The Crown of Wild Olive
expression of complicated details, as leaves, masonry, textures of
ground, &c., while the overlaid tint enables you to express the most
tender distances of sky, and forms of playing light, mist or cloud. Most
of the best drawings by the old masters are executed on this principle,
the touches of the pen being useful also to give a look of transparency
to shadows, which could not otherwise be attained but by great finish
of tinting; and if you have access to any ordinarily good public
gallery, or can make friends of any print-sellers who have folios of old
drawings, or facsimiles of them, you will not be at a loss to find some
example of this unity of pen with tinting. Multitudes of photographs
also are now taken from the best drawings by the old masters, and I hope
that our Mechanics' Institutes, and other societies organized with a
view to public instruction, will not fail to possess themselves of
examples of these, and to make them accessible to students of drawing in
the vicinity; a single print from Turner's Liber, to show the unison of
tint with pen etching, and the "St. Catherine," lately photographed by
Thurston Thompson, from Raphael's drawing in the Louvre, to show the
unity of the soft tinting of the stump with chalk, would be all that is
necessary, and would, I believe, be in many cases more serviceable than
a larger collection, and certainly than a whole gallery of second-rate
prints. Two such examples are peculiarly desirable, because all other
modes of drawing, with pen separately, or chalk separately, or colour
separately, may be seen by the poorest student in any cheap illustrated
book, or in shop windows. But this unity of tinting with line he cannot
generally see but by some especial enquiry, and in some out of the way
places he could not find a single example of it. Supposing that this
should be so in your own case, and that you cannot meet with any example
of this kind, try to make the matter out alone, thus:
Take a small and simple photograph; allow yourself half an hour to
express its subjects with the pen only, using some permanent liquid
colour instead of ink, outlining its buildings or trees firmly, and
laying in the deeper shadows, as you have been accustomed to do in your
bolder pen drawings; then, when this etching is dry, take your sepia or
grey, and tint it over, getting now the finer gradations of the
photograph; and finally, taking out the higher lights with penknife or
blotting-paper. You will soon find what can be done in this way; and by
a series of experiments you may ascertain for yourself how far the pen
may be made serviceable to reinforce shadows, mark characters of
texture, outline unintelligible masses, and so on. The more time you
have, the more delicate you may make the pen drawing, blending it with
the tint; the less you have, the more distinct you must keep the two.
Practice in this way from one photograph, allowing yourself sometimes
only a quarter of an hour for the whole thing, sometimes an hour,
sometimes two or three hours; in each case drawing the whole subject in
full depth of light and shade, but with such degree of finish in the
parts as is possible in the given time. And this exercise, observe, you
will do well to repeat frequently whether you can get prints and
drawings as well as photographs, or not.
And now at last, when you can copy a piece of Liber Studiorum, or its
photographic substitute, faithfully, you have the complete means in your
power of working from nature on all subjects that interest you, which
you should do in four different ways.
First. When you have full time, and your subject is one that will stay
quiet for you, make perfect light and shade studies, or as nearly
perfect as you can, with grey or brown colour of any kind, reinforced
and defined with the pen.
Secondly. When your time is short, or the subject is so rich in detail
that you feel you cannot complete it intelligibly in light and shade,
make a hasty study of the effect, and give the rest of the time to a
Dureresque expression of the details. If the subject seems to you
interesting, and there are points about it which you cannot understand,
try to get five spare minutes to go close up to it, and make a nearer
memorandum; not that you are ever to bring the details of this nearer
sketch into the farther one, but that you may thus perfect your
experience of the aspect of things, and know that such and such a look
of a tower or cottage at five hundred yards off means _that_ sort of
tower or cottage near; while, also, this nearer sketch will be useful to
prevent any future misinterpretation of your own work. If you have time,
however far your light and shade study in the distance may have been
carried, it is always well, for these reasons, to make also your
Dureresque and your near memoranda; for if your light and shade drawing
be good, much of the interesting detail must be lost in it, or
disguised.
Your hasty study of effect may be made most easily and quickly with a
soft pencil, dashed over when done with one tolerably deep tone of grey,
which will fix the pencil. While this fixing colour is wet, take out the
higher lights with the dry brush; and, when it is quite dry, scratch out
the highest lights with the penknife. Five minutes, carefully applied,
will do much by these means. Of course the paper is to be white. I do
not like studies on grey paper so well; for you can get more gradation
by the taking off your wet tint, and laying it on cunningly a little
darker here and there, than you can with body-colour white, unless you
are consummately skilful. There is no objection to your making your
Dureresque memoranda on grey or yellow paper, and touching or relieving
them with white; only, do not depend much on your white touches, nor
make the sketch for their sake.
