[1] In Dravidian words a line above a vowel shows that it is long.
The dotted consonants t, d, and n are pronounced by striking the tip
of the tongue against the centre of the hard palate. The dotted l is
distinguished from l in a similar way. Its sound, however, differs in
the different districts. A Greek [chi] marks the sound of _ch_ in
"loch"; _s_ is the English _sh_; _c_ the _ch_ in "church"; and _ri_
is an _r_ which is used as a vowel. In the list of Dravidian
languages the names are spelt fully, with all the necessary
diacritical marks. In the rest of the article dots under consonants
have been omitted in these words.
DRAWBACK, in commerce, the paying back of a duty previously paid upon
the exportation of excisable articles or upon the re-exportation of
foreign goods. The object of a drawback is to enable commodities which
are subject to taxation to be exported and sold in a foreign country on
the same terms as goods from countries where they are untaxed. It
differs from a bounty in that the latter enables commodities to be sold
abroad at less than their cost price; it may occur, however, under
certain conditions that the giving of a drawback has an effect
equivalent to that of a bounty, as in the case of the so-called sugar
bounties in Germany (see SUGAR). The earlier tariffs contained elaborate
tables of the drawbacks allowed on the exportation or re-exportation of
commodities, but so far as the United Kingdom is concerned the system of
"bonded warehouses" practically abolished drawbacks, as commodities can
be warehoused (placed "in bond") until required for subsequent
exportation.
DRAWING, in art. Although the verb "to draw" has various meanings, the
substantive _drawing_ is confined by usage to its artistic sense,
delineation or design. The word "draw," from a root common to the
Teutonic languages (Goth, _dragan_, O.H.G. _drahan_, Mod. Ger. _tragen_,
which all have the sense of "carry," O. Norse _draga_, A.S. _drazan_,
_drazen_, "draw," cf. Lat. _trahere_), means to pull or "drag" (a word
of the same origin) as distinct from the action of pushing. It is thus
used of traction generally, whether by men, animals or machines. The
same idea is preserved in "drawing" as applied to the fine arts. We do
not usually say, or think, that a sculptor is drawing when he is using
his chisel, although he may be expressing or defining forms, nor that an
engraver is drawing when he is pushing the burin with the palm of the
hand, although the result may be the rendering of a design. But we do
say that an artist is drawing when he uses the lead pencil, and here we
have a motion bearing some resemblance to that of traction generally.
The action of the artist in drawing the pencil point with his fingers
along the paper is analogous, e.g., to that of a horse or man drawing a
pole over soft ground and leaving a mark behind. The same analogy may be
observed between two of the senses in which the French verb _tirer_ is
frequently employed. This word, the origin of which is quite uncertain,
was formerly used by good writers in the two senses of the verb to draw.
Thus Lafontaine says, "Six forts chevaux _tiraient_ un coche"; and
Caillieres wrote, "Il n'y a pas longtemps que je me suis fait _tirer_
par Rigaud," meaning that Rigaud had drawn or painted his portrait. At
the present day the verb _tirer_ has fallen into disuse amongst
cultivated Frenchmen with regard to drawing and painting, but it is
still universally used for all kinds of design and even for photography
by the common people. The cultivated use it still for printing, as for
example "cette gravure sera tiree a cent exemplaires," in the sense of
pulling. A verb much more nearly related to the English verb _to draw_
is the French _traire_ (Lat. _trahere_), which has _trait_ for its past
participle. _Traire_ is now used exclusively for milking cows and other
animals, and though the analogy between this and artistic drawing is not
obvious at first, nevertheless there is a certain analogy of motion,
since the hand passing down the teat draws the milk downwards. The word
_trait_ is much more familiar in connexion with art as "les traits du
visage," the natural markings of the face, and it is very often used in
a figurative sense, as we say "traits of character." It is familiar in
the English _portrait_, derived from _protrahere_. The ancient Romans
used words which expressed more clearly the conception that drawing was
done in line (_delineare_) or in shade (_adumbrare_), though there are
reasons for believing that the words were often indiscriminately
applied. Although the modern Italians have both _traire_ and _trarre_,
they use _delineare_ still in the sense of artistic drawing, and also
_adombrare_. The Greek verb [Greek: graphein] appears in English in
"graphic" and in many compounds, such as photograph, &c. It is worth
observing that the Greeks seem to have considered drawing and writing
(q.v.) as essentially the same process, since they used the same word
for both. This points to the early identity of the two arts when drawing
was a kind of writing, and when such writing as men had learned to
practise was essentially what we should call drawing, though of a rude
and simple kind. Even in the present day picture writing is not
unfrequently resorted to by travellers as a means of making themselves
intelligible. There is also a kind of art which is writing in the modern
sense and drawing at the same time, such as the work of the medieval
illuminators in their manuscripts. (X.)
_The Art of Drawing._--Rather than attempt here a historical survey of
the various so-called "styles" of drawing, or write a personal
appreciation of them, it seems of greater use to give a logical account
of drawing as an art, applicable to all times and countries. Reference
to the teaching of drawing will be occasionally given rather to
illustrate the argument than with a view to its being of practical use.
At the outset a distinction must be made between drawing as a means of
symbolic or literary expression and drawing as the direct and only means
of expressing the beauty of form. If Pharaoh wants to have it known that
a hundred ducks were consumed at one meal in his court, he employs a
draughtsman to register the fact on a frieze by picturing a row of cooks
occupied in preparing the hundred ducks. The artist in this case does
not represent the scene as he must have known it in the kitchen, with
all its variety of movement and composition (as an early Greek vase
painter conceived the interior of a vase factory), but all he does and
is required to do is to give the sufficient number of figures and ducks.
The more uniform the figures the greater will be the effect of number.
