Most objects, people, trees, chairs, tables, houses, etc. as far as the visual aspect is concerned, can be reduced to
shapes, flat or solid. And the first thing to accustom yourself to is that whatever the object is called by name it has a shape that you can see. The difficulty here is that we tend to see only the name and not the shape. For instance, we think we know what a tree looks like because we have associated the word ‘tree’ with trees we have seen. The word ‘tree’ conjures up an image of something green, something leafy, something with branches, something very beautiful. But when we are confronted with drawing a tree the situation seems entirely changed. Is this thing before me a tree? The tree that I always conjured up in my mind when talking about a tree? And how do I begin to draw it? It looks nothing like a tree to begin with.

When you are stuck in front of a tree with a pencil in one hand and drawing board on your knee, you are aware, for perhaps the first time, that you have never really seen a tree before. And this can happen again and again with all sorts of objects and places. What can you do to solve the dilemma? It’s enough, you might think, to make one give up altogether.

Well, forget about what the thing is entirely. Chair, table, tree, house, it doesn’t matter what it might be. Forget what it is called. Clear your mind of its name image and concentrate solely on its shape and its tones exactly as they appear to you, and try not to let the name superimpose itself on the image you see at any cost.

Shape is the key word to remember. Get its shape down somehow and its likeness to its name will follow automatically.

It is helpful when trying to work out a complicated shape like a tree or a head to reduce the object to the simplest geometric symbols possible: namely the cone, the cube, the cylinder or the pyramid. Then you can build on them and, by fining down the hard geometric shape, find the true shape the eye sees (see illustration).

Shadows have shapes too, and so have clouds and, with the exception of atmosphere and mood, most physical objects in nature have some sort of shape that you can grasp and put down on paper. Remembering this simple fact you should have no difficulty at all in drawing anything, whenever it is presented to you.

What is drawing? Well, in the first place it is making marks on a sheet of paper. So why not take your charcoal, any stick will do, and on a sheet of white paper draw some lines? Do these lines all over the page in any arrangement you like, sometimes using the point and sometimes the side of the charcoal. Do this with the conte crayon and the carbon pencil on different sheets of paper and notice the difference between them. Try out the different grades of charcoal as well. Notice anything?

Next, take a sheet of grey or tinted paper and try to gradate your charcoal from darkest dark to lightest light. To gradate a tone don’t lift your medium off the paper. Gently scribble back and forth. With a little practice this effect is quite easily obtained. Then do the same with a piece of white chalk, continuing the gradation with white. You will see the bigger range of tone you can get with the combination of the two media.

Using charcoal on a piece of white paper, draw a small rectangle about Ii in. x 21 in. on the top left-hand side of the paper. Fill it in carefully until it is a good black. Then draw another rectangle (it doesn’t have to be too accurate) the same size in the bottom right-hand corner. Now turn the square, by gradually changing its shape, into a circle. Fill in each change of shape with less black each time so that by the time you have arrived at a circle shape the tone is grey. Then turn the circle back into the rectangle at the bottom right-hand corner of your paper, getting denser in tone once more (see illustration).

What you have done, when you have completed all this, is to have introduced yourself to the three basic elements in drawing, namely line, tone and shape which, with the fourth element space (we will go into this later), make up the basis of all pictorial art.

Line, tone (or light and dark, shading, or chiaroscuro) and shape are the basic way we see things and, with color and space, make up our visual perception of the world.

We are told, and rightly so, that it is great fun to be able to draw and paint. Every manual of painting stresses this, and then proceeds to make the whole thing seem so difficult that we are discouraged before we begin. Of course it is difficult. But should that really concern us?

There is a saying that goes: if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly. Which means, in essence, that whatever you do, do it for the enjoyment it gives you. If you are concerned only with doing it well you may feel so inadequate that you won’t do it at all. And look at all the pleasure you will miss.

I was the despair of my teachers. Yet if I had taken them seriously I would have given up long ago. But drawing and painting were too pleasant to abandon just because I wasn’t going to be any good at them, so I went on enjoying myself and got better and better in spite of myself. It was as simple as that.

Of course this may confound many people. It sounds too easy. How can you achieve anything, they could argue, if (a) you haven’t any ability or (b) you don’t work hard? But then most of the things we do in life are, in reality, easy. It is our thinking about them that makes them difficult. If we knew how complicated it is to take one simple breath, we might give up and suffocate. Yet breathing comes so easily to us we do it without thinking. And I submit it is the same with drawing and painting. It is easier than we think. All we need to know is what to use and how it behaves when we use it.

