102. MY DEAR READER,--The work we have already gone through together
has, I hope, enabled you to draw with fair success either rounded and
simple masses, like stones, or complicated arrangements of form, like
those of leaves; provided only these masses or complexities will stay
quiet for you to copy, and do not extend into quantity so great as to
baffle your patience. But if we are now to go out to the fields, and to
draw anything like a complete landscape, neither of these conditions
will any more be observed for us. The clouds will not wait while we copy
their heaps or clefts; the shadows will escape from us as we try to
shape them, each, in its stealthy minute march, still leaving light
where its tremulous edge had rested the moment before, and involving in
eclipse objects that had seemed safe from its influence; and instead of
the small clusters of leaves which we could reckon point by point,
embarrassing enough even though numerable, we have now leaves as little
to be counted as the sands of the sea, and restless, perhaps, as its
foam.
103. In all that we have to do now, therefore, direct imitation becomes
more or less impossible. It is always to be aimed at so far as it _is_
possible; and when you have time and opportunity, some portions of a
landscape may, as you gain greater skill, be rendered with an
approximation almost to mirrored portraiture. Still, whatever skill you
may reach, there will always be need of judgment to choose, and of speed
to seize, certain things that are principal or fugitive; and you must
give more and more effort daily to the observance of characteristic
points, and the attainment of concise methods.
104. I have directed your attention early to foliage for two reasons.
First, that it is always accessible as a study; and secondly, that its
modes of growth present simple examples of the importance of leading or
governing lines. It is by seizing these leading lines, when we cannot
seize all, that likeness and expression are given to a portrait, and
grace and a kind of vital truth to the rendering of every natural form.
I call it vital truth, because these chief lines are always expressive
of the past history and present action of the thing. They show in a
mountain, first, how it was built or heaped up; and secondly, how it is
now being worn away, and from what quarter the wildest storms strike it.
In a tree, they show what kind of fortune it has had to endure from its
childhood: how troublesome trees have come in its way, and pushed it
aside, and tried to strangle or starve it; where and when kind trees
have sheltered it, and grown up lovingly together with it, bending as it
bent; what winds torment it most; what boughs of it behave best, and
bear most fruit; and so on. In a wave or cloud, these leading lines show
the run of the tide and of the wind, and the sort of change which the
water or vapor is at any moment enduring in its form, as it meets shore,
or counter-wave, or melting sunshine. Now remember, nothing
distinguishes great men from inferior men more than their always,
whether in life or in art, _knowing the way things are going_. Your
dunce thinks they are standing still, and draws them all fixed; your
wise man sees the change or changing in them, and draws them so,--the
animal in its motion, the tree in its growth, the cloud in its course,
the mountain in its wearing away. Try always, whenever you look at a
form, to see the lines in it which have had power over its past fate and
will have power over its futurity. Those are its _awful_ lines; see that
you seize on those, whatever else you miss. Thus, the leafage in Fig. 16
(p. 63) grew round the root of a stone pine, on the brow of a crag at
Sestri near Genoa, and all the sprays of it are thrust away in their
first budding by the great rude root, and spring out in every direction
round it, as water splashes when a heavy stone is thrown into it. Then,
when they have got clear of the root, they begin to bend up again; some
of them, being little stone pines themselves, have a great notion of
growing upright, if they can; and this struggle of theirs to recover
their straight road towards the sky, after being obliged to grow
sideways in their early years, is the effort that will mainly influence
their future destiny, and determine if they are to be crabbed, forky
pines, striking from that rock of Sestri, whose clefts nourish them,
with bared red lightning of angry arms towards the sea; or if they are
to be goodly and solemn pines, with trunks like pillars of temples, and
the purple burning of their branches sheathed in deep globes of cloudy
green. Those, then, are their fateful lines; see that you give that
spring and resilience, whatever you leave ungiven: depend upon it, their
chief beauty is in these.
[Illustration: FIG. 17.]
105. So in trees in general, and bushes, large or small, you will notice
that, though the boughs spring irregularly and at various angles, there
is a tendency in all to stoop less and less as they near the top of the
tree. This structure, typified in the simplest possible terms at _c_,
Fig. 17, is common to all trees that I know of, and it gives them a
certain plumy character, and aspect of unity in the hearts of their
branches which are essential to their beauty. The stem does not merely
send off a wild branch here and there to take its own way, but all the
branches share in one great fountain-like impulse; each has a curve and
a path to take, which fills a definite place, and each terminates all
its minor branches at its outer extremity, so as to form a greater outer
curve, whose character and proportion are peculiar for each species.
That is to say, the general type or idea of a tree is not as _a_, Fig.
17, but as _b_, in which, observe, the boughs all carry their minor
divisions right out to the bounding curve; not but that smaller
branches, by thousands, terminate in the heart of the tree, but the idea
and main purpose in every branch are to carry all its child branches
well out to the air and light, and let each of them, however small, take
its part in filling the united flow of the bounding curve, so that the
type of each separate bough is again not _a_, but _b_, Fig. 18;
approximating, that is to say, so far to the structure of a plant of
broccoli as to throw the great mass of spray and leafage out to a
rounded surface. Therefore beware of getting into a careless habit of
drawing boughs with successive sweeps of the pen or brush, one hanging
to the other, as in Fig. 19. If you look at the tree-boughs in any
painting of Wilson's you will see this structure, and nearly every other
that is to be avoided, in their intensest types. You will also notice
that Wilson never conceives a tree as a round mass, but flat, as if it
had been pressed and dried. Most people in drawing pines seem to fancy,
in the same way, that the boughs come out only on two sides of the
trunk, instead of all round it: always, therefore, take more pains in
trying to draw the boughs of trees that grow _towards_ you than those
that go off to the sides; anybody can draw the latter, but the
foreshortened ones are not so easy. It will help you in drawing them to
observe that in most trees the ramification of each branch, though not
of the tree itself, is more or less flattened, and approximates, in its
position, to the look of a hand held out to receive something, or
shelter something. If you take a looking-glass, and hold your hand
before it slightly hollowed, with the palm upwards, and the fingers
open, as if you were going to support the base of some great bowl,
larger than you could easily hold; and sketch your hand as you see it in
the glass with the points of the fingers towards you; it will materially
help you in understanding the way trees generally hold out their hands:
and if then you will turn yours with its palm downwards, as if you were
going to try to hide something, but with the fingers expanded, you will
get a good type of the action of the lower boughs in cedars and such
other spreading trees.
