In the first place, the book is not calculated for the use of children

under the age of twelve or fourteen. I do not think it advisable to

engage a child in any but the most voluntary practice of art. If it has

talent for drawing, it will be continually scrawling on what paper it

can get; and should be allowed to scrawl at its own free will, due

praise being given for every appearance of care, or truth, in its

efforts. It should be allowed to amuse itself with cheap colours almost

as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the

paper with shapeless stains, the colour-box may be taken away till it

knows better: but as soon as it begins painting red coats on soldiers,

striped flags to ships, etc., it should have colours at command; and,

without restraining its choice of subject in that imaginative and

historical art, of a military tendency, which children delight in,

(generally quite as valuable, by the way, as any historical art

delighted in by their elders,) it should be gently led by the parents to

try to draw, in such childish fashion as may be, the things it can see

and likes,--birds, or butterflies, or flowers, or fruit. In later

years, the indulgence of using the colour should only be granted as a

reward, after it has shown care and progress in its drawings with

pencil. A limited number of good and amusing prints should always be

within a boy's reach: in these days of cheap illustration he can hardly

possess a volume of nursery tales without good woodcuts in it, and

should be encouraged to copy what he likes best of this kind; but should

be firmly restricted to a _few_ prints and to a few books. If a child

has many toys, it will get tired of them and break them; if a boy has

many prints he will merely dawdle and scrawl over them; it is by the

limitation of the number of his possessions that his pleasure in them is

perfected, and his attention concentrated. The parents need give

themselves no trouble in instructing him, as far as drawing is

concerned, beyond insisting upon economical and neat habits with his

colours and paper, showing him the best way of holding pencil and rule,

and, so far as they take notice of his work, pointing out where a line

is too short or too long, or too crooked, when compared with the copy;

_accuracy_ being the first and last thing they look for. If the child

shows talent for inventing or grouping figures, the parents should

neither check, nor praise it. They may laugh with it frankly, or show

pleasure in what it has done, just as they show pleasure in seeing it

well, or cheerful; but they must not praise it for being clever, any

more than they would praise it for being stout. They should praise it

only for what costs it self-denial, namely attention and hard work;

otherwise they will make it work for vanity's sake, and always badly.

The best books to put into its hands are those illustrated by George

Cruikshank or by Richter. (See Appendix.) At about the age of twelve or

fourteen, it is quite time enough to set youth or girl to serious work;

and then this book will, I think, be useful to them; and I have good

hope it may be so, likewise, to persons of more advanced age wishing to

know something of the first principles of art.

Yet observe, that the method of study recommended is not brought forward

as absolutely the best, but only as the best which I can at present

devise for an isolated student. It is very likely that farther

experience in teaching may enable me to modify it with advantage in

several important respects; but I am sure the main principles of it are

sound, and most of the exercises as useful as they can be rendered

without a master's superintendence. The method differs, however, so

materially from that generally adopted by drawing-masters, that a word

or two of explanation may be needed to justify what might otherwise be

thought wilful eccentricity.

The manuals at present published on the subject of drawing are all

directed, as far as I know, to one or other of two objects. Either they

propose to give the student a power of dexterous sketching with pencil

or water-colour, so as to emulate (at considerable distance) the

slighter work of our second-rate artists; or they propose to give him

such accurate command of mathematical forms as may afterwards enable him

to design rapidly and cheaply for manufactures. When drawing is taught

as an accomplishment, the first is the aim usually proposed; while the

second is the object kept chiefly in view at Marlborough House, and in

the branch Government Schools of Design.

Of the fitness of the modes of study adopted in those schools, to the

end specially intended, judgment is hardly yet possible; only, it seems

to me, that we are all too much in the habit of confusing art as

_applied_ to manufacture, with manufacture itself. For instance, the

skill by which an inventive workman designs and moulds a beautiful cup,

is skill of true art; but the skill by which that cup is copied and

afterwards multiplied a thousandfold, is skill of manufacture: and the

faculties which enable one workman to design and elaborate his original

piece, are not to be developed by the same system of instruction as

those which enable another to produce a maximum number of approximate

copies of it in a given time. Farther: it is surely inexpedient that any

reference to purposes of manufacture should interfere with the education

of the artist himself. Try first to manufacture a Raphael; then let

Raphael direct your manufacture. He will design you a plate, or cup, or

a house, or a palace, whenever you want it, and design them in the most

convenient and rational way; but do not let your anxiety to reach the

platter and the cup interfere with your education of the Raphael. Obtain

first the best work you can, and the ablest hands, irrespective of any

consideration of economy or facility of production. Then leave your

trained artist to determine how far art can be popularised, or

manufacture ennobled.

Now, I believe that (irrespective of differences in individual temper

and character) the excellence of an artist, as such, depends wholly on

refinement of perception, and that it is this, mainly, which a master or

a school can teach; so that while powers of invention distinguish man

from man, powers of perception distinguish school from school. All great

schools enforce delicacy of drawing and subtlety of sight: and the only

rule which I have, as yet, found to be without exception respecting art,

is that all great art is delicate.

Therefore, the chief aim and bent of the following system is to obtain,

first, a perfectly patient, and, to the utmost of the pupil's power, a

delicate method of work, such as may ensure his seeing truly. For I am

nearly convinced, that when once we see keenly enough, there is very

little difficulty in drawing what we see; but, even supposing that this

difficulty be still great, I believe that the sight is a more important

thing than the drawing; and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils

may learn to love Nature, than teach the looking at Nature that they may

learn to draw. It is surely also a more important thing for young people

and unprofessional students, to know how to appreciate the art of

others, than to gain much power in art themselves. Now the modes of

sketching ordinarily taught are inconsistent with this power of

judgment. No person trained to the superficial execution of modern

water-colour painting, can understand the work of Titian or Leonardo;

they must for ever remain blind to the refinement of such men's

pencilling, and the precision of their thinking. But, however slight a

degree of manipulative power the student may reach by pursuing the mode

recommended to him in these letters, I will answer for it that he cannot

go once through the advised exercises without beginning to understand

what masterly work means; and, by the time he has gained some

proficiency in them, he will have a pleasure in looking at the painting

of the great schools, and a new perception of the exquisiteness of

natural scenery, such as would repay him for much more labour than I

have asked him to undergo.

That labour is, nevertheless, sufficiently irksome, nor is it possible

that it should be otherwise, so long as the pupil works unassisted by a

master. For the smooth and straight road which admits unembarrassed

progress must, I fear, be dull as well as smooth; and the hedges need to

be close and trim when there is no guide to warn or bring back the

erring traveller. The system followed in this work will, therefore, at

first, surprise somewhat sorrowfully those who are familiar with the

practice of our class at the Working Men's College; for there, the

pupil, having the master at his side to extricate him from such

embarrassments as his first efforts may lead into, is _at once_ set to

draw from a solid object, and soon finds entertainment in his efforts

and interest in his difficulties. Of course the simplest object which it

is possible to set before the eye is a sphere; and practically, I find a

child's toy, a white leather ball, better than anything else; as the

gradations on balls of plaster of Paris, which I use sometimes to try

the strength of pupils who have had previous practice, are a little too

delicate for a beginner to perceive. It has been objected that a circle,

or the outline of a sphere, is one of the most difficult of all lines to

draw. It is so; but I do not want it to be drawn. All that his study of

the ball is to teach the pupil, is the way in which shade gives the

appearance of projection. This he learns most satisfactorily from a

sphere; because any solid form, terminated by straight lines or flat

surfaces, owes some of its appearance of projection to its perspective;

but in the sphere, what, without shade, was a flat circle, becomes,

merely by the added shade, the image of a solid ball; and this fact is

just as striking to the learner, whether his circular outline be true or

false. He is, therefore, never allowed to trouble himself about it; if

he makes the ball look as oval as an egg, the degree of error is simply

pointed out to him, and he does better next time, and better still the

next. But his mind is always fixed on the gradation of shade, and the

outline left to take, in due time, care of itself. I call it outline,

for the sake of immediate intelligibility,--strictly speaking, it is

merely the edge of the shade; no pupil in my class being ever allowed to

draw an outline, in the ordinary sense. It is pointed out to him, from

the first, that Nature relieves one mass, or one tint, against another;

but outlines none. The outline exercise, the second suggested in this

letter, is recommended, not to enable the pupil to draw outlines, but as

the only means by which, unassisted, he can test his accuracy of eye,

and discipline his hand. When the master is by, errors in the form and

extent of shadows can be pointed out as easily as in outline, and the

handling can be gradually corrected in details of the work. But the

solitary student can only find out his own mistakes by help of the

traced limit, and can only test the firmness of his hand by an exercise

in which nothing but firmness is required; and during which all other

considerations (as of softness, complexity, &c.) are entirely excluded.

