Drawing and painting self-taught

Front matter

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Preface

Thirty years ago I made my first efforts to cause instruction in drawing to become vision training in place of picture making in the production of which the student's hands and teacher's eyes and knowledge were combined. I have endeavored to accomplish this result by having the student substitute many quick sketches, each self-corrected for one or more long pieces of work of finished but superficial result.

In 1895 I published the book Free-hand Drawing and explained that I made use of clear window glass simply as a drawing tablet to be used in place of paper; that the drawing was made upon it entirely free-hand when a sheet of white cardboard was placed behind the glass; that all tests and the usual measurements were forbidden until the drawing became as perfect as possible by eye alone; that when complete the drawing was tested for the first time by removing the card and looking through the glass to see if the drawing would appear to cover the object. I carefully explained that the Glass was not for tracing or for correcting work on paper, and that it was soon discarded because its proper use resulted in eyes that were truer than the results of tracing or other use of the Glass as an aid to results on paper.

In spite of these assertions which have been repeated on every possible occasion since the method was published, the Glass is still supposed to be a device for tracing, first upon the Glass, and then from the Glass to paper, as explained by Leonardo da Vinci.

When my first book was written the Glass was without the spirit-level, which experience proved necessary if students were ever to see angles truly. Only in recent years has the Glass been perfected by the addition of two lenses, which enable students to discover mistakes in light and shade and color as surely as the spirit-level enables them to find mistakes in perspective outline.

New methods of using the Glass with young pupils have recently been tried, and have proven that it is possible for fourth grade children to draw from nature with class results that equal those in other subjects.

New methods of using the Glass in Art Schools for the training of the memory and for the study of free-hand perspective have been tried and perfected.

These methods enable all the students to understand with vi DRAWING AND PAINTING SELF-TAUGHT

little aid from the teacher, whereas formerly with all possible assistance, only the talented were able both to explain and practically use the essential theories.

Therefore this book is undertaken to explain these new methods as well as emphasize again the folly of tracing and the usual tests that substitute measurements for true eyes. Such methods are crutches that enable one to hobble at the start and insure the continuance of this crippled condition as long as tests and measures are depended upon more than the vision.

The methods of this book are not based on tracing or any system of measuring or testing to be used permanently. Their sole aim is to discard all measures and tests as far as possible from the start. Even pencil measurements are forbidden with the rest, until the student has done his very best by depending upon his eyes alone. Then only is the first test permitted, and it is so simple that a child can apply it perfectly and be his own teacher.

By this method the first drawings are made with a special, soft crayon upon a sheet of clear window glass, a piece of white cardboard being held behind the glass so that the drawing can be seen upon the glass as readily as it would be upon paper. The test is applied by removing this cardboard back and holding up the glass to see if the lines of the drawing will appear to cover the edges of the object studied. If they do this when the spirit-level shows that the glass is held level, then the angles and proportions of the sketch are correct. If the lines will not cover those of the object, however, these mistakes are seen, and the student thus instructs himself.

These methods do not render it easy for even the talented to become artists, but they do enable object drawing to be studied profitably by all Grammar School pupils who are able to do the other required work.

These methods will enable any one to gain in his own home the power to draw and paint truthfully from nature. When this is understood and proven, High School graduates will be expected to have this ability. In time this will mean a general appreciation of art that has never before been known. This will lead to the recognition of exceptional ability and the support of artists who have it. It will not increase the number of poor artists, for when all are able to master drawing as readily as writing or arithmetic, those of average ability will not study art as a profession. They often do this now because average power to draw is falsely considered proof of genius. One who can write only a descriptive letter has as much chance of becoming a famous poet as a student of art has of becoming a famous

PREFACE vii

artist when his only power is that of drawing truthfully from nature.

These methods will not enable the student or the teacher to avoid the hard work that must always underlie real success. Copying and dictation and most other subjects give results to exhibit more quickly than honest use of the Glass. Teachers who try to give visual power, will find that the Glass does away with the strain involved in correcting drawings, and enables the class to make many more drawings and correct them all with very little assistance.

