Freehand drawing

“ In this, the Design method is superior to the Representation method, though it would be an error to assume that freehand drawing is chiefly a manual operation. Such an error is entertained by those only who never have learned to draw. ”

“ They correspond to the sketches made by the engineer or draftsman for drafting-room or shop use. The experience of many instructors seems to indicate that the early introduction of freehand perspective and orthographic sketching in a course of mechanical drawing serves as a means of developing that skill in freehand execution which is so necessary in rendering the freehand features of a mechanical drawing. When this type of skill is acquired before the mechanical work is started, the mechanical and freehand technique may be simultaneously developed. ”

“ Freehand perspective sketching affords the most natural method of representing objects in outline. It is of particular value in interpreting orthographic drawing. The student who first draws a perspective sketch of an object becomes so familiar with every detail of it that he cannot fail to have a clearer mental image of its form when he attempts to draw its orthographic views. It gives a valuable training in coördinating the hand and eye in drawing freehand lines and estimating proportions. ”

“ In making copies it is not usual to make the preliminary drawing freehand. It takes time that may better be given to something else, and often it is not exact enough. When a painter has made careful studies which he wishes to transfer to his canvas, they may have qualities of line or movement, or of emphasis or character which the model may not have had. These studies, probably, are much smaller than they will be in the picture. The same things may be true of the characteristics of the sketches. ”

“ Free-hand drawing cannot be too free. The hand, practised to sweep boldly yet steadily in spirals, circles and curves, can be trained in a short time to a rapidity of execution and an unerring accuracy which seem miraculous to many. Let us consider how this is to be acquired. The beginner should take a lead pencil, not too soft, an H. or H. B. (hard or medium) will do. Practice for some days on a ground-glass slate, such as costs from twenty-five to fifty cents, tracing the outline pictures which are sold with such slates In tracing the outline pictures draw very slowly indeed at first.... ”

“ Fig. 55.
[55]
Free-Hand Drawing.
A free-hand drawing is executed with the unaided hand and eye, without guiding instruments or other artificial help. It is necessary to be known that all drawing required cannot possibly be done by rule and compass, but that some portions must be drawn “free-hand,” trusting to the eye alone.
Hence, it is important that the student should be able to sketch at sight from objects he may see, or to draw roughly, with a piece of chalk or a pencil, pieces of mechanism required to be represented. ”

“ To be able to do free-hand drawing is one of the nicest accomplishments you can have for then you can sketch the things you see and want to remember; and, further, sketches made with a pencil or pen and ink are, to my way of thinking, just as interesting as photographs provided they are well done.
Talent versus Practice. —Some fellows have a natural bent for sketching and are what you might call born artists, while others seem to be entirely minus this talent and the only way they can ever learn to sketch is by following certain rules and then practicing. ”

“ Thus, for style, for mastery of effect and management of line, we must go back to the old masters; to work produced generally in a reposeful life, to which the younger generation are strangers. But the mere copying of other men’s lines is of little avail without mastering the principles of the art of line drawing. The skilful copies, the fac-similes of engravings and etchings drawn in pen and ink, which are the admiration of the young artist’s friends, are of little or no value in deciding the aptitude of the student. ”

“ Surely it would be possible to make a distinction, giving prizes for academic drawings which should be as thoroughly accurate in a mechanical way as industry and application can make them, and also for artistic drawings, in which the student should be encouraged to follow his bent, striving for the expression of any qualities that delight him, and troubling less about mechanical accuracy. The use of drawing as an expression of something felt is so often left until after the school training is done that many students fail to achieve it altogether. ”

“ No reconciliation is possible, and to think of it is self-deception. They will say, and they do say: "If drawing is necessary in a popular school, then only drawing from Nature is permissible, only technical drawing, applicable to life; the drawing of a plow, of a machine, of a building; drawing only as an art subsidiary to lineal design."
This common idea of drawing was shared by the teacher in the Yasnaya Polyana School, an account of which we present. But the very experiment we made in this method of teaching drawing convinced us of the falsity and injustice of this technical program. ”

“ While granting to engraving the rank of art, it cannot justly be forgotten that it is, after all, a means to an end,—an art, it is true, but an art subordinate to other arts which it is designed to interpret. Once this is allowed, it follows, as a matter of course, that it is the duty of the engraver to render faithfully the drawing or painting that is to be cut; and to magnify himself not at the expense of the artist who made the drawing, but by rendering, as nearly as possible, a fac-simile of the original picture. ”