Both the system adopted at the Working Men's College, and that

recommended here, agree, however, in one principle, which I consider the

most important and special of all that are involved in my teaching:

namely, the attaching its full importance, from the first, to local

colour. I believe that the endeavour to separate, in the course of

instruction, the observation of light and shade from that of local

colour, has always been, and must always be, destructive of the

student's power of accurate sight, and that it corrupts his taste as

much as it retards his progress. I will not occupy the reader's time by

any discussion of the principle here, but I wish him to note it as the

only distinctive one in my system, so far as it is a system. For the

recommendation to the pupil to copy faithfully, and without alteration,

whatever natural object he chooses to study, is serviceable, among other

reasons, just because it gets rid of systematic rules altogether, and

teaches people to draw, as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or

stirrups; my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold

their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."

In these written instructions, therefore, it has always been with regret

that I have seen myself forced to advise anything like monotonous or

formal discipline. But, to the unassisted student, such formalities are

indispensable, and I am not without hope that the sense of secure

advancement, and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the

following out of even the more tedious exercises here proposed, possible

to the solitary learner, without weariness. But if it should be

otherwise, and he finds the first steps painfully irksome, I can only

desire him to consider whether the acquirement of so great a power as

that of pictorial expression of thought be not worth some toil; or

whether it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working

world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those who will give

no price for it.

One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have not

imposed upon him: namely, learning the laws of perspective. It would be

worth while to learn them, if he could do so easily; but without a

master's help, and in the way perspective is at present explained in

treatises, the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is

not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You can draw the

rounding line of a table in perspective, but you cannot draw the sweep

of a sea bay; you can foreshorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot

foreshorten an arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any

subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle forms by

the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones. No great painters ever

trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its

laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in

the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult

ones. It would take about a month's labour to draw imperfectly, by laws

of perspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five

minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending

the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. It is

true that when perspective was first discovered, everybody amused

themselves with it; and all the great painters put fine saloons and

arcades behind their madonnas, merely to show that they could draw in

perspective: but even this was generally done by them only to catch the

public eye, and they disdained the perspective so much, that though they

took the greatest pains with the circlet of a crown, or the rim of a

crystal cup, in the heart of their picture, they would twist their

capitals of columns and towers of churches about in the background in

the most wanton way, wherever they liked the lines to go, provided only

they left just perspective enough to please the public. In modern days,

I doubt if any artist among us, except David Roberts, knows so much

perspective as would enable him to draw a Gothic arch to scale, at a

given angle and distance. Turner, though he was professor of perspective

to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far

as I remember, drew a single building in true perspective in his life;

he drew them only with as much perspective as suited him. Prout also

knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner did,

into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would

recommend the student at least to treat perspective with common

civility, but to pay no court to it. The best way he can learn it, by

himself, is by taking a pane of glass, fixed in a frame, so that it can

be set upright before the eye, at the distance at which the proposed

sketch is intended to be seen. Let the eye be placed at some fixed

point, opposite the middle of the pane of glass, but as high or as low

as the student likes; then with a brush at the end of a stick, and a

little body-colour that will adhere to the glass, the lines of the

landscape may be traced on the glass, as you see them through it. When

so traced they are all in true perspective. If the glass be sloped in

any direction, the lines are still in true perspective, only it is

perspective calculated for a sloping plane, while common perspective

always supposes the plane of the picture to be vertical. It is good, in

early practice, to accustom yourself to enclose your subject, before

sketching it, with a light frame of wood held upright before you; it

will show you what you may legitimately take into your picture, and

what choice there is between a narrow foreground near you, and a wide

one farther off; also, what height of tree or building you can properly

take in, &c.[198]

Of figure drawing, nothing is said in the following pages, because I do

not think figures, as chief subjects, can be drawn to any good purpose

by an amateur. As accessaries in landscape, they are just to be drawn on

the same principles as anything else.

Lastly: If any of the directions given subsequently to the student

should be found obscure by him, or if at any stage of the recommended

practice he finds himself in difficulties which I have not provided

enough against, he may apply by letter to Mr. Ward, who is my under

drawing-master at the Working Men's College (45 Great Ormond Street),

and who will give any required assistance, on the lowest terms that can

remunerate him for the occupation of his time. I have not leisure myself

in general to answer letters of inquiry, however much I may desire to do

so; but Mr. Ward has always the power of referring any question to me

when he thinks it necessary. I have good hope, however, that enough

guidance is given in this work to prevent the occurrence of any serious

embarrassment; and I believe that the student who obeys its directions

will find, on the whole, that the best answer of questions is

perseverance; and the best drawing-masters are the woods and hills.

FOOTNOTES:

[198] If the student is fond of architecture, and wishes to know more of

perspective than he can learn in this rough way, Mr. Runciman (of 40

Accacia Road, St. John's Wood), who was my first drawing-master, and to

whom I owe many happy hours, can teach it him quickly, easily, and

rightly.

THE

ELEMENTS OF DRAWING.

LETTER I.

ON FIRST PRACTICE.

MY DEAR READER:

Whether this book is to be of use to you or not, depends wholly on your

reason for wishing to learn to draw. If you desire only to possess a

graceful accomplishment, to be able to converse in a fluent manner about

drawing, or to amuse yourself listlessly in listless hours, I cannot

help you: but if you wish to learn drawing that you may be able to set

down clearly, and usefully, records of such things as cannot be

described in words, either to assist your own memory of them, or to

convey distinct ideas of them to other people; if you wish to obtain

quicker perceptions of the beauty of the natural world, and to preserve

something like a true image of beautiful things that pass away, or which

you must yourself leave; if, also, you wish to understand the minds of

great painters, and to be able to appreciate their work sincerely,

seeing it for yourself, and loving it, not merely taking up the thoughts

of other people about it; then I _can_ help you, or, which is better,

show you how to help yourself.

Only you must understand, first of all, that these powers which indeed

are noble and desirable, cannot be got without work. It is much easier

to learn to draw well, than it is to learn to play well on any musical

instrument; but you know that it takes three or four years of practice,

giving three or four hours a day, to acquire even ordinary command over

the keys of a piano; and you must not think that a masterly command of

your pencil, and the knowledge of what may be done with it, can be

acquired without painstaking, or in a very short time. The kind of

drawing which is taught, or supposed to be taught, in our schools, in a

term or two, perhaps at the rate of an hour's practice a week, is not

drawing at all. It is only the performance of a few dexterous (not

always even that) evolutions on paper with a black-lead pencil;

profitless alike to performer and beholder, unless as a matter of

vanity, and that the smallest possible vanity. If any young person,

after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will

try to copy the commonest piece of real _work_--suppose a lithograph on

the title-page of a new opera air, or a woodcut in the cheapest

illustrated newspaper of the day--they will find themselves entirely

beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much

more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young

lady is supposed to have command; and that woodcut was drawn in urgent

haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by

people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power;

both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any

simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by.

Do not, therefore, think that you can learn drawing, any more than a new

language, without some hard and disagreeable labour. But do not, on the

other hand, if you are ready and willing to pay this price, fear that

you may be unable to get on for want of special talent. It is indeed

true that the persons who have peculiar talent for art, draw

instinctively and get on almost without teaching; though never without

toil. It is true, also, that of inferior talent for drawing there are

many degrees; it will take one person a much longer time than another to

attain the same results, and the results thus painfully attained are

never quite so satisfactory as those got with greater ease when the

faculties are naturally adapted to the study. But I have never yet, in

the experiments I have made, met with a person who could not learn to

draw at all; and, in general, there is a satisfactory and available

power in every one to learn drawing if he wishes, just as nearly all

persons have the power of learning French, Latin, or arithmetic, in a

decent and useful degree, if their lot in life requires them to possess

such knowledge.

Supposing then that you are ready to take a certain amount of pains, and

to bear a little irksomeness and a few disappointments bravely, I can

promise you that an hour's practice a day for six months, or an hour's

practice every other day for twelve months, or, disposed in whatever way

you find convenient, some hundred and fifty hours' practice, will give

you sufficient power of drawing faithfully whatever you want to draw,

and a good judgment, up to a certain point, of other people's work: of

which hours, if you have one to spare at present, we may as well begin

at once.

EXERCISE I.

Everything that you can see, in the world around you, presents itself to

your eyes only as an arrangement of patches of different colours

variously shaded.[199] Some of these patches of colour have an

appearance of lines or texture within them, as a piece of cloth or silk

has of threads, or an animal's skin shows texture of hairs; but whether

this be the case or not, the first broad aspect of the thing is that of

a patch of some definite colour; and the first thing to be learned is,

how to produce extents of smooth colour, without texture.

This can only be done properly with a brush; but a brush, being soft at

the point, causes so much uncertainty in the touch of an unpractised

hand, that it is hardly possible to learn to draw first with it, and it

is better to take, in early practice, some instrument with a hard and

fine point, both that we may give some support to the hand, and that by

working over the subject with so delicate a point, the attention may be

properly directed to all the most minute parts of it. Even the best

artists need occasionally to study subjects with a pointed instrument,

in order thus to discipline their attention: and a beginner must be

content to do so for a considerable period.

