41. Go out into your garden, or into the road, and pick up the first
round or oval stone you can find, not very white, nor very dark; and the
smoother it is the better, only it must not _shine_. Draw your table
near the window, and put the stone, which I will suppose is about the
size of _a_ in Fig. 5 (it had better not be much larger), on a piece of
not very white paper, on the table in front of you. Sit so that the
light may come from your left, else the shadow of the pencil point
interferes with your sight of your work. You must not let the _sun_ fall
on the stone, but only ordinary light: therefore choose a window which
the sun does not come in at. If you can shut the shutters of the other
windows in the room it will be all the better; but this is not of much
consequence.
42. Now if you can draw that stone, you can draw anything; I mean,
anything that is drawable. Many things (sea foam, for instance) cannot
be drawn at all, only the idea of them more or less suggested; but if
you can draw the stone _rightly_, everything within reach of art is also
within yours.
For all drawing depends, primarily, on your power of representing
_Roundness_. If you can once do that, all the rest is easy and
straightforward; if you cannot do that, nothing else that you may be
able to do will be of any use. For Nature is all made up of roundnesses;
not the roundness of perfect globes, but of variously curved surfaces.
Boughs are rounded, leaves are rounded, stones are rounded, clouds are
rounded, cheeks are rounded, and curls are rounded: there is no more
flatness in the natural world than there is vacancy. The world itself is
round, and so is all that is in it, more or less, except human work,
which is often very flat indeed.
[Illustration: FIG. 5.]
Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you
have won the battle.
43. Look your stone antagonist boldly in the face. You will see that the
side of it next the window is lighter than most of the paper; that the
side of it farthest from the window is darker than the paper; and that
the light passes into the dark gradually, while a shadow is thrown to
the right on the paper itself by the stone: the general appearance of
things being more or less as in _a_, Fig. 5, the spots on the stone
excepted, of which more presently.
44. Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that everything
you can see in Nature is seen only so far as it is lighter or darker
than the things about it, or of a different color from them. It is
either seen as a patch of one color on a ground of another; or as a pale
thing relieved from a dark thing, or a dark thing from a pale thing. And
if you can put on patches of color or shade of exactly the same size,
shape, and gradations as those on the object and its ground, you will
produce the appearance of the object and its ground. The best
draughtsman--Titian and Paul Veronese themselves--could do no more than
this; and you will soon be able to get some power of doing it in an
inferior way, if you once understand the exceeding simplicity of what is
to be done. Suppose you have a brown book on a white sheet of paper, on
a red tablecloth. You have nothing to do but to put on spaces of red,
white, and brown, in the same shape, and gradated from dark to light in
the same degrees, and your drawing is done. If you will not look at what
you see, if you try to put on brighter or duller colors than are there,
if you try to put them on with a dash or a blot, or to cover your paper
with "vigorous" lines, or to produce anything, in fact, but the plain,
unaffected, and finished tranquillity of the thing before you, you need
not hope to get on. Nature will show you nothing if you set yourself up
for her master. But forget yourself, and try to obey her, and you will
find obedience easier and happier than you think.
45. The real difficulties are to get the refinement of the forms and the
evenness of the gradations. You may depend upon it, when you are
dissatisfied with your work, it is always too coarse or too uneven. It
may not be wrong--in all probability is not wrong, in any (so-called)
great point. But its edges are not true enough in outline; and its
shades are in blotches, or scratches, or full of white holes. Get it
more tender and more true, and you will find it is more powerful.
46. Do not, therefore, think your drawing must be weak because you have
a finely pointed pen in your hand. Till you can draw with that, you can
draw with nothing; when you can draw with that, you can draw with a log
of wood charred at the end. True boldness and power are only to be
gained by care. Even in fencing and dancing, all ultimate ease depends
on early precision in the commencement; much more in singing or drawing.
47. Now I do not want you to copy my sketch in Fig. 5, but to copy the
stone before you in the way that my sketch is done. To which end, first
measure the extreme length of the stone with compasses, and mark that
length on your paper; then, between the points marked, leave something
like the form of the stone in light, scrawling the paper all over, round
it; _b_, in Fig. 5, is a beginning of this kind. Rather leave too much
room for the high light, than too little; and then more cautiously fill
in the shade, shutting the light gradually up, and putting in the dark
slowly on the dark side. You need not plague yourself about accuracy of
shape, because, till you have practiced a great deal, it is impossible
for you to draw the shape of the stone quite truly, and you must
gradually gain correctness by means of these various exercises: what you
have mainly to do at present is, to get the stone to look solid and
round, not much minding what its exact contour is--only draw it as
nearly right as you can without vexation; and you will get it more right
by thus feeling your way to it in shade, than if you tried to draw the
outline at first. For you can _see_ no outline; what you see is only a
certain space of gradated shade, with other such spaces about it; and
those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by
scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the
same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more
likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.
For instance, having sketched the fossil sea-urchin at _a_, in Fig. 5,
whose form, though irregular, required more care in following than that
of a common stone, I was going to draw it also under another effect;
reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background: but when
I had laid on the first few touches I thought it would be better to
stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which beginning it
will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I can more or
less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work on, the lines
which suggest the outline being blended with the others if I do not want
them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer the
irregularities of such a sketch will probably secure a higher completion
at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a true outline
before beginning.
