Painting and drawing will help you acquire an appreciation of other paintings. This is a good thing because you will get little help from an art gallery or museum where you are left very much to your own devices.

Visiting an art gallery can be a very confusing, tiring business if you don’t know what to look for. Paintings are often jumbled up without reference to period or time. No help is given to the visitor who is likely to see work from the eighteenth century next to painting done today.

To help you to understand these paintings, it is a good idea to obtain reproductions of the works you see; not to hang, but to analyze. And one of the best ways to do this is to draw over them on tracing paper the strong lines of the compositions and freely copy them in color in your own style. During this practice ideas and misconceptions about them will change. You will be understanding them, which is much better. Tracing over them will help you in other ways as well. Through your own experience you will get inside the picture. You will see whether the artist achieved what he set out to do or not. It will also give you ideas that will enhance your own work.

You will also find that you will acquire discrimination in other fields of art: architecture, sculpture, pottery, illustration, textile design, interiors, furniture, posters, and so on. This is because the principles contained in painting and drawing are also contained in these other forms of art.

Later you may want to try your hand at etching, lithography, wood and lino cutting. Here, too, you will find that your practice in drawing and painting will stand you in good stead.

Read as many books on art and its history as you have time to. But keep a keen sense of balance and don’t believe all you read. You will know what is feasible and what is not if you rely on your own experience as a practicing artist and by using a little common sense.

Look upon the new with caution and always be ready to abandon the old. You won’t go far wrong if you do.

Nobody can create anything visual like a picture without prior visual experience. You cannot get something from nothing. Something visual must start you off. And it follows that it must come from nature.

However imaginative our ideas are, they must have visual expression if we wish to paint them and so it is to nature that we must apply for the colors and forms we shall need.

It still boils down to the fact that we have to rely on nature for either our inspiration or for the means of expressing our ideas. All we need to remember is that as we cannot dominate nature and as nature does not wish to dominate us, we are free to use her as and when we wish. We are not her slaves and neither is she ours. There is so much more to art than a wish merely to record nature. You cannot do it so why try, and if this is remembered when you look at pictures, you will gain more pleasure and understanding.

What are the qualities we can use in the study of nature and how can we use them? This is the crux of the whole problem.

Nature consists, visually, of movement, weight, mass, solidity, light, color, texture, pattern and space. We have a rectangular canvas, a few brushes and some colors. The first thing is to consider our canvas: the rectangle.

A painter’s world consists of a rectangle. Everything he does must conform and relate to it. Nature, on the other hand, has no such restrictions placed upon her. Consequently she can be more free, less restricted and much more able to do things a painter cannot do. A painter, therefore, is forced to select those shapes and those tones that will best express his idea or vision. It would seem that because he has so great a choice that this selection might be difficult. It need not be once you have accepted the problem in its entirety. You will then see that to express an idea to the best advantage a simple approach will be more successful than a complicated one.

For instance, movement can be expressed by the use of
flowing lines and shapes across the canvas (Fig. 33), by how you direct the eyes across your shapes. Weight, solidity and mass can be stressed by simplifying the shapes and eliminating detail or by accentuating the planes round a form (Fig. 34).

Space can be expressed by perspective, by color and by relating large shapes to smaller ones (Fig. 35). Color can be controlled in such a way that with the use of few, carefully selected colors, they will give a more splendid effect than all the colors on your palette.

The methods employed by the old masters resembled the working of a factory. The apprentices were occupied in grinding colors and preparing grounds, or working on the paintings that were to be finished by the master.

They paid the master for his instruction and helped to keep his studio running smoothly by doing nearly everything but sell the finished paintings. They worked in his style until ready to start out on their own. They accepted everything the master told them. They learnt their craft thoroughly and it sometimes took many years to complete a training this way.