Also, observe that before we trouble ourselves about differences of

colour, we must be able to lay on _one_ colour properly, in whatever

gradations of depth and whatever shapes we want. We will try, therefore,

first to lay on tints or patches of _grey_, of whatever depth we want,

with a pointed instrument. Take any finely-pointed steel pen (one of

Gillott's lithographic crow-quills is best), and a piece of quite

smooth, but not shining, note-paper, cream-laid, and get some ink that

has stood already some time in the inkstand, so as to be quite black,

and as thick as it can be without clogging the pen. Take a rule, and

draw four straight lines, so as to enclose a square or nearly a square,

about as large as _a_, Fig. 1. I say nearly a square, because it does

not in the least matter whether it is quite square or not, the object

being merely to get a space enclosed by straight lines.

[Illustration: FIG. 1.]

Now, try to fill in that square space with crossed lines, so completely

and evenly that it shall look like a square patch of grey silk or cloth,

cut out and laid on the white paper, as at _b_. Cover it quickly, first

with straightish lines, in any direction you like, not troubling

yourself to draw them much closer or neater than those in the square

_a_. Let them quite dry before retouching them. (If you draw three or

four squares side by side, you may always be going on with one while the

others are drying). Then cover these lines with others in a different

direction, and let those dry; then in another direction still, and let

those dry. Always wait long enough to run no risk of blotting, and then

draw the lines as quickly as you can. Each ought to be laid on as

swiftly as the dash of the pen of a good writer; but if you try to reach

this great speed at first you will go over the edge of the square, which

is a fault in this exercise. Yet it is better to do so now and then than

to draw the lines very slowly; for if you do, the pen leaves a little

dot of ink at the end of each line, and these dots spoil your work. So

draw each line quickly, stopping always as nearly as you can at the edge

of the square. The ends of lines which go over the edge are afterwards

to be removed with the penknife, but not till you have done the whole

work, otherwise you roughen the paper, and the next line that goes over

the edge makes a blot.

When you have gone over the whole three or four times, you will find

some parts of the square look darker than other parts. Now try to make

the lighter parts as dark as the rest, so that the whole may be of equal

depth or darkness. You will find, on examining the work, that where it

looks darkest the lines are closest, or there are some much darker

lines, than elsewhere; therefore you must put in other lines, or little

scratches and dots, _between_ the lines in the paler parts; and where

there are very conspicuous dark lines, scratch them out lightly with the

penknife, for the eye must not be attracted by any line in particular.

The more carefully and delicately you fill in the little gaps and holes

the better; you will get on faster by doing two or three squares

perfectly than a great many badly. As the tint gets closer and begins to

look even, work with very little ink in your pen, so as hardly to make

any mark on the paper; and at last, where it is too dark, use the edge

of your penknife very lightly, and for some time, to wear it softly into

an even tone. You will find that the greatest difficulty consists in

getting evenness: one bit will always look darker than another bit of

your square; or there will be a granulated and sandy look over the

whole. When you find your paper quite rough and in a mess, give it up

and begin another square, but do not rest satisfied till you have done

your best with every square. The tint at last ought _at least_ to be as

close and even as that in _b_, Fig. 1. You will find, however, that it

is very difficult to get a _pale_ tint; because, naturally, the ink

lines necessary to produce a close tint at all, blacken the paper more

than you want. You must get over this difficulty not so much by leaving

the lines wide apart as by trying to draw them excessively fine, lightly

and swiftly; being very cautious in filling in; and, at last, passing

the penknife over the whole. By keeping several squares in progress at

one time, and reserving your pen for the light one just when the ink is

nearly exhausted, you may get on better. The paper ought, at last, to

look lightly and evenly toned all over, with no lines distinctly

visible.

EXERCISE II.

As this exercise in shading is very tiresome, it will be well to vary it

by proceeding with another at the same time. The power of shading

rightly depends mainly on _lightness_ of hand and _keenness_ of sight;

but there are other qualities required in drawing, dependent not merely

on lightness, but steadiness of hand; and the eye, to be perfect in its

power, must be made _accurate_ as well as keen, and not only see

shrewdly, but measure justly.

Possess yourself, therefore, of any cheap work on botany containing

_outline_ plates of leaves and flowers, it does not matter whether bad

or good: "Baxter's British Flowering Plants" is quite good enough. Copy

any of the simplest outlines, first with a soft pencil, following it, by

the eye, as nearly as you can; if it does not look right in proportions,

rub out and correct it, always by the eye, till you think it is right:

when you have got it to your mind, lay tracing-paper on the book, on

this paper trace the outline you have been copying, and apply it to your

own; and having thus ascertained the faults, correct them all patiently,

till you have got it as nearly accurate as may be. Work with a very soft

pencil, and do not rub out so hard[200] as to spoil the surface of your

paper; never mind how _dirty_ the paper gets, but do not roughen it;

and let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere with

the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and shape

your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as

right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest

your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the

pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen

point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part

of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the present

day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all

such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for your

exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is better,

however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in

the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but it

matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place than

in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line

slowly and in any direction; all _dashing_ lines, or approximations to

penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the

ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it

in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.

As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you have

made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the

_slowness_. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a

sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[201] the real

difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but

keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.

EXERCISE III.

Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares, and

chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for rest.

[Illustration: FIG. 2.]

As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading

instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to

produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark tint passing gradually

into the lighter ones. Nearly _all_ expression of form, in drawing,

depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is

always most skilful which passes from one tint into another _very

little_ paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your

work, as in Fig. 2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to

black, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every

part of the band may have visible change in it. The perception of

gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many

artists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation

skilful enough when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece

of grey shaded riband, and comparing it with your drawing, you may

arrive, in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction

with it. Widen your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as

to give the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the

same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest

and the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and

try to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a

piece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it happens to be,

and observe how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the

space in the window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on

the outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look

round and hollow;[202] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus

gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the

light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your

eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.

But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects in

which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad

omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of

by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of

sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,

between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the

corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to

gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as

_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without colour, no, nor with colour

either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your

spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the

sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful

for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all

great painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are fond of

the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,

and in a woodcut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black

lines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will

never gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common woodcuts, in

the cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given to

the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must

make your lines as _fine_ as you can, as well as far apart, towards the

light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross

irregularly in any direction easy to your hand, depending on nothing but

their gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of lines,

however, I shall have to tell you more presently; in the meantime, do

not trouble yourself about it.

EXERCISE IV.

As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an H.

or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest

possible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,

lightening, however, now with India-rubber instead of the penknife. You

will find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with

great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark

power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt

to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,

however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing

any single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the

knife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.

If you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with

India-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine

touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to

perfect evenness with the darker spots.

You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work

with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.

At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured that

some clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking

amazement, and ask you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you

persevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from

your artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good

drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You do not hear them

tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among

the keys, in imitation of the great masters; yet they might, as

reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your

knowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the

sense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a

thousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad

advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good

and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness

in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not

bold at _her_ work, do you think you ought to be at _yours_? So never

mind what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently;

and if you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that

though there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large

places, small work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait,

and quick work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I

think, only one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all

_delicate_ art. Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this

at present, because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and

subtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first look

coarse; but, believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due

time.

You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil

drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant

by a chance touch of the India-rubber, than by an hour's labour with the

point; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,

which might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two

reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able

to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you

wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rubber does it; and,

secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams

of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little

pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;

in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:

in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be

represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an

instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the

point properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this

instrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the

flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that

can only be done with the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously,

with that only.

EXERCISE V.

[Illustration: FIG. 3.]

When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point,

get a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into shape with

the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure their height

and extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_, Fig. 3., and

then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A, enclosed within

the lines, being in what Turner would have called a "state of

forwardness."

Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, draw pen and

ink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and remove any touches

outside the limit, first with the India-rubber, and then with the

penknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub out any of

the pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it, closing it up

to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are all to be

_ruled_,[203] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand;

and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the curved

letters, such as Bs, Cs, &c., to stand quite straight, and come into

accurate form.

All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be persisted

in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in any of

them. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to be able

to draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this

is only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil in hand

all his life, and all day long, hence the force of Giotto's proof of his

skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without

attaining even an approximation to such a power; the main point being,

not that every line should be precisely what we intend or wish, but that

the line which we intended or wished to draw should be right. If we

always see rightly and mean rightly, we shall get on, though the hand

may stagger a little; but if we mean wrongly, or mean nothing, it does

not matter how firm the hand is. Do not, therefore, torment yourself

because you cannot do as well as you would like; but work patiently,

sure that every square and letter will give you a certain increase of

power; and as soon as you can draw your letters pretty well, here is a

more amusing exercise for you.

EXERCISE VI.

Choose any tree that you think pretty, which is nearly bare of leaves,

and which you can see against the sky, or against a pale wall, or other

light ground: it must not be against strong light, or you will find the

looking at it hurts your eyes; nor must it be in sunshine, or you will

be puzzled by the lights on the boughs. But the tree must be in shade;

and the sky blue, or grey, or dull white. A wholly grey or rainy day is

the best for this practice.

