The Crown of Wild Olive
than even the light and shade, and they are always interesting as the
means by which Nature carries light into her shadows, and shade into her
lights, an art of which we shall have more to say hereafter, in speaking
of composition. Fig. 5. is a rough sketch of a fossil sea-urchin, in
which the projections of the shell are of black flint, coming through a
chalky surface. These projections form dark spots in the light; and
their sides, rising out of the shadow, form smaller whitish spots in the
dark. You may take such scattered lights as these out with the penknife,
provided you are just as careful to place them rightly, as if you got
them by a more laborious process.
When you have once got the feeling of the way in which gradation
expresses roundness and projection, you may try your strength on
anything natural or artificial that happens to take your fancy, provided
it be not too complicated in form. I have asked you to draw a stone
first, because any irregularities and failures in your shading will be
less offensive to you, as being partly characteristic of the rough stone
surface, than they would be in a more delicate subject; and you may as
well go on drawing rounded stones of different shapes for a little
while, till you find you can really shade delicately. You may then take
up folds of thick white drapery, a napkin or towel thrown carelessly on
the table is as good as anything, and try to express them in the same
way; only now you will find that your shades must be wrought with
perfect unity and tenderness, or you will lose the flow of the folds.
Always remember that a little bit perfected is worth more than many
scrawls; whenever you feel yourself inclined to scrawl, give up work
resolutely, and do not go back to it till next day. Of course your towel
or napkin must be put on something that may be locked up, so that its
folds shall not be disturbed till you have finished. If you find that
the folds will not look right, get a photograph of a piece of drapery
(there are plenty now to be bought, taken from the sculpture of the
cathedrals of Rheims, Amiens, and Chartres, which will at once educate
your hand and your taste), and copy some piece of that; you will then
ascertain what it is that is wanting in your studies from nature,
whether more gradation, or greater watchfulness of the disposition of
the folds. Probably for some time you will find yourself failing
painfully in both, for drapery is very difficult to follow in its
sweeps; but do not lose courage, for the greater the difficulty, the
greater the gain in the effort. If your eye is more just in measurement
of form than delicate in perception of tint, a pattern on the folded
surface will help you. Try whether it does or not; and if the patterned
drapery confuses you, keep for a time to the simple white one; but if it
helps you, continue to choose patterned stuffs (tartans, and simple
chequered designs are better at first than flowered ones), and even
though it should confuse you, begin pretty soon to use a pattern
occasionally, copying all the distortions and perspective modifications
of it among the folds with scrupulous care.
Neither must you suppose yourself condescending in doing this. The
greatest masters are always fond of drawing patterns; and the greater
they are, the more pains they take to do it truly.[210] Nor can there be
better practice at any time, as introductory to the nobler complication
of natural detail. For when you can draw the spots which follow the
folds of a printed stuff, you will have some chance of following the
spots which fall into the folds of the skin of a leopard as he leaps;
but if you cannot draw the manufacture, assuredly you will never be able
to draw the creature. So the cloudings on a piece of wood, carefully
drawn, will be the best introduction to the drawing of the clouds of the
sky, or the waves of the sea; and the dead leaf-patterns on a damask
drapery, well rendered, will enable you to disentangle masterfully the
living leaf-patterns of a thorn thicket, or a violet bank.
Observe, however, in drawing any stuffs, or bindings of books, or other
finely textured substances, do not trouble yourself, as yet, much about
the woolliness or gauziness of the thing; but get it right in shade and
fold, and true in pattern. We shall see, in the course of
after-practice, how the penned lines may be made indicative of texture;
but at present attend only to the light, and shade, and pattern. You
will be puzzled at first by _lustrous_ surfaces, but a little attention
will show you that the expression of these depends merely on the right
drawing of their light, and shade, and reflections. Put a small black
japanned tray on the table in front of some books; and you will see it
reflects the objects beyond it as in a little black rippled pond; its
own colour mingling always with that of the reflected objects. Draw
these reflections of the books properly, making them dark and distorted,
as you will see that they are, and you will find that this gives the
lustre to your tray. It is not well, however, to draw polished objects
in general practice; only you should do one or two in order to
understand the aspect of any lustrous portion of other things, such as
you cannot avoid; the gold, for instance, on the edges of books, or the
shining of silk and damask, in which lies a great part of the expression
of their folds. Observe, also, that there are very few things which are
totally without lustre: you will frequently find a light which puzzles
you, on some apparently dull surface, to be the dim image of another
object.
And now, as soon as you can conscientiously assure me that with the
point of the pen or pencil you can lay on any form and shade you like, I
give you leave to use the brush with one colour,--sepia, or blue-black,
or mixed cobalt and blue-black, or neutral tint; and this will much
facilitate your study, and refresh you. But, preliminarily, you must do
one or two more exercises in tinting.