Drawing teachers are now the most overworked of all teachers, and the failure of drawing in the elementary schools is not due to lack of effort or ability on their part. I have no word of criticism for the drawing teacher, who far too often is an artist by nature and training, and yet not free to teach as he wishes, because of influences that confine and restrict art instruction in public and elementary schools to a greater degree than other subjects.

The possibilities of this method can not be known until students who have used the Glass all through the Grammar School graduate from the High School. Such students should do work far better than any produced thus far through only a partial use of the Glass.

This book is to supplement my earlier books and not to take the place of any of them. It is not a complete Text-book for art students' use, but it aims to give a quick and sure method whereby the student may gain by self-instruction true vision for outline, values, and color.

The chapter on Perspective is not a full presentation of the subject, for the scientific method is not explained at all, and only the few problems most necessary to the artist are presented in the new way developed from the use of the Glass in the study -of object drawing from memory and from observation.

The chapter on Graded Lessons does not pretend to be a complete course for the public schools, but only a practical method for teaching object drawing in the grades. Many excellent books supply all needed aid in design and other subjects that should be included in a public school course.

The purposes of this book are : First, to make it possible for any person to gain power to draw and paint from nature by home study; Second, to present a method for use in the public schools that shall make object drawing as generally possible as other studies; Third, to make an effort to harmonize the conflicting views of those teachers who consider drawing from the opposing standpoints of art and science and who thus make it

Vlll DRAWING AND PAINTING SELF-TAUGHT

so artistic that there is no foundation of science to support free expression, or on the other hand make it so literal that there is little chance for free and artistic expression. I shall in this last effort try to show that science and art must be inseparable in the practice of the artist and should have equal attention in the schools.

I have not reproduced my students' drawings on account of their excellence but because they are the unaided efforts of beginners. When they are compared with the crude sketches made on entering the gain is apparent though defects are still evident. These mistakes were pointed out but corrections were not permitted, since this would have caused reliance on the instructor more than on self-criticism.

It is impossible fully to show the actual gain since the process will not reproduce the quick sketches that are most conclusive. Figures 4 and 5 show best the value of the method, for these prize drawings were made by students whose average age was twenty-one and who had spent about three years in the Massachusetts Normal Art School, where only a small part of the time is given to figure drawing. These prizes were competed for by students of the best art schools in the country in which it is the custom to spend six or eight years in study of the figure alone.

When the Faculty of the Art Museum School secured my appointment as instructor of still life it gave me my first opportunity to teach drawing, values, and color at the same time, for in the Normal Art School, I was restricted to outline. A few months' experience with the serious students of the Museum makes me confident that as much time can be saved in the study of painting by the use of the Painting Glass as is saved in the study of drawing by the use of the Drawing Glass. As the Painting Glass was not used by the students in the Normal Art School the only illustration that is positive proof of its influence is the Frontispiece.

This book is very different from my first ones, and it is different from what I would have written five years ago. In the next five years I may wish to change this book, but I offer it as the result of my experience up to this time, in the hope that it may aid others to make truthful nature study the foundation for art expression.

The reproductions of pencil drawings by Miss Anna M. Hathaway combine truth, beauty, and good technique in a way helpful for students to study. Miss Hathaway was first a student and has been for many years a teacher in the Normal Art School. Her drawings show what it is possible for a talented student to do as a result of the broad training recommended.

PREFACE

IX

I am indebted to my sister, Miss Evelyn F. Cross, for the demonstration that has enabled grade teachers, who have never made a special study of drawing, to use the Glass with such success that the object drawing has been a pleasure to themselves and their pupils when formerly all had disliked this subject.

I am also indebted to Mr. Arthur B. Webber, Superintendent of schools at Stoneham, Mass.,— who permitted the experiments with the Glass at a time when object drawing has not been the fashion in Grammar Grades. Without this assistance the first experiments, that failed, would have been the last.

I am indebted to the Suffolk Engraving Co. for unusual interest and care in the reproduction of difficult subjects.

From photograph of the pitcher and background from which the Frontispiece

was drawn. The apple was not the same, but the light and shade and color

values are nearly true in this photograph, and prove how much the student

gained in the first lesson.

