Working drawing

“ Many work with the pen alone, leaving the paper for the lights, which is difficult but in effect most masterly; and innumerable other methods are practised in drawing, of which it is not needful to make mention, because all represent the same thing, that is drawing.
The designs having been made in this way, the artist who wishes to work in fresco, that is, on the wall, must make cartoons; many indeed prepare them even for working on panel. ”

“ The [Pg 34] outline sketched in, the proportions are ascertained to be correct and the shadow and light are divided into two great masses without detail and blocked in as broadly as possible, according to the method given in the following pages.
Learn to begin a drawing properly and the finishing will be easy enough, being merely a matter of practice when once the manner of working is understood. How often we see exposed for sale and on exhibition drawings and paintings elaborately finished of which the drawing is so faulty as to render them worthless. ”

“ This, with a definite understanding on the pupil’s part that drawing technique is the major and the utility of the drawing the minor consideration, should put the pupil in the right attitude toward his drawing work and make it possible to secure the best drawings he is capable of producing. No one, not even a finished draftsman, could produce good drawings surrounded by the noise and dust of neighboring woodworkers. Under the alternating system there are always slow pupils who, if they finish their drawings before they make the application, must do it while the others are working in wood. ”

“ THE drawings which most deeply interest the workman are working drawings—just the last to be appreciated by the public, because they are the last to be understood. The most admired of show drawings are to us craftsmen comparatively without interest. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Even in drawings made with full flowing brush or pen, there will be modulations in the strength of the ink, or occasioned by the surface of the wood or paper, in every stroke, by which the, sensitive artist in the heat of work cannot help being influenced, and which will lead him to give a bloom, a delicacy, to his drawing, such as a print can never possess. ”

“ 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. ”

“ And he will not understand the mental form stimulus that the direction and swing of a brush stroke can give. These and many things connected with expression can best be studied in line work.
Let the student therefore begin on the principles adopted in most schools, with outline studies of simple casts or models, and gradually add light and shade. When he has acquired more proficiency he may approach drawing from the life. ”

“ Now a picture is a thing of paint upon a flat surface, and a drawing is a matter of certain marks upon a paper, and how to translate the intricacies of a visual or imagined impression to the prosaic terms of masses of coloured pigment or lines and tones is the business with which our technique is concerned. The ease, therefore, with which a painter will be able to remember an impression in a form from which he can work, will depend upon his power to analyse vision in this technical sense. ”

“ Have you crowded too much into one place? Have you left a space crying aloud for some attention, though it be but a few short strokes of the pencil or brush?
Turn your drawing upside down. Look at the picture as a pattern, regardless of other interest, and try to consider it as such. Or, again, collect a number of small objects, a few vases, ornaments, shells, ribbons, books, hats, balls, gloves, candles (and candle-shades) , and, arranging those which harmonize together in groups, make swift sketches merely for the sake of arranging patterns, of practising composition. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Study the work of the best illustrators, noting the tone-scheme and the placing upon the page.
ETCHING Etching, pen drawing and pencil sketching are line-arts. The needle, pen and lead pencil are tools for drawing lines, and there is much reason in Whistler's contention that tone and shading should not be attempted with them. The tool always gives character to work, and the best results are obtained when the possibilities of tools and materials are fully appreciated. If a sharp point is used in drawing, it will produce pure line, whose quality may reach any degree of excellence. ”

“ Even such facilities as are afforded by the acquirement of freehand drawing, as taught in our schools of art, are not to be despised. The workman should thoroughly master his tools, or they will hamper him. The first step towards design is that you should learn to draw. After this, appreciation and observation are necessary, and due balance in outline and colour should be studied; and all this is as much needed in [Pg 81] drawing a pattern as in composing a picture. The difference lies in our art being only decorative, wherein beauty and fitness are to be remembered, and nothing else ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ The drawings of many modern artists are full of attempts to express tone and colour effects, things entirely outside the true province of drawing. The small but infinitely important part of nature that pure drawing is capable of conveying has been neglected, and line work, until recently, went out of fashion in our schools. ”

“ If so, you have learned some important principles that will help you in drawing, for you will be able to sketch any hat you wish to draw by the same process that the best artists employ. Again, you will be able to use proper judgment in introducing the lines into a face. If, for example, you were copying, in pen-and-ink, chalk-plate or wood engraving, {83} OLD MAN’S HEAD. Crayon Drawing by Ludwig Knaus. ”

