artistic expression. In academic work, where artistic feeling is less
important than the discipline of your faculties, you may, of course, do
so, but even here as little as possible. In beautiful drawing of any
facility it has a weakening effect, somewhat similar to that produced by
a person stopping in the middle of a witty or brilliant remark to
correct a word. If a wrong line is made, it is left in by the side of
the right one in the drawing of many of the masters. But the great aim
of the draughtsman should be to train himself to draw cleanly and
fearlessly, hand and eye going together. But this state of things cannot
be expected for some time.
Let painstaking accuracy be your aim for a long time. When your eye and
hand have acquired the power of seeing and expressing on paper with some
degree of accuracy what you see, you will find facility and quickness of
execution will come of their own accord. In drawing of any expressive
power this quickness and facility of execution are absolutely essential.
The waves of emotion, under the influence of which the eye really sees
in any artistic sense, do not last long enough to allow of a slow,
painstaking manner of execution. There must be no hitch in the machinery
of expression when the consciousness is alive to the realisation of
something fine. Fluency of hand and accuracy of eye are the things your
academic studies should have taught you, and these powers will be needed
if you are to catch the expression of any of the finer things in form
that constitute good drawing.
Try and express yourself in as simple, not as complicated a manner as
possible. Let every touch mean something, and if you don't see what to
do next, don't fill in the time by meaningless shading and scribbling
until you do. Wait awhile, rest your eye by looking away, and then see
if you cannot find something right that needs doing.
Before beginning a drawing, it is not a bad idea to study carefully the
work of some master draughtsman whom the subject to be drawn may
suggest. If you do this carefully and thoughtfully, and take in a full
enjoyment, your eye will unconsciously be led to see in nature some of
the qualities of the master's work. And you will see the subject to be
drawn as a much finer thing than would have been the case had you come
to it with your eye unprepared in any way. Reproductions are now so good
and cheap that the best drawings in the world can be had for a few
pence, and every student should begin collecting reproductions of the
things that interest him.
This is not the place to discuss questions of health, but perhaps it
will not be thought grandmotherly to mention the extreme importance of
nervous vitality in a fine draughtsman, and how his life should be
ordered on such healthy lines that he has at his command the maximum
instead of the minimum of this faculty. After a certain point, it is a
question of vitality how far an artist is likely to go in art. Given two
men of equal ability, the one leading a careless life and the other a
healthy one, as far as a healthy one is possible to such a
supersensitive creature as an artist, there can be no doubt as to the
result. It is because there is still a lingering idea in the minds of
many that an artist must lead a dissipated life or he is not really an
artist, that one feels it necessary to mention the subject. This idea
has evidently arisen from the inability of the average person to
associate an unconventional mode of life with anything but riotous
dissipation. A conventional life is not the only wholesome form of
existence, and is certainly a most unwholesome and deadening form to the
artist; and neither is a dissipated life the only unconventional one
open to him. It is as well that the young student should know this, and
be led early to take great care of that most valuable of studio
properties, vigorous health.
XX
MATERIALS
The materials in which the artist works are of the greatest importance
in determining what qualities in the infinite complexity of nature he
selects for expression. And the good draughtsman will find out the
particular ones that belong to whatever medium he selects for his
drawing, and be careful never to attempt more than it is capable of
doing. Every material he works with possesses certain vital qualities
peculiar to itself, and it is his business to find out what these are
and use them to the advantage of his drawing. When one is working with,
say, pen and ink, the necessity for selecting only certain things is
obvious enough. But when a medium with the vast capacity of oil paint is
being used, the principle of its governing the nature of the work is
more often lost sight of. So near can oil paint approach an actual
illusion of natural appearances, that much misdirected effort has been
wasted on this object, all enjoyment of the medium being subordinated to
a meretricious attempt to deceive the eye. And I believe a popular idea
of the art of painting is that it exists chiefly to produce this
deception. No vital expression of nature can be achieved without the aid
of the particular vitality possessed by the medium with which one is
working. If this is lost sight of and the eye is tricked into thinking
that it is looking at real nature, it is not a fine picture. Art is not
a substitute for nature, but an expression of feeling produced in the
consciousness of the artist, and intimately associated with the material
through which it is expressed in his work--inspired, it may be, in the
first instance, by something seen, and expressed by him in painted
symbols as true to nature as he can make them while keeping in tune to
the emotional idea that prompted the work; but never regarded by the
fine artist as anything but painted symbols nevertheless. Never for one
moment does he intend you to forget that it is a painted picture you are
looking at, however naturalistic the treatment his theme may demand.