You will see that _all_ the boughs of the tree are _dark_ against the

sky. Consider them as so many dark rivers, to be laid down in a map with

absolute accuracy; and, without the least thought about the _roundness_

of the stems, map them all out in flat shade, scrawling them in with

pencil, just as you did the limbs of your letters; then correct and

alter them, rubbing out and out again, never minding how much your paper

is dirtied (only not destroying its surface), until every bough is

exactly, or as near as your utmost power can bring it, right in

curvature and in thickness. Look at the white interstices between them

with as much scrupulousness as if they were little estates which you had

to survey, and draw maps of, for some important lawsuit, involving heavy

penalties if you cut the least bit of a corner off any of them, or gave

the hedge anywhere too deep a curve; and try continually to fancy the

whole tree nothing but a flat ramification on a white ground. Do not

take any trouble about the little twigs, which look like a confused

network or mist; leave them all out,[204] drawing only the main branches

as far as you can see them distinctly, your object at present being not

to draw a tree, but to _learn how_ to do so. When you have got the thing

as nearly right as you can--and it is better to make one good study than

twenty left unnecessarily inaccurate--take your pen, and put a fine

outline to all the boughs, as you did to your letter, taking care, as

far as possible, to put the outline within the edge of the shade, so as

not to make the boughs thicker: the main use of the outline is to

_affirm_ the whole more clearly; to do away with little accidental

roughnesses and excrescences, and especially to mark where boughs cross,

or come in front of each other, as at such points their arrangement in

this kind of sketch is unintelligible without the outline. It may

perfectly well happen that in Nature it should be less distinct than

your outline will make it; but it is better in this kind of sketch to

mark the facts clearly. The temptation is always to be slovenly and

careless, and the outline is like a bridle, and forces our indolence

into attention and precision. The outline should be about the thickness

of that in Fig. 4, which represents the ramification of a small stone

pine, only I have not endeavoured to represent the pencil shading within

the outline, as I could not easily express it in a woodcut; and you have

nothing to do at present with the indication of the foliage above, of

which in another place. You may also draw your trees as much larger

than this figure as you like; only, however large they may be, keep the

outline as delicate, and draw the branches far enough into their outer

sprays to give quite as slender ramification as you have in this figure,

otherwise you do not get good enough practice out of them.

[Illustration: FIG. 4.]

You cannot do too many studies of this kind: every one will give you

some new notion about trees: but when you are tired of tree boughs, take

any forms whatever which are drawn in flat colour, one upon another; as

patterns on any kind of cloth, or flat china (tiles, for instance),

executed in two colours only; and practice drawing them of the right

shape and size by the eye, and filling them in with shade of the depth

required.

In doing this, you will first have to meet the difficulty of

representing depth of colour by depth of shade. Thus a pattern of

ultramarine blue will have to be represented by a darker tint of grey

than a pattern of yellow.

And now it is both time for you to begin to learn the mechanical use of

the brush, and necessary for you to do so in order to provide yourself

with the gradated scale of colour which you will want. If you can, by

any means, get acquainted with any ordinarily skilful water-colour

painter, and prevail on him to show you how to lay on tints with a

brush, by all means do so; not that you are yet, nor for a long while

yet, to begin to colour, but because the brush is often more convenient

than the pencil for laying on masses or tints of shade, and the sooner

you know how to manage it as an instrument the better. If, however, you

have no opportunity of seeing how water-colour is laid on by a workman

of any kind, the following directions will help you:--

EXERCISE VII.

Get a shilling cake of Prussian blue. Dip the end of it in water so as

to take up a drop, and rub it in a white saucer till you cannot rub much

more, and the colour gets dark, thick, and oily-looking. Put two

teaspoonfuls of water to the colour you have rubbed down, and mix it

well up with a camel's-hair brush about three quarters of an inch long.

Then take a piece of smooth, but not glossy, Bristol board or

pasteboard; divide it, with your pencil and rule, into squares as large

as those of the very largest chess-board: they need not be perfect

squares, only as nearly so as you can quickly guess. Rest the pasteboard

on something sloping as much as an ordinary desk; then, dipping your

brush into the colour you have mixed, and taking up as much of the

liquid as it will carry, begin at the top of one of the squares, and lay

a pond or runlet of colour along the top edge. Lead this pond of colour

gradually downwards, not faster at one place than another, but as if you

were adding a row of bricks to a building, all along (only building down

instead of up), dipping the brush frequently so as to keep the colour as

full in that, and in as great quantity on the paper, as you can, so only

that it does not run down anywhere in a little stream. But if it should,

never mind; go on quietly with your square till you have covered it all

in. When you get to the bottom, the colour will lodge there in a great

wave. Have ready a piece of blotting-paper; dry your brush on it, and

with the dry brush take up the superfluous colour as you would with a

sponge, till it all looks even.

In leading the colour down, you will find your brush continually go over

the edge of the square, or leave little gaps within it. Do not endeavour

to retouch these, nor take much care about them; the great thing is to

get the colour to lie smoothly where it reaches, not in alternate blots

and pale patches; try, therefore, to lead it over the square as fast as

possible, with such attention to your limit as you are able to give. The

use of the exercise is, indeed, to enable you finally to strike the

colour up to the limit with perfect accuracy; but the first thing is to

get it even, the power of rightly striking the edge comes only by time

and practice; even the greatest artists rarely can do this quite

perfectly.

When you have done one square, proceed to do another which does not

communicate with it. When you have thus done all the alternate squares,

as on a chess-board, turn the pasteboard upside down, begin again with

the first, and put another coat over it, and so on over all the others.

The use of turning the paper upside down is to neutralise the increase

of darkness towards the bottom of the squares, which would otherwise

take place from the ponding of the colour.

Be resolved to use blotting-paper, or a piece of rag, instead of your

lips, to dry the brush. The habit of doing so, once acquired, will save

you from much partial poisoning. Take care, however, always to draw the

brush from root to point, otherwise you will spoil it. You may even wipe

it as you would a pen when you want it very dry, without doing harm,

provided you do not crush it upwards. Get a good brush at first, and

cherish it; it will serve you longer and better than many bad ones.

When you have done the squares all over again, do them a third time,

always trying to keep your edges as neat as possible. When your colour

is exhausted, mix more in the same proportions, two teaspoonfuls to as

much as you can grind with a drop; and when you have done the alternate

squares three times over, as the paper will be getting very damp, and

dry more slowly, begin on the white squares, and bring them up to the

same tint in the same way. The amount of jagged dark line which then

will mark the limits of the squares will be the exact measure of your

unskilfulness.

As soon as you tire of squares draw circles (with compasses); and then

draw straight lines irregularly across circles, and fill up the spaces

so produced between the straight line and the circumference; and then

draw any simple shapes of leaves, according to the exercise No. 2., and

fill up those, until you can lay on colour quite evenly in any shape you

want.

You will find in the course of this practice, as you cannot always put

exactly the same quantity of water to the colour, that the darker the

colour is, the more difficult it becomes to lay it on evenly. Therefore,

when you have gained some definite degree of power, try to fill in the

forms required with a full brush, and a dark tint, at once, instead of

laying several coats one over another; always taking care that the tint,

however dark, be quite liquid; and that, after being laid on, so much of

it is absorbed as to prevent its forming a black line at the edge as it

dries. A little experience will teach you how apt the colour is to do

this, and how to prevent it; not that it needs always to be prevented,

for a great master in water-colours will sometimes draw a firm outline,

when he _wants_ one, simply by letting the colour dry in this way at the

edge.

When, however, you begin to cover complicated forms with the darker

colour, no rapidity will prevent the tint from drying irregularly as it

is led on from part to part. You will then find the following method

useful. Lay in the colour very pale and liquid; so pale, indeed, that

you can only just see where it is on the paper. Lead it up to all the

outlines, and make it precise in form, keeping it thoroughly wet

everywhere. Then, when it is all in shape, take the darker colour, and

lay some of it _into_ the middle of the liquid colour. It will spread

gradually in a branchy kind of way, and you may now lead it up to the

outlines already determined, and play it with the brush till it fills

its place well; then let it dry, and it will be as flat and pure as a

single dash, yet defining all the complicated forms accurately.

Having thus obtained the power of laying on a tolerably flat tint, you

must try to lay on a gradated one. Prepare the colour with three or four

teaspoonfuls of water; then, when it is mixed, pour away about

two-thirds of it, keeping a teaspoonful of pale colour. Sloping your

paper as before, draw two pencil lines all the way down, leaving a space

between them of the width of a square on your chess-board. Begin at the

top of your paper, between the lines; and having struck on the first

brushful of colour, and led it down a little, dip your brush deep in

water, and mix up the colour on the plate quickly with as much more

water as the brush takes up at that one dip: then, with this paler

colour, lead the tint farther down. Dip in water again, mix the colour

again, and thus lead down the tint, always dipping in water once between

each replenishing of the brush, and stirring the colour on the plate

well, but as quickly as you can. Go on until the colour has become so

pale that you cannot see it; then wash your brush thoroughly in water,

and carry the wave down a little farther with that, and then absorb it

with the dry brush, and leave it to dry.

