largely confined themselves to training students mechanically to observe
and portray the thing set before them to copy, an antique figure, a
still-life group, a living model sitting as still and lifeless as he
can. Now this is all very well as far as it goes, but the real matter of
art is not necessarily in all this. And if the real matter of art is
neglected too long the student may find it difficult to get in touch
with it again.
These accurate, painstaking school studies are very necessary indeed as
a training for the eye in observing accurately, and the hand in
reproducing the appearances of things, because it is through the
reproduction of natural appearances and the knowledge of form and colour
derived from such study that the student will afterwards find the means
of giving expression to his feelings. But when valuable prizes and
scholarships are given for them, and _not_ for really artistic work,
they do tend to become the end instead of the means.
It is of course improbable that even school studies done with the sole
idea of accuracy by a young artist will in all cases be devoid of
artistic feeling; it will creep in, if he has the artistic instinct. But
it is not enough #encouraged#, and the prize is generally given to the
drawing that is most complete and like the model in a commonplace way.
If a student, moved by a strong feeling for form, lets himself go and
does a fine thing, probably only remotely like the model to the average
eye, the authorities are puzzled and don't usually know what to make of
it.
There are schools where the most artistic qualities are encouraged, but
they generally neglect the academic side; and the student leaves them
poorly equipped for fine work. Surely it would be possible to make a
distinction, giving prizes for academic drawings which should be as
thoroughly accurate in a mechanical way as industry and application can
make them, and also for artistic drawings, in which the student should
be encouraged to follow his bent, striving for the expression of any
qualities that delight him, and troubling less about mechanical
accuracy. The use of drawing as an expression of something felt is so
often left until after the school training is done that many students
fail to achieve it altogether. And rows of lifeless pictures, made up of
models copied in different attitudes, with studio properties around
them, are the result, and pass for art in many quarters. Such pictures
often display considerable ability, for as Burne-Jones says in one of
his letters, "It is very difficult to paint even a bad picture." But had
the ability been differently directed, the pictures might have been
good.
[Illustration: Plate XIV.
DRAWING IN RED CHALK BY ERNEST COLE
Example of unacademic drawing made in the author's class at the
Goldsmiths College School of Art.]
It is difficult to explain what is wrong with an academic drawing,
and what is the difference between it and fine drawing. But perhaps
this difference can be brought home a little more clearly if you will
pardon a rather fanciful simile. I am told that if you construct a
perfectly fitted engine--the piston fitting the cylinder with absolute
accuracy and the axles their sockets with no space between, &c.--it
#will not work#, but be a lifeless mass of iron. There must be enough
play between the vital parts to allow of some movement; "dither" is, I
believe, the Scotch word for it. The piston must be allowed some play
in the opening of the cylinder through which it passes, or it will not
be able to move and show any life. And the axles of the wheels in their
sockets, and, in fact, all parts of the machine where life and movement
are to occur, must have this play, this "dither." It has always seemed
to me that the accurately fitting engine was like a good academic
drawing, in a way a perfect piece of workmanship, but lifeless.
Imperfectly perfect, because there was no room left for the play of
life. And to carry the simile further, if you allow too great a play
between the parts, so that they fit one over the other too loosely,
the engine will lose power and become a poor rickety thing. There must
be the smallest amount of play that will allow of its working. And
the more perfectly made the engine, the less will the amount of this
"dither" be.
The word "dither" will be a useful name to give that elusive quality,
that play on mechanical accuracy, existing in all vital art. #It is this
vital quality that has not yet received much attention in art training.#
It is here that the photograph fails, it can only at best give
mechanical accuracy, whereas art gives the impression of a live,
individual consciousness. Where the recording instrument is a live
individual, there is no mechanical standard of accuracy possible, as
every recording instrument is a different personality. And it is the
subtle differences in the individual renderings of nature that are the
life-blood of art. The photograph, on account of its being chained to
mechanical accuracy, has none of this play of life to give it charm. It
only approaches artistic conditions when it is blurred, vague, and
indefinite, as in so-called artistic photography, for then only can some
amount of this vitalising play, this "dither" be imagined to exist.
It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes
the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is
variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made
article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are
probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery,
the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave
it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a
perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in
sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the
earlier period.