In the earlier history of art it was not so necessary to insist on the
limitations imposed by different mediums. With their more limited
knowledge of the phenomena of vision, the early masters had not the same
opportunities of going astray in this respect. But now that the whole
field of vision has been discovered, and that the subtlest effects of
light and atmosphere are capable of being represented, it has become
necessary to decide how far complete accuracy of representation will
help the particular impression you may intend your picture or drawing to
create. The danger is that in producing a complete illusion of
representation, the particular vitality of your medium, with all the
expressive power it is capable of yielding, may be lost.
Perhaps the chief difference between the great masters of the past and
many modern painters is the neglect of this principle. #They represented
nature in terms of whatever medium they worked in, and never
overstepped this limitation#. Modern artists, particularly in the
nineteenth century, often attempted to #copy nature#, the medium being
subordinated to the attempt to make it look like the real thing. In the
same way, the drawings of the great masters were drawings. They did not
attempt anything with a point that a point was not capable of
expressing. The drawings of many modern artists are full of attempts to
express tone and colour effects, things entirely outside the true
province of drawing. The small but infinitely important part of nature
that pure drawing is capable of conveying has been neglected, and line
work, until recently, went out of fashion in our schools.
There is something that makes for power in the limitations your
materials impose. Many artists whose work in some of the more limited
mediums is fine, are utterly feeble when they attempt one with so few
restrictions as oil paint. If students could only be induced to impose
more restraint upon themselves when they attempt so difficult a medium
as paint, it would be greatly to the advantage of their work. Beginning
first with monochrome in three tones, as explained in a former chapter,
they might then take for figure work ivory black and Venetian red. It is
surprising what an amount of colour effect can be got with this simple
means, and how much can be learned about the relative positions of the
warm and cold colours. Do not attempt the full range of tone at first,
but keep the darks rather lighter and the lights darker than nature.
Attempt the full scale of tone only when you have acquired sufficient
experience with the simpler range, and gradually add more colours as you
learn to master a few. But restraints are not so fashionable just now
as unbridled licence. Art students start in with a palette full of the
most amazing colours, producing results that it were better not to
discuss. It is a wise man who can discover his limitations and select a
medium the capacities of which just tally with his own. To discover
this, it is advisable to try many, and below is a short description of
the chief ones used by the draughtsman. But very little can be said
about them, and very little idea of their capacities given in a written
description; they must be handled by the student, and are no doubt
capable of many more qualities than have yet been got out of them.
[Sidenote: Lead Pencil]
This well-known medium is one of the most beautiful for pure line work,
and its use is an excellent training to the eye and hand in precision of
observation. Perhaps this is why it has not been so popular in our art
schools lately, when the charms of severe discipline are not so much in
favour as they should be. It is the first medium we are given to draw
with, and as the handiest and most convenient is unrivalled for
sketch-book use.
It is made in a large variety of degrees, from the hardest and greyest
to the softest and blackest, and is too well known to need much
description. It does not need fixing.
For pure line drawing nothing equals it, except silver point, and great
draughtsmen, like Ingres, have always loved it. It does not lend itself
so readily to any form of mass drawing. Although it is sometimes used
for this purpose, the offensive shine that occurs if dark masses are
introduced is against its use in any but very lightly shaded work.
[Illustration: Plate LV.
FROM A SILVER-POINT DRAWING]
Its charm is the extreme delicacy of its grey-black lines.
