate to 
 that, and in consequence, while drawing these boundaries 
 with the most scrupulous care, he ignored in a great 
 measure, and necessarily so, the give and take of the 
 lighting, the envelopment, the forward and backward 
 movement of the edges. Thus in the drawing of Sir 
 Elliott Knight (fig. 42) the nose is drawn with a firm line 
 throughout, though it is certain that under the general 
 condition of lighting that part of the nose seen against 
 the cheek would not in actual vision supply so strong and 
 accented a line. But Holbein wanted to be sure of his 
 form, and without conscious intention on his part, his 
 convention created itself. Within these limits what 
 delicacy and subtlety of vision can be discerned ! 
 Almost it seems as if the restrictions under which he 
 worked enabled him to see and represent with a maxi- 
 mum of refinement. If the line between the closed lips 
 for instance be examined, it will be seen how it varies. 
 
CONVENTION. 153 
 
 how unlike it is to the hard wire-like one might ignorantly 
 assume would suffice for Holbein's purpose. It varies 
 throughout its length, sdftening here, tightening there, 
 showing that far from drawing it as a mere line, Holbein 
 searched out the form of the line above, below, and 
 especially the two ends of it. One might examine all 
 his forms, with a like result. It seems ungracious after 
 this to point out that Holbein is uncertain sometimes of 
 the alignment of his features, that he occasionally places 
 the eyes too high, and that he frequently makes the 
 further eye too large, while noting however its distinctive 
 forms. 
 
 Starting then from Holbein's method we might 
 assume a priori that each form of art demands its own 
 convention of drawing, which has linked with it a depend- 
 ent grace and beauty. The sketches of Alfred Stevens 
 have already been referred to as examples of drawings 
 made for a definite end. They are mainly studies for 
 sculpture, and in them are seen the master's efforts to 
 attain his ideal. He demanded the highest degree of 
 plasticity, drawing his figures with solidity and weight, 
 for they were to be translated into stone or bronze. He 
 ignored the accidentals of light and shade, and rough 
 hewed his figures with broad strokes indicating the actual 
 structure, much as a biologist cuts up his tiny bone into 
 a number of sections, or a geographer constructs a relief 
 map by contour lines, (figs. 61, 62). 
 
 More important still to Stevens was the movement 
 of his figures. Here the meticulous exactness of 
 Holbein's forms is replaced by a rain of lines, one might 
 say scribbled in, but always with the aim of securing the 
 
154 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Utmost freedom of movement and poise. He moved the 
 lines, say, of the back twice or thrice, he drew an arm in 
 several positions. In a word the master used drawing 
 for his own artistic purpose, made of it a tool to express 
 his ideals. 
 
 Each form of pictorial representation in turn could 
 be taken and shown to demand from drawing a conven- 
 tion suited to its needs. The etcher seizes on the great 
 planes of his subject; he makes use of force to hold his 
 foreground forms near the eye, but with the tenderest 
 delicacy his distances float away from it. Fig. 43 
 shows that the drawings have been made by 
 an etcher; without the sub-conscious prompting of the 
 acid bath it is not likely that the force of the darks and 
 the delicacy of the more distant parts would have been 
 rendered so directly. 
 
 Similarly fig. 44 a study for an etching shows 
 clearly that it has been made with the resources of the 
 craft always in view. The great sign and foreground 
 darks dominate the composition, while the background 
 is kept tender and quiet, as would happen were it lightly 
 bitten on a plate. But more than this, there is the know- 
 ledge of the limitations of etching, that it is a convention 
 and not an imitative process, that it depends on variety 
 of line and shape, hence an insistence on these. Every 
 window in the background has its individual treatment : 
 no two are alike ; also many parts are worked to a closer 
 degree of finish than the etching was intended to display, 
 for it is impossible to put the whole of a drawing into an 
 etching; one must have more than one can use in 
 needling the plate from a drawing. 
 

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 Fig. j|.4 — A Jr,u\ing in lead pencil and black chalk nn cream-colnurcd 
 wrapping paper. 
 
 ■ 56 
 
CONVENTION. 157 
 
 The history of illustration in black and white pro- 
 vides further examples of convention. The illustrators 
 of the early sixties, who had succeeded in throwing off 
 the thraldom of the engraver with his cross hatching 
 tools, mechanical aids and ruled lines, though insisting 
 on their work being followed in facsimile, yet found a 
 convention necessary, one with freedom though still 
 based on that of Bewick, and one that followed more or 
 less closely what has been set forth in these pages, that 
 form is expressed in light areas by darks, and in dark 
 areas by lights. In the dark areas they used the white 
 line in the way we associate with Bewick. But in the 
 light areas they emphasized their forms clearly with the 
 black line. Examples of these illustrations may be 
 seen in old volumes of the "Gornhill," "Once a Week," 
 "Good Words," etc. 
 
 Phil May, who built up his own convention by elim- 
 ination, sometimes omitted the line of the white collar. 
 It might be said that this was a retrograde step, for the 
 omission suggested an objective vision which contrasted 
 oddly with the rest of his very abstract convention. But 
 he perhaps considered it as a joke, or more probably it 
 assisted in giving that looseness and freedom which he 
 desired. 
 
 His work is rather misleading to young students who 
 think that they can do easily the same sort of thing, but 
 his method as disclosed by his friends and himself is 
 another example of the strenuous drawing necessary to 
 the convention he employed. He really drew most 
 minutely and carefully ; then went over the drawing with 
 his fat line, omitting details, or redrew from memory. A 
 
158 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 friend told the writer of a policeman posing in May's 
 studio. The artist made drawing after drawing till the 
 floor was littered, then, the sitter paid and gone, another 
 drawing was made embodying the character as learned 
 in making the previous sketches. The two methods 
 employed both led to the same result, insistence on 
 character by quality of line and omission of superfluous 
 detail. 
 
 If the subject be that of mural painting, which pre- 
 serves the flatness of the wall by the absence of concen- 
 trated composition, or of violent colour and forcible 
 lights and darks, a convention of representation must 
 be followed which harmonizes the above conditions. 
 One naturally turns to the Italian traditional practice of 
 the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. There the 
 technique of buon fresco, the only method of painting 
 without vehicle other than water, on fresh or damp plaster 
 necessitated a clearly defined contour. The work had to 
 proceed with some speed, for in a short time the plaster 
 dried, rendering further progress in the same manner 
 impossible. Thus the conditions militated against real- 
 istic work in light and shade even if such had been under- 
 stood in those times. The outline cartoon was traced on 
 the still soft plaster, and the colouring proceeded without 
 delay. 
 
 Unfortunately the climate of our great cities has been 
 declared unsuited to this simple and beautiful technique, 
 although Mrs. Sargant Florence asserts that it stands 
 the ordinary weather conditions of this country very well 
 indeed. She points out that pure fresco flourished in 
 districts with a high rainfall. Her own frescoes at Oak- 
 
CONVENTION. 159 
 
 ham and elsewhere have stood the test of this climate 
 satisfactorily. The influence of fresco has been felt by 
 succeeding styles of mural painting, although for a time 
 the craft wandered in the dangerous paths of realism. 
 