[Illustration: FIG. 18.]
[Illustration: FIG. 19.]
106. Fig. 20 will give you a good idea of the simplest way in which
these and other such facts can be rapidly expressed; if you copy it
carefully, you will be surprised to find how the touches all group
together, in expressing the plumy toss of the tree branches, and the
springing of the bushes out of the bank, and the undulation of the
ground: note the careful drawing of the footsteps made by the climbers
of the little mound on the left.[23] It is facsimilëd from an etching of
Turner's, and is as good an example as you can have of the use of pure
and firm lines; it will also show you how the particular action in
foliage, or anything else to which you wish to direct attention, may be
intensified by the adjuncts. The tall and upright trees are made to look
more tall and upright still, because their line is continued below by
the figure of the farmer with his stick; and the rounded bushes on the
bank are made to look more rounded because their line is continued in
one broad sweep by the black dog and the boy climbing the wall. These
figures are placed entirely with this object, as we shall see more fully
hereafter when we come to talk about composition; but, if you please,
we will not talk about that yet awhile. What I have been telling you
about the beautiful lines and action of foliage has nothing to do with
composition, but only with fact, and the brief and expressive
representation of fact. But there will be no harm in your looking
forward, if you like to do so, to the account, in Letter III. of the
"Law of Radiation," and reading what is said there about tree growth:
indeed it would in some respects have been better to have said it here
than there, only it would have broken up the account of the principles
of composition somewhat awkwardly.
[Illustration: FIG. 20.]
107. Now, although the lines indicative of action are not always quite
so manifest in other things as in trees, a little attention will soon
enable you to see that there are such lines in everything. In an old
house roof, a bad observer and bad draughtsman will only see and draw
the spotty irregularity of tiles or slates all over; but a good
draughtsman will see all the bends of the under timbers, where they are
weakest and the weight is telling on them most, and the tracks of the
run of the water in time of rain, where it runs off fastest, and where
it lies long and feeds the moss; and he will be careful, however few
slates he draws, to mark the way they bend together towards those
hollows (which have the future fate of the roof in them), and crowd
gradually together at the top of the gable, partly diminishing in
perspective, partly, perhaps, diminished on purpose (they are so in most
English old houses) by the slate-layer. So in ground, there is always
the direction of the run of the water to be noticed, which rounds the
earth and cuts it into hollows; and, generally, in any bank or height
worth drawing, a trace of bedded or other internal structure besides.
Figure 20 will give you some idea of the way in which such facts may be
expressed by a few lines. Do you not feel the depression in the ground
all down the hill where the footsteps are, and how the people always
turn to the left at the top, losing breath a little, and then how the
water runs down in that other hollow towards the valley, behind the
roots of the trees?
108. Now, I want you in your first sketches from Nature to aim
exclusively at understanding and representing these vital facts of form;
using the pen--not now the steel, but the quill--firmly and steadily,
never scrawling with it, but saying to yourself before you lay on a
single touch,--"_that_ leaf is the main one, _that_ bough is the guiding
one, and this touch, _so_ long, _so_ broad, means that part of
it,"--point or side or knot, as the case may be. Resolve always, as you
look at the thing, what you will take, and what miss of it, and never
let your hand run away with you, or get into any habit or method of
touch. If you want a continuous line, your hand should pass calmly from
one end of it to the other without a tremor; if you want a shaking and
broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a
musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that
there is no general way of doing _any_ thing; no recipe can be given you
for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be
ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or
rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to
draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you to _do_ grass."
So a stone may be round or angular, polished or rough, cracked all over
like an ill-glazed teacup, or as united and broad as the breast of
Hercules. It may be as flaky as a wafer, as powdery as a field
puff-ball; it may be knotted like a ship's hawser, or kneaded like
hammered iron, or knit like a Damascus saber, or fused like a glass
bottle, or crystallized like hoar-frost, or veined like a forest leaf:
look at it, and don't try to remember how anybody told you to "do a
stone."
109. As soon as you find that your hand obeys you thoroughly, and that
you can render any form with a firmness and truth approaching that of
Turner's or Dürer's work,[24] you must add a simple but equally careful
light and shade to your pen drawing, so as to make each study as
complete as possible; for which you must prepare yourself thus. Get, if
you have the means, a good impression of one plate of Turner's Liber
Studiorum; if possible, one of the subjects named in the note
below.[25] If you cannot obtain, or even borrow for a little while, any
of these engravings, you must use a photograph instead (how, I will tell
you presently); but, if you can get the Turner, it will be best. You
will see that it is composed of a firm etching in line, with mezzotint
shadow laid over it. You must first copy the etched part of it
accurately; to which end put the print against the window, and trace
slowly with the greatest care every black line; retrace this on smooth
drawing-paper; and, finally, go over the whole with your pen, looking at
the original plate always, so that if you err at all, it may be on the
right side, not making a line which is too curved or too straight
already in the tracing, more curved or more straight, as you go over it.
And in doing this, never work after you are tired, nor to "get the thing
done," for if it is badly done, it will be of no use to you. The true
zeal and patience of a quarter of an hour are better than the sulky and
inattentive labor of a whole day. If you have not made the touches right
at the first going over with the pen, retouch them delicately, with
little ink in your pen, thickening or reinforcing them as they need: you
cannot give too much care to the facsimile. Then keep this etched
outline by you in order to study at your ease the way in which Turner
uses his line as preparatory for the subsequent shadow;[26] it is only
in getting the two separate that you will be able to reason on this.
Next, copy once more, though for the fourth time, any part of this
etching which you like, and put on the light and shade with the brush,
and any brown color that matches that of the plate;[27] working it with
the point of the brush as delicately as if you were drawing with pencil,
and dotting and cross-hatching as lightly as you can touch the paper,
till you get the gradations of Turner's engraving.