[Sidenote: Silver and Gold Point.]
Similar to lead pencil, and of even greater delicacy, is silver-point
drawing. A more ancient method, it consists in drawing with a silver
point on paper the surface of which has been treated with a faint wash
of Chinese white. Without this wash the point will not make a mark.
For extreme delicacy and purity of line no medium can surpass this
method. And for the expression of a beautiful line, such as a profile,
nothing could be more suitable than a silver point. As a training to the
eye and hand also, it is of great value, as no rubbing out of any sort
is possible, and eye and hand must work together with great exactness.
The discipline of silver-point drawing is to be recommended as a
corrective to the picturesque vagaries of charcoal work.
A gold point, giving a warmer line, can also be used in the same way as
a silver point, the paper first having been treated with Chinese white.
[Sidenote: Charcoal.]
Two extreme points of view from which the rendering of form can be
approached have been explained, and it has been suggested that students
should study them both separately in the first instance, as they each
have different things to teach. Of the mediums that are best suited to a
drawing combining both points of view, the first and most popular is
charcoal.
Charcoal is made in many different degrees of hardness and softness, the
harder varieties being capable of quite a fine point. A chisel-shaped
point is the most convenient, as it does not wear away so quickly. And
if the broad side of the chisel point is used when a dark mass is
wanted, the edge can constantly be kept sharp. With this edge a very
fine line can be drawn.
Charcoal works with great freedom, and answers readily when forceful
expression is wanted. It is much more like painting than any other form
of drawing, a wide piece of charcoal making a wide mark similar to a
brush. The delicacy and lightness with which it has to be handled is
also much more like the handling of a brush than any other point
drawing. When rubbed with the finger, it sheds a soft grey tone over the
whole work. With a piece of bread pressed by thumb and finger into a
pellet, high lights can be taken out with the precision of white chalk;
or rubber can be used. Bread is, perhaps, the best, as it does not
smudge the charcoal but lifts it readily off. When rubbed with the
finger, the darks, of course, are lightened in tone. It is therefore
useful to draw in the general proportions roughly and rub down in this
way. You then have a middle tone over the work, with the rough drawing
showing through. Now proceed carefully to draw your lights with bread or
rubber, and your shadows with charcoal, in much the same manner as you
did in the monochrome exercises already described.
All preliminary setting out of your work on canvas is usually done with
charcoal, which must of course be fixed with a spray diffuser. For large
work, such as a full-length portrait, sticks of charcoal nearly an inch
in diameter are made, and a long swinging line can be done without their
breaking.
For drawings that are intended as things of beauty in themselves, and
are not merely done as a preparatory study for a painting, charcoal is
perhaps not so refined a medium as a great many others. It is too much
like painting to have the particular beauties of a drawing, and too much
like drawing to have the qualities of a painting. However, some
beautiful things have been done with it.
It is useful in doing studies where much finish is desired, to fix the
work slightly when drawn in and carried some way on. You can work over
this again without continually rubbing out with your hand what you have
already drawn. If necessary you can rub out with a hard piece of rubber
any parts that have already been fixed, or even scrape with a pen-knife.
But this is not advisable for anything but an academic study, or working
drawings, as it spoils the beauty and freshness of charcoal work.
Studies done in this medium can also be finished with Conté chalk.
There is also an artificial charcoal put up in sticks, that is very good
for refined work. It has some advantages over natural charcoal, in that
there are no knots and it works much more evenly. The best natural
charcoal I have used is the French make known as "Fusain Rouget." It is
made in three degrees, No. 3 being the softest, and, of course, the
blackest. But some of the ordinary Venetian and vine charcoals sold are
good. But don't get the cheaper varieties: a bad piece of charcoal is
worse than useless.
Charcoal is fixed by means of a solution of white shellac dissolved in
spirits of wine, blown on with a spray diffuser. This is sold by the
artists' colourmen, or can be easily made by the student. It lightly
deposits a thin film of shellac over the work, acting as a varnish and
preventing its rubbing off.