But to return to our drawings. If the variations from strict accuracy
made under the influence of feeling are too great, the result will be
a caricature. The variations in a beautiful drawing are so subtle as
often to defy detection. The studies of Ingres are an instance of what I
mean. How true and instinct with life are his lines, and how easily one
might assume that they were merely accurate. But no merely accurate work
would have the impelling quality these drawings possess. If the writer
may venture an opinion on so great an artist, the subtle difference we
are talking about was sometimes missed by even Ingres himself, when he
transferred his drawings to the canvas; and the pictures have in some
cases become academic and lifeless. Without the stimulus of nature
before him it was difficult to preserve the "dither" in the drawing, and
the life has escaped. This is the great difficulty of working from
studies; it is so easy to lose those little points in your drawing that
make for vitality of expression, in the process of copying in cold
blood.
[Illustration: Plate XV.
FROM A PENCIL DRAWING BY INGRES
_Photo Bulloz_]
The fact is: it is only the academic that can be taught. And it is no
small thing if this is well done in a school. The qualities that give
vitality and distinction to drawing must be appreciated by the student
himself, and may often assert themselves in his drawing without his
being aware that he is doing aught but honestly copying. And if he has
trained himself thoroughly he will not find much difficulty when he is
moved to vital expression. All the master can do is to stand by and
encourage whenever he sees evidence of the real thing. But there is
undoubtedly this danger of the school studies becoming the end instead
of the means.
A drawing is not necessarily academic because it is thorough, but only
because it is dead. Neither is a drawing necessarily academic because
it is done in what is called a conventional style, any more than it is
good because it is done in an unconventional style. The test is whether
it has life and conveys genuine feeling.
* * * * *
There is much foolish talk about conventional art, as if art could ever
get away from conventions, if it would. The convention will be more
natural or more abstract according to the nature of the thing to be
conveyed and the medium employed to express it. But naturalism is just
as much a convention as any of the other isms that art has lately been
so assailed with. For a really unconventional art there is Madame
Tussaud's Waxworks. There, even the convention of a frame and flat
surface are done away with, besides the painted symbols to represent
things. They have real natural chairs, tables, and floors, real clothes,
and even real hair. Realism everywhere, but no life. And we all know the
result. There is more expression of life in a few lines scribbled on
paper by a good artist than in all the reality of the popular show.
It would seem that, after a certain point, the nearer your picture
approaches the actual illusion of natural appearance, the further you
are from the expression of life. One can never hope to surpass the
illusionary appearance of a #tableau vivant#. There you have real,
living people. But what an awful deathlike stillness is felt when the
curtain is drawn aside. The nearer you approach the actual in all its
completeness, the more evident is the lack of that #movement# which
always accompanies life. You cannot express life by copying laboriously
natural appearances. Those things in the appearance that convey vital
expression and are capable of being translated into the medium he is
working with, have to be sought by the artist, and the painted symbols
of his picture made accordingly. This lack of the movement of life is
never noticed in a good picture, on the other hand the figures are often
felt to move.
Pictures are blamed for being conventional when it is lack of vitality
that is the trouble. If the convention adopted has not been vitalised by
the emotion that is the reason of the painting, it will, of course, be a
lifeless affair. But however abstract and unnaturalistic the manner
adopted, if it has been truly felt by the artist as the right means of
expressing his emotional idea, it will have life and should not be
called conventional in the commonly accepted offensive use of the term.
It is only when a painter consciously chooses a manner not his own,
which he does not comprehend and is incapable of firing with his own
personality, that his picture is ridiculous and conventional in the dead
sense.
But every age differs in its temperament, and the artistic conventions
of one age seldom fit another. The artist has to discover a convention
for himself, one that fits his particular individuality. But this is
done simply and naturally--not by starting out with the intention of
flouting all traditional conventions on principle; nor, on the other
hand, by accepting them all on principle, but by simply following his
own bent and selecting what appeals to him in anything and everything
that comes within the range of his vision. The result is likely to be
something very different from the violent exploits in peculiarity that
have been masquerading as originality lately. #Originality is more
concerned with sincerity than with peculiarity.#
The struggling and fretting after originality that one sees in modern
art is certainly an evidence of vitality, but one is inclined to doubt
whether anything really original was ever done in so forced a way. The
older masters, it seems, were content sincerely to try and do the best
they were capable of doing. And this continual striving to do better led
them almost unconsciously to new and original results. Originality is a
quality over which an artist has as little influence as over the shape
and distinction of his features. All he can do is to be sincere and try
and find out the things that really move him and that he really likes.
If he has a strong and original character, he will have no difficulty in
this, and his work will be original in the true sense. And if he has
not, it is a matter of opinion whether he is not better employed in
working along the lines of some well-tried manner that will at any rate
keep him from doing anything really bad, than in struggling to cloak his
own commonplaceness under violent essays in peculiarity and the
avoidance of the obvious at all costs.