48. In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark.
In order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round
hole, about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper the color
of that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper with the hole in it,
between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,
so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like
one of the patches of color you have been accustomed to match, only
changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen
through it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the color of the
stone at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular
opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,
but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued grays.[10]
49. You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of
the paper it lies on, look luminous through the opening; so that the
little circle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When
this is so, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting
light brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped
towards the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which
before looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if
you can place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone
looks slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of
shade, and if your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or
match every gradation. You will be amazed to find, under these
circumstances, how slight the differences of tint are, by which, through
infinite delicacy of gradation, Nature can express form.
If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light
through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it
white; you can do no more.
50. When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed
to finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the
stone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or
fissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain
of timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they
present, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,
however small its scale. It is in reality a little ravine, with a dark
or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the
bottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to
understand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,
for the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in
general be explained; and in the endeavor to explain some, we are sure
to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
importance of those on which the attention is fixed causes us to
exaggerate them, so that merely scientific draughtsmen caricature a
third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose
eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not
therefore trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute
of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,
especially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils
to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can
always show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing
in it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
51. Generally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the
stone you are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark
side turned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on
something else (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may
sometimes be placed so as to see only the light side and shadow,
sometimes only the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both or either
without the shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all
the three, as the stone does here.
52. Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now
with your side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to
the window. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the
other distinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no
seen shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on
the other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.
53. Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgewise, as you hold
your hand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is
turned from the light, the paper being of course farther from the
window. You will see, as it passes, a strong gleam of light strike on
your hand, and light it considerably on its dark side. This light is
_reflected_ light. It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes
first in coming from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a
ball would be if somebody threw it through the window at the wall and
you caught it at the rebound.
Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet
cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as
you wave the book, is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find
the gleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own color
back in the light that it reflects.
54. Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
hand: every object in the room on that side of it reflects some, but
more feebly, and the colors mixing all together form a neutral[11]
light, which lets the color of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.
55. Objects are seen therefore, in general, partly by direct light, and
partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
atmosphere and clouds. The color of their light sides depends much on
that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colors of
the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand what
color an object will have at any point of its surface, that color
depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
is, that their color will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
them merely darker shades of the color of the light sides must assuredly
be bad.
56. Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You
will see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow
of your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
rosy color somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
flesh, and is of a very deep gray. The reason of this is, that much
light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
chink under your finger.
57. In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of
the shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the
object. I say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to
prevent its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or
the ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand
farthest from the window; you will presently find you are throwing
gleams of light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some
positions of the glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow
altogether, and you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a
stupid painter would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside
the hand of one of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule
that "shadow was darker than the dark side," he would never think of the
reflection from the glass, but paint a dark gray under the hand, just as
if no glass were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of
the true effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and
wonders why the hand is so light on its dark side.
58. Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in
matters of art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general
way, a shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,
supposing the colors otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white
object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark
surface: the rule will not hold if the colors are different, the shadow
of a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,
usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the
ultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the
meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone
are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,
while the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little
darker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the
stone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,
therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more
or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or
streak in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white
one, you may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision,
into either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of
it nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes
from, you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite
side, you will make it a ridge or mound; and the complete success of the
effect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the
drawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of
the shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or
anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience
in following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
labored finishing of texture of surface and transparencies of shadow.
59. When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the
stains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the
forms. Very often, spots or bars of local color do more to express form
than even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the
means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her
lights; an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
of composition. _a_, in Fig. 5, is a rough sketch of a fossil
sea-urchin, in which the projections of the shell are of black flint,
coming through a chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in
the light; and their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller
whiter spots in the dark. You may take such scattered lights as these
out with the penknife, provided you are just as careful to place them
rightly as if you got them by a more laborious process.
60. When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on
anything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided
it be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone
first, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be
less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as
well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little
while, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take
up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on
the table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same
way; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with
perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.
Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work
resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel
or napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its
folds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery
(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the
cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate
your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then
ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from Nature,
whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of
the folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the
greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement
of form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded
surface will help you. Try whether it does or not: and if the patterned
drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans and simple
checkered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern
occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications
of it among the folds with scrupulous care.
61. Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater
they are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[12] Nor can there be
better practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication
of natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the
folds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;
but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully
drawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the
sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask
drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket or a violet bank.
62. Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or
other finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much
about the wooliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade
and fold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of
after-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;
but at present attend only to the light and shade and pattern. You will
be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention will
show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right
drawing of their light and shade, and reflections. Put a small black
japanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it
reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
own color mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw these
reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted, as
you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the luster
to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects in
general practice; only you should do one or two in order to understand
the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as you cannot
avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the shining of
silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression of their
folds. Observe also that there are very few things which are totally
without luster; you will frequently find a light which puzzles you, on
some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another object.
63. And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
give you leave to use the brush with one color,--sepia, or blue black,
or mixed cobalt and blue black, or neutral tint; and this will much
facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminary, you must do
one or two more exercises in tinting.