 Mural painting then may be taken as the type of a 
 number of crafts where drawing is viewed without insist- 
 ence on light or shade, or rather the emphasis is laid on 
 the line and structure, the accidents of light being 
 ignored. Moody's interesting chart of the styles of 
 painting should be consulted in this connexion. In this 
 he shows that the lights and darks, sparkling but spotty, 
 of the imitative Dutch panel pictures contrast with the 
 broad simple shadows melting into the light, of the 
 Florentine frescoes. 
 
 This supplies the clue to drawing practice in the life 
 class. While students are studying the principles on 
 which the representation by appearance is based, it is 
 well to make the problem as simple as possible, avoiding 
 complications of lighting. These arrangements have 
 been noted earlier. The lights should be kept strictly 
 in one direction and limited in area, so that the planes are 
 clearly separated by light and dark. 
 
 But the advanced student should prepare to study 
 the figure under less restricted conditions. The light 
 should be expanded so that it envelops the figure, 
 reduces the strength of the dark planes, and eliminates 
 small spotty darks, while the contour becomes more com- 
 pletely visible, this being assisted by varying the back- 
 ground, making it lighter than the bulk of the light areas 
 of the figure, or darker than the masses of dark. In the 
 early Florentine frescoes, the backgrounds are generally 
 
i6o DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 light in tone, while the backgrounds of the frescoes of 
 Pompeii are dark in tone or rich in colour, the forms 
 telling light against them. 
 
 Under such conditions the student will be con- 
 strained to adopt to some extent a linear convention. 
 The light and shade are still there but reduced in inten- 
 sity, and subordinated to the contour. But it should be 
 understood that structure and movement are more im- 
 portant than ever, for on them success will mainly 
 depend. 
 
 It is needless to investigate the conventions of other 
 forms of plastic art in order to see what part drawing 
 plays; the heedful student will do that for himself. 
 But ever as he advances in the study of drawing, he is 
 conscious of new complexities ; the better he draws the 
 more conscious will he be of his limitations and his 
 inability to achieve what he desires, and it is well, for 
 one who draws with facility and ease is on the downward 
 path of mannerism and stereotyped form. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 DRAWING FOR ILLUSTRATORS. 
 
 There comes a time when the student leaves his 
 school, has finished (save the word) his period of study. 
 He is to begin his art career, whether as sculptor, 
 painter, illustrator or designer. What is his attitude 
 towards drawing ? Does he regard it as a discipline from 
 which he is at last happily emancipated ? In his freedom 
 he may be pardoned for at first feeling a little con- 
 temptuous of the methods and precepts of the classroom. 
 He is now a professional with no longer unlimited time 
 to build up the stages of his work, which has to be turned 
 out with regularity and promptness. It must be done in 
 some fashion, and whether he be a portrait painter or the 
 merest hack advertisement draughtsman, the same bond 
 of necessity lies heavy on both vocations. In other 
 words, the newly-fledged art worker is in danger of 
 becoming merely a professional, and ceasing to be a 
 student. 
 
 But if the student's interest in form has been aroused 
 and stimulated, if logical methods of work have been 
 faithfully pressed upon him, he will have acquired an 
 attitude of mind which can never be eradicated. Granted 
 
 i6i 
 
1 62 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 that the special conditions of his life work are onerous, 
 that they tend to crush the artistic spirit, yet the artist 
 rises superior to commercial and almost degrading tram- 
 mels, and produces good work in spite of, perhaps 
 because of these fetters. Of course every art worker must 
 know his job. The portrait painter must be able to pro- 
 duce a likeness, the etcher must know how to bite a plate 
 with all possible precision, the illustrator must be able to 
 use his pen and brush freely. But beyond that, in the 
 doing of the work, no matter how poorly paid or how un- 
 interesting it may be, the worker, if he is an artist, will 
 give something above what he is paid for, some touch of 
 the art spirit within him which sustains him and reminds 
 him that art is his career. 
 
 That is to say he studies at his craft, he remains a 
 student and as such drawing will be his life-long com- 
 panion. Take for instance the illustrator, who is asked 
 to depict scenes and incidents often chosen by authors 
 and editors without any eye to artistic motive and effect. 
 But in spite of that he need not despair, for the poorest 
 situation includes the most interesting material in the 
 world — people — and if he has the illustrator's spirit he 
 will not fail to be interested in his work, and make it 
 interesting to others. His will be a busy life, for to him 
 all people are possible subjects for his pencil. His study 
 in the life room was only the beginning ; now he must 
 look for his models everywhere. He will always be 
 searching for type and character. He may use a sketch 
 book, but his memory training will be of still more value 
 to him. Thus the lot, the happy lot, of the illustrator is 
 to study continually and by remaining a student, his 
 
DRAWING FOR ILLUSTRATORS. 163 
 
 work will show increasing character, freshness and 
 pliability. 
 
 The designer on his part, must accept this necessity 
 for the search for form. The flowers of the field, insects, 
 birds, clouds, lines of land and sea, animals and people, 
 are all his province. The methodical worker will store 
 his studies in portfolios ; the others will make them on 
 backs of envelopes and lose them, but it matters not if 
 the eye is quickened, and the mind stored with form. 
 
 All branches of art exhibit the same dependence 
 upon drawing. The numberless pencil studies of Con- 
 stable show his interest in tree structure, the momentary 
 sketches of Rodin, his search for new and unexpected 
 movements, while the drawings of Gainsborough sug- 
 gested the composition and arrangement, and enabled 
 him to revise his ideals freely, unhampered by the fetters 
 with which oilpaint once laid upon the canvas and left to 
 dry binds a painter's freedom to choose and alter. The 
 portrait heads of Holbein have been already referred to 
 as an example of drawing put to a direct practical use by 
 the painter, and certainly few portrait painters like to 
 attack a canvas without preliminary studies. Reference 
 may be made to the masterly charcoal drawings by Mr. 
 Sargent preparatory to painting. Here the material is 
 used with directness and force, its qualities being ex- 
 ploited with great skill. The evident intention of the 
 studies is to investigate the character of the sitter, not to 
 obtain actual outlines for tracing as in the case of 
 Holbein, but as a means of getting into close touch with, 
 the personality, searching for the forms and accents 
 
1 64 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 which give at once Ukeness and character. Lastly 
 one may refer to an immediately practical form 
 of illustration. The number of publications and 
 magazines devoted to engineering of all kinds is increas- 
 ing and will increase. In regard to the illustrations 
 required, photography once so depended upon is prov- 
 ing a failure, for its focus just misses the precision 
 required, while it becomes impossible, when dark 
 interiors have to be revealed or when exterior coverings 
 are assumed to be removed to show mechanism. 
 