110. In this exercise, as in the former one, a quarter of an inch worked
to close resemblance of the copy is worth more than the whole subject
carelessly done. Not that in drawing afterwards from Nature you are to
be obliged to finish every gradation in this way, but that, once having
fully accomplished the drawing _something_ rightly, you will
thenceforward feel and aim at a higher perfection than you could
otherwise have conceived, and the brush will obey you, and bring out
quickly and clearly the loveliest results, with a submissiveness which
it would have wholly refused if you had not put it to severest work.
Nothing is more strange in art than the way that chance and materials
seem to favor you, when once you have thoroughly conquered them. Make
yourself quite independent of chance, get your result in spite of it,
and from that day forward all things will somehow fall as you would have
them. Show the camel's hair, and the color in it, that no bending nor
blotting is of any use to escape your will; that the touch and the shade
_shall_ finally be right, if it costs you a year's toil; and from that
hour of corrective conviction, said camel's hair will bend itself to all
your wishes, and no blot will dare to transgress its appointed border.
If you cannot obtain a print from the Liber Studiorum, get a
photograph[28] of some general landscape subject, with high hills and a
village or picturesque town, in the middle distance, and some calm water
of varied character (a stream with stones in it, if possible), and copy
any part of it you like, in this same brown color, working, as I have
just directed you to do from the Liber, a great deal with the point of
the brush. You are under a twofold disadvantage here, however; first,
there are portions in every photograph too delicately done for you at
present to be at all able to copy; and, secondly, there are portions
always more obscure or dark than there would be in the real scene, and
involved in a mystery which you will not be able, as yet, to decipher.
Both these characters will be advantageous to you for future study,
after you have gained experience, but they are a little against you in
early attempts at tinting; still you must fight through the difficulty,
and get the power of producing delicate gradations with brown or gray,
like those of the photograph.
111. Now observe; the perfection of work would be tinted shadow, like
photography, without any obscurity or exaggerated darkness; and as long
as your effect depends in anywise on visible lines, your art is not
perfect, though it may be first-rate of its kind. But to get complete
results in tints merely, requires both long time and consummate skill;
and you will find that a few well-put pen lines, with a tint dashed over
or under them, get more expression of facts than you could reach in any
other way, by the same expenditure of time. The use of the Liber
Studiorum print to you is chiefly as an example of the simplest
shorthand of this kind, a shorthand which is yet capable of dealing with
the most subtle natural effects; for the firm etching gets at the
expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
ground, etc., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist, or cloud.
Most of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this
principle, the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of
transparency to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by
great finish of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good
public gallery, or can make friends of any printsellers who have folios
either of old drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss
to find some example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of
photographs also are now taken from the best drawings by the old
masters, and I hope that our Mechanics' Institutes and other societies
organized with a view to public instruction, will not fail to possess
themselves of examples of these, and to make them accessible to students
of drawing in the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show
the unison of tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine,"
photographed by Thurston Thompson from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre,
to show the unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be
all that is necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more
serviceable than a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery
of second-rate prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable,
because all other modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk
separately, or color separately, may be seen by the poorest student in
any cheap illustrated book, or in shop windows. But this unity of
tinting with line he cannot generally see but by some special inquiry,
and in some out of the way places he could not find a single example of
it. Supposing that this should be so in your own case, and that you
cannot meet with any example of this kind, try to make the matter out
alone, thus:
112. Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to
express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid
color instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and
laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your
bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
gray, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the
photograph; and, finally taking out the higher lights with penknife or
blotting paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by
a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen
may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of
texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you
have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.
Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes
only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in
full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the
parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you
will do well to repeat frequently, whether you can get prints and
drawings as well as photographs, or not.
113. And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or
its photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in
your power of working from Nature on all subjects that interest you,
which you should do in four different ways.
First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay
quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly
perfect as you can, with gray or brown color of any kind, reinforced and
defined with the pen.
114. Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in
detail that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and
shade, make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time
to a Düreresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you
interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
Düreresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
disguised.
115. Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with
a soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of
gray, which will fix the pencil. While this fixing color is wet, take
out the higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry,
scratch out the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes,
carefully applied, will do much by these means. Of course the paper is
to be white. I do not like studies on gray paper so well; for you can
get more gradation by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on
cunningly a little darker here and there, than you can with body-color
white, unless you are consummately skillful. There is no objection to
your making your Düreresque memoranda on gray or yellow paper, and
touching or relieving them with white; only, do not depend much on your
white touches, nor make the sketch for their sake.
116. Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for
Düreresque detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the
shadows with the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can
at once, and to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more
color again and again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient
which your practice has suggested to you of carrying out your
chiaroscuro in the manageable and moist material, taking the color off
here with the dry brush, scratching out lights in it there with the
wooden handle of the brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it
off with your sponge, etc. Then, when the color is in, take your pen and
mark the outline characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber
Studiorum. This kind of study is very convenient for carrying away
pieces of effect which depend not so much on refinement as on
complexity, strange shapes of involved shadows, sudden effects of sky,
etc.; and it is most useful as a safeguard against any too servile or
slow habits which the minute copying may induce in you; for although the
endeavor to obtain velocity merely for velocity's sake, and dash for
display's sake, is as baneful as it is despicable; there are a velocity
and a dash which not only are compatible with perfect drawing, but
obtain certain results which cannot be had otherwise. And it is
perfectly safe for you to study occasionally for speed and decision,
while your continual course of practice is such as to insure your
retaining an accurate judgment and a tender touch. Speed, under such
circumstances, is rather fatiguing than tempting; and you will find
yourself always beguiled rather into elaboration than negligence.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.]
117. Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
study, nor a Düreresque one, may yet become of singular value in
consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21, seen
within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
the crossed bars, of pure gray; wholly without indication of their
cause, as in Fig. 22 _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
it would appear, as in Fig. 22 _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of gray on the light
hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
[Illustration: FIG. 22.]