Drawing has been employed here to tell a story, and it succeeds in so
far as it tells the spectator plainly what could be told, perhaps less
conveniently, in words. It matters not whether the figures and objects
be feelingly rendered and harmoniously composed. So, to-day, a child, or
any one who has a simple trick of symbolizing figures and objects in
nature, can describe any event or moral by this process, provided the
plot be not too elaborate to be expressed by a scene, or series of
scenes, enacted by dumb symbolic figures. It is plain that the amusing
pictures in _Punch_ or _Fliegende Blatter_ would be none the more
amusing if they were done by the hand of Michelangelo, nor would the
mystic designs of Blake be more full of meaning if drawn by Rembrandt,
for in neither case do these works depend upon any subtle rendering of
the forms of nature for their success, but upon the dramatic or
intellectual imagination of the man who conceived them. When the witty
or ethical man is at the same time a master draughtsman his work has two
values, the "literary" content and the beauty of his drawing of natural
objects. But it must be borne in mind that these values are
fundamentally distinct; so much so that the spectator who has no
appreciation of the forms of nature enjoys the story told and remains
blind to the qualities of draughtsmanship, whilst the lover of nature's
forms may or may not trouble to unravel the literary plot but finds
perfect satisfaction in the drawing. By far the greater part of
illustration, and of artistic production generally, must be classed as
symbolic art. Magazine stories to-day are sometimes illustrated even by
photography, for the hand of the artist is not required. Symbolic art
describes indirectly and in a necessarily limited scope what literature
can do directly and with unlimited powers. The only content of symbolic
drawing is its literary meaning; as drawing it may be quite worthless.
Pure drawing, however, whether it represent a dramatic event or a
knee-joint, has a content that cannot be expressed by words, and is not
necessarily directed towards literary expression. Just as a fragment of
good sculpture pleases the connoisseur without any reference either to
the whole original or to its spiritual significance, fine drawing can
appeal to the lover of nature independently of indirect considerations.
What is the content of pure drawing? It is held by some that drawing or
monochrome can suggest colour, and many people, some consciously, others
unconsciously, attempt to represent in drawings the colours of figures
and landscape. It seems a strange aberration to argue that by different
intensities of the one colour various other colours can be suggested: it
would not be more unreasonable to maintain that E flat and F could be
suggested by striking the note G with varying strength. Now the
draughtsman employs various intensities of his monochrome as light and
shade by which to give roundness to his forms. But if on the same
drawing he uses the same means in his attempt to express colour, a
conflict would be at once set up between that which makes for form and
that which would make for colour, and the result would generally be a
confusion. Again, let one attempt to give red hair to a monochrome
drawing of a man, and if the red be plain and unmistakable to all who
are not the artist's accomplices, then the artist has succeeded;
otherwise it is bootless to treat of colour and colour values (which of
course must depend upon the existence of colour) in monochrome. Apart
from theory, if we examine the drawings, etchings and monochromes of
great artists, where do we find them attempting to give colour or colour
values? The hundreds of costume studies by Rembrandt might have been
done from white plaster models, and there are only a few exceptions
where a man has, for instance, a black hat or cloak. But in these few
instances the "colour" tone is applied with such discretion that the
true representation of the form is scarcely, perhaps only theoretically,
impaired: they certainly have gained nothing in colour value because no
specific colour is manifest in them. In Rembrandt's, Claude's or
Turner's drawings of landscapes the formation of the country, the
architecture, &c., is expressed by line, light and shade, and enhanced
by shadows cast from clouds and trees. If, in the drawings of masters,
we should find objects darker or lighter than their position in the
light would warrant, they have value (perhaps not quite a legitimate
one) for balancing the composition as a flat pattern. They were never
intended to suggest colour, nor do they. Yet, in spite of the failure to
succeed, and contrary to logical argument and the practice of great
draughtsmen, the student of most of the schools of Europe and America
still persists in doing the hair dark, and, by attempting to give colour
values to the clothes, breaks up the consistency of the whole. For the
same reason that the sculptor uses uniformly coloured material in order
that the natural light and shade may have full opportunity of making his
forms manifest to the spectator, the draughtsman confines himself to
giving light and shade only. If a monochrome has "colour tones," the
effect is similar to that produced by a draped statue made out of
variously coloured marbles--an inartistic jumble.
As the immediate purpose and content of drawing there remains the
representation of form only. Drawing is, therefore, essentially the same
activity as sculpture, and has no additional scope. "Pupils," says
Donatello, "I give you the whole art of sculpture when I tell you to
draw" (cited by Holroyd, _Michel Angelo_, p. 2 95), and the only
practical teaching of drawing might be summed up by the inversion of the
above.
Now if everything in nature--men, mountains or clouds--were as flat
targets, i.e. two-dimensional, drawing could be legitimately reduced to
a mechanical process,--to trace their contours upon a glass screen or
even photograph them would be all that would be required. Indeed,
provided the size of the drawing, the local colour and the texture be
the same as those of the original, a complete illusion would be the
result, in fact the proper end of one's labours. But the presence of the
third dimension in all objects causes light and shade, which in their
turn bring about radical changes of the local colour, even in uniformly
coloured objects. Now since drawing cannot suggest colour, local or
atmospherical, any attempt to effect an illusion by a monochrome is at
once defeated. If the end of drawing were to approach imitation or
illusion as nearly as possible, how is it that a mere "sketch" by a
master draughtsman can be for itself as valuable as his highly finished
drawing? And surely a masterly outline drawing of a figure or landscape
does not pretend to be an illusion. If then the draughtsman does not,
and cannot hope to imitate nature, he is compelled to state only his
ideas of it, ideas of three-dimensional form. For this reason only
drawing must be treated as an art, and not as a mechanical act of
getting an illusion.
[Illustration: (From a Greek vase in the British Museum (E. 46).