 Therefore a new convention of drawing machinery is 
 growing up, demanding a high degree of appreciation of 
 the appearance of things together with a sound know- 
 ledge of perspective, geometry and mechanical structure. 
 The draughtsman by the unaided use of his pencil, 
 without quadrants, tee squares and pearwood curves 
 must be able to explain in his drawing how a machine 
 works, and express with precision the relations of such 
 mechanism as elaborate gearing and valves seen in per- 
 spective. Only the well-trained student can grapple 
 with the formidable difficulties such subjects present, 
 while the simplicity of the means brings about its own 
 convention, and with it a clear articulate expression, 
 apart from the practical value of the drawing. That is 
 to say, a drawing of machinery in the hands of an artist 
 becomes a work of art. 
 
 One returns to the truth that what the artist chooses 
 to interest himself in is suitable for art expression no 
 matter what may be its nature. We are emancipated 
 from the sham ruins and picturesqueness of the i8th 
 century, those mannerisms of the great Italian style from 
 
DRAWING FOR ILLUSTRATORS. 165 
 
 i 
 
 Botticelli onwards which later ages appropriated while 
 losing its spirit. The early Italians, the Trecento and 
 Quattrocento artists were too interested in their own 
 time to hanker after the picturesque. They drew build- 
 ings for instance, raw new as they saw them. And to-day 
 we may find suitable material for the study of drawing 
 close at hand without travelling round the world for 
 strange and stimulating forms. No longer need the 
 world be divided into two categories, interesting and 
 commonplace, for students are using their eyes as did 
 the Italians of the fourteenth century, and find interest 
 of form in the commonest material. Even to fully 
 express a matchbox would tax the powers of the best 
 trained artist. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 
 
 The first known drawings and paintings by man are 
 to be found in the caves of the Pyrenees and the Dor- 
 dogne district, once tenanted by the later Palaeolithic 
 race. Much attention has of late been paid to these 
 works, and reproductions are fairly common, a series 
 being on view in the Natural History Museum at South 
 Kensington. The paintings of bison and other animals 
 on the ceiling of one of the chambers of the cave of 
 Altamira in Northern Spain, may be instanced among 
 the finest of the examples of this early art. They show 
 the preoccupation of the men of this period. They were 
 hunters, had no domestic animals with the doubtful ex- 
 ception of the rough ponies of the period, no pottery for 
 drinking from, and practised no tillage. But in physical 
 form and brain capacity they were the equal of modern 
 races and must not be confused with the earlier beetle 
 browed Neanderthal man of whom nothing is known 
 other than that he fabricated stone implements, 
 possessed fire, and buried his dead. Practically all the 
 cave paintings, with the scratchings on bone, and the 
 bone and ivory sculpture, represent animals, though here 
 
 1 66 
 
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 167 
 
fii!ra!^jt5ilgngl!l!TM?pi]iM^P 
 
 Fk. 46. — A brush drawing from a white Athenian vase (c}rLndrical). Though there 
 are puzzling details such as the smallness of the man's hands, the parallelism of his feet, 
 etc., yet the purity of line and the suggestion of form should be closcl}' studied. 
 
 [British Museum. 
 
 168 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 169 
 
 and there are found statuettes of female figures mostly 
 gross in form. 
 
 The roof of Altamira is covered with full-sized col- 
 oured drawings of paintings of animals, bison, horses, 
 deer and pigs. They are outlined in black and washed 
 over with red, brown and yellow pigments made from 
 various iron and manganese earths. They show a cor- 
 rectness of proportion and a freedom of movement which 
 have never been surpassed while the extremely simpli- 
 fied conventions used to express the structure and hair 
 growths, have nothing in common with the childish 
 scrawls of most living races of savages. The placing of 
 the legs is practically in accord with photographs of 
 moving animals testifying to the artist's quickness of eye 
 and keenness of observation. In particular some draw- 
 ings of mortally wounded bison in the last death spasm, 
 with their legs crumpled beneath them and the tail vibrat- 
 ing over the back show how well the draughtsman 
 memorized a phenomenon with which he must have been: 
 perfectly familiar. 
 
 Other famous examples are the drawings of mam- 
 moths, deer and horses on the walls of caves and on bone. 
 The drawing of the reindeer, from Thayngen, and the 
 three red deer crossing a river, from Lorthet, {Ancient 
 Hunters. Sollas), show a close observation of the 
 animals and a certain ease and freedom in representing 
 them. They reveal the anatomical knowledge of one 
 who has repeatedly skinned and dismembered his prey, 
 the habits and movements of which have been his life- 
 long study. And these drawings were made by a man 
 so primitive that like the beasts of the field he had to go 
 
170 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 down to the river to drink. It may be said here that 
 though he may have had to risk the sabre-toothed tiger 
 and the great cave bear, yet the strange, enormous rep- 
 tilian creatures, with whom he is sometimes associated 
 in certain modern humorous drawings, had become 
 extinct ages before. 
 
 Of what we call composition we must not expect 
 much. On the roof at Altamira the creatures are fitted 
 in as closely as possible, some being superimposed on 
 others, the idea apparent being to give the impression of 
 a great herd. Elsewhere we get the usual panoramic 
 composition of early art much as in the Egyptian and 
 Assyrian freizes. One animal follows another, and oc- 
 casionally there is a somewhat impressionistic repre- 
 sentation of a herd of horses or deer indicated by a row 
 of heads and foreparts much as one would see glancing 
 along the front rank. 
 
 What strikes one is that this earliest art is repre- 
 sentational rather than consciously decorative. It may 
 be that the artist connected his picture with the 
 desires of his appetite, much as children, in the absence 
 of the object they desire say a boat or doll, will draw it 
 and thus to some extent satisfy their craving. Appar- 
 ently this early man desired his drawings in line and 
 colour to be as like as possible, which is perhaps why Mr. 
 Clive Bell dislikes them. They may even be symbolic 
 of food to be used by the soul after death as in Egyptian 
 art which also exhibits exceedingly well-drawn animals. 
 
 But in Egypt had grown up an ancient civilization 
 where the priesthood ruled and prescribed minutely the 
 conventions of the forms in the paintings which min- 
 
c; " S 
 
 .5 ,„ u c 
 
 17> 
 
Fig. 48 — A drawing b)' Holbein. Great care has been given to the 
 eyebrows and the line between the lips. The far eye appears somewhat 
 too large. [British Museum. 
 
 172 
 
Fic. 49 — A drawing by Holbein. Certain forms which were evidentl)' 
 deemed essential to the likeness have been careiull)- redrawn with a hard 
 point on the thin films of charcoal or chalk. These are the eyelids, the 
 nostrils and the line separating the lips. [Windsor Castle. 
 
