The Sketch Book

“ The methods pursued by special artists in obtaining their sketches are as various as the methods of painters in producing their pictures, or of authors in writing their books. One man uses a very small sketch-book, another prefers a large one, but they all require to supplement their hurried sketches with marginal notes. ”

“ In any other part of the world one would have been pestered by people crowding round and all wanting to finger one’s sketch-book; but here, in this far-away Siberian home, where, to say the least of it, sketching is not an everyday sight, stolid indifference was stronger than idle curiosity. ”

“ One morning, as I passed the spot, it occurred to me to make a drawing of the place in my sketch-book, that I might have some memorial of that strange adventure. The pictorial possibilities of the lane just here were not great, but by taking my stand at the turn, on the very spot where I had seen the body lying, I was able to arrange a simple composition which was satisfactory enough.
I am no artist. A neat and intelligible drawing is the utmost that I can produce. ”

“ It would be idle to pretend that it is possible in the chapter of a book, or indeed in a book itself, to give instruction that would make a boy an artist; but most people have the capacity to make sketches, and this is a pleasing and useful training of the eye and hand. The power to bring away a sketch of a scene that has charmed us is one well worth the cultivation, and in the making of the sketch we see many things that would otherwise escape our notice. ”

“ There is always something of freshness about a first original sketch, be it in whatsoever medium, a quality which the most careful copy fails to repeat.
This brings us to consider whether it would not be well to make our first impressions or sketches in such a manner that they could be handed to the process worker right away; and we shall then have to consider what medium and what materials are suitable for "drawing from life." Certainly the ordinary pencil sketch, as taken from the pocket sketch-book, would not do. ”

“ If you wish to draw a tall subject, such as a tree, a narrow building, an upright flower or figure, hold your sketch-book in an upright position. If you intend drawing a long-shaped subject, a reclining figure of a person or animal, a wide-spreading building, a stretch of low-lying ground, hold the book open at the full width of the page.
Fig. 63. The Well-head Beginners are prone to dash at a subject, and, finding they have drawn it on a smaller scale than they intended, add other details until the page is filled.
But why fill the whole page? An artist's sketch-book is a book of scraps. ”

“ Their apparent incompleteness should seem due to the author having insufficient time—not insufficient knowledge—to finish them.
What is set down must not only be good work in itself, but it must suggest other good work as a completion.
You have probably seen some reproduction of a fragmentary pencil or pen-and-ink sketch, by an experienced artist, showing only a portion of a figure or a building; yet so suggestive that the onlooker instinctively fills in the remainder, and constructs out of the artist's unfinished drawing a picture complete and beautiful. ”

“ It was this sketch-book, which was as dilapidated then as you see it now. ”

“ While on the subject of sketching, especially quick note-taking under difficult conditions, I want a word with my fellow-craftsmen should they chance to take up this book. The difficulties of drawing by twilight, lamplight, and the still greater difficulty of drawing in colour under blazing sunlight, cannot easily be exaggerated. How many times has a sketch done in a failing light looked strong in tone, only to go to pieces when seen under normal conditions? ”

“ I begin, their mother calls them; my sketch-book becomes filled with tips of noses and locks of hair. I make a resolution not to go home without a whole figure, and I try for the first time to draw in mass, to draw rapidly, which is the only possible way of drawing, and which is to-day one of the chief faculties of our moderns. I put myself to draw in the winking of an eye the first group that presents itself ”

“ On the one hand, the work of neat and systematic note-taking face to face with nature is continued, and on the other hand, a number of studies aiming at the embodiment of the artist’s subjective attitude make their appearance. The final synthesis of the two factors, the without and the within, is of course only arrived at in the finished work of art, but the contents of the sketch-books{34} of this period fall easily apart, according as they lean either in the direction of the particular facts or in the direction of the emotional synthesis. ”

“ To write a present-day realistic sketch you will not need to look far for a subject. Just divest yourself of preconceived ideas of the romantic in fiction, and begin anywhere. Everything is of interest to the realist. ”

“ A splendid set of drawings is included in the group Au café. We can see that they are so many resumés of the hurried sketches, for ever being made in the sketch-books which are Huard’s never-failing companions. The handling, whether in pen and ink or in chalk, is always frank and bold, and occasionally is like that of Raffaëlli. ”

“ Most, in the prettiest sense of the word, gentle artists indulge themselves in the ease, and even trust to the felicity of rapid—and even in a measure inconsiderate—work in sketching, so that the beauty of a sketch is understood to be consistent with what is partly unintentional. ”

“ It, like most of them, is not a sketch, but a group of sketches, made on both sides of the leaf of the note-book. The note-books vary in contents from sixty to ninety leaves: there are about two hundred books of the kind—three hundred and odd note-books in all ”

“ TO the keen, enthusiastic young artist there is nothing more fascinating, more enthralling, than sketching out of doors.
A walk abroad among foreign scenes and strange people or a walk at home among one's own familiar haunts can be equally fruitful.
There are one or two points which need explaining, and one or two pitfalls of which the novice might be warned.
For the ardent young sketcher frequently digs a pit for his own feet. He begins a 'sketch,' but he pursues it into a finished study.
A sketch, it must be remembered, should be a sketch and nothing more. ”

“ To catch the flying values of life, and convey them to other minds and hearts in a few pages of picture may seem easy to the lay reader, but is, I do assure him, mortal hard.
The sketches in this, the first book of a young writer, are so really good, that they should require no preliminary puff. But the fact is that the reading public in America and England get so few good sketches, indeed so few volumes of sketches at all, that even the best work of this kind has unfairly little chance. ”