“ This is why I would strongly urge all who wish to enrich their embroideries with the human figure to practise drawing first. I would further suggest that the drawing should be chiefly from the antique, and the study altogether more with regard to typical than individual forms, as this training is not for the painting of ‘pictures,’ but for the sake of knowing what are the elements of human beauty and how they ought to be applied or modified. Neither am I including the study of design, which, as I have before remarked, is a study in itself. ”

“ The drawing is full of details, such as the workbox, scissors, thimble, primroses, and anemones in the bowl, the china in the cupboard, and the coloured engraving on the wall, which, as we have seen in the case of other painters who have practised it, opens up in fuller maturity a power of painting which is never possible to those who have neglected such an education. ”

“ The best test of power or accuracy of observation is drawing, and power of drawing is the basis of all art, which might in all its varieties be described as different kinds or degrees of drawing; what is painting but drawing in colour and tone? What is modelling but drawing in relief or in three dimensions? What is weaving pattern but drawing in textile? And so with each artistic craft by means of which beautiful form and colour is created, each after its manner is a method of drawing, and, as a matter of fact, each is actually based on a drawing as a preliminary stage of its existence. ”

“ Try to imagine how a Michael Angelo or a Raphael would have conducted themselves, and work yourself into a belief that your picture is to be seen and observed by them. Even enter into a kind of competition with these great masters; paint a subject like theirs; a companion to any work you think a model. Test your own work with the model.... Let your port-crayon be never out of your hands. Draw till you draw as mechanically as you write. But, on every opportunity, paint your studies instead of drawing them. Painting comprises both drawing and coloring. ”

“ I give a reduced copy of the engraving, together with a facsimile reduction of the original sketch, which will show the reader the way in which hurried sketches are sometimes adapted to the purposes of a newspaper without at all impairing their original truth.
Sometimes more than one draughtsman is employed on a drawing where the subject consists of figures and landscape, or figures and architecture. In such a case, if time presses, the two parts of the drawing are proceeded with simultaneously. The whole design is first traced on the block ”

“ Of course, in draughting, as in all classes of work, a great deal of the less important portions may be done by junior hands, but a knowledge of drawing is required, if only to guide the eye, by them all, except the twillers. ”

“ It I were a real artist it might have occurred to me to walk. But I'm tied to a job and a salary, and my father gives me studio and room rent free here. That's why I have to paint afternoons and Sundays and do my drawing by artificial light. You draw in the evening sometimes, don't you? ”

“ How much better our carriages would be if we worked from drawings as carefully planned out and executed as these. Many of our artisans could, with a little instruction, draw quite as well, and by degrees would learn to draw with as much artistic taste and sense of the beautiful. Some artisans are now being instructed in the art of design, and I trust the day is not far distant when every workman will see that his son learns drawing as part of his education, and as the essential preliminary to any technical education which is to follow. ”

“ Most modern drawing is a mixture of both these points of view, but they should be studied separately if confusion is to be avoided. If 49the student neglects line drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of form that only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of conveying; while, if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly equipped when he comes to express form with a brush full of paint to work with. ”

“ The Illustrator.—The employment of wood engravings in conjunction with literature created a new phase of artistic work. The task of the illustrator or designer is peculiar. He sketches out his design on the wood block, and then passes it on to the engraver. His drawing is not intended as a permanent form of pictorial art, but as a suggestive sketch, which, while perfectly intelligible to the engraver, will be free from such intricacies in its composition as might interfere with its effective interpretation. ”

“ From lack of this elementary tone study, the student, when he approaches painting for the first time, with only his outline and light and shade knowledge, is entirely at sea. With brushes and paint he is presented with a problem of form expressions entirely new. And he usually begins to flounder about, using his paint as much like chalk on paper as possible. And timid of losing his outlines, he fears to put down a mass, as he has no knowledge of reducing appearances to a structure of tone masses or planes. ”

“ It would be wiser and better that the proprietors and governors of most of our art schools should say frankly—“we cannot teach drawing as the great draughtsmen were taught, we teach a fairly serviceable method of drawing which it must be clearly understood is intended to be painted over.” ”