Chapter I. VISION TRUER THAN TESTS

1. Ruskin said, "The excellence of an artist as such depends wholly on refinement of perception and that it is this mainly which a master or a school can teach. . . . One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will find I have not imposed upon him; namely learning the laws of perspective. For perspective is not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. . . . No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy part of their work rules which can not help them in difficult ones."*

2. Artists and Educators Differ. — Though the above statement harmonizes with the practice of the masters, past and present, it has not influenced the educators who are apt to pity the artist for his ignorance, and assure students how much better the artists would paint if they would understand theory.

The artist's influence is confined to his students. The educator's influence extends far more widely through art schools, normal schools, universities, summer schools, public schools and especially through text-books and publishing firms. Thus elementary art study is far too often based on rules, theories, tests and measures instead of on vision, and it places special emphasis on technique instead of on true representation.

3. Trust Your Eyes. — I was taught to trust measurements more than my eyes, and therefore I explained in my first books the best way to measure. Several years after these books were written my pupils proved to me that they could see more exactly than they could measure even when they followed my directions for measuring, and then I began to forbid the pencil measurements that prevented reliance upon more truthful eyes.

Any teacher may prove that the average pupil can see closer than he can measure by placing his measured drawing far enough away to have it look the same size as the object and then asking

* Preface to "Elements of Drawing."

him to forget his measures and decide by eye alone whether the drawing is stouter or slimmer than the object. Even before the i

Fig. 1.— From sketch by Rembrandt (1607-1669).

eyes have been trained to draw without measures, 90% of the replies will improve incorrect drawings.

4. To see truly you must look quickly from the object to the drawing, and transfer the vision back and forth from one to the other as rapidly as possible, trying to forget that one image is from the drawing and the other from the object. This quick comparison will suddenly enable you to see appearances on the plane of the drawing, and thus realize your mistakes, and the folly of depending upon measures that can never equal your eyes.

5. Tests applied before you draw or to aid results on paper are harmful if relied on more than vision, for the proper use of tests is to train you to see mistakes after your eyes have done their best without the tests. The beginner who must measure in order to continue drawing is as foolish to spend weeks or

VISION TRUER THAN TESTS 3

months on one drawing as the pianist would be who tried to master Beethoven without spending any time on finger exercises.

Fig. 2. — From oil monochrome.

6. Use the Glass properly and it will show you mistakes more surely in your first lesson than could the best artist. Therefore, in order to improve, there is no need for you to finish your first sketches. Never try to finish any drawing more difficult than an outline from a copy until you have made so many hundred sketches from nature that you begin to see truly.

7. Draw Bulk Instead of Outlines. — The secret of success as draftsman, sculptor, or painter lies in thinking of and representing from the start the diameter or bulk of an object and each of its parts. As long as you look at and draw lines, or edges, you will fail to represent the bulk correctly. You will never draw well till you stop thinking of lines and edges and continually ask yourself as you draw if your sketch is fatter or slimmer than the model.

8. Fig. 1 reproduced from a sketch by Rembrandt shows how the masters begin to express mass and action by the fewest possible lines. You should study such sketches often until you can think of and work for mass, and are not afraid of getting an extra line. Study of this sketch will bring out horses and men where at first no form is evident.

9. Drawing Should Look as Large as the Model. — The drawing problem is much simplified by placing the drawing in such a position and at such a distance from the eye that it may appear the same size as the object and on the same level. A life size drawing should be placed at the right or left of the object and the same distance away from the eye and the drawing made by memory of observations repeated as often as desired from the chosen position. A smaller drawing should be placed enough nearer the eye to appear full size from the chosen position. To sit or stand and draw from any position upon an easel that you can reach without walking up to it, involves making a small drawing unless the drawing is to look much larger than the model while you work upon it. Unless the drawing looks the same size as the subject it is much harder to see its mistakes. Therefore art school students are often almost forced to measure because they can not choose their positions and the size of the drawing so as to use their eyes. This is one reason why they progress so slowly that only a few of the most talented ones can depend upon their eyes when they finish their art school courses.

10. To draw the size the object appears simplifies the comparison of the drawing with the model for it reduces this comparison to one plane (that of the picture) by making it possible for you to forget that the object is solid and behind the drawing and think of it as if it were a second drawing on the same plane as your own drawing. In thus comparing, however, you should think first of bulk and diameter and never of the details in the contour until you are sure you have the weight and action correct.