From all accounts it was a tough and exacting life, holding craftsmanship high and individuality low, and anybody overstepping the bounds was liable to be severely reprimanded or put out of business entirely. Rembrandt and Hals, in pursuing a slightly different course from that accepted, suffered in no small way by getting fewer and fewer commissions to do. The story of Rembrandt’s painting ‘The Night Watch’ is a famous example of what happened when you took your inspiration into your own hands and flaunted the conventions of the time. He was made bankrupt and put out of business.

But the seeds of destruction were already sown and by the seventeenth century the factory studio had all but died out. With the introduction, in the nineteenth century, of ready-made paints and brushes, oil painting took a new turn. For better or for worse the look of oil paintings took on a more personal note and the medium was exploited to the full, until today there is no right or wrong way to use it. Only the best way, the way that suits each individual to express himself or his ideas to his own satisfaction, counts.

Manufactured colors and brushes give great advantages to the artist. It is very noble to make your own paints and it is quite possible that material made this way will last many centuries longer than the bought material, but it is a conceit to wish that your paintings will be preserved by posterity. It should not concern the painter what the future will think of his work. His job is to get on and do it. It shouldn’t matter very much what happens to them after he is dead. To worry about them will only give him ulcers, and painting should be a pleasure not a complaint.

Making your own material for economy, or because you like to experiment, or because home-made equipment suits your needs better, are the best reasons for not buying the ready-made stuff. Nevertheless there is at the artists’ colorman such a vast variety of material it is better to find out what they have to offer before making your own.

A drawing is complete when you have nothing more to add to it. It is finished when you feel you have done enough. It is as simple as that.

But one or two points occur to me that might help you arrive at that decision. Fill your page completely, from top to bottom and side to side. The reason for this is, that before you can confidently leave out, you must overdo what you put in. The same applies when you are concerned with studies of single objects, or details, that you are going to incorporate into a larger work. It is also easier to frame a completed drawing in your sketch book. But never tear out a picture if you can help it. Keep a sketch book intact. If you want a particular scene framed do another version of it from the original sketch. Sometimes, however, it cannot be avoided. A sketch book picture has to come out. But do be careful when doing so. It is easy to tear your drawing and your sketch book as well. The binding will become loose and all the pages fall out.

PANORAMAS

I have suggested that using a viewfinder is helpful in settling the problem of what to draw. However you may want to do the view next to the one you have chosen. Add that view to the one you have already completed, either on the page opposite or by adding a further section. This can be attached with tape quite easily and will fold into your sketch book neatly. You can, if you want, continue adding as many
sections of views as you like, folding them into your sketch book and attaching them with masking tape Any change of tone, or even style, from section to section will not harm the total effect when you pull out the finished work. On the contrary, it adds something to it.

Remember, though, the view must continue from one section to another. The lines in a panoramic drawing must move easily from drawing to drawing, else it will look odd.

TIME MARCHES ON

It is not always possible to devote hours to one work outdoors. This fact must be recognized. Rain, disturbances, limited time available, will tend to cut down the time you can devote to a picture or drawing. This need not deter you, however, from producing any finished work. If you are very short of time, go for quick lively sketches. Make lots of notes that mie:ht help you and finish them up at home. Also, with a more ambitious work, if you cannot complete it out-of-doors, finish it off at home.
It is best to do lots of rough studies of a scene, plus one or two careful details and a few written observations. Then, when you get home, assemble the material into a completely new picture.
Making up two or three half-finished sketches into a completely new work is one of the things I shall be discussing in the chapter on composition. For the moment, let me say
this. Outdoor drawing and painting is the best source of
ideas. It should be persevered with and will reward you in many ways. As you will have realized, there are few rules to bother about. The approach I have taken is purely practical.
If you have drawn inside, you will be able to draw outside.
There is no hard way and there is no easy way. There is only your way. And that is the only thing I want to encourage you to develop. If you are in doubt, or find your spirits flagging, go and look at the drawings and paintings of those great artists who have got their inspiration from working outdoors. Turner, Constable, Samuel Palmer, Cox, de Wint and, in our day, Carel Weight, Ruskin Spear, John Minton, Edward Bawden, etc. There are many of them and their works will help you. By relating your problems to these works you will find not only help, but appreciation as well.