“ To attempt within the limits of this little volume to exhaust a subject so rich in magnificent material would be obviously impossible. All that is permitted me here by imperative limits of space is a sketch, where my matter tempts me sorely to a comprehensive study. Yet even the sketch may claim for itself a place beside the finished work of art, if—while omitting the detail which it was unable to include—it has yet secured for us the main outlines, the swing of the figure, the balance of light and shadow, the sweep and spacing of the horizon ”

“ The sketch, on the other hand, is a note of an effect merely, or of a general idea, and calls for only those qualities which most successfully show the central idea, which might sometime become a picture, or which suggests a scheme. A carefully worked-up sketch is a contradiction in terms, just as a careless study would be. ”

“ It is true, sketches, or such drawings as painters generally make for their works, give this pleasure of imagination to a high degree. From a slight undetermined drawing, where the ideas of the composition and character are, as I may say, only just touched upon, the imagination supplies more than the painter himself, probably, could produce; and we accordingly often find that the finished work disappoints the expectation that was raised from the sketch; and this power of the imagination is one of the causes of the great pleasure we have in viewing a collection of drawings by great painters. ”

“ A single point gives a hint of what we desire to do, but it does not express it. It is undoubtedly sufficient for a sketch intended to represent a drawing executed with pen and ink or with the pencil; but it cannot be successfully employed in a plate which, by the variety of color and the vigor of the biting, is meant to convey the idea of a painting. ”

“ How they seem to some one else, or seemed at some other time, is not to the point. What you know they are or may be will not help you, but only hinder you in a sketch. The more facts the worse, in sketching. Remember always what a sketch is for. Don't be beguiled into trying to make a picture of it, nor a study of it. ”

“ In this work I did not expect more than to take the first step toward teaching to sketch from nature. An easy, rapid, and decided manner of sketching is to be acquired only by practice. It is an acquisition essential to excellence in all the other artistic qualities, to which it serves as a basis. ”

“ The lines of a sketch are seldom so full and continuous as those of an outline, being, like the shading or color, little more than indications or suggestions according to which a finished picture may be made; the artist's first representation of a sunset, the hues of which change so rapidly, must of necessity be a sketch. ”

“ The true writer will stop everywhere and anywhere to put down his notes, as the true painter will stop everywhere and anywhere to sketch.
I do not see why an author should not have a sale of literary sketches, each one short, slight and capable of being framed and glazed in small compass. They would make excellent library decorations and ought to fetch as much as an artist’s sketches. They might be cut up in suitable lots, if the fashion were once set, and many a man might be making provision for his family at odd times with his notes as an artist does with his sketches. ”

“ The simplicity of a sketch, the comparative rapidity with which it is produced, the concentration of meaning demanded by its rigid economy of means, render it more symbolical, more like the hieroglyph of its maker's mind, than any finished work can be. We may discover a greater mass of interesting objects in a painted picture or a carved statue; but we shall never find exactly the same thing, never the involuntary revelation of the artist's soul, the irrefutable witness to his mental and moral qualities, to the mysteries of his genius and to its limitations. ”

“ We do this without any forethought, without any artistic ability, and never for a moment considering that we are fulfilling the first theoretical function of the illustrator, and we make this sketch-plan partly because we could not so graphically describe what we wish in words; and, again, the drawing will produce a more lasting impression upon the person appealed to, and that without so great an effort of memory on his part. "Seeing is believing," and to see is also to remember. ”

“ A sketch, observe,—not a finished drawing. Sketches are only proper subjects of comparison with each other when they contain about the same quantity of work: the test of their merit is the quantity of truth told with a given number of touches. ”

“ Technically it is a tale, with the picture-phrases of the sketch. It is a marvellous brief story rather than a marvellous short-story, which, as I have before remarked, must exhibit more plot, more complication, with its consequent dénouement, than is found in either the tale or the sketch. As a work of art, it ranks with the author’s most vivid stories. In the memorable phrase of Walter Pater, “Seldom or never has the mere pen of a writer taken us so close to the cannon’s mouth.” ”

“ Our analysis has invariably{138} shown us that the slightest sketch—much more then a fully organised work of art!—is something more than and something radically different from a mere representation of such physical constituents. ”

“ A sketch is a graphic memorandum. “The field of labor is the wide world of nature—her beautiful truths the lessons to be learned by heart. Once fairly within her school, Art awakens to a life of sympathy with its teacher that lasts forever.” A capacity for drawing means more than producing a linear representation. The sculptor draws when he models the plastic clay into imitative or ideal creations. The painter draws when he disposes his pigments with like impulse. The stalwart smith draws when he shapes 10the heated metal into form. ”

“ I do not think any more wonderful example could be given of the intense activity of creative genius than that which is furnished by a careful comparison of this drawing with the sketch upon which it was based. We look at the sketch, and all the subject seems there; as a synopsis of the finished picture it seems tolerably complete. Yet in the drawing we find almost every detail has been altered. Notice the way the foreground trees have been pushed nearer to each other. In the sketch one has to search for the abbey, and then one’s eyes begin to wander about aimlessly. ”

“ In adorning your sketch, figures, both animate and inanimate, may be introduced, but sparingly; touch them slightly, for an attempt at finish offends.
I shall take the liberty of adding—endeavour to get a free and flowing outline; be not too minute either in detail or finishing; use pen or brush for your rough sketch in preference to pencil; you will gain confidence, and correctness will be your aim in your adorned copy. Finally, study nature, art, and good writers. ”