Beginner's Drawing Lessons

Application of Elementary Lines – The reason for placing the exercise lines in the early exercises in enclosures of various shapes, rather than in formal squares, which are wearisome and uninteresting to the pupil, and therefore hurriedly practiced, if not altogether slighted by the pupil, through a desire to get at something that is interesting, seems sufficiently apparent. It is just as well and easy at the outset to encourage and cultivate a taste for form while engaged in the necessary practice of making flat tints. There is no use in making the study of drawing a treadmill. Instruction in drawing should, right from the start, be along the lines of pictorial art; therefore, the use of different forms, of more or less interest and beauty, in connection with practice exercise has been adopted.

Experience has shown that this method is of benefit to the pupils and does not result in the usual weariness and impatience engendered by the use of simple square spaces.

Odd Shapes Preferable – Besides, the use of odd shapes found in the enclosures obtains for the pupil using these exercises a greater control and adaptability in the use of pencil or pen than would be gained by the stopping of lines within unvarying angular borders.

In Figs. 1, 2, 3 and 4 the various practice lines are used in connection with the simplest forms that may be copied or drawn from memory or imagination. Fig. 4 is an exercise in copying aided by means of eight squares of equal size. To obviate any difficulty that may arise, for the beginner, in drawing this example, permit him to draw what is seen in a single square, irrespective of what appears in the other. For instance, let the pupil be asked to draw all the lines in a single square, as if it were a separate picture; for example, let him make the square marked A or B.