Each artist, too, is influenced in some way by the art of a different time. Rembrandt, who liked to draw in an elaborate chiaroscuro, was very much taken with oriental art. In his drawings you can see the Chinese brush marks, the flowing immediate statement of form and line that you can detect in all Oriental brush drawings (Fig. 12).

Because Rembrandt tended to over-finish his drawings, this opposite influence of spare line and wash probably gave him just the tension he needed. And in his later work, the elaborate flourishes were toned down and simplified. His work became stronger because of it. Therefore keep an open mind towards drawing that seems out of your orbit. It may be able to offer you something you need. It is often the case that those works which seem to be opposite what you like do you more good in understanding your own work and the work of others.

I believe that because you are drawing for yourself and later painting for yourself you will have this breadth of mind. It is a pity that more critics of art don’t acquire it likewise.

Fig. 12. Warrior by Hokusai. (1760-1849 Japanese.) Hokusai drew, painted and made woodcuts throughout his long life. But most of all he loved to draw. When he died he was still holding a brush and regretted he had not been given five more years to live. Then he is reported to have said sorrowfully, ‘I might have become a great artist’

There is an old Chinese saying that goes: one showing is worth a thousand sayings. This certainly applies to humorous drawing in which English art abounds. From Hogarth and Rowlandson to the drawings in Punch, humorous drawing has been part of the English temperament.

The qualities that go to make good drawings are apparent in humorous artists like Cruikshank, the illustrator of Dickens’s novels or Charles Keene and Phil May, and the drawings of Ronald Searle and Saul Steinberg in our own day. They know how to say a lot with very little, to get the most out of their lines, shapes and tones and to use their eyes to observe the oddities of human behavior. They well repay study, especially if you are interested in drawing in line with pen and ink. A good humorous drawing says so much it more often than not doesn’t need a caption at all.

Portrait drawings are always a delight to look at. The portraits by Hans Holbein at Windsor Castle are a good example. Holbein worked in England during the reign of Henry VIII but that is no reflection on his drawings. They look as fresh and modern as if they had been done yesterday (a fact that is apparent in most good art). A good drawing should speak to you and be as relevant today as it was when it was drawn. Nobody knows whether Holbein’s portraits were good likenesses or not. It doesn’t matter.

A point about tone and color in black and white drawing. If everything were whitewashed in nature we could draw the tone that light makes when it falls on objects quite easily. However, the things around us are not painted white.

They are multicolored. And colors, too, bear a degree of lightness or darkness that is independent of the light on them at any given time. Consequently we have to take care in assessing these two different factors. You will be more concerned with this when you are painting. When we are drawing we can eliminate the tone of the color if we want to or we can use it if we wish to. Dark brown hair, or dark clothes on a figure can be made dark even though they are in full light. The thing to remember is that colors have a lightness or darkness in their own right and there is nothing wrong in giving them their full value..

LOOKING AT DRAWINGS

I don’t think it really matters if a drawing looks as finished as a painting, though some artists find this idea not at all to their liking. I, myself, take my drawings to a high degree of finish and detail. I have no firm reason for this. I just like doing them that way. I get so involved, sometimes, with a drawing that I am loath to put it aside. Samuel Palmer, a very fine British landscape artist of the last century, overworked his drawings. On the other hand an artist like Modigliani left in very little. Yet each in his way produced a fine drawing.

The bewildering variety of styles and approach is simplified by the act of drawing. When you have done some drawing and have appreciated the problems, the drawings of the masters and moderns don’t seem so remote. You have an affinity with them. They speak more to you than before. They speak in the language you are now using. Consequently through your own enjoyment of drawing and painting you are able to enjoy the drawing and painting of others.