If you get to the bottom of your paper before your colour gets pale, you

may either take longer paper, or begin, with the tint as it was when you

left off, on another sheet; but be sure to exhaust it to pure whiteness

at last. When all is quite dry, recommence at the top with another

similar mixture of colour, and go down in the same way. Then again, and

then again, and so continually until the colour at the top of the paper

is as dark as your cake of Prussian blue, and passes down into pure

white paper at the end of your column, with a perfectly smooth gradation

from one into the other.

You will find at first that the paper gets mottled or wavy, instead of

evenly gradated; this is because at some places you have taken up more

water in your brush than at others, or not mixed it thoroughly on the

plate, or led one tint too far before replenishing with the next.

Practice only will enable you to do it well; the best artists cannot

always get gradations of this kind quite to their minds; nor do they

ever leave them on their pictures without after touching.

As you get more power, and can strike the colour more quickly down, you

will be able to gradate in less compass;[205] beginning with a small

quantity of colour, and adding a drop of water, instead of a brushful;

with finer brushes, also, you may gradate to a less scale. But slight

skill will enable you to test the relations of colour to shade as far as

is necessary for your immediate progress, which is to be done thus:--

Take cakes of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt, and

vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done with

the Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[206] Cut a narrow slip

all the way down, of each gradated colour, and set the three slips side

by side; fasten them down, and rule lines at equal distances across all

the three, so as to divide them into fifty degrees, and number the

degrees of each, from light to dark, 1, 2, 3, &c. If you have gradated

them rightly, the darkest part either of the red or blue will be nearly

equal in power to the darkest part of the blue-black, and any degree of

the black slip will also, accurately enough for our purpose, balance in

weight the degree similarly numbered in the red or the blue slip. Then,

when you are drawing from objects of a crimson or blue colour, if you

can match their colour by any compartment of the crimson or blue in your

scales, the grey in the compartment of the grey scale marked with the

same number is the grey which must represent that crimson or blue in

your light and shade drawing.

Next, prepare scales with gamboge, cobalt, and vermilion. You will find

that you cannot darken these beyond a certain point;[207] for yellow and

scarlet, so long as they remain yellow and scarlet, cannot approach to

black; we cannot have, properly speaking, a dark yellow or dark scarlet.

Make your scales of full yellow, blue, and scarlet, half-way down;

passing _then_ gradually to white. Afterwards use lake to darken the

upper half of the vermilion and gamboge; and Prussian blue to darken the

cobalt. You will thus have three more scales, passing from white nearly

to black, through yellow and orange, through sky-blue, and through

scarlet. By mixing the gamboge and Prussian blue you may make another

with green; mixing the cobalt and lake, another with violet; the sepia

alone will make a forcible brown one; and so on, until you have as many

scales as you like, passing from black to white through different

colours. Then, supposing your scales properly gradated and equally

divided, the compartment or degree No. 1. of the grey will represent in

chiaroscuro the No. 1. of all the other colours; No. 2. of grey the No.

2. of the other colours, and so on.

It is only necessary, however, in this matter that you should understand

the principle; for it would never be possible for you to gradate your

scales so truly as to make them practically accurate and serviceable;

and even if you could, unless you had about ten thousand scales, and

were able to change them faster than ever juggler changed cards, you

could not in a day measure the tints on so much as one side of a

frost-bitten apple: but when once you fully understand the principle,

and see how all colours contain as it were a certain quantity of

darkness, or power of dark relief from white--some more, some less; and

how this pitch or power of each may be represented by equivalent values

of grey, you will soon be able to arrive shrewdly at an approximation by

a glance of the eye, without any measuring scale at all.

You must now go on, again with the pen, drawing patterns, and any shapes

of shade that you think pretty, as veinings in marble, or

tortoise-shell, spots in surfaces of shells, &c., as tenderly as you

can, in the darknesses that correspond to their colours; and when you

find you can do this successfully, it is time to begin rounding.

EXERCISE VIII.

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.

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_, every thing 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.

Therefore, set yourself steadily to conquer that round stone, and you

have won the battle.

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.

Now, remember always what was stated in the outset, that every thing 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 colour from them. It is either

seen as a patch of one colour 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 colour 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 colours 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.

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.

[Illustration: FIG. 5.]

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.

Now, I do not want you to copy Fig. 5., but to copy the stone before you

in the way that Fig. 5. 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, as at _b_, Fig.

5. You cannot rightly see what the form of the stone really is till you

begin finishing, so sketch it in quite rudely; only 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 cautiously on the dark side. You need not plague

yourself about accuracy of shape, because, till you have practised a

great deal, it is impossible for you to draw that shape 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, I was going to draw, beside _a_, another effect on the

stone; 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.

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 colour 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 colour 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 colour 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 greys.[208]

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.

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 endeavour 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.

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, and 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.

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.

Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgeways, 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 colour back

in the light that it reflects.

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 colours mixing all together form a neutral[209]

light, which lets the colour 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.

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 colour of their light sides depends much on

that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colours of

the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand

what colour an object will have at any point of its surface, that colour

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 colour will be changeful, and that a picture which gives

them merely darker shades of the colour of the light sides must

assuredly be bad.

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 colour 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 grey. 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.

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 grey 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.

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 colours 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 colours 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

laboured finishing of textures of surface and transparencies of shadow.

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 colour 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. 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 whitish 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.

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

chequered 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.

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.[210] 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.

Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or other

finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much about

the woolliness 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 colour 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

lustre 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 lustre: you will frequently find a light which puzzles

you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another

object.

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 colour,--sepia, or blue-black,

or mixed cobalt and blue-black, or neutral tint; and this will much

facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do

one or two more exercises in tinting.

EXERCISE IX.

Prepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full of it, and

strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry

sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper

very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more

or less minute interstices in the colour. The lighter and faster every

dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry,

with little colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine

point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make the

whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more colour,

always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied

colour exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new colour

dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first. Retouch

it, therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A very

small bit of colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought

to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you

better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly;

so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most minute spot of

white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then go to the

small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a marked limit;

then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always seeing distinctly

what is done and what undone.

EXERCISE X.

Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of paper.

Let it dry. Then another coat over four-fifths of the square, or

thereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it

dry. Then another coat over three-fifths; another over two-fifths; and

the last over one-fifth; so that the square may present the appearance

of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one

beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,

when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those

used in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately

beyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones

imperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a

multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,

you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of

each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with

the next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded

from dark to pale, with no bars; only a crossing texture of touches,

something like chopped straw, over the whole.[211]

Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade you

like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of colour,

prepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the highest

light, leaving the edge of your colour quite sharp. Then another wash,

extending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp

also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still darker

parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry sharp.

Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the darks, and

work the whole delicately together, as you would with the pen, till you

have got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You will find

that the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now get

effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.

The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not trouble or

vex the colour, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the paper; colour

looks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash of the

brush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been dragged

about and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the edges and

forms be a _little_ wrong, even if one cannot correct them afterwards,

than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in

water-colour can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and _bad_

masters in water-colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, and

leave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from true,

are as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular blot

as with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in our

beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then

correct with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be

right, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we

can be right with freedom.

I have hitherto limited you to colour mixed with two or three

teaspoonfuls of water; but in finishing your light and shade from the

stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the

light, use the colour for the small touches with more and more water,

till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a

_perfect_ gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when

they are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the

colour tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and

dash away the superfluous colour on blotting-paper, you will find that,

touching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated

touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to

shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this

properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and

shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[212]

As you get used to the brush and colour, you will gradually find out

their ways for yourself, and get the management of them. Nothing but

practice will do this perfectly; but you will often save yourself much

discouragement by remembering what I have so often asserted,--that if

anything goes wrong, it is nearly sure to be refinement that is wanting,

not force; and connexion, not alteration. If you dislike the state your

drawing is in, do not lose patience with it, nor dash at it, nor alter

its plan, nor rub it desperately out, at the place you think wrong; but

look if there are no shadows you can gradate more perfectly; no little

gaps and rents you can fill; no forms you can more delicately define:

and do not _rush_ at any of the errors or incompletions thus discerned,

but efface or supply slowly, and you will soon find your drawing take

another look. A very useful expedient in producing some effects, is to

wet the paper, and then lay the colour on it, more or less wet,

according to the effect you want. You will soon see how prettily it

gradates itself as it dries; when dry, you can reinforce it with

delicate stippling when you want it darker. Also, while the colour is

still damp on the paper, by drying your brush thoroughly, and touching

the colour with the brush so dried, you may take out soft lights with

great tenderness and precision. Try all sorts of experiments of this

kind, noticing how the colour behaves; but remembering always that your

final results must be obtained, and can only be obtained, by pure work

with the point, as much as in the pen drawing.