“ One artist makes it a thick line with a blunt pen, another a thin line with a fine pen, and another, like Moullier, makes it with a series of dots, but each of these methods is a matter of technic, and the rules of technic are arbitrary, not fixed as are the rules for drawing. You may invent your own technic, but you cannot invent perspective. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nor is this to be wondered at, considering that one can make a drawing in an hour which takes a week to engrave, and that an engraver may take five guineas for his share of the work whilst an artist may get fifty. There is very little doubt, therefore, as to the reason why artists who can draw refrain from engraving their own work. ”

“ The importance of the discovery will be appreciated when it is remembered that, before this, the poor artist, if he were drawing the portrait of a place directly on the block, was compelled to draw it the exact size it was to be engraved, to reverse it himself, and to have his actual drawing destroyed by engraving through it. Once photography was used, the drawing could be made of any size, it was mechanically reversed, the original was preserved, and the artist was free. ”

“ 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 titlepage of a new opera air, or a wood-cut 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 ”

“ In these you will find the foundation of our teaching—that is, we do not say that a human face must be made by putting in a black line running obliquely from the nose to the lip, made with such or such a pen, such or such a crayon, ink, or charcoal, but we point out the line in nature, and say that because it is found in nature, artists put it in their drawings. When not found in a face, as that of a young person, then it is left out in a good artist’s drawing of a young face. ”

“ One need not go to an art school to see that a cast is white, and that its shadows are not as black as the shadows upon a bronze; but unless he trains his eye by observation to see this difference in other things, no tricks of pen-technic will help him when he comes to draw a white horse, or a white collar. He does not have to study portraiture in an art school in order to make a drawing in pen and ink, for his paper, from a photograph ”

“ Now, while in wash drawings, crayon, or pencil sketches, "scrape" boards, and the like, there must be some amount of instinctive artistic ability, not only to guide the hand in execution but to govern taste, idea, and selection; yet in simple line drawing with the pen, without any art knowledge or technical ability, it may be possible to produce a perfectly reproducible drawing, fulfilling in every way the essential duty of an illustration. ”

“ One does rejoice to find an artist equipped with some new medium of expression—some medium of expression, at all events, by which his work, while remaining autographic, may yet be widely diffused. And the art or craft of Lithography, whatever it does not do, does at least enable the expert in it to produce and scatter broadcast, by the hundred or the thousand if he choose, work which shall have all or nearly all the quality of a pencil or chalk drawing, or, if it is desired, much of the quality even of a drawing that is washed. ”

“ I cannot over-emphasize the importance of your realizing that you have been told sufficient about pen drawing for you to go ahead and make drawings for your paper. If there is anything more to be learned I am candid in saying that you are better able to find out what it is than I am, for it is almost entirely a matter of printing, and not of engraving. Photo-engravers can nowadays reproduce almost any kind of a drawing, but a cut which might print well in a magazine might not print at all in your country newspaper. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Not only is it true that without talent you must not expect to succeed in producing important pictures, such as full-page illustrations, double-column portraits, poster designs and large work in general, but it is almost more unlikely that you will succeed in designing the most simple tailpiece or initial letter. It is quite natural that you should suppose it a very easy task to design an initial letter or a tiny silhouette of a leaf or flower, a branch or wreath or two forming a “printer’s mark”; every artist in Christendom thinks the same—until he tries it ”

“ If an artist, he will, as he pursues his work, alter and improve an imperfect drawing in its minor and imperfect details, as may be necessary; putting in a little light here, darkening a shade there, and almost invariably turning out a pleasing picture. If not an artist, he will "follow his copy, even if it goes out of the window," as a compositor would say, copying beauties and defects with the same unconcern, and producing a picture even from a good drawing with as little spirit or soul as the block on which he works—a "wood-cut," not an "engraving." ”

“ It may be remarked that they only draw well who draw intelligently; aptness in this, as in many other virtues, is a matter of slow growth, “here a line and there a line”—it’s the proper direction, not the rate of progress, that counts in the end.
There are several methods of drawing—1, Free-hand; 2, Instrumental; 3, Geometrical; 4. Perspective. In the first the work, also termed sketching, is executed by pencil, pen, crayon, or even paint-brush; in the second the result is attained by the use of rule, tee-square, drawing pen, etc. ”

“ Lithography as a means of artistic reproduction has suffered much in public esteem by being put to all manner of inartistic trade uses. It is really one of the most wonderful means of reproducing an artist's actual work, the result being, in most cases, so identical with the original that, seen together, if the original drawing has been done on paper, it is almost impossible to distinguish any difference. ”

“ 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 colors almost as soon as it has sense enough to wish for them. If it merely daubs the paper with shapeless stains, the color-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 colors at command ”