Some of the drawings you will see will be just pages of studies, like those of Watteau that can be seen in the British Museum. They are drawn in red chalk and are beautifully sensitive. They are not large and one wonders how he managed to keep his chalk sharp enough to enable him to be so delicate.

I can see that they are wonderful drawings. I can feel the limbs underneath the clothes and the poses and gestures are alive with energy. As for how he did them I haven’t a clue, though sometimes when I am doing a drawing myself I can feel and understand just what he was getting at; then it seems clear to me. But when I stop drawing I cannot put it into words. I think that you will feel this too if you go on drawing long enough. It is a sense of understanding that cannot be explained but can only be felt.

Permit Use of Guide Lines – Among the first exercises in drawing, practically the same principles may be applied that are applicable to the teaching of penmanship. Guide lines should be permitted; that is, simple lines constructed along the horizontal and oblique sides. The exercises indicated at the beginning of each row of figures should be made the subject of a single lesson.

The lines indicated at the right of each row should be added as the pupil advances; for instance, let the pupil draw, say, a hundred straight, oblique lines, until he becomes proficient in their use. Follow with the reverse and duplicated lines in the top row, After that let him draw the simple curves at the left of the second row a great many times before he progresses to the added and duplicated, triplicated and quadrupled curves at the right.

Next let him draw repeatedly the compound curves at the left in the third and fourth rows. before proceeding to the more complex additions at the right.

After the pupil has become proficient with the exercises in Fig 6, let him draw the curves and ornamental devices in Fig 7.

Each of the designs in Fig 8 is enclosed in a rectangle of the same dimensions. There are three sets of horizontal lines, in turn bisected by vertical lines. Three sets of five totally different designs are based on these lines. Let them serve as an exercise by which they are copied as herewith given.

When the pupils have made further progress let them make variations from these, using the same kind of guide lines, but with the endeavor to make new and original designs.

Snow crystals – Fig 9 shows four snow crystals greatly enlarged. They are formed by hexagons, or two equilateral triangles with apexes in opposition. To draw them by means of the latter proceed as in Fig 10. Draw the horizontal line a. Bisect it as at b. Each oblique line in c equals the horizontal line a. Describe another triangle inverted as at d. Then proceed to construct the crystals on the lines of the triangles as shown in Fig 11.

Decoration relates to the production of beauty in art, in which the first principle to be considered is symmetry – the equal balance of two halves. The second principle is repetition.

Repetition may be considered as Simple, when the same unit is used repeatedly.

As Alternate, when two units are used alternately.

As Combined, when several units (each one different) are
used.

Simple repetition, Alternate repetition and Combined repetition are seen in Fig. 2. Further complication appears in Fig. 3.

Conventional Design

To conventionalize means to represent by symbol of some exact preconceived outline, rather than by an attempt to duplicate resemblance to a natural object. To conventionalize, for instance, is to produce an ornamental design of such a character that it may be made up of several different integral parts, each of which is copied from some natural object, such as a leaf or flower, but which has been formalized into the typical rather than the correct representation of the original.

Or, to give another instance, it may be a leaf made to conform to some geometrical figure, such as the maple leaf drawn within the confines of a hexagon.

Even in pictorial art, liberties are taken with nature to overcome the limitations of human efforts to make certain visible impressions by pictorial means.

Ornament – In the ornamental designs of the Greeks and the Romans, Repetition and Alternation were the chief resources.

Modern ornamenters added Intersection, which means relieving Repetition and Alternation at intervals with additional forms or group of forms, and then continuing as before.

Complication also has been added. In decorative design, Complication is a term which differs somewhat from the – ordinary meaning. It is here used to distinguish the results produced from the contact, interlacing of the various forms comprising the whole.