Charcoal is not on the whole the medium an artist with a pure love of
form selects, but rather that of the painter, who uses it when his
brushes and paints are not handy.
[Sidenote: Red Chalk (Sanguine).]
A delightful medium that can be used for either pure line work or a
mixed method of drawing, is red chalk. This natural red earth is one of
the most ancient materials for drawing. It is a lovely Venetian red in
colour, and works well in the natural state, if you get a good piece. It
is sold by the ounce, and it is advisable to try the pieces as they vary
very much, some being hard and gritty and some more soft and smooth. It
is also made by Messrs. Conté of Paris in sticks artificially prepared.
These work well and are never gritty, but are not so hard as the natural
chalk, and consequently wear away quickly and do not make fine lines as
well.
Red chalk when rubbed with the finger or a rag spreads evenly on paper,
and produces a middle tone on which lights can be drawn with rubber or
bread. Sticks of hard, pointed rubber are everywhere sold, which, cut in
a chisel shape, work beautifully on red chalk drawings. Bread is also
excellent when a softer light is wanted. You can continually correct and
redraw in this medium by rubbing it with the finger or a rag, thus
destroying the lights and shadows to a large extent, and enabling you to
draw them again more carefully. For this reason red chalk is greatly to
be recommended for making drawings for a picture where much fumbling may
be necessary before you find what you want. Unlike charcoal, it hardly
needs fixing, and much more intimate study of the forms can be got into
it.
Most of the drawings by the author reproduced in this book are done in
this medium. For drawings intended to have a separate existence it is
one of the prettiest mediums. In fact, this is the danger to the student
while studying: your drawing looks so much at its best that you are apt
to be satisfied too soon. But for portrait drawings there is no medium
to equal it.
Additional quality of dark is occasionally got by mixing a little of
this red chalk in a powdered state with water and a very little
gum-arabic. This can be applied with a sable brush as in water-colour
painting, and makes a rich velvety dark.
It is necessary to select your paper with some care. The ordinary paper
has too much size on it. This is picked up by the chalk, and will
prevent its marking. A paper with little size is best, or old paper
where the size has perished. I find an O.W. paper, made for printing
etchings, as good as any for ordinary work. It is not perfect, but works
very well. What one wants is the smoothest paper without a faced and
hot-pressed surface, and it is difficult to find.
Occasionally black chalk is used with the red to add strength to it. And
some draughtsmen use it with the red in such a manner as to produce
almost a full colour effect.
Holbein, who used this medium largely, tinted the paper in most of his
portrait drawings, varying the tint very much, and sometimes using zinc
white as a wash, which enabled him to supplement his work with a
silver-point line here and there, and also got over any difficulty the
size in the paper might cause. His aim seems to have been to select the
few essential things in a head and draw them with great finality and
exactness. In many of the drawings the earlier work has been done with
red or black chalk and then rubbed down and the drawing redone with
either a brush and some of the chalk rubbed up with water and gum or a
silver-point line of great purity, while in others he has tinted the
paper with water-colour and rubbed this away to the white paper where he
wanted a light, or Chinese white has been used for the same purpose.
[Sidenote: Black Conté and Carbon Pencil.]
Black Conté is a hard black chalk made in small sticks of different
degrees. It is also put up in cedar pencils. Rather more gritty than red
chalk or charcoal, it is a favourite medium with some, and can be used
with advantage to supplement charcoal when more precision and definition
are wanted. It has very much the same quality of line and so does not
show as a different medium. It can be rubbed like charcoal and red chalk
and will spread a tone over the paper in very much the same way.
Carbon pencils are similar to Conté, but smoother in working and do not
rub.
[Sidenote: White chalk.]
White chalk is sometimes used on toned paper to draw the lights, the
paper serving as a half tone while the shadows and outlines are drawn in
black or red. In this kind of drawing the chalk should never be allowed
to come in contact with the black or red chalk of the shadows, the half
tone of the paper should always be between them.