 "73 
 
Fig. 50 — In this drawing by Leonardo da Vinci the|features have more 
 veracity than the fanciful armour, and bear a great resemblance to the elder 
 Tedeschi, a model known to a generation of art students. Such a profile 
 could only have been drawn of an Italian by an Italian. [British Museum. 
 
 ■74 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 175 
 
 istered to the national religion. Reference has been 
 made already to the way in which man was portrayed in 
 the Egyptian canon of form. Apparently however the 
 animals had escaped the attention of those who laid 
 down the rules of representation, and in consequence as 
 we see if we consult the book of the Dead, reproduced 
 by the British Museum Authorities, or the wall paintings 
 and drawings, the cats, dogs and especially the baboons 
 and birds are lifelike in their proportions, structure and 
 movement, drawn as they are in much the same simple 
 convention as was used by the cave men. 
 
 Assyrian art runs a parallel course. The bas-reliefs 
 in the British Museum are cut in soft gypsum or alabas- 
 ter, the work of a victorious people in a hurry, and often 
 the relief is so slight that the work may be considered as 
 a drawing. Here again there is a convention of the 
 human figure, with swollen muscles on a brawny frame, 
 and again also the sculptors seem to have looked at 
 animals with a clearer eye than when they attempted 
 men. Their horses are good, and their lions better, the 
 most famous being the slab whereon is depicted a lioness 
 dragging herself along the ground, her hind quarters 
 having been paralysed by an arrow, (fig. 45.) She is 
 roaring, the skin of her nose wrinkled in agony. The 
 relief is little more than i inch, and again one can say 
 that the artist must have witnessed this sight, and set 
 down with convincing clearness his memory vision of it. 
 
 Following the line of successive nationalities one 
 inquires what drawings were made by the Greeks. For- 
 tunately their drawings are plain to see on their vases. 
 At last the artists have become interested in the forms 
 
176 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 of man and though we may assume that the vase painter 
 was little more than a workman yet the best vase paint- 
 ings lag but little behind the best Greek sculpture. It 
 will be convenient to examine the white vase paintings, 
 where the backgrounds are not painted in. They are 
 called paintings but they are really brush drawings and 
 done with an ease, and fluency of expression that makes 
 them worthy of the closest study. The draughtsman 
 must have worked with some speed ; he had to turn out 
 a quantity, and his convention arose out of the necess- 
 ities of his occupation. He used his line with the utmost 
 economy, but his eye, his draughtsman's soul was all the 
 time concentrated on the point of his brush, which pro- 
 duced a line of the utmost flexibility and sensibility. 
 (fig 46.) From the Greeks to the medievals is a long step 
 both as regards technique and sentiment. Once more 
 drawing has been grasped by the priesthood to serve 
 religion. The figure has to express hope, fear, rever- 
 ence. The features are expanded until they fill the 
 face ; the hands stretched out with stiff fingers implore, 
 deprecate, or command. The figure is hidden in the 
 long lines of the draperies. The line is still there but 
 it is now the convention of a craft of which the conditions 
 are necessarily stringent to a degree — ^that of stained 
 glass. The form is subordinated to the leads of the 
 window, the angularity of the medieval forms being asso- 
 ciated with the special quality of the material — glass. 
 
 Another step, and one comes to the man who stood at 
 the parting of the ways — ^Albert Durer — who inherited 
 the gothic tradition of angular forms, piped draperies 
 and scriptural subject matter, yet reached out to the 
 
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 Fk;. 52 — A chalk drawing h) Raphael. 'I'he interest in form should be 
 
 noted. It is lull of overlapping contours. The drawing is hut little 
 
 concerned with the photographic aspect of the model. 
 
 '78 
 
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 '.■>*■!.. •js»'.i;' ■isaa^*; 
 
 f > 
 
 Fig. 5 3 — A drawing b)- Ruhens in black and red cliajk. He drew more 
 by the lights than the darks. We may be certain that there was more tone 
 under the chin than is shewn by him. But he wanted this to be not a 
 light and shade study merely ; the expression of the sitter, alert, listening, 
 arch, is what he has achieved. The drawing is full of vitality. The face 
 seems alive. [British Museum. 
 
 179 
 
Fk.. 5-1- — A chalk drav\ing by Rubens. The fine line descending from the 
 head to the knees should be noted as also that uniting the arms. 
 
 [British Museum. 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. i8i 
 
 Renaissance, with its renewed interest in the unclothed 
 figure as seen in classic myth, and in the mass of archi- 
 tectural and other forms which accentuate the new style. 
 The conditions of Durer's career as an artist made 
 him the very type of a draughtsman. He was to be the 
 world's great illustrator, and as such he had an intense 
 curiosity in the forms of things. He drew the ancient 
 roofs of his native town, horses, men in armour, every- 
 thing he might want in his engravings and woodcuts, and 
 as an illustrator he makes use of all his drawings. Like 
 the Japanese he drew and redrew his subject until he 
 was line perfect, and like them he was always simplify- 
 ing, refining his line down to its lowest terms, often until 
 it became a mere decorative motive, a trick of the 
 pen. But this simplification forced him to study struc- 
 ture, with the result that every stroke of Durer's repre- 
 sents a definite fact; his simplest drawings are full of 
 anatomy, whether they be of plants, animals, or persons. 
 (fig. 47.) Walter Crane must have studied Durer, and 
 his mannerisms came from his efforts to make his line 
 express as much as possible of the form, the bend of the 
 wrist or ankle, the twisting of the neck, and the radiation 
 of the toes or fingers, with the result that people who 
 were not interested in structure cried out that he was 
 deforming the figure. The criticism shows the necessity 
 of a draughtsman constantly comparing his convention 
 with natural form, of self criticism. He should avoid, 
 and it is the most difficult thing to do so, falling into ruts 
 of expression, mannerisms, that is unnatural form. It is 
 the young student curiously enough whose work is full of 
 undigested conventions for he seems to absorb them from 
 
1 82 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 the nursery onwards. He unconsciously abstracts from 
 the work of the artist he admires, its tricks of handling, 
 rather than the good qualities revealed only on close 
 study. That is why copying is to be deprecated, for this 
 practice does not always imply study. What study is 
 and what it involves students will do well to ponder over. 
 
 Of Holbein much has been said in these pages. Like 
 Durer he was a great pen draughtsman, and could design 
 with facility in the new style, with its classical mould- 
 ings, capitals and acanthus. But when he confronted 
 his sitter he put all the new forms and conventions aside, 
 and looked at his model with an eye cleared of Italian 
 motes and beams, (figs. 42, 48, 49.) 
 