You will find also, as you deal with more and more complicated subjects,

that Nature's resources in light and shade are so much richer than

yours, that you cannot possibly get all, or anything _like_ all, the

gradations of shadow in any given group. When this is the case,

determine first to keep the broad masses of things distinct: if, for

instance, there is a green book, and a white piece of paper, and a black

inkstand in the group, be sure to keep the white paper as a light mass,

the green book as a middle tint mass, the black inkstand as a dark mass;

and do not shade the folds in the paper, or corners of the book, so as

to equal in depth the darkness of the inkstand. The great difference

between the masters of light and shade, and imperfect artists, is the

power of the former to draw so delicately as to express form in a

dark-coloured object with little light, and in a light-coloured object

with little darkness; and it is better even to leave the forms here and

there unsatisfactorily rendered than to lose the general relations of

the great masses. And this observe, not because masses are grand or

desirable things in your composition (for with composition at present

you have nothing whatever to do), but because it is a _fact_ that things

do so present themselves to the eyes of men, and that we see paper,

book, and inkstand as three separate things, before we see the wrinkles,

or chinks, or corners of any of the three. Understand, therefore, at

once, that no detail can be as strongly expressed in drawing as it is in

the reality; and strive to keep all your shadows and marks and minor

markings on the masses, lighter than they appear to be in Nature, you

are sure otherwise to get them too dark. You will in doing this find

that you cannot get the _projection_ of things sufficiently shown; but

never mind that; there is no need that they should appear to project,

but great need that their relations of shade to each other should be

preserved. All deceptive projection is obtained by partial exaggeration

of shadow; and whenever you see it, you may be sure the drawing is more

or less bad; a thoroughly fine drawing or painting will always show a

slight tendency towards _flatness_.

Observe, on the other hand, that however white an object may be, there

is always some small point of it whiter than the rest. You must

therefore have a slight tone of grey over everything in your picture

except on the extreme high lights; even the piece of white paper, in

your subject, must be toned slightly down, unless (and there are a

thousand chances to one against its being so) it should all be turned so

as fully to front the light. By examining the treatment of the white

objects in any pictures accessible to you by Paul Veronese or Titian,

you will soon understand this.[213]

As soon as you feel yourself capable of expressing with the brush the

undulations of surfaces and the relations of masses, you may proceed to

draw more complicated and beautiful things.[214] And first, the boughs

of trees, now not in mere dark relief, but in full rounding. Take the

first bit of branch or stump that comes to hand, with a fork in it; cut

off the ends of the forking branches, so as to leave the whole only

about a foot in length; get a piece of paper the same size, fix your bit

of branch in some place where its position will not be altered, and draw

it thoroughly, in all its light and shade, full size; striving, above

all things, to get an accurate expression of its structure at the fork

of the branch. When once you have mastered the tree at its _armpits_,

you will have little more trouble with it.

Always draw whatever the background happens to be, exactly as you see

it. Wherever you have fastened the bough, you must draw whatever is

behind it, ugly or not, else you will never know whether the light and

shade are right; they may appear quite wrong to you, only for want of

the background. And this general law is to be observed in all your

studies: whatever you draw, draw completely and unalteringly, else you

never know if what you have done is right, or whether you _could_ have

done it rightly had you tried. There is nothing _visible_ out of which

you may not get useful practice.

Next, to put the leaves on your boughs. Gather a small twig with four or

five leaves on it, put it into water, put a sheet of light-coloured or

white paper behind it, so that all the leaves may be relieved in dark

from the white field; then sketch in their dark shape carefully with

pencil as you did the complicated boughs, in order to be sure that all

their masses and interstices are right in shape before you begin

shading, and complete as far as you can with pen and ink, in the manner

of Fig. 6., which is a young shoot of lilac.

[Illustration: FIG. 6.]

You will probably, in spite of all your pattern drawings, be at first

puzzled by leaf foreshortening; especially because the look of

retirement or projection depends not so much on the perspective of the

leaves themselves as on the double sight of the two eyes. Now there are

certain artifices by which good painters can partly conquer this

difficulty; as slight exaggerations of force or colour in the nearer

parts, and of obscurity in the more distant ones; but you must not

attempt anything of this kind. When you are first sketching the leaves,

shut one of your eyes, fix a point in the background, to bring the point

of one of the leaves against, and so sketch the whole bough as you see

it in a fixed position, looking with one eye only. Your drawing never

can be made to look like the object itself, as you see that object with

_both_ eyes,[215] but it can be made perfectly like the object seen with

one, and you must be content when you have got a resemblance on these

terms.

In order to get clearly at the notion of the thing to be done, take a

single long leaf, hold it with its point towards you, and as flat as you

can, so as to see nothing of it but its thinness, as if you wanted to

know how thin it was; outline it so. Then slope it down gradually

towards you, and watch it as it lengthens out to its full length, held

perpendicularly down before you. Draw it in three or four different

positions between these extremes, with its ribs as they appear in each

position, and you will soon find out how it must be.

Draw first only two or three of the leaves; then larger clusters; and

practise, in this way, more and more complicated pieces of bough and

leafage, till you find you can master the most difficult arrangements,

not consisting of more than ten or twelve leaves. You will find as you

do this, if you have an opportunity of visiting any gallery of pictures,

that you take a much more lively interest than before in the work of the

great masters; you will see that very often their best backgrounds are

composed of little more than a few sprays of leafage, carefully studied,

brought against the distant sky; and that another wreath or two form the

chief interest of their foregrounds. If you live in London you may test

your progress _accurately_ by the degree of admiration you feel for the

leaves of vine round the head of the Bacchus, in Titian's Bacchus and

Ariadne. All this, however, will not enable you to draw a mass of

foliage. You will find, on looking at any rich piece of vegetation, that

it is only one or two of the nearer clusters that you can by any

possibility draw in this complete manner. The mass is too vast, and too

intricate, to be thus dealt with.

[Illustration: FIG. 7. a b c]

You must now therefore have recourse to some confused mode of execution,

capable of expressing the confusion of Nature. And, first, you must

understand what the character of that confusion is. If you look

carefully at the outer sprays of any tree at twenty or thirty yards'

distance, you will see them defined against the sky in masses, which, at

first, look quite definite; but if you examine them, you will see,

mingled with the real shapes of leaves, many indistinct lines, which

are, some of them, stalks of leaves, and some, leaves seen with the edge

turned towards you, and coming into sight in a broken way; for,

supposing the real leaf shape to be as at _a_, Fig. 7., this, when

removed some yards from the eye, will appear dark against the sky, as at

_b_; then, when removed some yards farther still, the stalk and point

disappear altogether, the middle of the leaf becomes little more than a

line; and the result is the condition at _c_, only with this farther

subtlety in the look of it, inexpressible in the woodcut, that the stalk

and point of the leaf, though they have disappeared to the eye, have yet

some influence in _checking the light_ at the places where they exist,

and cause a slight dimness about the part of the leaf which remains

visible, so that its perfect effect could only be rendered by two layers

of colour, one subduing the sky tone a little, the next drawing the

broken portions of the leaf, as at _c_, and carefully indicating the

greater darkness of the spot in the middle, where the under side of the

leaf is.

This is the perfect theory of the matter. In practice we cannot reach

such accuracy; but we shall be able to render the general look of the

foliage satisfactorily by the following mode of practice.

Gather a spray of any tree, about a foot or eighteen inches long. Fix it

firmly by the stem in anything that will support it steadily; put it

about eight feet away from you, or ten if you are far-sighted. Put a

sheet of not very white paper behind it, as usual. Then draw very

carefully, first placing them with pencil, and then filling them up with

ink, every leaf, mass and stalk of it in simple black profile, as you

see them against the paper: Fig. 8. is a bough of Phillyrea so drawn. Do

not be afraid of running the leaves into a black mass when they come

together; this exercise is only to teach you what the actual shapes of

such masses are when seen against the sky.

[Illustration: FIG. 8.]

Make two careful studies of this kind of one bough of every common

tree--oak, ash, elm, birch, beech, &c.; in fact, if you are good, and

industrious, you will make one such study carefully at least three times

a week, until you have examples of every sort of tree and shrub you can

get branches of. You are to make two studies of each bough, for this

reason--all masses of foliage have an upper and under surface, and the

side view of them, or profile, shows a wholly different organisation of

branches from that seen in the view from above. They are generally seen

more or less in profile, as you look at the whole tree, and Nature puts

her best composition into the profile arrangement. But the view from

above or below occurs not unfrequently, also, and it is quite necessary

you should draw it if you wish to understand the anatomy of the tree.

The difference between the two views is often far greater than you could

easily conceive. For instance, in Fig. 9., _a_ is the upper view, and

_b_ the profile, of a single spray of Phillyrea. Fig. 8. is an

intermediate view of a larger bough; seen from beneath, but at some

lateral distance also.

[Illustration: FIG. 9.]

When you have done a few branches in this manner, take one of the

_drawings_, and put it first a yard away from you, then a yard and a

half, then two yards; observe how the thinner stalks and leaves

gradually disappear, leaving only a vague and slight darkness where they

were, and make another study of the effect at each distance, taking care

to draw nothing more than you really see, for in this consists all the

difference between what would be merely a _miniature_ drawing of the

leaves seen _near_, and a _full-size_ drawing of the same leaves at a

distance. By full size, I mean the size which they would really appear

of if their outline were traced through a pane of glass held at the

same distance from the eye at which you mean to hold your drawing. You

can always ascertain this full size of any object by holding your paper

upright before you, at the distance from your eye at which you wish your

drawing to be seen. Bring its edge across the object you have to draw,

and mark upon this edge the points where the outline of the object

crosses, or goes behind, the edge of the paper. You will always find it,

thus measured, smaller than you supposed.

