The Crown of Wild Olive
those pieces of shade you are to imitate as nearly as you can, by
scrawling the paper over till you get them to the right shape, with the
same gradations which they have in Nature. And this is really more
likely to be done well, if you have to fight your way through a little
confusion in the sketch, than if you have an accurately traced outline.
For instance, I was going to draw, beside _a_, another effect on the
stone; reflected light bringing its dark side out from the background:
but when I had laid on the first few touches, I thought it would be
better to stop, and let you see how I had begun it, at _b_. In which
beginning it will be observed that nothing is so determined but that I
can more or less modify, and add to or diminish the contour as I work
on, the lines which suggest the outline being blended with the others if
I do not want them; and the having to fill up the vacancies and conquer
the irregularities of such a sketch, will probably secure a higher
completion at last, than if half an hour had been spent in getting a
true outline before beginning.
In doing this, however, take care not to get the drawing too dark. In
order to ascertain what the shades of it really are, cut a round hole,
about half the size of a pea, in a piece of white paper, the colour of
that you use to draw on. Hold this bit of paper, with the hole in it,
between you and your stone; and pass the paper backwards and forwards,
so as to see the different portions of the stone (or other subject)
through the hole. You will find that, thus, the circular hole looks like
one of the patches of colour you have been accustomed to match, only
changing in depth as it lets different pieces of the stone be seen
through it. You will be able thus actually to _match_ the colour of the
stone, at any part of it, by tinting the paper beside the circular
opening. And you will find that this opening never looks quite _black_,
but that all the roundings of the stone are given by subdued greys.[208]
You will probably find, also, that some parts of the stone, or of the
paper it lies on, look luminous through the opening, so that the little
circle then tells as a light spot instead of a dark spot. When this is
so, you cannot imitate it, for you have no means of getting light
brighter than white paper: but by holding the paper more sloped towards
the light, you will find that many parts of the stone, which before
looked light through the hole, then look dark through it; and if you can
place the paper in such a position that every part of the stone looks
slightly dark, the little hole will tell always as a spot of shade, and
if your drawing is put in the same light, you can imitate or match every
gradation. You will be amazed to find, under these circumstances, how
slight the differences of tint are, by which, through infinite delicacy
of gradation, Nature can express form.
If any part of your subject will obstinately show itself as a light
through the hole, that part you need not hope to imitate. Leave it
white, you can do no more.
When you have done the best you can to get the general form, proceed to
finish, by imitating the texture and all the cracks and stains of the
stone as closely as you can; and note, in doing this, that cracks or
fissures of any kind, whether between stones in walls, or in the grain
of timber or rocks, or in any of the thousand other conditions they
present, are never expressible by single black lines, or lines of simple
shadow. A crack must always have its complete system of light and shade,
however small its scale. It is in reality a little _ravine_, with a dark
or shady side, and light or sunny side, and, usually, shadow in the
bottom. This is one of the instances in which it may be as well to
understand the reason of the appearance; it is not often so in drawing,
for the aspects of things are so subtle and confused that they cannot in
general be explained; and in the endeavour to explain some, we are sure
to lose sight of others, while the natural overestimate of the
importance of those on which the attention is fixed, causes us to
exaggerate them, so that merely _scientific_ draughtsmen caricature a
third part of Nature, and miss two-thirds. The best scholar is he whose
eye is so keen as to see at once how the thing looks, and who need not,
therefore, trouble himself with any reasons why it looks so: but few
people have this acuteness of perception; and to those who are destitute
of it, a little pointing out of rule and reason will be a help,
especially when a master is not near them. I never allow my own pupils
to ask the reason of anything, because, as I watch their work, I can
always show them how the thing is, and what appearance they are missing
in it; but when a master is not by to direct the sight, science may,
here and there, be allowed to do so in his stead.
Generally, then, every solid illumined object--for instance, the stone
you are drawing--has a light side turned towards the light, a dark side
turned away from the light, and a shadow, which is cast on something
else (as by the stone on the paper it is set upon). You may sometimes be
placed so as to see only the light side and shadow, and sometimes only
the dark side and shadow, and sometimes both, or either, without the
shadow; but in most positions solid objects will show all the three, as
the stone does here.
Hold up your hand with the edge of it towards you, as you sit now with
your side to the window, so that the flat of your hand is turned to the
window. You will see one side of your hand distinctly lighted, the other
distinctly in shade. Here are light side and dark side, with no seen
shadow; the shadow being detached, perhaps on the table, perhaps on the
other side of the room; you need not look for it at present.