 In Italy Giotto broke away from the more formal 
 Byzantine manner. His figures have weight and power, 
 though his accessories, his hills, trees and animals are 
 the merest recollections. But he took the turn towards 
 naturalism and all through the fourteenth century the 
 Italians were examining nature and trying to draw and 
 paint like the model, though not knowing quite how it 
 was to be done. Botticelli has been referred to as one 
 who used the nude figure constantly with much poetic 
 grace, yet without a clear knowledge of its structure and 
 articulations. It was Leonardo da Vinci with the inqui- 
 sitive scientific spirit and full measure of the organizing 
 faculty who did everything to form what may be called 
 the academic convention, especially in regard to light 
 and shade, except actually to set up a school of art. (fig. 
 50.) The study of perspective, involving shadows and 
 reflections, and of anatomy with its dissections did much 
 to direct the study of art in the same path. 
 
Fig. 55 — This unassuming drawing b}' Ruhens shows beautiful rh}'thm of 
 line. The pose quiet as it is, is full of action. The feet should be noted, 
 drawn as one form, and the difficult turn of the head has been attacked. 
 Many students do not realize the loss of length in such a pose and make 
 their sitting and crouching figures much too high. [British Museum. 
 
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 Fig. 57 — One of Ingres' portrait drawings of which he made a great 
 
 number while at Rome. Full of search for form and rhythmical line. 
 
 Note how the two arms have been unified. F.very fold in the clothes tells 
 
 of the form beneath. 
 
 i8s 
 
.V/ 
 
 ' . 'lUl^-.i 
 
 It:a 
 
 p[c. 58 — A chalk drawing by J. F. Millet which shows his method clearly. 
 
 He has been quick to seize the forms which emerge from the heavy, 
 
 hanging garments. The drawing has a rhythm of its own. 
 
 186 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 187 
 
 In the drawings of Mantegna one sees a closer return 
 to the classic spirit. So insistent is the line that the 
 shading is simpler and more summary in its method than 
 the convention used by the northern draughtsmen, of 
 whom Durer may be cited as the chief example. Durer 
 covers his forms with lines drawn round them each sug- 
 gesting a section through the mass, a convention much 
 used by the northern engravers and etchers. Manteg- 
 na's shading consists of straight lines drawn diagonally, 
 the easiest movement of the hand across the paper. 
 This convention while it does not allow of a certain over- 
 realized, almost stereoscopic form which is seen in work 
 produced by the northern engravers, is simple and direct 
 and defines the planes more clearly. The tendency ever 
 since has been to adopt it for the study of form, and 
 mediums like charcoal, chalk, pencil and pen lend 
 themselves to it. Even a modern pen draughtsman like 
 Mr. G. D. Armour uses it almost exclusively. 
 
 Michael Angelo, though a giant yet learned all his 
 academic teachers could impart, and transformed his 
 study by his volcanic genius. When he drew it was to 
 reveal structure, and especially the overlapping of coii^ 
 tours, rather than the appearance, though if he chose he 
 could load his surfaces with shading in the correct 
 Italian style. He was preoccupied with the figure as 
 his raw material in design ; he combined nudes, grouped 
 them, flung them together in ropes, festoons and swirls, 
 held together by his great line running round torses and 
 along limbs, (fig. 51.) 
 
 Rubens trained in Italian methods made numberless 
 drawings and sketches for compositions; many of the 
 
1 88 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 latter however are painted in monochrome. His work 
 shows how a man is dominated by .his own tempera- 
 ment, and also by the tendencies of his age. Women 
 smile, men strike flamboyant attitudes, horses prance, 
 curtains swirl in the wind, and vivid masses of red ener- 
 gise the composition. The Philip and his Queen 
 painted by him are portraits of people well pleased with 
 themselves and in robust health. When one turns to 
 the portraits of the same people by Velasquez, a man of 
 their own race and therefore more likely to realize the 
 national character, very different personalities are 
 revealed, cold, indifferent and passive. 
 
 The drawings of Rubens show equally this exuber- 
 ance of spirit. He is one of the very few who could 
 command a full measure of vitality and action; his 
 figures move with freedom, with an amplitude of gesture 
 as well as of form. (figs. 54 55.) His study of Michael 
 Angelo shows in his work though mingled with his own 
 temperament ; in place of the latter's elemental violence 
 he substituted a jovial turbulence. But he drew as he 
 painted with a mastery over his material. He exercised 
 a strict economy of means. In his drawing of a 
 woman's head (fig. 53) he went far beyond a mere por- 
 trait ; he is concerned with the pleasant disposition of his 
 sitter. In other words he drew the smile rather than the 
 features, and achieved both with the minimum of light 
 and shade. He refused to dirty his drawing with mere 
 masses of dark and gained his end rather by working 
 round his lights, for to him the lights were the essence of 
 the form. 
 
 In Holland, Rembrandt among the Italianizing 
 
Fig. 59. — A drawing in pencil by Lord Leighton. 
 189 
 
Fi(.. 60. — A drawing by Lord Lcighton, made with black and white 
 chalk on brown paper. 
 
 190 
 
 I t 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 191 
 
 Dutchmen stood alone. Here again like Durer and 
 Holbein, his subject matter for his etchings is from the 
 Bible, though he sat at his window and accepted the 
 types and costumes of the Jewish folk who swarmed 
 below as they do to this day. He like Durer was always 
 accumulating material, though many of his so-called 
 drawings are compositions set down hastily as they came 
 into his head^ and often with splendid emphasis on the 
 significant lines. He is the very type of an artist. 
 Every event, and there were some sombre ones in his 
 career, seems to call forth from him not speech or letter, 
 but drawings, in which he sought new ways of expressing 
 himself, a new outlook. When his wife lay dying, he 
 made a slight pen-drawing of her, pinched and wan in 
 bed. After her death he wandered by creeks and ham- 
 lets outside Amsterdam drawing with simple pen strokes 
 what he saw, the roads, trees and tumble-down houses, 
 which latter cannot be found there any more; for in 
 Holland all is now clean and tidy, especially the fish- 
 wives of Marken, who hasten themselves and their chil- 
 dren into their ancient dress when they see an excursion 
 steamer, full of tourists, approaching. These drawings 
 are models of compressed expression, for while Rem- 
 brandt was thus trying to solace himself for his loss, he 
 was subconsciously working out like Durer a method of 
 putting things down in their simplest terms. 
 
 Many painters have left but few drawings, a pro- 
 minent instance being Velasquez. It has been thought 
 that he attacked his composition on the canvas without 
 preliminary work for there are pictures by him where 
 strips of canvas have been added, t)ecause, as he pro- 
 
192 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 ceeded, the development of the subject demanded more 
 space. But the absence of drawings is no reason why 
 the student of form should neglect Velasquez for he was 
 one of the greatest of draughtsmen. He had not the 
 swagger of Rubens, the feeling for humanity of Rem- 
 brandt, nor the clearly defined edge of Holbein, but in 
 his brushwork he showed a knowledge of and a means of 
 suggesting atmosphere, which no other master quite 
 reaches. He draws with the brush in a real sense, for he 
 goes far beyond the earlier technique of painting, the 
 bringing of two surfaces of paint sharply together in a 
 contour. With some painters if the canvas is held to the 
 light haloes appear round the forms where the paint is 
 non-existent. But Velasquez welded his edges together 
 so that they became one passage ; he placed accents in 
 different degrees of intensity to suggest nearness to the 
 eye, or by blurring edges he quietened the forms farthest 
 from the centre of interest. 
 