But while speaking against fretting after eccentricity, don't let it be
assumed that any discouragement is being given to genuine new points of
view. In art, when a thing has once been well done and has found
embodiment in some complete work of art, it has been done once for all.
The circumstances that produced it are never likely to occur again. That
is why those painters who continue to reproduce a picture of theirs (we
do not mean literally) that had been a success in the first instance,
never afterwards obtain the success of the original performance. Every
beautiful work of art is a new creation, the result of particular
circumstances in the life of the artist and the time of its production,
that have never existed before and will never recur again. Were any of
the great masters of the past alive now, they would do very different
work from what they did then, the circumstances being so entirely
different. So that should anybody seek to paint like Titian now, by
trying to paint like Titian did in his time, he could not attempt
anything more unlike the spirit of that master; which in its day, like
the spirit of all masters, was most advanced. But it is only by a
scrupulously sincere and truthful attitude of mind that the new and
original circumstances in which we find ourselves can be taken advantage
of for the production of original work. And self-conscious seeking after
peculiarity only stops the natural evolution and produces abortions.
But do not be frightened by conventions, the different materials in
which the artist works impose their conventions. And as it is through
these materials that he has to find expression, what expressive
qualities they possess must be studied, and those facts in nature
selected that are in harmony with them. The treatment of hair by
sculptors is an extreme instance of this. What are those qualities of
hair that are amenable to expression in stone? Obviously they are few,
and confined chiefly to the mass forms in which the hair arranges
itself. The finest sculptors have never attempted more than this, have
never lost sight of the fact that it was stone they were working with,
and never made any attempt to create an illusion of real hair. And in
the same way, when working in bronze, the fine artist never loses sight
of the fact that it is bronze with which he is working. How sadly the
distinguished painter to whom a misguided administration entrusted the
work of modelling the British emblem overlooked this, may be seen any
day in Trafalgar Square, the lions there possessing none of the
splendour of bronze but looking as if they were modelled in dough, and
possessing in consequence none of the vital qualities of the lion. It is
interesting to compare them with the little lion Alfred Stevens modelled
for the railing of the British Museum, and to speculate on what a thrill
we might have received every time we passed Trafalgar Square, had he
been entrusted with the work, as he might have been.
And in painting, the great painters never lose sight of the fact that it
is paint with which they are expressing themselves. And although paint
is capable of approaching much nearer an actual illusory appearance of
nature than stone or bronze, they never push this to the point where you
forget that it is paint. This has been left for some of the smaller men.
And when it comes to drawing, the great artists have always confined
themselves to the qualities in nature that the tool they were drawing
with was capable of expressing, and no others. Whether working with pen,
pencil, chalk, or charcoal, they always created a convention within
which unlimited expression has been possible.
To sum up, academic drawing is all that can be really taught, and is as
necessary to the painter as the practising of exercises is to the
musician, that his powers of observation and execution may be trained.
But the vital matter of art is not in all this necessary training. And
this fact the student should always keep in mind, and be ever ready to
give rein to those natural enthusiasms which, if he is an artist, he
will find welling up within him. The danger is that the absorbing
interest in his academic studies may take up his whole attention, to the
neglect of the instinctive qualities that he should possess the
possession of which alone will entitle him to be an artist.
VII
THE STUDY OF DRAWING
We have seen that there are two extreme points of view from which the
representation of form can be approached, that of outline directly
related to the mental idea of form with its touch association on the one
hand, and that of mass connected directly with the visual picture on the
retina on the other.
Now, between these two extreme points of view there are an infinite
variety of styles combining them both and leaning more to the one side
or the other, as the case may be. But it is advisable for the student to
study both separately, for there are different things to be learnt and
different expressive qualities in nature to be studied in both.
From the study of outline drawing the eye is trained to accurate
observation and learns the expressive value of a line. And the hand is
also trained to definite statement, the student being led on by degrees
from simple outlines to approach the full realisation of form in all the
complexity of light and shade.
But at the same time he should study mass drawing with paint from the
purely visual point of view, in order to be introduced to the important
study of tone values and the expression of form by means of planes. And
so by degrees he will learn accurately to observe and portray the tone
masses (their shapes and values) to which all visual appearances can be
reduced; and he will gradually arrive at the full realisation of form--a
realisation that will bring him to a point somewhat similar to that
arrived at from the opposite point of view of an outline to which has
been added light and shade, &c.
But unless both points of view are studied, the student's work will be
incomplete. If form be studied only from the outline point of view, and
what have been called sculptor's drawings alone attempted, the student
will lack knowledge of the tone and atmosphere that always envelop form
in nature. And also he will be poorly equipped when he comes to exchange
the pencil for a brush and endeavours to express himself in paint.