I have written fully about the equipment you will need and what its uses are; and I have suggested exercises and discussed different modes of seeing. But I have not laid down any firm rules about anything. If you are going to express yourself you will break all the rules anyway. Instead I have laid down some general lines on which to travel. Let your own inclination be the best judge of what is most useful to you.

Above all, let your materials do the work, let your hands have their way and let your eyes dictate their impressions. Don’t force anything. Let it happen naturally. After all it is quite natural to want to draw and paint.

Pastel-stencil work is a new and exceedingly fascinating
line of art work invented by the author of this work.

As its name indicates, it is a dry stencil process, easy and cleanly in operation.

For school room work it is better than any other method of stenciling. It is reversible, and by its use the most complex geometric, ornamental and other forms become simple.

One great advantage is that both sides of the stencil can be utilized. Because:
(1) The stencils are self-cleaning.
(2) Pigment never adheres sufficiently to cause smudging.

Blending Colors

In making designs by means of pastel stenciling one is enabled to blend colors and give variation to the lines and tints transferred, making modulations that cannot be obtained by any other stencil process.

Parts May Be Taken Out

By means of this method, with the use of the rubber or similar eraser parts of the design may be taken out, in the case of decorative design, gaining the effect of one ornament placed upon another.

The materials used are these:

A sheet of drawing paper
(or the blackboard).
A sheet of oil stencil board.
A pencil for making the design on the stencil.
A pen knife, of which only the extreme end of the blade
need be sharp.

An assortment of colored chalks or crayon. These must be soft to produce the best results.

The wax crayon can be used to a modified degree.

Rather strange to say, working with wax crayons is accompanied by less “mussing up” of the person using them, whereas the work itself is not so productive of neatness in effect as the use of the soft crayons.

Adapted for the Lower Grades

Work with pastel-stencils is admirably adapted for children in the lowest grades, because by this means the study of form becomes peculiarly interesting instead of tiresome. Teachers are thus enabled to supply their young pupils with the necessary models in colored form at hardly any outlay, either in time or money.

As an example, let the teacher cut stencils in shapes shown in Fig. 1, making copies for the pupils. By making them in various colors, color as well as form can be taught with a minimum of effort and a maximum of interest.

The sauce crayon mentioned in Chapter XXVI is excellent for pastel stenciling where soft gray and white effects are desired.

Imitation or copy drawing is valuable at the outset, as it imparts style or method of handling. To an extent it reveals the personality. By its use the pupil gains accuracy of eye measurement, errors in that respect being more readily shown than when drawing from model.

Drawing from copy also trains the eye by giving it some means of correcting its mistake in the estimate of lengths and values of lines.

Perspective or object drawing gives a knowledge of form, color, and construction. Ideas of relation and relative sizes are thus acquired.

Imaginary and memory drawings enable the pupil to express thought and impart ideas.

Intermingling parts of all three supports, helps and explains the others.
In copying one is shown how.
In object drawing one sees how.
In imaginative drawing one thinks how.

EYE MEASUREMENTS

Measurement Exercise – As the pupil progresses, greater accuracy in eye-measurement will become apparent. This can be hastened by frequent practice exclusively in this direction.

A good plan is for the teacher to draw straight lines of various determined lengths, requiring pupils to bisect, trisect and quadrisect them at regular intervals. Thus, draw a line four inches long to be divided in half. Then the same line in three equal divisions; then into four equal divisions.

PROPORTION

Proportion, and What Is Meant by Out of Proportion – For example: If a picture of a man were drawn with the head twice as long as the head should be, as is shown in Fig. 1, Chap. 19, that would be called out of proportion, because it would be unnatural.

It should be in “good proportion,” which means it should be near the natural size as compared with other parts of the body. The ability to draw the figure in proper proportion requires considerable practice, close observation and accurate eye-measurement.

Varying Proportions – In drawing the head of a child, the same proportions as adults does not exist; the child’s head being larger in proportion to the body than in the case of adults. There are also further variations. Putting a very small head on the body of a child would make the drawing appear as much out of proportion as in the case of the overlarge head referred to. In caricature, lapses from true proportion are permitted. Then it is done purposely to produce a ludicrous effect.