 Some of the dwarf and jester portraits painted with 
 less of the decorum and stiffness of the court portraits, 
 as if he did them to please himself, show the height of his 
 powers as a draughtsman. 
 
 In France during the Renaissance, the artists looked 
 largely to Italy for inspiration and guidance. But it 
 was Jean Clouet from Flanders who founded a great 
 school of portrait drawing. He settled in Paris and 
 with his descendants painted a vast series of small por- 
 traits. For these, as did Holbein some years later, he 
 first made drawings in black and red chalk, the latter 
 medium being already much in use in Italy. The 
 Clouets and their followers made numbers of these por- 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 193 
 
 trait drawings, justly famed for their delicacy and pre- 
 cision. 
 
 Later Watteau and other artists of his period used 
 the method with more vigour applying it to figure com- 
 position generally. 
 
 Mr. W. Strang, followed by other modern draughts- 
 men, has revived the method for his series of portrait 
 heads. 
 
 Claude is noteworthy as one of the first painters to 
 study or sketch outdoors. But these drawings made 
 mostly with the brush, are rather studies of composition — 
 how the light falls on groups of trees and tree trunks, 
 and divides the composition into masses of shade, though 
 he certainly drew twining ivy and slender branches of 
 foliage against the sky. 
 
 One; wishes but vainly for some drawings of still 
 life by Chardin, to note how he indicated the volume of 
 his fat bottles, and their effect against his quiet back- 
 grounds. 
 
 Watteau left numberless drawings mostly with the 
 red and black chalk handed down from the Clouets. 
 Here was an artist who valued drawing for what it was 
 worth to him. He wanted above everything movement 
 easy and langorous perhaps on the surface but suggest- 
 ing a hidden fire, vivacity and alertness, (fig. 24). The 
 lady seated on the ground with her hand on the arm of 
 the gallant is about to rise. The impression of move- 
 ment is conveyed, while the contrast of the rising 
 torse with the scrumpled legs hidden in the voluminous 
 skirt is stated with conviction. Watteau used the chalk 
 rather than the brush in making his studies, because he 
 
194 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 knew that the hard point enabled him to deal more 
 trenchantly with structure and movement. It is pre- 
 eminently painter's drawing or rather drawing for 
 painting. How often does the student make his studies 
 for a picture, in say water-colour only to find that this 
 medium has its own convention, demanding the disre- 
 gard of everything not essential to it, with the result that 
 the water-colour study contains little that is of direct use 
 and worse still has not impressed on the mind facts of 
 structure and line required for the carrying out of the 
 work.? Drawing with charcoal or with the point would 
 have helped him to arrive at the essentials, without im- 
 posing on him conventions clashing with those special to 
 the material which he proposes to use. 
 
 The modern era is now reached. Jean Dominique 
 Ingres, the upholder of the academic banner against the 
 romantic movement had perhaps the most skilful pencil 
 of any draughtsman early or recent. His cleverness 
 approaches legerdemain, so that there are those who 
 declare that to place his drawings before the student is to 
 court disaster, luring him to attempt by trickery what no 
 one but Ingres could accomplish. His methods how- 
 ever, are plain in his drawings, reproductions of which 
 may be seen in Newne's edition (now out of print). He 
 surveyed the pose, sketched in the leading lines, studied 
 the structure beneath the clothes with light strokes before 
 he concentrated on details. He made many portrait 
 drawings while in Rome for a few francs apiece, and as 
 time was short, gave most of it to the head, the remainder 
 of the drawing being left with the first strokes showing. 
 The finish he gaye to the surface forms of the face is of 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 195 
 
 course possible only to himself, though well worth the 
 keenest attention, for it could have been compassed only 
 by a close study of the structure, (fig. 57.) 
 
 Jean Francois Millet is to be noted among the 
 Barbizon groups for his drawings. He was a type of 
 artist who painted in series. A picture was influenced 
 and suggested by an earlier one, to which it formed a 
 corollary, and as it were completed it. He wished to 
 depict the whole life of the French peasants of his time, 
 their labours and privations and how these varied during 
 the year. His mode of study required first and always 
 close observation rather than actual painting from the 
 model and scenery, which he despised as tending to 
 triviality. Consequently he made numberless notes of 
 figures engaged in rural occupations, mainly from 
 memory. His drawings show without finicky detail the 
 character and bodily structure of his subject; even the 
 drapery seems to have its appropriate weight and coarse- 
 ness of texture, while the action leisurely and untKeatrical 
 is expressed with a sombre strength, (fig. 58). 
 
 Puvis de Chavannes worked after the great schools 
 of art in Paris had established themselves and settled 
 their methods, and therefore made the studies for his 
 great mural decorations with charcoal the implement 
 commonly used for drawing from the life. His draw- 
 ings are excellent, so solid and weighty are his figures, 
 the feet firmly planted on the ground and the structure 
 cared for throughout. Mr. C. H. Shannon has one 
 squared off for transferring to the canvas. 
 
 Of the drawings of the great French master Degas, 
 only the studies of the ballet dancers are familiar to 
 
196 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Engli&h students, and these mostly from reproductions. 
 Degas, and not without prolonged study, achieved an 
 extraordinary degree of intimacy in his drawings. His 
 people never look like models stuck on a throne, and so 
 quietly and naturally do they move that the artistic mas- 
 tery is only observed after careful scrutiny. This feeling 
 of what one may call "at homeness" though Degas did 
 not always seek his subjects at home, is not easy to 
 analyse and account for. His drawings are the opposite 
 of diagrams or maps of form. His figures are always 
 depicted in relationship with their surroundings and one 
 of the secrets of his power in this respect may lie as has 
 been pointed out, that he drew as it were with a wide 
 angled lens, not as if he were surveying a stage or scene 
 from a distance, but as if sitting among those he depicted 
 so that one would have to turn the head to take in the 
 width of space taken up by the drawing. And as one 
 might expect Degas was very careful over the placing of 
 his accents, and equally so with his non-accented 
 passages, those where the form merged into the back- 
 ground. The Burlington Magazine recently published 
 some illuminating articles on the master by Mr. Walter 
 Sickert, and also reproduced three views of a head. 
 
 In Germany Adolf Menzel during a long life 
 made more drawings than any other painter. They are 
 all painter's studies, that is for use in his pictures, 
 which were mainly historical in character and needing 
 the closest attention to details of costume, architecture, 
 etc. They are highly realistic and made mostly with 
 black chalk and charcoal. A characteristic selection 
 is reproduced in Newne's series, but there are very few 
 
Fic. 6 1 — A drawing in red chalk b)- Alfred Stevens. 
 197 
 
Fig. 62 — A drawing in red chnlk by Alfred Ste\'cns. Red challc 
 
 should be avoided by students. The colour distracts their attention 
 
 from the form. 
 