118. Studies of this kind are easily made, when you are in haste, with
an F. or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to insure
your drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very
subtle; they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so
everywhere. The pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you
are master of the pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is
both, and will draw a line with the precision of the one and the
gradation of the other; nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the
sharp touches, on which the best of the detail depends, getting
gradually deadened by time, or to find the places where force was wanted
look shiny, and like a fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the
steady use of the pen, or brush, and color, whenever time admits of it;
keeping only a small memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its
well-cut, sheathed pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but
never being without this.
119. Thus much, then, respecting the manner in which you are at first to
draw from Nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
note one or two points respecting your choice of subjects for study, and
the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
120. (1.) Do not draw things that you love, on account of their
associations; or at least do not draw them because you love them; but
merely when you cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw
places that you love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat
brick walls, iron railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset
hedges; besides that you will be continually led into some endeavor to
make your drawing pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your
progress. You need never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious
that the drawing you are actually at work upon should look nice when it
is done. All you have to care about is to make it _right_, and to learn
as much in doing it as possible. So then, though when you are sitting in
your friend's parlor, or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you
may draw anything that is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or
the pattern on the carpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not
because it is a beloved carpet, or a friendly poker and tongs, nor
because you wish to please your friend by drawing her room.
121. Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am
addressing you as a beginner--a time may come when your work will be
precious to everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know
that it is worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will
know that it is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing,
send them a couple of cakes of color and a piece of Bristol board: those
materials are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you
had spread the one over the other.
The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will much
protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings
pretty.
122. (2.) Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if
complicated in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments,
chandeliers, plate, glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of
furniture does not matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret
yourself if it will not look right, and choose only things that do not
shine.
(3.) Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,
and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things
as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
profitless study than a newly painted Thames wherry, nor a better study
than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low tide: in general,
everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.
(4.) Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen
through another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before
your chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near
branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to
represent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not
imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look
for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
rather for a cottage with a dark tree beside it, than for one with a
thin tree in front of it, rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.
(5.) Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps
nothing in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque
and unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge,
with trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the
cattle line.
Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that
the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that
you should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even
for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;
which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.
123. As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,
perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all banks
are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large landscapes.
If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places where the
ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or roots of
trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things within your
reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy mill-dams, etc.
Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will present beautiful
bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and color than high
chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the flowery ground
below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study: a not very
thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy running up
it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
124. Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always
beautiful, when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of
pattern cottages, or villas with Ionic and Doric porticoes. Any old
English village, or cluster of farmhouses, drawn with all its ins and
outs, and haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a
French one. French landscape is generally as much superior to English as
Swiss landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is
incomparable. Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have
recommended you to buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their
expression of graceful rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty
of component lines.
In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
and bossy roses; you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
anything in purer thoughts.
Make intimate friends with all the brooks in your neighborhood, and
study them ripple by ripple.
Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
peculiar meanness about most of them and awkwardness of line. Old
manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
vergerism about them.
125. If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
color. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
hills will be comparatively easy.
126. When you have practiced for a little time from such of these
subjects as may be accessible to you, you will certainly find
difficulties arising which will make you wish more than ever for a
master's help: these difficulties will vary according to the character
of your own mind (one question occurring to one person, and one to
another), so that it is impossible to anticipate them all; and it would
make this too large a book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate;
you must be content to work on, in good hope that Nature will, in her
own time, interpret to you much for herself; that farther experience on
your own part will make some difficulties disappear; and that others
will be removed by the occasional observation of such artists' work as
may come in your way. Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without
a few general remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are
somewhat advanced in power; and these remarks may, I think, be
conveniently arranged under three heads, having reference to the drawing
of vegetation, water, and skies.
127. And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said
enough about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and
tried to draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be
ready by this time to hear a little more of them. You will also
recollect that we left our question, respecting the mode of expressing
intricacy of leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so
because I wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing
them for yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle
considerations as to method in drawing them. And by this time, I
imagine, you must have found out two principal things, universal facts,
about leaves; namely, that they always, in the main tendencies of their
lines, indicate a beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law
of radiation, already referred to;[29] and the second, that this
divergence is never formal, but carried out with endless variety of
individual line. I must now press both these facts on your attention a
little farther.
128. You may, perhaps, have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of
the works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with
the passages referring to them in Modern Painters, in which they are
highly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only
works by a modern[30] draughtsman which express in any wise the energy
of trees, and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There
are no lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character,
obtained with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame,
Robert, and the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether
inferior in power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you
must not take even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for
occasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his Lessons on
Trees,[31] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at
present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well
that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,
because their great influence on young students renders it desirable
that their real character should be thoroughly understood.
129. You will find, first, in the titlepage of the Lessons on Trees, a
pretty wood-cut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and
in a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1 is not quite worthy
of Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
everything depends on black dots; still, the main lines are good, and
very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2, we come to the
point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
that he may practice from them till his hand gets into the habit of
arranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.
Harding to be universal in application; "all outlines expressive of
foliage," he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23 below; and the
characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner
ends to a common center;" that "their ends terminate in [are inclosed
by] ovoid curves;" and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
[Illustration: FIG. 23.]
130. Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and
inclosure, the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a
very interesting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition.
The reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be
most emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end
of a natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but
ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,
as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as
any mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is
another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose
sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be
carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the
moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of
growth with its companions in the radiating group.
131. It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster
may be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one
than _b_ in Fig. 9, p. 47, nor a less formal one than this shoot of
Spanish chestnut, shedding its leaves, Fig. 24; but in either of them,
even the general reader, unpracticed in any of the previously
recommended exercises, must see that there are wandering lines mixed
with the radiating ones, and radiating lines with the wild ones: and if
he takes the pen, and tries to copy either of these examples, he will
find that neither play of hand to left nor to right, neither a free
touch nor a firm touch, nor any learnable or describable touch
whatsoever, will enable him to produce, currently, a resemblance of it;
but that he must either draw it slowly or give it up. And (which makes
the matter worse still) though gathering the bough, and putting it close
to you, or seeing a piece of near foliage against the sky, you may draw
the entire outline of the leaves, yet if the spray has light upon it,
and is ever so little a way off, you will miss, as we have seen, a point
of a leaf here, and an edge there; some of the surfaces will be confused
by glitter, and some spotted with shade; and if you look carefully
through this confusion for the edges or dark stems which you really
_can_ see and put only those down, the result will be neither like Fig.