Relative Proportions – Ability to represent the relative size or proportion of one object to another is an essential element in correct drawing. To accomplish this the pupil requires aid from the teacher.

An effective method of teaching this is to choose some object for a unit of measure or comparison, and place others beside it, one or several at a time.

Any well-known object will do, as, for instance, a piece of fruit, such as an apple or an orange-or a ball.

Exercise in Proportion – Make a drawing of the object selected and compare it with some other object of about the same size. Then place beside them still another object, two or three times as large, such as a book or cap. Now let the pupil make a drawing showing the three objects in their relative sizes.

Any small wooden or cardboard box may be used in connection with other small boxes to demonstrate proportionate sizes.

Place the apple (or whatever object is selected) on a box and draw both in proportion.

Proceed with the exercise by drawing from imagination (or copy) some other object with which the student is familiar and draw the object in proportion. The subject may be a bird, a mouse, a set of keys, a cup, mug – any object that is not larger than the box itself.

The value of these exercises consists largely in fostering the inventive faculty of the child, in bringing out his individual ingenuity. The teacher should let the pupil depend on his own imagination entirely, afterwards suggesting improvements and pointing out the most palpable errors.

The Subjects - The stories illustrated may be original, or from suggestions offered by simple nursery tales and rhymes. For instance:

John flew a kite, but the wind was so strong that the string broke and the kite fell towards the ground. But it never reached the ground. It was caught in a tree and stayed there for a long time, so long, indeed, that there was nothing left of the kite except a few rotting sticks. Did John cry? No, he went home and made another kite.

To illustrate this, one or more pictures may be made. Examples: A boy flying a kite. The kite falling (upside-down). The kite lodged in a tree.

Reverse the Operation – For instance, draw a picture and write a little story about it.

As for example: A picture of a bird feeding a little bird in a nest. The story: “One day a bird fed its little one and then flew away to get another meal, but the mother bird never came back. A bad boy threw a stone at it just as it was picking up a nice little worm for the birdling’s luncheon. Wouldn’t the bad little boy feel sorry if he knew that the little bird in the nest starved to death because its mother never came back?”

Many of the Mother Goose Melodies provide easy, yet interesting, material for simple illustrations, thus:

MOTHER GOOSE MELODIES SIMPLY ILLUSTRATED

Anniversaries – On holidays, national anniversaries and other seasonable occasions, or rather for some days preceding them, it is well to direct the pupil’s energies toward the symbols and pictures by which these events and persons are commemorated.

New Year’s Day suggests Father Time, his scythe and hour glass. The New Year itself, as portrayed by a child, illustrating the new born year with the date thereof made prominent. Good resolutions – someone writing in a diary, etc.

February presents Washington’s and Lincoln’s birthdays as subjects, besides St. Valentine’s day. Events in the Jives of the two great patriots are good subjects, or simply their portraits surmounted by or surmounting, for instance, a hatchet and a cherry tree trunk, or a rail fence or broken shackles, made into a frame – as the case may be.

SEPTEMBER – Draw Autumn flowers, such as the golden-rod, sunflower, and others found in your locality, grasses, grains, bushes and trees.

OCTOBER – Draw fruits, Autumn leaves, pumpkins and ‘Jack-o’ lanterns.

NOVEMBER – Draw objects suggested by Thanksgiving – The May flower. Indians. wigwams, turkeys and corn.

DECEMBER – Subjects suggested by Christmas, such as Christmas trees, stars, holly, Santa Claus and reindeer, toys of all kinds.

JANUARY – Eskimo huts, snow forts, snow men, snow crystals, skating and coasting.

FEBRUARY – Subjects suggested by Lincoln’s and Washington’s birthdays and Valentine Day. .

MARCH – Draw kites. windmills, boats and pussy-willows.

APRIL – Draw buds and twigs, tulips and other early Spring flowers, umbrellas & ducks.

MAY – Draw baskets, birds and their nests and eggs, trees, flowers and simple landscapes.

JUNE – Draw flowers, vacation scenes, landscapes.

The Months – The illustration below offers a suggestion for each month of the year. The designs are intended for those who are well advanced as well as for beginners. The latter may use them as copies, while the former may find in them bases for improvement in form and idea.

Here are three suggestions for simple story pictures:

MEMORY DRAWING

Practice drawing from memory. Take a single figure, a simple subject, and, having drawn it two or three times from the original, lay both aside and then, by no aid except that of your memory, draw the object once more. Then compare it with the original and see how near it you have made the sketch. This is an interesting as well as a practically helpful exercise.

