The Crown of Wild Olive
pencil, and do not rub out so hard[200] as to spoil the surface of your
paper; never mind how _dirty_ the paper gets, but do not roughen it;
and let the false outlines alone where they do not really interfere with
the true one. It is a good thing to accustom yourself to hew and shape
your drawing out of a dirty piece of paper. When you have got it as
right as you can, take a quill pen, not very fine at the point; rest
your hand on a book about an inch and a half thick, so as to hold the
pen long; and go over your pencil outline with ink, raising your pen
point as seldom as possible, and never leaning more heavily on one part
of the line than on another. In most outline drawings of the present
day, parts of the curves are thickened to give an effect of shade; all
such outlines are bad, but they will serve well enough for your
exercises, provided you do not imitate this character: it is better,
however, if you can, to choose a book of pure outlines. It does not in
the least matter whether your pen outline be thin or thick; but it
matters greatly that it should be _equal_, not heavier in one place than
in another. The power to be obtained is that of drawing an even line
slowly and in any direction; all _dashing_ lines, or approximations to
penmanship, are bad. The pen should, as it were, walk slowly over the
ground, and you should be able at any moment to stop it, or to turn it
in any other direction, like a well-managed horse.
As soon as you can copy every curve _slowly_ and accurately, you have
made satisfactory progress; but you will find the difficulty is in the
_slowness_. It is easy to draw what appears to be a good line with a
sweep of the hand, or with what is called freedom;[201] the real
difficulty and masterliness is in never letting the hand _be_ free, but
keeping it under entire control at every part of the line.
EXERCISE III.
Meantime, you are always to be going on with your shaded squares, and
chiefly with these, the outline exercises being taken up only for rest.
As soon as you find you have some command of the pen as a shading
instrument, and can lay a pale or dark tint as you choose, try to
produce gradated spaces like Fig. 2., the dark tint passing gradually
into the lighter ones. Nearly _all_ expression of form, in drawing,
depends on your power of gradating delicately; and the gradation is
always most skilful which passes from one tint into another _very
little_ paler. Draw, therefore, two parallel lines for limits to your
work, as in Fig. 2., and try to gradate the shade evenly from white to
black, passing over the greatest possible distance, yet so that every
part of the band may have visible change in it. The perception of
gradation is very deficient in all beginners (not to say, in many
artists), and you will probably, for some time, think your gradation
skilful enough when it is quite patchy and imperfect. By getting a piece
of grey shaded riband, and comparing it with your drawing, you may
arrive, in early stages of your work, at a wholesome dissatisfaction
with it. Widen your band little by little as you get more skilful, so as
to give the gradation more lateral space, and accustom yourself at the
same time to look for gradated spaces in Nature. The sky is the largest
and the most beautiful; watch it at twilight, after the sun is down, and
try to consider each pane of glass in the window you look through as a
piece of paper coloured blue, or grey, or purple, as it happens to be,
and observe how quietly and continuously the gradation extends over the
space in the window, of one or two feet square. Observe the shades on
the outside and inside of a common white cup or bowl, which make it look
round and hollow;[202] and then on folds of white drapery; and thus
gradually you will be led to observe the more subtle transitions of the
light as it increases or declines on flat surfaces. At last, when your
eye gets keen and true, you will see gradation on everything in Nature.
But it will not be in your power yet awhile to draw from any objects in
which the gradations are varied and complicated; nor will it be a bad
omen for your future progress, and for the use that art is to be made of
by you, if the first thing at which you aim should be a little bit of
sky. So take any narrow space of evening sky, that you can usually see,
between the boughs of a tree, or between two chimneys, or through the
corner of a pane in the window you like best to sit at, and try to
gradate a little space of white paper as evenly as that is gradated--as
_tenderly_ you cannot gradate it without colour, no, nor with colour
either; but you may do it as evenly; or, if you get impatient with your
spots and lines of ink, when you look at the beauty of the sky, the
sense you will have gained of that beauty is something to be thankful
for. But you ought not to be impatient with your pen and ink; for all
great painters, however delicate their perception of colour, are fond of
the peculiar effect of light which may be got in a pen-and-ink sketch,
and in a woodcut, by the gleaming of the white paper between the black
lines; and if you cannot gradate well with pure black lines, you will
never gradate well with pale ones. By looking at any common woodcuts, in
the cheap publications of the day, you may see how gradation is given to
the sky by leaving the lines farther and farther apart; but you must
make your lines as _fine_ as you can, as well as far apart, towards the
light; and do not try to make them long or straight, but let them cross
irregularly in any direction easy to your hand, depending on nothing but
their gradation for your effect. On this point of direction of lines,
however, I shall have to tell you more presently; in the meantime, do
not trouble yourself about it.
EXERCISE IV.