9 nor Fig. 24, but such an interrupted and puzzling piece of work as
Fig. 25.[32]
[Illustration: FIG. 25.]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.]
132. Now, it is in the perfect acknowledgment and expression of these
_three_ laws that all good drawing of landscape consists. There is,
first, the organic unity; the law, whether of radiation, or parallelism,
or concurrent action, which rules the masses of herbs and trees, of
rocks, and clouds, and waves; secondly, the individual liberty of the
members subjected to these laws of unity; and, lastly, the mystery under
which the separate character of each is more or less concealed.
I say, first, there must be observance of the ruling organic law. This
is the first distinction between good artists and bad artists. Your
common sketcher or bad painter puts his leaves on the trees as if they
were moss tied to sticks; he cannot see the lines of action or growth;
he scatters the shapeless clouds over his sky, not perceiving the sweeps
of associated curves which the real clouds are following as they fly;
and he breaks his mountain side into rugged fragments, wholly
unconscious of the lines of force with which the real rocks have risen,
or of the lines of couch in which they repose. On the contrary, it is
the main delight of the great draughtsman to trace these laws of
government; and his tendency to error is always in the exaggeration of
their authority rather than in its denial.
133. Secondly, I say, we have to show the individual character and
liberty of the separate leaves, clouds, or rocks. And herein the great
masters separate themselves finally from the inferior ones; for if the
men of inferior genius ever express law at all, it is by the sacrifice
of individuality. Thus, Salvator Rosa has great perception of the sweep
of foliage and rolling of clouds, but never draws a single leaflet or
mist wreath accurately. Similarly, Gainsborough, in his landscape, has
great feeling for masses of form and harmony of color; but in the detail
gives nothing but meaningless touches; not even so much as the species
of tree, much less the variety of its leafage, being ever discernible.
Now, although both these expressions of government and individuality are
essential to masterly work, the individuality is the _more_ essential,
and the more difficult of attainment; and, therefore, that attainment
separates the great masters _finally_ from the inferior ones. It is the
more essential, because, in these matters of beautiful arrangement in
visible things, the same rules hold that hold in moral things. It is a
lamentable and unnatural thing to see a number of men subject to no
government, actuated by no ruling principle, and associated by no common
affection: but it would be a more lamentable thing still, were it
possible, to see a number of men so oppressed into assimilation as to
have no more any individual hope or character, no differences in aim, no
dissimilarities of passion, no irregularities of judgment; a society in
which no man could help another, since none would be feebler than
himself; no man admire another, since none would be stronger than
himself; no man be grateful to another, since by none he could be
relieved; no man reverence another, since by none he could be
instructed; a society in which every soul would be as the syllable of a
stammerer instead of the word of a speaker, in which every man would
walk as in a frightful dream, seeing specters of himself, in everlasting
multiplication, gliding helplessly around him in a speechless darkness.
Therefore it is that perpetual difference, play, and change in groups of
form are more essential to them even than their being subdued by some
great gathering law: the law is needful to them for their perfection and
their power, but the difference is needful to them for their life.
134. And here it may be noted in passing, that, if you enjoy the pursuit
of analogies and types, and have any ingenuity of judgment in discerning
them, you may always accurately ascertain what are the noble characters
in a piece of painting by merely considering what are the noble
characters of man in his association with his fellows. What grace of
manner and refinement of habit are in society, grace of line and
refinement of form are in the association of visible objects. What
advantage or harm there may be in sharpness, ruggedness, or quaintness
in the dealings or conversations of men; precisely that relative degree
of advantage or harm there is in them as elements of pictorial
composition. What power is in liberty or relaxation to strengthen or
relieve human souls; that power precisely in the same relative degree,
play and laxity of line have to strengthen or refresh the expression of
a picture. And what goodness or greatness we can conceive to arise in
companies of men, from chastity of thought, regularity of life,
simplicity of custom, and balance of authority; precisely that kind of
goodness and greatness may be given to a picture by the purity of its
color, the severity of its forms, and the symmetry of its masses.
135. You need not be in the least afraid of pushing these analogies too
far. They cannot be pushed too far; they are so precise and complete,
that the farther you pursue them, the clearer, the more certain, the
more useful you will find them. They will not fail you in one
particular, or in any direction of inquiry. There is no moral vice, no
moral virtue, which has not its _precise_ prototype in the art of
painting; so that you may at your will illustrate the moral habit by the
art, or the art by the moral habit. Affection and discord, fretfulness,
and quietness, feebleness and firmness, luxury and purity, pride and
modesty, and all other such habits, and every conceivable modification
and mingling of them, may be illustrated, with mathematical exactness,
by conditions of line and color; and not merely these definable vices
and virtues, but also every conceivable shade of human character and
passion, from the righteous or unrighteous majesty of the king to the
innocent or faultful simplicity of the shepherd boy.
136. The pursuit of this subject belongs properly, however, to the
investigation of the higher branches of composition, matters which it
would be quite useless to treat of in this book; and I only allude to
them here, in order that you may understand how the utmost noblenesses
of art are concerned in this minute work, to which I have set you in
your beginning of it. For it is only by the closest attention, and the
most noble execution, that it is possible to express these varieties of
individual character, on which all excellence of portraiture depends,
whether of masses of mankind, or of groups of leaves.
137. Now you will be able to understand, among other matters, wherein
consists the excellence, and wherein the shortcoming, of the
tree-drawing of Harding. It is excellent in so far as it fondly
observes, with more truth than any other work of the kind, the great
laws of growth and action in trees: it fails,--and observe, not in a
minor, but in the principal point,--because it cannot rightly render any
one individual detail or incident of foliage. And in this it fails, not
from mere carelessness or incompletion, but of necessity; the true
drawing of detail being for evermore impossible to a hand which has
contracted a _habit_ of execution. The noble draughtsman draws a leaf,
and stops, and says calmly,--That leaf is of such and such a character;
I will give him a friend who will entirely suit him: then he considers
what his friend ought to be, and having determined, he draws his friend.