CORRECTING ERRORS

The pupil will be benefited if he will frequently criticize his own work from his own viewpoint. Thus only is improvement possible.

It is a mistake to suppose that it is necessary to have separate instructions for drawing each form or even each group of forms. Certain fixed niles govern drawing, and, once these are mastered, they can be applied to almost anything that can be represented by pen, pencil or brush.

Pen-drawing, the study of perspective, composition, light and shade, nature sketching, charcoal and crayon work, and other studies may be taken in accordance with the provisions of the state course of study.

Subjects for Simple Drawings – Draw the front of the house in which you live. If it is a simply constructed building this will not he difficult. If it is somewhat ornate in its facade, draw only a part of the detail, such as the front door or a window or two. Draw any of the outbuildings, such as the barn, the shed, or a chicken coop, or garage.

As mere suggestions from memory subjects, the following are offered. Many others will suggest themselves to the teacher according to the surroundings:

SUBJECTS

Draw
– The house you live in.
– The mailbox.
– The front door.
– The shed.
– The dog house.
– The wheel of the wheel-barrow.
– A wheel-barrow.
– The handle of the shovel.
– The shovel.
– Any toy.
– Draw a horse.
– Draw the wheels and the steering wheel of a car.
– The car itself.
– Draw any piece of furniture.
– A broom.
– A serving spoon.
– Anything else used in the kitchen.
– Any simple garden tool.
– Any carpenter’s tool, such as a saw, hammer, screwdriver, level etc. Draw any tool used by a plumber, electrician, musician or skilled worker.
– Draw any article of clothing: A hat, slipper, boot, or shoe. (Coats and dresses may be found rather difficult at first and may be omitted from the earliest exercises.)
– Draw a barrel, a pail, a dipper or cup.
– Show with a few lines what a lamp or a candlestick looks like.
– The pupil should not be discouraged if he fails to draw more than a few of these subjects. If he can do a few fairly well, he is making a very good beginning.

Correct Outlines

The student should become as perfect as possible in his ability to depict things by means of outlines. The outline is important always. Even in a drawing composed entirely of tints and shadows the areas of light and shadow, have their definite outline and they must be accurately placed. The limit of one’s ability to draw correctly an outline is the limit of one’s ability to reproduce, with any art utensil, be it brush or pencil, the boundaries of given objects. To do the latter well is a great part of aJl that can be learned from instruction in art. Unless one can represent form by means of outline one will not be able to do so by means of light and shade effects alone.

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.

Effect by Suggestion – By combination and juxtaposition, we are enabled to establish the meaning of lines that by themselves would not be recognized in the way intended. For instance, the lines in the upper left hand corner of Fig. 6, by themselves, would not be understood as representing rain. But place an open umbrella in connection with the lines, and the eye interprets them as portraying rain. For practice, draw plain lines on the blackboard and add figures as here suggested.

Draw on the blackboard the lines A in Fig. 7.

The student should copy these as an exercise. The scallops, by themselves, represent nothing in nature. Invert them and place a sketch of a sailboat and waves are suggested.

The lines inside the frame below, by themselves, would hardly be recognized as representing glass. But draw objects beyond the “glass”, partly hidden, and the meaning becomes clear.

Drawing from Imagination – The following exercises will develop the imagination. The subjects are merely suggestive and others may be substituted. Care should be taken to select objects simple in outline and construction.

Draw a box – just the front of it. Now add wheels and a handle, thus making a wagon out of it. Put a doll in the wagon. Now draw a boy or a girl pulling the wagon. Write a line under it, descriptive, for instance, as to where they are going.

Draw the box again – just the front – put a flower pot on it. Now put a long stem with a flower in the pot. Add leaves to the stem. Next put a butterfly or a bird flying near the flower. Write under the drawing a line about birds (or butterflies) and flowers.

Draw a box; put a cage on it; put a bird into the cage. Draw a cat near the box, looking at the bird. The cat is interested in the bird. Write under the drawing what the cat says about it.

Draw a log on a bank; put a boy or a girl on the log; put a fishing rod, with line and hook, in the hands of the boy. Draw a line showing the surface of the water. Now show a fish under the waterline, getting ready to bite at the hook.

Let the student write a line under the drawing. It might refer to whether the fishing is good or not.