Confusion is the term of another element that has a valued place in modern decoration. Confusion, usually the synonym of disorder, when applied to decorative art is used in giving contrast and even harmony to the general composition. The ornamentist in employing Confusion gains the aid of every possible object, whose curves or symmetrical lines appeal to his eye. He will tints group in one design the most incongruous figures, all of which give zest and life to an otherwise purely mechanical design.

Confusion in designing ornament is the artist’s license. The sculptor requires Confusion’s aid, when he fills his pedestals, niches, etc., with ornaments imitated, at random it would almost seem, from the vegetable and animal world.

Ruled Lines for Lettering – In making Roman letters, the pupil should be guided by ruled lines just as he is guided ill making script. Possibly there will come a time, as in writing, when the use of guide lines for lettering may be discontinued, but in the meantime it would be just as absurd to teach a child to learn to write without ruled lines as to require him to draw without their aid.

Guide Lines Necessary – For the purpose of making guide lines for lettering the use of the straight edge should be freely permitted, The straight edge may be a ruler, a pencil, a piece of cardboard or anything that may be used for the purpose, Ruling short, straight lines for pencil or ink, by means of the simple contrivance described in Fig. 1 will be found useful.

Take a new round pencil – the thicker the better – and around each end roll narrow strips of pasted paper about three-eighths of an inch in width and about 10 inches in length, the latter depending on the thickness of the paper used. The result should be about a thirty-second of an inch in thickness – just enough to keep the body of the pencil away from the paper on which it is used.

Roll it Along – When rolled along gently on the surface of the paper to be used for the drawing, the pencil will be propelled in a straight direction instead of sliding from side to side, straight as is usually the case when a pencil is used as a edge and the endeavor is to make parallel lines.

The Gothic alphabet drawn by aid of guide lines. Note the vertical lines as guides to symmetry in. forming some of the curved letters. Note that the upper divisions of letters are smaller than the lower. They are made so as to prevent their having a top-heavy appearance. Hold the alphabet upside down. Look at the letters B, E, H, K and S and see how top-heavy they appear when thus seen.

I can not overemphasize the value of guidelines. Their use should be repeated at intervals throughout the entire course of study. The author of this work has never stopped using them.

Adaptation of Comic Figures – Many ordinary-looking things, by repetition and reversing, become good subjects for ornamental design. For instance, the comic policeman in the chapter on comic drawing is well adapted for a design for the cover of some book of humor.

Make free-hand drawings of cylinders in various positions, especially one that will show the visible end of a cylinder appearing nearly as a straight line (as in A in the accompanying illustration) and the invisible end (B) appearing as an ellipse, the width depending upon the length of the cylinder – the longer the cylinder, the wider the ellipse.

Draw a box from the model. Place it directly in front of the eye, but above or below it. Measure the back edge of the top and compare it with the front edge. Note that the back edge will be much shorter. Note that the two side lines will converge to meet the shorter lines. Place the box to one side, so that one side will be seen. Note the apparent shortness of the further (vertical) edge of the side. (See also Figs. 16 and 17, chapter on Perspective.)

LEARN TO SEE

That is the secret of nearly all success in art work. To see. To see accurately, the outline, the phase of light and shade, the quantities, qualities and gradations of color. That is all. It must be learned by degrees.
The frequently heard question, “Can I learn to draw pictures?” should unhesitatingly be answered in the affirmative. “Can you tell me how long it will take?” should be answered in the negative.

To learn to draw well means application, patience, courage and confidence. And it means having those qualities more than the possession of so-called talent or even genius.

Certain rules may be laid down but there is that which the pupil must do himself – he must see. The art of seeing, that’s it.

Begin at the bottom. A very large proportion of the failures among drawing students is due to a tendency to slight the early exercises. They want to start right out with finished drawings of an ambitious character.

Keep to simple subjects drawn with simple lines. Avoid elaboration and complication.
Practice line economy.

Note – The seeker for further instruction on the subject of fore
shortening is advised to study and become familiar with the laws of perspective, and to go to nature for the true aspects of visible form.