When you have made a few careful experiments of this kind on your own

drawings, (which are better for practice, at first, than the real trees,

because the black profile in the drawing is quite stable, and does not

shake, and is not confused by sparkles of lustre on the leaves,) you may

try the extremities of the real trees, only not doing much at a time,

for the brightness of the sky will dazzle and perplex your sight. And

this brightness causes, I believe, some loss of the outline itself; at

least the chemical action of the light in a photograph extends much

within the edges of the leaves, and, as it were, eats them away so that

no tree extremity, stand it ever so still, nor any other form coming

against bright sky, is truly drawn by a photograph; and if you once

succeed in drawing a few sprays rightly, you will find the result much

more lovely and interesting than any photograph can be.

All this difficulty, however, attaches to the rendering merely the dark

form of the sprays as they come against the sky. Within those sprays,

and in the heart of the tree, there is a complexity of a much more

embarrassing kind; for nearly all leaves have some lustre, and _all_ are

more or less translucent (letting light through them); therefore, in any

given leaf, besides the intricacies of its own proper shadows and

foreshortenings, there are three series of circumstances which alter or

hide its forms. First, shadows cast on it by other leaves--often very

forcibly. Secondly, light reflected from its lustrous surface, sometimes

the blue of the sky, sometimes the white of clouds, or the sun itself

flashing like a star. Thirdly, forms and shadows of other leaves, seen

as darkness _through_ the translucent parts of the leaf; a most

important element of foliage effect, but wholly neglected by landscape

artists in general.

The consequence of all this is, that except now and then by chance, the

form of a complete leaf is never seen; but a marvellous and quaint

confusion, very definite, indeed, in its evidence of direction of

growth, and unity of action, but wholly indefinable and inextricable,

part by part, by any amount of patience. You cannot possibly work it out

in fac simile, though you took a twelvemonth's time to a tree; and you

must therefore try to discover some mode of execution which will more or

less imitate, by its own variety and mystery, the variety and mystery of

Nature, without absolute delineation of detail.

Now I have led you to this conclusion by observation of tree form only,

because in that the thing to be proved is clearest. But no natural

object exists which does not involve in some part or parts of it this

inimitableness, this mystery of quantity, which needs peculiarity of

handling and trick of touch to express it completely. If leaves are

intricate, so is moss, so is foam, so is rock cleavage, so are fur and

hair, and texture of drapery, and of clouds. And although methods and

dexterities of handling are wholly useless if you have not gained first

the thorough knowledge of the form of the thing; so that if you cannot

draw a branch perfectly, then much less a tree; and if not a wreath of

mist perfectly, much less a flock of clouds; and if not a single grass

blade perfectly, much less a grass bank; yet having once got this power

over decisive form, you may safely--and must, in order to perfection of

work--carry out your knowledge by every aid of method and dexterity of

hand.

But, in order to find out what method can do, you must now look at Art

as well as at Nature, and see what means painters and engravers have

actually employed for the expression of these subtleties. Whereupon

arises the question, what opportunity have you to obtain engravings? You

ought, if it is at all in your power, to possess yourself of a certain

number of good examples of Turner's engraved works: if this be not in

your power, you must just make the best use you can of the shop

windows, or of any plates of which you can obtain a loan. Very possibly,

the difficulty of getting sight of them may stimulate you to put them to

better use. But, supposing your means admit of your doing so, possess

yourself, first, of the illustrated edition either of Rogers's Italy or

Rogers's Poems, and then of about a dozen of the plates named in the

annexed lists. The prefixed letters indicate the particular points

deserving your study in each engraving.[216] Be sure, therefore, that

your selection includes, at all events, one plate marked with each

letter--of course the plates marked with two or three letters are, for

the most part, the best. Do not get more than twelve of these plates,

nor even all the twelve at first. For the more engravings you have, the

less attention you will pay to them. It is a general truth, that the

enjoyment derivable from art cannot be increased in quantity, beyond a

certain point, by quantity of possession; it is only spread, as it were,

over a larger surface, and very often dulled by finding ideas repeated

in different works. Now, for a beginner, it is always better that his

attention should be concentrated on one or two good things, and all his

enjoyment founded on them, than that he should look at many, with

divided thoughts. He has much to discover; and his best way of

discovering it is to think long over few things, and watch them

earnestly. It is one of the worst errors of this age to try to know and

to see too much: the men who seem to know everything, never in reality

know anything rightly. Beware of _hand-book_ knowledge.

These engravings are, in general, more for you to look at than to copy;

and they will be of more use to you when we come to talk of composition,

than they are at present; still, it will do you a great deal of good,

sometimes to try how far you can get their delicate texture, or

gradations of tone; as your pen-and-ink drawing will be apt to incline

too much to a scratchy and broken kind of shade. For instance, the

texture of the white convent wall, and the drawing of its tiled roof, in

the vignette at p. 227. of Rogers's Poems, is as exquisite as work can

possibly be; and it will be a great and profitable achievement if you

can at all approach it. In like manner, if you can at all imitate the

dark distant country at p. 7., or the sky at p. 80., of the same volume,

or the foliage at pp. 12. and 144., it will be good gain; and if you can

once draw the rolling clouds and running river at p. 9. of the "Italy,"

or the city in the vignette of Aosta at p. 25., or the moonlight at p.

223., you will find that even Nature herself cannot afterwards very

terribly puzzle you with her torrents, or towers, or moonlight.

You need not copy touch for touch, but try to get the same effect. And

if you feel discouraged by the delicacy required, and begin to think

that engraving is not drawing, and that copying it cannot help you to

draw, remember that it differs from common drawing only by the

difficulties it has to encounter. You perhaps have got into a careless

habit of thinking that engraving is a mere _business_, easy enough when

one has got into the knack of it. On the contrary, it is a form of

drawing more difficult than common drawing, by exactly so much as it is

more difficult to cut steel than to move the pencil over paper. It is

true that there are certain mechanical aids and methods which reduce it

at certain stages either to pure machine work, or to more or less a

habit of hand and arm; but this is not so in the foliage you are trying

to copy, of which the best and prettiest parts are always etched--that

is, drawn with a fine steel point and free hand: only the line made is

white instead of black, which renders it much more difficult to judge of

what you are about. And the trying to copy these plates will be good for

you, because it will awaken you to the real labour and skill of the

engraver, and make you understand a little how people must work, in

this world, who have really to _do_ anything in it.

Do not, however, suppose that I give you the engraving as a model--far

from it; but it is necessary you should be able to do as well[217]

before you think of doing better, and you will find many little helps

and hints in the various work of it. Only remember that _all_ engravers'

foregrounds are bad; whenever you see the peculiar wriggling parallel

lines of modern engravings become distinct, you must not copy; nor

admire: it is only the softer masses, and distances; and portions of the

foliage in the plates marked _f_, which you may copy. The best for this

purpose, if you can get it, is the "Chain bridge over the Tees," of the

England series; the thicket on the right is very beautiful and

instructive, and very like Turner. The foliage in the "Ludlow" and

"Powis" is also remarkably good.

Besides these line engravings, and to protect you from what harm there

is in their influence, you are to provide yourself, if possible, with a

Rembrandt etching, or a photograph of one (of figures, not landscape).

It does not matter of what subject, or whether a sketchy or finished

one, but the sketchy ones are generally cheapest, and will teach you

most. Copy it as well as you can, noticing especially that Rembrandt's

most rapid lines have steady purpose; and that they are laid with almost

inconceivable precision when the object becomes at all interesting. The

"Prodigal Son," "Death of the Virgin," "Abraham and Isaac," and such

others, containing incident and character rather than chiaroscuro, will

be the most instructive. You can buy one; copy it well; then exchange

it, at little loss, for another; and so, gradually, obtain a good

knowledge of his system. Whenever you have an opportunity of examining

his work at museums, &c., do so with the greatest care, not looking at

_many_ things, but a long time at each. You must also provide yourself,

if possible, with an engraving of Albert Durer's. This you will not be

able to copy; but you must keep it beside you, and refer to it as a

standard of precision in line. If you can get one with a _wing_ in it,

it will be best. The crest with the cock, that with the skull and satyr,

and the "Melancholy," are the best you could have, but any will do.

Perfection in chiaroscuro drawing lies between these two masters,

Rembrandt and Durer. Rembrandt is often too loose and vague; and Durer

has little or no effect of mist or uncertainty. If you can see anywhere

a drawing by Leonardo, you will find it balanced between the two

characters; but there are no engravings which present this perfection,

and your style will be best formed, therefore, by alternate study of

Rembrandt and Durer. Lean rather to Durer; it is better for amateurs to

err on the side of precision than on that of vagueness: and though, as I

have just said, you cannot copy a Durer, yet try every now and then a

quarter of an inch square or so, and see how much nearer you can come;

you cannot possibly try to draw the leafly crown of the "Melancholia"

too often.