 198 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 199 
 
 originals to be seen in Britain. In his insistence on 
 structure and in his tenacity he reminds one of Durer, 
 though with an almost photographic vision, a result 
 attained however not by stippling, but by direct and 
 summary methods. There is a chalk drawing of the two 
 reclining female figures from the Parthenon which must 
 have been made at top speed and yet everything is there. 
 The figures were indicated and their ample forms sug- 
 gested by smudges of chalk, the accents of the drapery 
 etc., being set down firmly on this preparation. Hol- 
 bein must have used a similar method, for several of his 
 portrait heads show the silvery shading done with stump 
 or finger the pen drawn accents of the features for some 
 reason having been omitted. 
 
 Menzel's methods must have aroused much interest 
 on the continent which perhaps account for the exclu- 
 sive use of charcoal, a favourite medium of his, in the 
 art schools. Menzel spared no pains to get on intimate 
 terms with his subject material, the current military and 
 court life of Germany, the most exacting in details of 
 equipment and social custom. His importance as his^ 
 torian was acknowledged, and on several occasions 
 important conferences suspended their business, while 
 Menzel took out his sketch book and made notes of 
 costumes or grouping. 
 
 In England, of the brilliant group of portrait 
 painters, Gainsborough is most famous for his drawings, 
 perhaps because he had more time. He obtained a 
 beautiful silvery quality but the portraits are rather 
 quick sketches for composition than studies of form, and 
 the same may be said of his landscapes. 
 
3O0 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 The illustrators of the sixties the magazines of which 
 period should be bought and treasured by every student 
 of figure composition, Millais, Charles Keane, Fred 
 Walker, Sandys, and many others, by their enthusiasm 
 made that decade perhaps the brightest in the history of 
 British art. The illustrations are really drawings 
 though at second-hand through the medium of the 
 engraver. The ignorant and youthful student on turn- 
 ing over the pages of these magazines glances at the 
 pegtop trousers and crinolines, and pronounces the illus- 
 trations old-fashioned. The fashions .however are 
 nothing, the art is everything, and the student must look 
 beyond the one to absorb the other. The period is not 
 yet far enough removed as is the dress of the eighteenth 
 century, to seem romantic. 
 
 It must be remembered that these draughtsmen had 
 not the freedom of the present-day men to draw to what 
 scale they liked, but drew on the wood the actual size of 
 the print and in reverse, which sometimes added im- 
 mensely to their difl&culties. 
 
 Turner left the nation thousands of sketches, an 
 astonishing number when his output of what he con- 
 sidered finished work is considered. He influenced 
 Ruskin who emphasized the need for close study of 
 growth and structure. Of late his art teaching in this 
 direction has been somewhat ignored partly because he 
 advocated the copying of bits of Durer etc. But he 
 gave reasons for all his exercises and not a few have 
 never acknowledged or perhaps even understood their 
 debt to his teaching. Turner himself as Ruskin has 
 pointed out, in his drawings of landscape displayed ex- 
 
Fig. 63 — A drawing on dark paper ot an old woman's head by Matthias 
 Grunewald. A worl< of great vitality and force. The skull high at the 
 back as in women shows clearly through the head covering which, though 
 the draughtsman mast have been quite familiar with, he draws with 
 inquisitivcness as if he had seen it for the first time — the right attitude 
 for a student of drawing. [British Museum. 
 
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Fig. 65 — A drawing in red chalk by Giorgione of a nude in stnjng action. 
 
 The dominant line of the pose starts with the head and then travels down 
 
 the neck .along the spinal column to the legs. The head, hands and 
 
 espechally the feet shew less observation than the torse and limbs. 
 
 203 
 
Fig. 66 — A composition by Frngonard. An example of drawing with the 
 brush. The .ibrupt square rh)thm of stroke is very evident. The drawing 
 is lull ot movement, secured by giving the "directions" their full degree ot 
 obliquity. [British Museum. 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 205 
 
 traordinary knowledge of the structure of natural form ; 
 the lie of the ground, the cleavage of rocks, the folds of 
 the hills he made clear, and was equally at home in 
 showing the perspective and arrangement of cloud forms 
 and the movements of water. He had a keen percep- 
 tion of rhythm and a profound understanding of com- 
 position. He made the salient points of his masses 
 whether mountain, trees, or city wall conform to large 
 invisible curves, and was master of the art of leading the 
 €ye into the picture to some desired point. 
 
 Of drawings by modern masters those by Lord 
 Leighton are well known by reason of their frequent re- 
 production, and exhibition in schools of art/ His early 
 drawings of plant forms were in line with Ruskin's 
 teaching. 
 
 Delicacy and precision are shown in fig. 59, yet a full 
 range of curve and movement is given to the stalks and 
 leaves. The emphasis though not insisted upon is 
 sufficient to detach the forms. The subtly varying lines 
 of the flower stalks should be noted. The arrangement 
 of the flower heads has been observed. No two are on a 
 level and the spaces between are unequal. 
 
 Leighton's drapery studies (fig. 60) show a technique 
 which has been widely adopted. They were made with 
 black and white chalk on brown paper. He took pains to 
 understand the forms under the drapery, sometimes mak- 
 ing a preliminary drawing from the nude. The study 
 must be looked upon as a working drawing, to be used in 
 a painting, and therefore giving the fullest possible con- 
 tent of forms, which accounts for its over accentuation. 
 
2o6 DRAWING FOR ART STUDENTS. 
 
 Alfred Stevens has already been referred to. Figs. 
 6i, 62, should be studied carefully. In fig. 61 move- 
 ment and structure were the pre-occupation of the master. 
 It should be noted how the curved form grasped by the 
 model, dominates the pose, a curve repeated in reverse 
 by the figure. The joints are well marked. The line of 
 the arms is continued across the shoulders and back. 
 The repeated attempts to place the right arm and hand 
 show that the involuntary movements of the model were 
 seized on to give increased vitality to the pose. Stevens 
 was one of the few draughtsmen who give all the move- 
 ment the human figure exhibits. 
 
 In FIG. 62 the shade lines are used to suggest 
 the planes, and to give the weight and solidity of the 
 body, which is insisted upon as much as in any "cubist" 
 drawing. A curious instance of academic "shading" 
 occurs in the rendering of the left shoulder. In the 
 arm repeated below, the linear method is reverted to. 
 The amplitude of the forms should be noted. 
 