This process may be as quick as lightning when the master is great--one
of the sons of the giants; or it may be slow and timid: but the process
is always gone through; no touch or form is ever added to another by a
good painter without a mental determination and affirmation. But when
the hand has got into a habit, leaf No. 1 necessitates leaf No. 2; you
cannot stop, your hand is as a horse with the bit in its teeth; or
rather is, for the time, a machine, throwing out leaves to order and
pattern, all alike. You must stop that hand of yours, however painfully;
make it understand that it is not to have its own way any more, that it
shall never more slip from one touch to another without orders;
otherwise it is not you who are the master, but your fingers. You may
therefore study Harding's drawing, and take pleasure in it;[33] and you
may properly admire the dexterity which applies the habit of the hand
so well, and produces results on the whole so satisfactory: but you must
never copy it; otherwise your progress will be at once arrested. The
utmost you can ever hope to do would be a sketch in Harding's manner,
but of far inferior dexterity; for he has given his life's toil to gain
his dexterity, and you, I suppose, have other things to work at besides
drawing. You would also incapacitate yourself from ever understanding
what truly great work was, or what Nature was; but, by the earnest and
complete study of facts, you will gradually come to understand the one
and love the other more and more, whether you can draw well yourself or
not.
138. I have yet to say a few words respecting the third law above
stated, that of mystery; the law, namely, that nothing is ever seen
perfectly, but only by fragments, and under various conditions of
obscurity.[34] This last fact renders the visible objects of Nature
complete as a type of the human nature. We have, observe, first,
Subordination; secondly, Individuality; lastly, and this not the least
essential character, Incomprehensibility; a perpetual lesson, in every
serrated point and shining vein which escapes or deceives our sight
among the forest leaves, how little we may hope to discern clearly, or
judge justly, the rents and veins of the human heart; how much of all
that is round us, in men's actions or spirits, which we at first think
we understand, a closer and more loving watchfulness would show to be
full of mystery, never to be either fathomed or withdrawn.
[Illustration: FIG. 26.]
139. The expression of this final character in landscape has never been
completely reached by any except Turner; nor can you hope to reach it at
all until you have given much time to the practice of art. Only try
always when you are sketching any object with a view to completion in
light and shade, to draw only those parts of it which you really see
definitely; preparing for the after development of the forms by
chiaroscuro. It is this preparation by isolated touches for a future
arrangement of superimposed light and shade which renders the etchings
of the Liber Studiorum so inestimable as examples, and so peculiar. The
character exists more or less in them exactly in proportion to the pains
that Turner has taken. Thus the Æsacus and Hesperie was wrought out with
the greatest possible care; and the principal branch on the near tree is
etched as in Fig. 26. The work looks at first like a scholar's instead
of a master's; but when the light and shade are added, every touch falls
into its place, and a perfect expression of grace and complexity
results. Nay, even before the light and shade are added, you ought to be
able to see that these irregular and broken lines, especially where the
expression is given of the way the stem loses itself in the leaves, are
more true than the monotonous though graceful leaf-drawing which, before
Turner's time, had been employed, even by the best masters, in their
distant masses. Fig. 27 is sufficiently characteristic of the manner of
the old wood-cuts after Titian; in which, you see, the leaves are too
much of one shape, like bunches of fruit; and the boughs too completely
seen, besides being somewhat soft and leathery in aspect, owing to the
want of angles in their outline. By great men like Titian, this somewhat
conventional structure was only given in haste to distant masses; and
their exquisite delineation of the foreground, kept their
conventionalism from degeneracy: but in the drawings of the Carracci and
other derivative masters, the conventionalism prevails everywhere, and
sinks gradually into scrawled work, like Fig. 28, about the worst which
it is possible to get into the habit of using, though an ignorant person
might perhaps suppose it more "free," and therefore better than Fig. 26.
Note also, that in noble outline drawing, it does not follow that a
bough is wrongly drawn, because it looks contracted unnaturally
somewhere, as in Fig. 26, just above the foliage. Very often the
muscular action which is to be expressed by the line runs into the
middle of the branch, and the actual outline of the branch at that place
may be dimly seen, or not at all; and it is then only by the future
shade that its actual shape, or the cause of its disappearance, will be
indicated.
[Illustration: FIG. 27.]
140. One point more remains to be noted about trees, and I have done. In
the minds of our ordinary water-color artists a distant tree seems only
to be conceived as a flat green blot, grouping pleasantly with other
masses, and giving cool color to the landscape, but differing no wise,
in texture, from the blots of other shapes which these painters use to
express stones, or water, or figures. But as soon as you have drawn
trees carefully a little while, you will be impressed, and impressed
more strongly the better you draw them, with the idea of their
_softness_ of surface. A distant tree is not a flat and even piece of
color, but a more or less globular mass of a downy or bloomy texture,
partly passing into a misty vagueness. I find, practically, this lovely
softness of far-away trees the most difficult of all characters to
reach, because it cannot be got by mere scratching or roughening the
surface, but is always associated with such delicate expressions of form
and growth as are only imitable by very careful drawing. The penknife
passed lightly _over_ this careful drawing will do a good deal; but you
must accustom yourself, from the beginning, to aim much at this softness
in the lines of the drawing itself, by crossing them delicately, and
more or less effacing and confusing the edges. You must invent,
according to the character of tree, various modes of execution adapted
to express its texture; but always keep this character of softness in
your mind, and in your scope of aim; for in most landscapes it is the
intention of Nature that the tenderness and transparent infinitude of
her foliage should be felt, even at the far distance, in the most
distinct opposition to the solid masses and flat surfaces of rocks or
buildings.
[Illustration: FIG. 28.]
141. II. We were, in the second place, to consider a little the modes of
representing water, of which important feature of landscape I have
hardly said anything yet.
Water is expressed, in common drawings, by conventional lines, whose
horizontality is supposed to convey the idea of its surface. In
paintings, white dashes or bars of light are used for the same purpose.