If you cannot get either a Rembrandt or a Durer, you may still learn

much by carefully studying any of George Cruikshank's etchings, or

Leech's woodcuts in Punch, on the free side; with Alfred Rethel's and

Richter's[218] on the severe side. But in so doing you will need to

notice the following points:

When either the material (as the copper or wood) or the time of an

artist, does not permit him to make a perfect drawing,--that is to say,

one in which no lines shall be prominently visible,--and he is reduced

to show the black lines, either drawn by the pen, or on the wood, it is

better to make these lines help, as far as may be, the expression of

texture and form. You will thus find many textures, as of cloth or grass

or flesh, and many subtle effects of light, expressed by Leech with

zigzag or crossed or curiously broken lines; and you will see that

Alfred Rethel and Richter constantly express the direction and rounding

of surfaces by the direction of the lines which shade them. All these

various means of expression will be useful to you, as far as you can

learn them, provided you remember that they are merely a kind of

shorthand; telling certain facts, not in quite the _right_ way, but in

the only possible way under the conditions: and provided in any after

use of such means, you never try to show your own dexterity; but only to

get as much record of the object as you can in a given time; and that

you continually make efforts to go beyond shorthand, and draw portions

of the objects rightly.

And touching this question of _direction_ of lines as indicating that of

surface, observe these few points:

[Illustration: FIG. 10.]

If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they

_can_ indicate any thing by their direction, they should explain rather

than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of

woodcut from Titian, Fig. 10., the lines are serviceable by expressing,

not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the

flow of its grain. And Albert Durer, whose work was chiefly engraving,

sets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible;

telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you

were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to

express effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert

Durer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as

the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great

painters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are

sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not

limited in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will

often scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight

lines, that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to

themselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is

one inclining from the left upward to the right, or _vice versa_, from

the right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is

hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence,

you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great

master full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you

will find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an

inferior master will have used curved ones. Fig. 11. is a fair facsimile

of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very

distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded

most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a

point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master if

you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with

straight lines.

[Illustration: FIG. 11.]

But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest

dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Figure 11., and pass

them for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the

genuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the _facts_ of

the object drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_

conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at

its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but

the _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to

judge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do,

otherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is,

you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All

judgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.

But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous

execution is never _affectedly_ impetuous. If a great man is not in a

hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he

puts none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got

with _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with

one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance),

that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the _execution_

of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the

easy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his; but if you

merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will

not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every

judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and

despise you accordingly.

Again, observe respecting the use of outline:

All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an

artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his

outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he

can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so

restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad

draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This

hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state

in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded

with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure

outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up

afterwards with colour, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or

tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing

wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves

it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and

his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist

habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his

drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade

than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched

with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.

[Illustration: FIG. 12.]

Hence, the published works of Retsch, and all the English imitations of

them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad work, and only

serve to corrupt the public taste, and of such outlines, the worst are

those which are darkened in some part of their course by way of

expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others;

because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately represents

the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus, the outline

_a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12., are both _true_ outlines of a ball;

because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the interior or

exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true circle. But _c_

is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner or outer edge of

the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be

thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force," as it is called,

is gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist whose eye

is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed often happen

that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and again for some

line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by

setting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer

supposes it has been thickened on purpose; or, sometimes also, at a

place where shade is afterwards to enclose the form, the painter will

strike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once, looking as

if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line is only the

first instalment of the future shadow, and the outline is really drawn

with its inner edge. And thus, far from good draughtsmen darkening the

lines which turn away from the light, the _tendency_ with them is rather

to darken them towards the light, for it is there in general that shade

will ultimately enclose them. The best example of this treatment that I

know is Raphael's sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel

pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left eye; where the

dark strong lines which terminate the nose and forehead towards the

light are opposed to tender and light ones behind the ear, and in other

places towards the shade. You will see in Fig. 11. the same principle

variously exemplified; the principal dark lines, in the head and drapery

of the arms, being on the side turned to the light.

All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not affect

your drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines as

_equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two following

purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II., for if

you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to terminate

your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is absent; or

(2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are pressed for

time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined, for the

most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being

shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant one;

and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required to round each

tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot often get

time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each tree as is

done by Durer in Fig. 13., you will get a most useful memorandum of

their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe in doing

this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that

procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of Durer, that

every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately descriptive

as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a shape,

definitely observed and set down; it contains a true "signalement" of

every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that

village. If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at

all--you are merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When you

have had four or five years' practice you may be able to make useful

memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet; except sometimes of light and

shade, in a way of which I will tell you presently. And this use of

outline, note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have _edges_

or _limits_. You can outline line a tree or a stone, when it rises

against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in drapery,

or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at all it must be by

some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can

consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You see, in that

woodcut of Durer's, his reason for even limiting himself so much to

outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains, is that he may

leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky

and the dark village spire; and the scene becomes real and sunny only by

the addition of these shades.

[Illustration: FIG. 13.]

Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go back to

our question about tree drawing left unanswered at page 60.

[Illustration: FIG. 14.]

[Illustration: FIG. 15.]

We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it

is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the

difficulty is to keep organisation in the midst of mystery. And you will

never succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side,

and allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all

your early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first

step must be to conditions like Figs. 14. and 15., which are careful

facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful woodcut of Durer's, the Flight

into Egypt. Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a time, but

thoroughly; then trace the Durer, and apply it to your drawing, and do

not be content till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true

enough to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in the

course of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot of Durer's

can be displaced without harm; that all add to the effect, and either

express something, or illumine something, or relieve something. If,

afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which

so many rich examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated

periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year's _Illustrated

News_ or _Times_ are full of them), you will see that, though good and

forcible general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by

thousands without special intention, and might just as well go one way

as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all together

a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little

careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the

same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any

fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will

imitate so much as one leaf of Durer's. Yet there is considerable

intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine

leaves of his, as well as of the grass.

[Illustration: FIG. 16.]

When you have got familiarised to this firm manner, you may draw from

Nature as much as you like in the same way, and when you are tired of

the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more easy

massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10. p. 66. This is facsimiled from an

engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner,

the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough model

for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even so far

as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16.,[219]

taking care always to have thorough command over your hand; that is, not

to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran glibly over the

paper, but because in nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and

you have faithfully followed the same.

And now that we have come to questions of _noble_ shape, as well as true

shape, and that we are going to draw from nature at our pleasure, other

considerations enter into the business, which are by no means confined

to _first_ practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this letter

is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of

correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only to

excuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable from

directions touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me, even

though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work.

Very faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[199] (N. B. This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous or

curious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are willing

to take the statement in the text on trust.)

The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We

_see_ nothing but flat colours; and it is only by a series of

experiments that we find out that a stain of black or grey indicates the

dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates that the

object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical power of

painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the _innocence of

the eye_; that is to say, a sort of childish perception of these flat

stains of colour, merely as such, without consciousness of what they

signify, as a blind man would see them if suddenly gifted with sight.

For instance; when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain

directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat

dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly

endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by the

sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and part a

dusty yellow (very nearly of the colour of primroses); and, if there

were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass was

another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow colour. We should try

to gather some of them, and then find that the colour went away from the

grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not from the primroses;

and by a series of experiments we should find out that the sun was

really the cause of the colour in the one,--not in the other. We go

through such processes of experiment unconsciously in childhood; and

having once come to conclusions touching the signification of certain

colours, we always suppose that we _see_ what we only know, and have

hardly any consciousness of the real aspect of the signs we have learned

to interpret. Very few people have any idea that sunlighted grass is

yellow.

Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as nearly

as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the colours of

nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at once in the

sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two colours that form

its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade and light, but bluish

green barred with gold.

Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great fact

about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience and touch

to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white, variously

gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by experience you

know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of brown, variously

darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art of Painting consists

merely in perceiving the shape and depth of these patches of colour, and

putting patches of the same size, depth, and shape on canvas. The only

obstacle to the success of painting is, that many of the real colours

are brighter and paler than it is possible to put on canvas: we must put

darker ones to represent them.

[200] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate

drawing, than India-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper

less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides, you

waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not for a

long while be worth the crumbs. So use India-rubber very lightly; or, if

heavily pressing it only, not passing it over the paper, and leave what

pencil marks that will not come away so, without minding them. In a

finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often serviceable, helping

the general tone, and enabling you to take out little bright lights.

[201] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is

the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose hand is

so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can let it fly

as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of a great master

at real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is under perfect

government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause within a hair's

breadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest touches; and follow,

within a hair's breadth, the previously intended curve. You must never,

therefore, aim at freedom. It is not required of your drawing that it

should be free, but that it should be _right_: in time you will be able

to do right easily, and then your work will be free in the best sense;

but there is no merit in doing _wrong_ easily.

These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,

which, it will be remembered, are to be made as _quickly_ as possible.

The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter it

is at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other lines,

and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to conceal

the lines as much as possible.

And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of

hand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in

Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he

draws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find

mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present if

you find your hand gaining command over the curves.

[202] If you can get any pieces of _dead_ white porcelain, not glazed,

they will be useful models.