 Whistler is said by Cuneo to have deprecated the 
 study of drawing as practised in the art schools yet his 
 numerous drypoints and lithographs which are essen- 
 tially drawings prove him to have exploited drawing to 
 the utmost. He cannot be called a skilled draughts- 
 man, and the structure and details of the bands in his 
 portraits gave him great trouble, yet he will always be 
 studied for his delicate perception of the sinuous and 
 flexible in line, of the gradation of tone and the value of 
 the right place of accent. According to Mempes he 
 once described his method of drawing which however 
 went on all fours with that of other masters. He first 
 
Fig. 67 — A sketch in pen and ink and wash by Guercino. Everything is 
 subordinated to the action and rhythm of line and the phicing of the accents 
 of dark. [British Museum. 
 
 207 
 
Fig. 68 — A wonderfully detailed dra\Aing b)- David Loggan. The head 
 seems too low in the oval. " D}namic Symmetry " might be able to 
 show that this is so because the features do not happen to coincide with 
 important divisions of the rectangle enclosing the ellipse. [British Museum. 
 
 zo8 
 
THE DRAWINGS OF THE MASTERS. 209 
 
 placed his focus of interest, it might be a figure, tower or 
 bridge, where he wanted it. From this he threw lines 
 establishing the masses of his composition, and his mind 
 at ease' he went on to express in detail whatever part he 
 chose to work at. Reference is made elsewhere to the 
 way he trained his memory. 
 
 While so many masters must be omitted necessarily, 
 one may barely mention Vierge that master of line and of 
 the placing of darks. His work should be closely 
 studied by all illustrators. 
 
 This chapter will close without any reference to 
 living masters or to new movements in the study of form, 
 though the student will take a keen interest in the con- 
 troversies of to-day and will certainly admire and per- 
 haps found himself upon the work of those whom he 
 feels most in sympathy with. The omission must not be 
 taken as implying that there are no great draughtsmen 
 living, or that the new movements are negligible. 
 
 But all in these pages has been concerned with form 
 in its three-fold aspect of movement, structure and 
 appearance as revealed by light. If the student has 
 been well grounded on some such lines, the new theories 
 of form will have no terrors for him, nor will he be con- 
 founded by their results; but it is evident that in this 
 book only those methods' which have been sanctioned by 
 the practice of the long line of masters could have been 
 dealt with. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 N.B. — The figures in heavy type indicate those pages on 
 which Illustrations occur. 
 
 Anatomy, 94, 98 
 
 Animals, 118, 127, 120, 123 
 
 Artists : 
 
 Botticelli, 4 
 
 Correggio, Frontispiece 
 
 Crawhall, 109, 115 
 
 Degas, 3, 196 
 
 Durer, 4, 171, 176 
 
 Fragonard, 204 
 
 Gainsborough, 199 
 
 Giorgione, 203 
 
 Giotto, 182 
 
 Griinewald, 201 
 
 Guercino, 5, 91, 207 
 
 Holbein, 4, 90, 150, 152, 172, 
 173, 182 
 
 Ingres, 4, 185, 194 
 
 Leighton, 189, 190, 205 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 174, 182 
 
 Loggan, 208 
 
 Lorenzo de Credi, 202 
 
 Maclise, 38 
 
 Menzel, 196 
 
 Michael Angelo, 177 
 
 Millet, 186, 195 
 
 Raphael, 178 
 
 Rembrandt, 4, 5, 184, 188 
 
 Reynolds, 89 
 
 Rubens, 5, 179, 180, 183, 187 
 
 Ruskin, 27, 132 
 
 Stevens, 153, 197, 198, 206 
 
 Velasquez, igi 
 
 Vierge, 209 
 
 Watteau, 82, 193 
 Whistler, 206 
 
 Assyrian Bas-Relief, 167, 175 
 Athenian Vase, Drawing from, 
 168, 175 
 
 Backgrounds, 60 
 Bias of Vision, 7 
 Birds, 120, 121 
 Botticelli, 4 
 
 Chalk Drawings, 99, 100, 171 
 Charcoal Studies, 41, 42, 47, 48, 
 
 54, 63, 69, 70, 92, 116 
 Chinese Drawings, no 
 Clouds, 27 
 Composition, 5, 139 
 Construction, 30 — 33 
 Convention, 151 — 160 
 Correggio, Frontispiece 
 Costume Study, 142 
 Crawhall, 109, 115 
 Cylindrical Forms, 23, 24, 25 
 
 Degas, 3, 196 
 Design, 139 
 Durer, 4, 171, 176 
 
 Edge Study, 85 
 
 Etching, Pencil Studies for, 154, 
 155 
 
 211 
 
212 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Face, 22 
 
 Figure Studies, 19, 20, 32, 49 — 
 
 84, 53, 54, 55, 59, 63, 64, 
 
 70, 92, 116, 119 
 Figure, Time Sketching, 73 — 79 
 Form, 103 — 106 
 Form, Search for, 39, 61-72 
 Fragonard, 204 
 
 Gaiasborough, 199 
 Giorgione, 203 
 Giotto, 182 
 Griinewald, 201 
 Guercino, 5, 91, 207 
 
 Head, 22 
 
 Holbein, 4, go, 150, 152, 172, 
 173, 182 
 
 Illustration, Drawing for, 161 — 
 
 165 
 Ingres, 4, 185, 194 
 
 Japanese Drawings, no, 113, 
 114 
 
 Landscape, 128 — 132 
 
 " Lay in " of Oil Study, 141 
 
 Leighton, 189, 190, 205 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, 174, 182 
 
 Light and Shade, 34 — 46, 41 
 
 Loggan, 208 
 
 Lorenzo de Credi, 202 
 
 Maclise, 38 
 
 Memory Drawing, 107 — 117, 119 
 
 Menzel, 196 
 
 Michael Angelo, 177 
 
 Millet, 186, 195 
 
 Movement, 51, 52, 53 
 
 Oil Painting, 141, 144 
 
 Painting, Drawing as a Prepara- 
 tion for, 140 — 148, 141, 142 
 
 Pencil Drawings, 43, 44, 156 
 
 Perspective, 14 
 
 Planes, 22 
 
 Plant Form, 133 — 139, 124, 137, 
 138, 189 
 
 Post-Impressionists, 7 
 
 Proportion, 3, 13 — 21 
 
 Quadrupeds, 29 
 
 Raphael, 178 
 
 Recumbent Forms, 20, 28 
 
 Related Figures, 80 — 84, 81, 82 
 
 Rembrandt, 4, 5, 184, 188 
 
 Re5molds, 89 
 
 Rubens. 5, 179, 180, 183, 187 
 
 Ruskin, 27, 132 
 
 Sincerity, Quality of, 3 
 Stevens, 153, 197, 198, 206 
 Still Life, 42 
 Style, 4 
 Sub-consciousness, 11 
 
 Tone Study, 34 — 46 
 
 Toned Paper, drawing on, 10 1 
 
 102 
 T5rpe Forms, 22 — 29 
 
 Velasquez, 191 
 
 Vierge, 209 
 
 Vision, Bias of, 7 — 12 
 
 Water Colour Drawing, 142, 149 
 Watteau, 82, 193 
 Whistler, 206 
 Wrist, 26 
 
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