But these and all other such expedients are vain and absurd. A piece of
calm water always contains a picture in itself, an exquisite reflection
of the objects above it. If you give the time necessary to draw these
reflections, disturbing them here and there as you see the breeze or
current disturb them, you will get the effect of the water; but if you
have not patience to draw the reflections, no expedient will give you a
true effect. The picture in the pool needs nearly as much delicate
drawing as the picture above the pool; except only that if there be the
least motion on the water, the horizontal lines of the images will be
diffused and broken, while the vertical ones will remain decisive, and
the oblique ones decisive in proportion to their steepness.
142. A few close studies will soon teach you this: the only thing you
need to be told is to watch carefully the lines of disturbance on the
surface, as when a bird swims across it, or a fish rises, or the current
plays round a stone, reed, or other obstacle. Take the greatest pains to
get the _curves_ of these lines true; the whole value of your careful
drawing of the reflections may be lost by your admitting a single false
curve of ripple from a wild duck's breast. And (as in other subjects) if
you are dissatisfied with your result, always try for more unity and
delicacy: if your reflections are only soft and gradated enough, they
are nearly sure to give you a pleasant effect.[35] When you are taking
pains, work the softer reflections, where they are drawn out by motion
in the water, with touches as nearly horizontal as may be; but when you
are in a hurry, indicate the place and play of the images with vertical
lines. The actual construction of a calm elongated reflection is with
horizontal lines: but it is often impossible to draw the descending
shades delicately enough with a horizontal touch; and it is best always
when you are in a hurry, and sometimes when you are not, to use the
vertical touch. When the ripples are large, the reflections become
shaken, and must be drawn with bold undulatory descending lines.
143. I need not, I should think, tell you that it is of the greatest
possible importance to draw the curves of the shore rightly. Their
perspective is, if not more subtle, at least more stringent than that of
any other lines in Nature. It will not be detected by the general
observer, if you miss the curve of a branch, or the sweep of a cloud, or
the perspective of a building;[36] but every intelligent spectator will
feel the difference between a rightly-drawn bend of shore or shingle,
and a false one. _Absolutely_ right, in difficult river perspectives
seen from heights, I believe no one but Turner ever has been yet; and
observe, there is NO rule for them. To develop the curve mathematically
would require a knowledge of the exact quantity of water in the river,
the shape of its bed, and the hardness of the rock or shore; and even
with these data, the problem would be one which no mathematician could
solve but approximatively. The instinct of the eye can do it; nothing
else.
144. If, after a little study from Nature, you get puzzled by the great
differences between the aspect of the reflected image and that of the
object casting it; and if you wish to know the law of reflection, it is
simply this: Suppose all the objects above the water _actually_ reversed
(not in appearance, but in fact) beneath the water, and precisely the
same in form and in relative position, only all topsy-turvy. Then,
whatever you could see, from the place in which you stand, of the solid
objects so reversed under the water, you will see in the reflection,
always in the true perspective of the solid objects so reversed.
If you cannot quite understand this in looking at water, take a mirror,
lay it horizontally on the table, put some books and papers upon it, and
draw them and their reflections; moving them about, and watching how
their reflections alter, and chiefly how their reflected colors and
shades differ from their own colors and shades, by being brought into
other oppositions. This difference in chiaroscuro is a more important
character in water-painting than mere difference in form.
145. When you are drawing shallow or muddy water, you will see shadows
on the bottom, or on the surface, continually modifying the reflections;
and in a clear mountain stream, the most wonderful complications of
effect resulting from the shadows and reflections of the stones in it,
mingling with the aspect of the stones themselves seen through the
water. Do not be frightened at the complexity; but, on the other hand,
do not hope to render it hastily. Look at it well, making out everything
that you see, and distinguishing each component part of the effect.
There will be, first, the stones seen through the water, distorted
always by refraction, so that, if the general structure of the stone
shows straight parallel lines above the water, you may be sure they will
be bent where they enter it; then the reflection of the part of the
stone above the water crosses and interferes with the part that is seen
through it, so that you can hardly tell which is which; and wherever the
reflection is darkest, you will see through the water best,[37] and
_vice versâ_. Then the real shadow of the stone crosses both these
images, and where that shadow falls, it makes the water more reflective,
and where the sunshine falls, you will see more of the surface of the
water, and of any dust or motes that may be floating on it: but whether
you are to see, at the same spot, most of the bottom of the water, or of
the reflection of the objects above, depends on the position of the eye.
The more you look down into the water, the better you see objects
through it; the more you look along it, the eye being low, the more you
see the reflection of objects above it. Hence the color of a given space
of surface in a stream will entirely change while you stand still in the
same spot, merely as you stoop or raise your head; and thus the colors
with which water is painted are an indication of the position of the
spectator, and connected inseparably with the perspective of the shores.
The most beautiful of all results that I know in mountain streams is
when the water is shallow, and the stones at the bottom are rich
reddish-orange and black, and the water is seen at an angle which
exactly divides the visible colors between those of the stones and that
of the sky, and the sky is of clear, full blue. The resulting purple,
obtained by the blending of the blue and the orange-red, broken by the
play of innumerable gradations in the stones, is indescribably lovely.
146. All this seems complicated enough already; but if there be a strong
color in the clear water itself, as of green or blue in the Swiss lakes,
all these phenomena are doubly involved; for the darker reflections now
become of the color of the water. The reflection of a black gondola, for
instance, at Venice, is never black, but pure dark green. And, farther,
the color of the water itself is of three kinds: one, seen on the
surface, is a kind of milky bloom; the next is seen where the waves let
light through them, at their edges; and the third, shown as a change of
color on the objects seen through the water. Thus, the same wave that
makes a white object look of a clear blue, when seen through it, will
take a red or violet-colored bloom on its surface, and will be made pure
emerald green by transmitted sunshine through its edges. With all this,
however, you are not much concerned at present, but I tell it you partly
as a preparation for what we have afterwards to say about color, and
partly that you may approach lakes and streams with reverence,[38] and
study them as carefully as other things, not hoping to express them by a
few horizontal dashes of white, or a few tremulous blots.[39] Not but
that much may be done by tremulous blots, when you know precisely what
you mean by them, as you will see by many of the Turner sketches, which
are now framed at the National Gallery; but you must have painted water
many and many a day--yes, and all day long--before you can hope to do
anything like those.