EXERCISE IX.
Prepare your colour as before directed. Take a brush full of it, and
strike it on the paper in any irregular shape; as the brush gets dry
sweep the surface of the paper with it as if you were dusting the paper
very lightly; every such sweep of the brush will leave a number of more
or less minute interstices in the colour. The lighter and faster every
dash the better. Then leave the whole to dry, and as soon as it is dry,
with little colour in your brush, so that you can bring it to a fine
point, fill up all the little interstices one by one, so as to make the
whole as even as you can, and fill in the larger gaps with more colour,
always trying to let the edges of the first and of the newly applied
colour exactly meet, and not lap over each other. When your new colour
dries, you will find it in places a little paler than the first. Retouch
it, therefore, trying to get the whole to look quite one piece. A very
small bit of colour thus filled up with your very best care, and brought
to look as if it had been quite even from the first, will give you
better practice and more skill than a great deal filled in carelessly;
so do it with your best patience, not leaving the most minute spot of
white; and do not fill in the large pieces first and then go to the
small, but quietly and steadily cover in the whole up to a marked limit;
then advance a little farther, and so on; thus always seeing distinctly
what is done and what undone.
EXERCISE X.
Lay a coat of the blue, prepared as usual, over a whole square of paper.
Let it dry. Then another coat over four-fifths of the square, or
thereabouts, leaving the edge rather irregular than straight, and let it
dry. Then another coat over three-fifths; another over two-fifths; and
the last over one-fifth; so that the square may present the appearance
of gradual increase in darkness in five bands, each darker than the one
beyond it. Then, with the brush rather dry (as in the former exercise,
when filling up the interstices), try, with small touches, like those
used in the pen etching, only a little broader, to add shade delicately
beyond each edge, so as to lead the darker tints into the paler ones
imperceptibly. By touching the paper very lightly, and putting a
multitude of little touches, crossing and recrossing in every direction,
you will gradually be able to work up to the darker tints, outside of
each, so as quite to efface their edges, and unite them tenderly with
the next tint. The whole square, when done, should look evenly shaded
from dark to pale, with no bars; only a crossing texture of touches,
something like chopped straw, over the whole.[211]
Next, take your rounded pebble; arrange it in any light and shade you
like; outline it very loosely with the pencil. Put on a wash of colour,
prepared _very_ pale, quite flat over all of it, except the highest
light, leaving the edge of your colour quite sharp. Then another wash,
extending only over the darker parts, leaving the edge of that sharp
also, as in tinting the square. Then another wash over the still darker
parts, and another over the darkest, leaving each edge to dry sharp.
Then, with the small touches, efface the edges, reinforce the darks, and
work the whole delicately together, as you would with the pen, till you
have got it to the likeness of the true light and shade. You will find
that the tint underneath is a great help, and that you can now get
effects much more subtle and complete than with the pen merely.
The use of leaving the edges always sharp is that you may not trouble or
vex the colour, but let it lie as it falls suddenly on the paper; colour
looks much more lovely when it has been laid on with a dash of the
brush, and left to dry in its own way, than when it has been dragged
about and disturbed; so that it is always better to let the edges and
forms be a _little_ wrong, even if one cannot correct them afterwards,
than to lose this fresh quality of the tint. Very great masters in
water-colour can lay on the true forms at once with a dash, and _bad_
masters in water-colour lay on grossly false forms with a dash, and
leave them false; for people in general, not knowing false from true,
are as much pleased with the appearance of power in the irregular blot
as with the presence of power in the determined one; but _we_, in our
beginnings, must do as much as we can with the broad dash, and then
correct with the point, till we are quite right. We must take care to be
right, at whatever cost of pains; and then gradually we shall find we
can be right with freedom.
I have hitherto limited you to colour mixed with two or three
teaspoonfuls of water; but in finishing your light and shade from the
stone, you may, as you efface the edge of the palest coat towards the
light, use the colour for the small touches with more and more water,
till it is so pale as not to be perceptible. Thus you may obtain a
_perfect_ gradation to the light. And in reinforcing the darks, when
they are very dark, you may use less and less water. If you take the
colour tolerably dark on your brush, only always liquid (not pasty), and
dash away the superfluous colour on blotting-paper, you will find that,
touching the paper very lightly with the dry brush, you can, by repeated
touches, produce a dusty kind of bloom, very valuable in giving depth to
shadow; but it requires great patience and delicacy of hand to do this
properly. You will find much of this kind of work in the grounds and
shadows of William Hunt's drawings.[212]
As you get used to the brush and colour, you will gradually find out
their ways for yourself, and get the management of them. Nothing but
practice will do this perfectly; but you will often save yourself much
discouragement by remembering what I have so often asserted,--that if