And if his studies be only from the mass point of view, the training of
his eye to the accurate observation of all the subtleties of contours
and the construction of form will be neglected. And he will not
understand the mental form stimulus that the direction and swing of a
brush stroke can give. These and many things connected with expression
can best be studied in line work.
Let the student therefore begin on the principles adopted in most
schools, with outline studies of simple casts or models, and gradually
add light and shade. When he has acquired more proficiency he may
approach drawing from the life. This is sufficiently well done in the
numerous schools of art that now exist all over the country. But, at the
same time (and this, as far as I know, is not done anywhere), the
student should begin some simple form of mass drawing in paint, simple
exercises, as is explained later in the chapter on Mass Drawing,
Practical, being at first attempted and criticised solely from the point
of view of tone values.
[Illustration: Diagram II.
SHOWING WHERE SQUARENESSES MAY BE LOOKED FOR IN THE DRAWING ON THE
OPPOSITE PAGE]
[Illustration: Plate XVI.
STUDY BY RUBENS FROM THE COLLECTION OF CHARLES RICKETTS AND CHARLES
SHANNON
A splendid example of Rubens' love of rich, full forms. Compare with the
diagram opposite, and note the flatnesses that give strength to the
forms.]
From lack of this elementary tone study, the student, when he approaches
painting for the first time, with only his outline and light and shade
knowledge, is entirely at sea. With brushes and paint he is presented
with a problem of form expressions entirely new. And he usually begins
to flounder about, using his paint as much like chalk on paper as
possible. And timid of losing his outlines, he fears to put down a mass,
as he has no knowledge of reducing appearances to a structure of tone
masses or planes.
I would suggest, therefore, that the student should study simultaneously
from these two points of view, beginning with their most extreme
positions, that is, bare outline on the one side and on the other side
tone masses criticised for their accuracy of values only in the first
instance. As he advances, the one study will help the other. The line
work will help the accuracy with which he observes the shapes of masses,
and when he comes to light and shade his knowledge of tone values will
help him here. United at last, when complete light and shade has been
added to his outline drawings and to his mass drawing an intimate
knowledge of form, the results will approximate and the two paths will
meet. But if the qualities appertaining to either point of view are not
studied separately, the result is confusion and the "muddling through"
method so common in our schools of art.
VIII
LINE DRAWING: PRACTICAL
Seeing that the first condition of your drawing is that it has to be
made on a flat surface, no matter whether it is to be in line or mass
you intend to draw, it is obvious that appearances must be reduced to
terms of a flat surface before they can be expressed on paper. And this
is the first difficulty that confronts the student in attempting to draw
a solid object. He has so acquired the habit of perceiving the solidity
of things, as was explained in an earlier chapter, that no little
difficulty will be experienced in accurately seeing them as a flat
picture.
[Sidenote: Observing Solids as a Flat copy.]
As it is only from one point of view that things can be drawn, and as we
have two eyes, therefore two points of view, the closing of one eye will
be helpful at first.
The simplest and most mechanical way of observing things as a flat
subject is to have a piece of cardboard with a rectangular hole cut out
of the middle, and also pieces of cotton threaded through it in such a
manner that they make a pattern of squares across the opening, as in the
accompanying sketch. To make such a frame, get a piece of stiff
cardboard, about 12 inches by 9 inches, and cut a rectangular hole in
the centre, 7 inches by 5 inches, as in Diagram III. Now mark off the
inches on all sides of the opening, and taking some black thread, pass
it through the point A with a needle (fixing the end at this point with
sealing-wax), and across the opening to the corresponding point on the
opposite side. Take it along to the next point, as shown by the dotted
line, and pass it through and across the opening again, and so on, until
B is reached, when the thread should be held by some sealing-wax quite
taut everywhere. Do the same for the other side. This frame should be
held between the eye and the object to be drawn (one eye being closed)
in a perfectly vertical position, and with the rectangular sides of the
opening vertical and horizontal. The object can then be observed as a
flat copy. The trellis of cotton will greatly help the student in seeing
the subject to be drawn in two dimensions, and this is the first
technical difficulty the young draughtsman has to overcome. It is useful
also in training the eye to see the proportions of different parts one
to another, the squares of equal size giving one a unit of measurement
by which all parts can be scaled.
[Illustration: Diagram III.
A DEVICE FOR ENABLING STUDENTS TO OBSERVE APPEARANCES AS A FLAT SUBJECT]
[Sidenote: Fixing Positions of Salient Points]