Take a sheet of note-paper, and holding it edgeways, as you hold your
hand, wave it up and down past the side of your hand which is turned
from the light, the paper being, of course, farther from the window. You
will see, as it passes a strong gleam of light strike on your hand, and
light it considerably on its dark side. This light is _reflected_ light.
It is thrown back from the paper (on which it strikes first in coming
from the window) to the surface of your hand, just as a ball would be if
somebody threw it through the window at the wall and you caught it at
the rebound.
Next, instead of the note-paper, take a red book, or a piece of scarlet
cloth. You will see that the gleam of light falling on your hand, as you
wave the book is now reddened. Take a blue book, and you will find the
gleam is blue. Thus every object will cast some of its own colour back
in the light that it reflects.
Now it is not only these books or papers that reflect light to your
hand: every object in the room, on that side of it, reflects some, but
more feebly, and the colours mixing all together form a neutral[209]
light, which lets the colour of your hand itself be more distinctly seen
than that of any object which reflects light to it; but if there were no
reflected light, that side of your hand would look as black as a coal.
Objects are seen, therefore in general, partly by direct light, and
partly by light reflected from the objects around them, or from the
atmosphere and clouds. The colour of their light sides depends much on
that of the direct light, and that of the dark sides on the colours of
the objects near them. It is therefore impossible to say beforehand
what colour an object will have at any point of its surface, that colour
depending partly on its own tint, and partly on infinite combinations of
rays reflected from other things. The only certain fact about dark sides
is, that their colour will be changeful, and that a picture which gives
them merely darker shades of the colour of the light sides must
assuredly be bad.
Now, lay your hand flat on the white paper you are drawing on. You will
see one side of each finger lighted, one side dark, and the shadow of
your hand on the paper. Here, therefore, are the three divisions of
shade seen at once. And although the paper is white, and your hand of a
rosy colour somewhat darker than white, yet you will see that the shadow
all along, just under the finger which casts it, is darker than the
flesh, and is of a very deep grey. The reason of this is, that much
light is reflected from the paper to the dark side of your finger, but
very little is reflected from other things to the paper itself in that
chink under your finger.
In general, for this reason, a shadow, or, at any rate, the part of the
shadow nearest the object, is darker than the dark side of the object. I
say in general, because a thousand accidents may interfere to prevent
its being so. Take a little bit of glass, as a wine-glass, or the
ink-bottle, and play it about a little on the side of your hand farthest
from the window; you will presently find you are throwing gleams of
light all over the dark side of your hand, and in some positions of the
glass the reflection from it will annihilate the shadow altogether, and
you will see your hand dark on the white paper. Now a stupid painter
would represent, for instance, a drinking-glass beside the hand of one
of his figures, and because he had been taught by rule that "shadow was
darker than the dark side," he would never think of the reflection from
the glass, but paint a dark grey under the hand, just as if no glass
were there. But a great painter would be sure to think of the true
effect, and paint it; and then comes the stupid critic, and wonders why
the hand is so light on its dark side.
Thus it is always dangerous to assert anything as a _rule_ in matters of
art; yet it is useful for you to remember that, in a general way, a
shadow is darker than the dark side of the thing that casts it,
supposing the colours otherwise the same; that is to say, when a white
object casts a shadow on a white surface, or a dark object on a dark
surface: the rule will not hold if the colours are different, the shadow
of a black object on a white surface being, of course, not so dark,
usually, as the black thing casting it. The only way to ascertain the
ultimate truth in such matters is to _look_ for it; but, in the
meantime, you will be helped by noticing that the cracks in the stone
are little ravines, on one side of which the light strikes sharply,
while the other is in shade. This dark side usually casts a little
darker shadow at the bottom of the crack; and the general tone of the
stone surface is not so bright as the light bank of the ravine. And,
therefore, if you get the surface of the object of a uniform tint, more
or less indicative of shade, and then scratch out a white spot or streak
in it of any shape; by putting a dark touch beside this white one, you
may turn it, as you choose, into either a ridge or an incision, into
either a boss or a cavity. If you put the dark touch on the side of it
nearest the sun, or rather, nearest the place that the light comes from,
you will make it a cut or cavity; if you put it on the opposite side,
you will make it a ridge or mound: and the complete success of the
effect depends less on depth of shade than on the rightness of the
drawing; that is to say, on the evident correspondence of the form of
the shadow with the form that casts it. In drawing rocks, or wood, or
anything irregularly shaped, you will gain far more by a little patience
in following the forms carefully, though with slight touches, than by
laboured finishing of textures of surface and transparencies of shadow.
When you have got the whole well into shape, proceed to lay on the
stains and spots with great care, quite as much as you gave to the
forms. Very often, spots or bars of local colour do more to express form