There is no such thing, for our purposes, as accuracy of vision. It is not so much that we don’t all see alike. We don’t. But nature is constantly moving and changing all the time. What we see rapidly alters from minute to minute.

All we can do is to compromise between the movement of life and the static nature of our rectangle of paper or canvas. We can only aim at a generalization, at most, of the scene before us, or a distillation of the character we can observe or feel. Nature is complex; never still, guarding her secrets closely. We won’t be able to make her give those secrets up, as the Pre-Raphaelites wrongly thought, by copying her with minute accuracy. Instead, we must take her unawares – almost casually, in fact, and then some of her spirit will infuse our efforts.

What I have just said will again help you to understand what some modern artists are aiming at. When you see their apparently distorted visions, you will come to realize that they, too, are trying to find that exact equivalent between painting and reality. Through a study of nature, by drawing and painting yourself, you will begin to understand the problems involved and be able to assess the work of others better (Fig. 21).

It is an easy mistake to make, to think that accuracy, or getting things ‘right’ is one of the aims of an artist. A thing can only be ‘right’ according to you and how you see it. Accuracy under the conditions stated, of an ever-changing ever-moving, ever-complex nature is impossible. However clever you may be, you won’t be able to compete. What is at stake is not being accurate but getting pleasure from observing these changes and movements in nature and trying to express them on paper in your own way.

PERSPECTIVE OUTDOORS

One can write volumes about the problems of eye-levels, vanishing points and all the other paraphernalia concerned with perspective. Frankly, I think it is best ignored. It will only muddle your eyes and lead you into all sorts of misconceptions.

Perspective is at best a device for the use of architects who wish to impress their clients with their drawings and need not seriously concern an artist. Use your viewfinder to assess any sloping of angles on buildings or streets and roads. If you put down what you see, it will not only look in perspective, it will, in all probability, be in perspective. Get used to noting how angles change with a new viewpoint.

Note how things look different when you are high up and when you are down low. If you pay particular attention to these changes you will be understanding perspective and what happens without a lot of unnecessary theory.

Often, traveling on a bus, I spot places that I think might make a good subject. Then, when I have time, I go back, look the place over, like a burglar casing a joint, for possible intrusion and, if it looks safe, I fetch my gear and start to work.

What I look for mostly are easy access, places to sit down comfortably and not be too conspicuous. If the season is inclement – and mostly it is – I make sure there is some shelter about and that the nearest cafe is not too far away. A hot cup of tea, after a few hours drawing in the damp, can be a tonic for the waning enthusiast.

This, of course, applies to drawing and painting in town. In the country, watch out for unsuspected streams underfoot and roaming bulls, irate farmers and odd picnickers. You want to make yourself as small and invisible as possible. Succeed in this and you will be uninterrupted and able to get on and enjoy what you are doing.
When drawing or painting in strong sunshine try to get under some shade. Strong sun on your paper will not only distort your tones but the glare can be very unpleasant to your eyes. It might even give you a bad headache into the bargain. A pair of sunglasses that are not too dark can be helpful if there is no shade near.

You can also shield your sketch book with your body.

Bearing these few hints in mind, what should we look for when choosing a subject?

WHAT TO DRAW

Edging yourself easily into outdoor sketching starts with working near to home, choosing subjects you are familiar with. When the excitement of sketching these has gone it is time to move farther afield. What are you going to look for? Picturesque views, thatched cottages, sunsets, windmills, punts on the river, sunshine and autumn leaves, pretty sights, sentimental animals, peaches and cream. . . careful! You might be sick.

No! Once you prejudice yourself with a fixed idea you will never find it. Your ability to create will dry up. The ability to create is a natural thing; therefore, when you look for subjects, finding them should be natural too. Picasso has been reported as saying ‘I do not seek. I find.’ This is certainly good advice for outdoor sketching.

Turn a corner and be surprised at what you see. Be taken unawares by odd pockets of life. Not the obvious. We are always seeking the obvious. But the surprise that is always lurking about, when you least expect it, will make the most enjoyable picture.

What do our eyes see? Shapes, colors, tones, patterns, textures, lights, darks, masses, spaces, solids. . . they don’t see trees, fields, people, buses, trains. These are names we give to shapes and forms. The eye consequently does not form judgments. The eye sees a shape and it doesn’t say ‘this is a bad or good shape’ or ‘this is an ugly shape’, it says ‘this is a large or small shape, dark or light shape’, and so on. It is our minds that form the judgments and sometimes our minds trip us up. What does it matter if the shape is beautiful or ugly, nice or nasty? What matters, surely, is whether I will enjoy painting it. Will it make an interesting hour’s study? Will it open up my eyes?

THE INNOCENT EYE
It is much better to do something you have seen for yourself, no matter how badly it is executed, than to copy from others except, of course, in order to find out how they did it. And once you have done so, go out and see something for yourself.