As soon as you find you can gradate tolerably with the pen, take an H.
or HH. pencil, using its point to produce shade, from the darkest
possible to the palest, in exactly the same manner as the pen,
lightening, however, now with India-rubber instead of the penknife. You
will find that all _pale_ tints of shade are thus easily producible with
great precision and tenderness, but that you cannot get the same dark
power as with the pen and ink, and that the surface of the shade is apt
to become glossy and metallic, or dirty-looking, or sandy. Persevere,
however, in trying to bring it to evenness with the fine point, removing
any single speck or line that may be too black, with the _point_ of the
knife: you must not scratch the whole with the knife as you do the ink.
If you find the texture very speckled-looking, lighten it all over with
India-rubber, and recover it again with sharp, and excessively fine
touches of the pencil point, bringing the parts that are too pale to
perfect evenness with the darker spots.
You cannot use the point too delicately or cunningly in doing this; work
with it as if you were drawing the down on a butterfly's wing.
At this stage of your progress, if not before, you may be assured that
some clever friend will come in, and hold up his hands in mocking
amazement, and ask you who could set you to that "niggling;" and if you
persevere in it, you will have to sustain considerable persecution from
your artistical acquaintances generally, who will tell you that all good
drawing depends on "boldness." But never mind them. You do not hear them
tell a child, beginning music, to lay its little hand with a crash among
the keys, in imitation of the great masters; yet they might, as
reasonably as they may tell you to be bold in the present state of your
knowledge. Bold, in the sense of being undaunted, yes; but bold in the
sense of being careless, confident, or exhibitory,--no,--no, and a
thousand times no; for, even if you were not a beginner, it would be bad
advice that made you bold. Mischief may easily be done quickly, but good
and beautiful work is generally done slowly; you will find no boldness
in the way a flower or a bird's wing is painted; and if Nature is not
bold at _her_ work, do you think you ought to be at _yours_? So never
mind what people say, but work with your pencil point very patiently;
and if you can trust me in anything, trust me when I tell you, that
though there are all kinds and ways of art,--large work for large
places, small work for narrow places, slow work for people who can wait,
and quick work for people who cannot,--there is one quality, and, I
think, only one, in which all great and good art agrees;--it is all
_delicate_ art. Coarse art is always bad art. You cannot understand this
at present, because you do not know yet how much tender thought, and
subtle care, the great painters put into touches that at first look
coarse; but, believe me, it is true, and you will find it is so in due
time.
You will be perhaps also troubled, in these first essays at pencil
drawing, by noticing that more delicate gradations are got in an instant
by a chance touch of the India-rubber, than by an hour's labour with the
point; and you may wonder why I tell you to produce tints so painfully,
which might, it appears, be obtained with ease. But there are two
reasons: the first, that when you come to draw forms, you must be able
to gradate with absolute precision, in whatever place and direction you
wish; not in any wise vaguely, as the India-rubber does it; and,
secondly, that all natural shadows are more or less mingled with gleams
of light. In the darkness of ground there is the light of the little
pebbles or dust; in the darkness of foliage, the glitter of the leaves;
in the darkness of flesh, transparency; in that of a stone, granulation:
in every case there is some mingling of light, which cannot be
represented by the leaden tone which you get by rubbing, or by an
instrument known to artists as the "stump." When you can manage the
point properly, you will indeed be able to do much also with this
instrument, or with your fingers; but then you will have to retouch the
flat tints afterwards, so as to put life and light into them, and that
can only be done with the point. Labour on, therefore, courageously,
with that only.
EXERCISE V.
When you can manage to tint and gradate tenderly with the pencil point,
get a good large alphabet, and try to _tint_ the letters into shape with
the pencil point. Do not outline them first, but measure their height
and extreme breadth with the compasses, as _a b_, _a c_, Fig. 3., and
then scratch in their shapes gradually; the letter A, enclosed within
the lines, being in what Turner would have called a "state of
forwardness."
Then, when you are satisfied with the shape of the letter, draw pen and
ink lines firmly round the tint, as at _d_, and remove any touches
outside the limit, first with the India-rubber, and then with the
penknife, so that all may look clear and right. If you rub out any of
the pencil inside the outline of the letter, retouch it, closing it up
to the inked line. The straight lines of the outline are all to be
_ruled_,[203] but the curved lines are to be drawn by the eye and hand;
and you will soon find what good practice there is in getting the curved
letters, such as Bs, Cs, &c., to stand quite straight, and come into
accurate form.
All these exercises are very irksome, and they are not to be persisted
in alone; neither is it necessary to acquire perfect power in any of
them. An entire master of the pencil or brush ought, indeed, to be able
to draw any form at once, as Giotto his circle; but such skill as this
is only to be expected of the consummate master, having pencil in hand
all his life, and all day long, hence the force of Giotto's proof of his
skill; and it is quite possible to draw very beautifully, without