11. Limit the Time on One Drawing. — Time spent on drawings that are not corrected is wasted, and so by usual methods the class must finish every sketch in order that the teacher may criticise each drawing. The Glass enables every student to criticise sketches made in even a minute or two, therefore it is wise to limit the time that may be spent on one drawing. First-year students should seldom spend more than one day on one drawi

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< i ing, and this only at the end of the year. Second-year students will be wise not to spend more than two days on one drawing. The more advanced the student the longer the time that may be well spent on one drawing; most advanced art school students may spend a week or two on one drawing or painting.

Fig. 2 is from an art school drawing made in 1882 by a student nineteen years old who had been in the School one year when the work was completed. The drawing is a monochrome in oil-color and several weeks were spent upon it. The time would have been more wisely spent in many quick sketches with possibly one carefully finished study representing a small part of the cast.

12. Think the Tests.— After a few months of faithful study upon the Glass, your eyes will become so true that when you apply the tests to a sketch on paper, they will show no errors. Then you will begin to omit the tests because you have learned to apply them visually from the very start of your sketch, and more exactly than is possible when you must depend on the spirit-level and thread.

13. This true vision will not insure success as an artist, or the speedy realization of your full power, for this is impossible to youth. No artist who is honest will cease to improve as long as he retains vigor of mind and body, and the chief object of this book is to aid the student to a true vision and vital expression of appearances in less time than is needed by usual methods.

14. Do Not Trace. — The Glass may be used to trace results to paper, but if in earnest you will not do this, or hasten to produce anything to exhibit. If you do not understand that the correct drawing is one which will appear to cover the object behind the Glass, it will do no harm to make a few tracings on the Glass in order to make perspective clear, but you should not transfer these tracings to paper, or make any attempt to draw pictures on paper, until you see well enough to do the work without aid from the Glass or the teacher.

15. The Artist Uses Tests. — When your student-days are over you may use a pencil for a few measurements, or you may use a finder with equal squares to measure proportions. You may even use a photograph if you understand that it is as false in values as it is in drawing and useful as a record of facts not to be copied literally. But you will, if you are wise, never be the slave of any method or science, for the artist has always been in advance of the scientist and always will be, since science deals with the material facts, and the artist, in the person of the inventor and discoverer, has always been busy in overturning accepted theories and replacing them with truer ones.

VISION TRUER THAN TESTS 7

16. The Artist is Inspired. — Art and invention are due to the intelligence that refuses to accept the orthodox, or any authority that can be disproved. The artist has known the truth before the scientist, because he trusts his own inspiration more than the theories of the Schools. The artist builds a steamer to cross the Atlantic to bring back a book written by a scientist to prove that no boat can be built to carry coal enough to steam across the ocean. The artist discovers the X-ray which scraps all text-books on science; and he builds an aeroplane to show the absurdity of the text-books that state the impossibility of building a flying machine heavier than the air.

17. Text-Books False. — Text-books to this date have been records of the ever changing imperfect theories of their periods, and the future may prove many present theories as false as those we have outgrown. Do not believe the inventions are all made and nature's laws all stated, for the future will record more of progress than the past, and honest students will gain the reward for hard work for ages to come.

When the educator will admit the inspiration of the artist, inventor, and poet, it may be possible for him to modify the inartistic methods that now produce results whose "Superficial pretence actually tended to degrade the taste and to blunt rather than sharpen the observation of the pupils." See Section 266.

18. Practical knowledge can not be gained except from hard work that combines theory and practice, therefore no change of educational methods, or of social conditions or of laws, will ever in fact make men free and equal as students or producers.

Some time in the future the artist, the scientist, and the educator will have more equal influence in our schools. Then ignorance, hatred, bigotry, superstition and selfishness will gradually be outgrown and a real civilization begin which will value intellect more and wealth less, and will therefore offer equal opportunity for education to all who are willing and able to pay the price in work and study.

Prize Drawing, Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Fig. 4. — First Prize of $200 in 1919 was awarded John H. Crossman, who entered the Normal Art School in September, 1915, at age of 18. In May, 1918, he enlisted in U. S. Coast Artillery. His first year of study included the use of the Drawing Glass. This competition was open to all Art Schools in the country.