This honesty and simplicity of vision brings to mind artists like Henri Douanier Rousseau, Vivin and Bombois in France, Horace Pippin, Grandma Moses in the United States, Walter Grieves, Stanley Spencer, L. S. Lowry in England; artists who belong to no school and are found everywhere in the world and at any time in history. Sometimes they take up painting late in life (Rousseau, Grandma Moses) or have had an orthodox training (Stanley Spencer) or no training at all (Vivin).

There are many such artists living obscurely somewhere, working for the joy of it, for no other reward than the satisfaction of a job well and honestly done. Or, like Stanley Spencer, they have a vision that must find expression in religious themes. Perhaps, as L. S. Lowry and Grandma Moses did, they paint the place they live in as they remembered it in the past. Lowry painted Manchester and Grandma Moses New England. Vivin painted Paris and Rousseau his memories, or his dreams of the jungles of South America. The only thing they have in common is that they are completely uninfluenced by the work of other artists.

FROM DRAWING TO PAINTING

You may wonder whether I have wandered off the subject of drawing. I have and I haven’t so to speak. The differences between drawing and painting needn’t be as great as some would have us believe. The smooth transition in thought from drawing to painting is your aim. Without this you will always be conscious of the idea that drawing is drawing and painting is painting and never the twain shall meet. Drawing can be put to different uses. Drawing can make its point quicker than a painting; that is, with a few lines in the right place you have a finished idea. A painting takes a little longer to get such a result. On the other hand you can continue drawing, adding color if you wish, until it is as complete as an oil painting.

In a later chapter I have described how to arrange and design your material, studies, details and so on for finished pictures. But if you want to read it now do so by all means. I have arranged this site so that you can dip into any part at any time and it will always relate to what you have read before. In fact, the more you mix one section with another the better you will, I think, be able to relate the separate parts to the whole. For instance, what I have written about painting will very well apply to drawing as well and vice versa. The ideas contained in both activities are completely interchangeable.

The old belief that you must draw well before you should be allowed to paint is unfounded. Because there is no real difference between the two activities it doesn’t matter which one you start on first. It is a matter of temperament and choice. So if you want to skip a lot of the drawing part and would like to begin painting instead, by all means do so. You will go back to drawing without any fuss or difficulty when you have done a bit of painting.

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.

To enlarge or reduce one may resort to any of the following methods:

(1) Photography.

(2) The mechanical instrument known as the pantograph.

(3) The mechanical instrument known as the proportional dividers.

(4) Free hand drawing. Good practice, but not conducive to accuracy.

(5) Squaring the original by means of intersecting horizontal and vertical lines. This requires great care in preparation and use. The squares must be square and usually require numbering along at least two sides of the original and of the copy.

(6) Triangulation. An old and simply made geometrical form which I have adopted for the purpose of enlarging and reducing.

In my practice it has, since my discovery of its new use, entirely superseded the laborious, if time-honored, methods. By its use ordinary care produces accurate work, no measurements being required except when laying out the perimeters.

In the squaring method even an ordinary reduction or enlargement requires from 16 to 64 squares, the latter with boundary numbers 1, 2, 3,4, 5,6, 7 and 8 on at least two sides of both original and copy. In this maze the draftsman is apt (to become “lost.” In the method I have adopted, the triangulation forms a pattern which aids the eye to keep within the proper corresponding spaces. That is, each triangle, in the original and in the drawing under way, occupies a distinctive and individual position not observable in the squares.

I have not space here to describe the numerous applications and advantages of the triangular method, nor even to describe its operation beyond giving a diagram of its most primitive, simplest form, as shown in the accompanying figures.

These figures merely show the progress of the method. A square or other parallelogram is drawn first, the oblique, vertical and horizontal lines being added.

In a drawing in which the detail is complex, the triangles are easily subdivided, both in the original and in the drawing to be made from it.

Not alone is this method superior in every way to the “squaring” process, but it provides a sure and easy way to make regularly proportional distortions.

Not long ago an engraver on old gold and silver ware came to me. He was distressed. An order had been given to him in which it was required that certain heraldric devices should appear on some silver plate. The devices included the pleasant-looking creature shown in Fig.1.

The engraver’s trouble was that the mythological animal had to be reproduced in narrow vertical and horizontal panels, respectively, of certain definite dimensions. My engraver friend did not know how to get the “critter” squeezed and distended into anything like proper proportions.

Figs. 2 and 3 show the engraver’s purpose was satisfactorily accomplished.

It is to be hoped that the result pleased his customer. It was my conjecture that the griffons might be intended for evolutional ancestral portraits and if my surmise was correct the two distortions might serve as portraits of two of his ancestors-one attenuated and the other obese. Anyway, I would as soon trace my origin to a fine official and officious looking griffon – or whatever it is – as to a grinning, chat. tering chimpanzee.

Another Example – Fig. 4 is another example of what may be done in the way of varying the form of an area in which any design may be placed.

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.