For rubbed work white pastel is better than the ordinary white chalk
sold for drawing, as it is not so hard. A drawing done in this method
with white pastel and red chalk is reproduced on page 46 [Transcribers
Note: Plate IV], and one with the hard white chalk, on page 260
[Transcribers Note: Plate LIV].
This is the method commonly used for making studies of drapery, the
extreme rapidity with which the position of the lights and shadows can
be expressed being of great importance when so unstable a subject as an
arrangement of drapery is being drawn.
[Sidenote: Lithography.]
Lithography as a means of artistic reproduction has suffered much in
public esteem by being put to all manner of inartistic trade uses. It is
really one of the most wonderful means of reproducing an artist's actual
work, the result being, in most cases, so identical with the original
that, seen together, if the original drawing has been done on paper, it
is almost impossible to distinguish any difference. And of course, as in
etching, it is the prints that are really the originals. The initial
work is only done as a means of producing these.
A drawing is made on a lithographic stone, that is, a piece of limestone
that has been prepared with an almost perfectly smooth surface. The
chalk used is a special kind of a greasy nature, and is made in several
degrees of hardness and softness. No rubbing out is possible, but lines
can be scratched out with a knife, or parts made lighter by white lines
being drawn by a knife over them. A great range of freedom and variety
is possible in these initial drawings on stone. The chalk can be rubbed
up with a little water, like a cake of water-colour, and applied with a
brush. And every variety of tone can be made with the side of the chalk.
Some care should be taken not to let the warm finger touch the stone, or
it may make a greasy mark that will print.
When this initial drawing is done to the artist's satisfaction, the
most usual method is to treat the stone with a solution of gum-arabic
and a little nitric acid. After this is dry, the gum is washed off as
far as may be with water; some of the gum is left in the porous stone,
but it is rejected where the greasy lines and tones of the drawing come.
Prints may now be obtained by rolling up the stone with an inked roller.
The ink is composed of a varnish of boiled linseed oil and any of the
lithographic colours to be commercially obtained.
The ink does not take on the damp gummed stone, but only where the
lithographic chalk has made a greasy mark, so that a perfect facsimile
of the drawing on stone is obtained, when a sheet of paper is placed on
the stone and the whole put through the press.
The medium deserves to be much more popular with draughtsmen than it is,
as no more perfect means of reproduction could be devised.
The lithographic stone is rather a cumbersome thing to handle, but the
initial drawing can be done on paper and afterwards transferred to the
stone. In the case of line work the result is practically identical, but
where much tone and playing about with the chalk is indulged in, the
stone is much better. Lithographic papers of different textures are made
for this purpose, but almost any paper will do, provided the drawing is
done with the special lithographic chalk.
[Sidenote: Pen and Ink.]
Pen and ink was a favourite means of making studies with many old
masters, notably Rembrandt. Often heightening the effect with a wash, he
conveyed marvellous suggestions with the simplest scribbles. But it is a
difficult medium for the young student to hope to do much with in his
studies, although for training the eye and hand to quick definite
statement of impressions, there is much to be said for it. No hugging of
half tones is possible, things must be reduced to a statement of clear
darks--which would be a useful corrective to the tendency so many
students have of seeing chiefly the half tones in their work.
[Illustration: Plate LVI.
STUDY IN PEN AND INK AND WASH FOR TREE IN "THE BOAR HUNT" RUBENS
(LOUVRE)
_Photo Giraudon_]
The kind of pen used will depend on the kind of drawing you wish to
make. In steel pens there are innumerable varieties, from the fine
crow-quills to the thick "J" nibs. The natural crow-quill is a much more
sympathetic tool than a steel pen, although not quite so certain in its
line. But more play and variety is to be got out of it, and when a free
pen drawing is wanted it is preferable.
Reed pens are also made, and are useful when thick lines are wanted.
They sometimes have a steel spring underneath to hold the ink somewhat
in the same manner as some fountain pens.