147. III. Lastly. You may perhaps wonder why, before passing to the
clouds, I say nothing special about _ground_.[40] But there is too much
to be said about that to admit of my saying it here. You will find the
principal laws of its structure examined at length in the fourth volume
of Modern Painters; and if you can get that volume, and copy carefully
Plate 21, which I have etched after Turner with great pains, it will
give you as much help as you need in the linear expression of
ground-surface. Strive to get the retirement and succession of masses in
irregular ground: much may be done in this way by careful watching of
the perspective diminutions of its herbage, as well as by contour; and
much also by shadows. If you draw the shadows of leaves and tree trunks
on any undulating ground with entire carefulness, you will be surprised
to find how much they explain of the form and distance of the earth on
which they fall.
148. Passing then to skies, note that there is this great peculiarity
about sky subject, as distinguished from earth subject;--that the
clouds, not being much liable to man's interference, are always
beautifully arranged. You cannot be sure of this in any other features
of landscape. The rock on which the effect of a mountain scene
especially depends is always precisely that which the roadmaker blasts
or the landlord quarries; and the spot of green which Nature left with a
special purpose by her dark forest sides, and finished with her most
delicate grasses, is always that which the farmer plows or builds upon.
But the clouds, though we can hide them with smoke, and mix them with
poison, cannot be quarried nor built over, and they are always therefore
gloriously arranged; so gloriously, that unless you have notable powers
of memory you need not hope to approach the effect of any sky that
interests you. For both its grace and its glow depend upon the united
influence of every cloud within its compass: they all move and burn
together in a marvelous harmony; not a cloud of them is out of its
appointed place, or fails of its part in the choir: and if you are not
able to recollect (which in the case of a complicated sky it is
impossible you should) precisely the form and position of all the clouds
at a given moment, you cannot draw the sky at all; for the clouds will
not fit if you draw one part of them three or four minutes before
another.
149. You must try therefore to help what memory you have, by sketching
at the utmost possible speed the whole range of the clouds; marking, by
any shorthand or symbolic work you can hit upon, the peculiar character
of each, as transparent, or fleecy, or linear, or undulatory; giving
afterwards such completion to the parts as your recollection will enable
you to do. This, however, only when the sky is interesting from its
general aspect; at other times, do not try to draw all the sky, but a
single cloud: sometimes a round cumulus will stay five or six minutes
quite steady enough to let you mark out his principal masses; and one or
two white or crimson lines which cross the sunrise will often stay
without serious change for as long. And in order to be the readier in
drawing them, practice occasionally drawing lumps of cotton, which will
teach you better than any other stable thing the kind of softness there
is in clouds. For you will find when you have made a few genuine studies
of sky, and then look at any ancient or modern painting, that ordinary
artists have always fallen into one of two faults: either, in rounding
the clouds, they make them as solid and hard-edged as a heap of stones
tied up in a sack, or they represent them not as rounded at all, but as
vague wreaths of mist or flat lights in the sky; and think they have
done enough in leaving a little white paper between dashes of blue, or
in taking an irregular space out with the sponge. Now clouds are not as
solid as flour-sacks; but, on the other hand, they are neither spongy
nor flat. They are definite and very beautiful forms of sculptured mist;
sculptured is a perfectly accurate word; they are not more _drifted_
into form than they are _carved_ into form, the warm air around them
cutting them into shape by absorbing the visible vapor beyond certain
limits; hence their angular and fantastic outlines, as different from a
swollen, spherical, or globular formation, on the one hand, as from that
of flat films or shapeless mists on the other. And the worst of all is,
that while these forms are difficult enough to draw on any terms,
especially considering that they never stay quiet, they must be drawn
also at greater disadvantage of light and shade than any others, the
force of light in clouds being wholly unattainable by art; so that if we
put shade enough to express their form as positively as it is expressed
in reality, we must make them painfully too dark on the dark sides.
Nevertheless, they are so beautiful, if you in the least succeed with
them, that you will hardly, I think, lose courage.
150. Outline them often with the pen, as you can catch them here and
there; one of the chief uses of doing this will be, not so much the
memorandum so obtained, as the lesson you will get respecting the
softness of the cloud-outlines. You will always find yourself at a loss
to see where the outline really is; and when drawn it will always look
hard and false, and will assuredly be either too round or too square,
however often you alter it, merely passing from the one fault to the
other and back again, the real cloud striking an inexpressible mean
between roundness and squareness in all its coils or battlements. I
speak at present, of course, only of the cumulus cloud: the lighter
wreaths and flakes of the upper sky cannot be outlined;--they can only
be sketched, like locks of hair, by many lines of the pen. Firmly
developed bars of cloud on the horizon are in general easy enough, and
may be drawn with decision. When you have thus accustomed yourself a
little to the placing and action of clouds, try to work out their light
and shade, just as carefully as you do that of other things, looking
exclusively for examples of treatment to the vignettes in Rogers's Italy
and Poems, and to the Liber Studiorum, unless you have access to some
examples of Turner's own work. No other artist ever yet drew the sky:
even Titian's clouds, and Tintoret's, are conventional. The clouds in
the "Ben Arthur," "Source of Arveron," and "Calais Pier," are among the
best of Turner's storm studies; and of the upper clouds, the vignettes
to Rogers's Poems furnish as many examples as you need.
151. And now, as our first lesson was taken from the sky, so, for the
present, let our last be. I do not advise you to be in any haste to
master the contents of my next letter. If you have any real talent for
drawing, you will take delight in the discoveries of natural loveliness,
which the studies I have already proposed will lead you into, among the
fields and hills; and be assured that the more quietly and
single-heartedly you take each step in the art, the quicker, on the
whole, will your progress be. I would rather, indeed, have discussed the
subjects of the following letter at greater length, and in a separate
work addressed to more advanced students; but as there are one or two
things to be said on composition which may set the young artist's mind
somewhat more at rest, or furnish him with defense from the urgency of
ill-advisers, I will glance over the main heads of the matter here;
trusting that my doing so may not beguile you, my dear reader, from your
serious work, or lead you to think me, in occupying part of this book
with talk not altogether relevant to it, less entirely or
Faithfully yours,