Prize Drawing, Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Fig. 5. — This drawing won Third Prize of $100 in 1921. It is by Beatrice Dwan, who entered the Normal Art School in 1918, at the age of 17.

First Prize of $200 was awarded to Ruth Deal in 1920. She entered the Normal Art School in 1917, at age of 17. Her drawing was so injured it can not be reproduced. Miss Deal and Miss Dwan used the Drawing Glass in their first year.

Chapter II. DRAWING SELF-TAUGHT

19. A Perspective Drawing. — An artist tries to create an impression of nature's appearances. Usually he works upon a flat surface. A perspective drawing is one upon a flat surface, which will create in the eye an image exactly like that produced by nature. In other words, if a sheet of glass is set up between the eye and the object, and lines drawn upon it to exactly cover or hide those of the model, when the eye is at one fixed point, the model may.be taken away and the drawing on the Glass will still cause in the eye the same linear image that the object produced. Leonardo da Vinci explained the method of making a perspective drawing by tracing it on a sheet of glass, and since this is the simplest method, it has continued in use to this day.

20. Perspective Distorts. — The science of perspective has been understood for hundreds of years, and is as exact as any other branch of geometry. It enables one to draw on paper the exact lines which would be traced on a sheet of glass set up in a given position with reference to the eye, and to an object whose size and relation to the eye is known. Such a drawing will create in the eye an image exactly like that caused by the object it represents, as long as the drawing is viewed from the fixed point from which the object is supposed to be seen. But if it is looked at from any other distance or direction, the drawing will not look like the object, and may often be as much distorted as Fig. 6 which was photographed from nine perfect spheres.

21. The Photograph is a Perspective. — The common photograph is a perspective, since it is the intersection of a plane by lines that converge from the object toward one point. The distortion of Fig. 6 which causes only one of the nine spheres to be represented by a circle, illustrates the difference between the photograph or any plane perspective and what the eye really sees.

Only the small part of a photograph, or any perspective on a plane, that is exactly opposite the eye, is exactly like what the eye sees. This is fully illustrated in Chapter VII of "Free-hand Drawing" by the author, and this chapter shows why dependence upon any method of measuring departs from the vision and the feeling of the artist, by producing the perspective distortion inevitable when any plane cuts the visual rays to the outer parts of a picture obliquely.

Perspective distortions are not the only reasons for avoiding scientific perspective and mechanical measurements, for those who depend upon them do not train the vision, and never obtain eyes that are trustworthy ; besides this, the measurements and tests applied are often so inaccurate as to do more harm than good.

22. Substitute Vision Training for Picture Making. — Glass has been so long used for tracing and mechanical aid to results on paper that those who hear of a new method of drawing on glass are likely to conclude that it is another mechanical system for the artist to oppose. Therefore it is hoped that those who read this book at all, will read it long enough to discover that it does not recommend glass for tracing, or as an aid to results on paper, but for free-hand drawings made without measures to train the eyes to see so closely that the use of the Glass and all other tests finally become unnecessary.

This result is accomplished by using the Glass as a drawing tablet in place of paper. The drawing is made upon it with a specially designed crayon, all measurements and tests being forbidden, also all tracing, the student being required to make and change the drawing by eye alone, until it seems perfect. Then, and then only the student may apply the first test given, by holding the drawing up between the eye and the object to see if the lines and proportions of the sketch will perfectly cover those of the object. In this way children as young as seven years are able to see their mistakes and realize that the Glass is not a mechanical device to aid in making drawings on paper but that it gives a scientific test of the accuracy of one's vision. It is the most artistic of all methods, in absolutely forbidding all finished drawings on paper until such time as they can be made without the aid of the Glass or any other test.

23. The Drawing Glass. — This Glass consists of a sheet of clear window glass set in a frame of wood and so held by screws that it may be quickly replaced if broken. A white card slides in grooves behind the Glass so that the drawing on the Glass may be seen as readily as if made on paper. The drawing is made with the "Cross" crayon and erased with a piece of dry cotton flannel or outing cloth.