Thirdly. When you have neither time for careful study nor for Dureresque
detail, sketch the outline with pencil, then dash in the shadows with
the brush boldly, trying to do as much as you possibly can at once, and
to get a habit of expedition and decision; laying more colour again and
again into the tints as they dry, using every expedient which your
practice has suggested to you of carrying out your chiaroscuro in the
manageable and moist material, taking the colour off here with the dry
brush, scratching out lights in it there with the wooden handle of the
brush, rubbing it in with your fingers, drying it off with your sponge,
&c. Then, when the colour is in, take your pen and mark the outline
characters vigorously, in the manner of the Liber Studiorum. This kind
of study is very convenient for carrying away pieces of effect which
depend not so much on refinement as on complexity, strange shapes of
involved shadows, sudden effects of sky, &c.; and it is most useful as a
safeguard against any too servile or slow habits which the minute
copying may induce in you; for although the endeavour to obtain velocity
merely for velocity's sake, and dash for display's sake, is as baneful
as it is despicable; there _are_ a velocity and a dash which not only
are compatible with perfect drawing, but obtain certain results which
cannot be had otherwise. And it is perfectly safe for you to study
occasionally for speed and decision, while your continual course of
practice is such as to ensure your retaining an accurate judgment and a
tender touch. Speed, under such circumstances, is rather fatiguing than
tempting; and you will find yourself always beguiled rather into
elaboration than negligence.
Fourthly. You will find it of great use, whatever kind of landscape
scenery you are passing through, to get into the habit of making
memoranda of the shapes of shadows. You will find that many objects of
no essential interest in themselves, and neither deserving a finished
study, nor a Dureresque one, may yet become of singular value in
consequence of the fantastic shapes of their shadows; for it happens
often, in distant effect, that the shadow is by much a more important
element than the substance. Thus, in the Alpine bridge, Fig. 21., seen
within a few yards of it, as in the figure, the arrangement of timbers
to which the shadows are owing is perceptible; but at half a mile's
distance, in bright sunlight, the timbers would not be seen; and a good
painter's expression of the bridge would be merely the large spot, and
the crossed bars, of pure grey; wholly without indication of their
cause, as in Fig. 22. _a_; and if we saw it at still greater distances,
it would appear, as in Fig. 22. _b_ and _c_, diminishing at last to a
strange, unintelligible, spider-like spot of grey on the light
hill-side. A perfectly great painter, throughout his distances,
continually reduces his objects to these shadow abstracts; and the
singular, and to many persons unaccountable, effect of the confused
touches in Turner's distances, is owing chiefly to this thorough
accuracy and intense meaning of the shadow abstracts.
Studies of this kind are easily made when you are in haste, with an F.
or HB. pencil: it requires some hardness of the point to ensure your
drawing delicately enough when the forms of the shadows are very subtle;
they are sure to be so somewhere, and are generally so everywhere. The
pencil is indeed a very precious instrument after you are master of the
pen and brush, for the pencil, cunningly used, is both, and will draw a
line with the precision of the one and the gradation of the other;
nevertheless, it is so unsatisfactory to see the sharp touches, on which
the best of the detail depends, getting gradually deadened by time, or
to find the places where force was wanted look shiny, and like a
fire-grate, that I should recommend rather the steady use of the pen, or
brush, and colour, whenever time admits of it; keeping only a small
memorandum-book in the breast-pocket, with its well-cut, sheathed
pencil, ready for notes on passing opportunities: but never being
without this.
Thus much, then, respecting the _manner_ in which you are at first to
draw from nature. But it may perhaps be serviceable to you, if I also
note one or two points respecting your _choice_ of subjects for study,
and the best special methods of treating some of them; for one of by no
means the least difficulties which you have at first to encounter is a
peculiar instinct, common, as far as I have noticed, to all beginners,
to fix on exactly the most unmanageable feature in the given scene.
There are many things in every landscape which can be drawn, if at all,
only by the most accomplished artists; and I have noticed that it is
nearly always these which a beginner will dash at; or, if not these, it
will be something which, though pleasing to him in itself, is unfit for
a picture, and in which, when he has drawn it, he will have little
pleasure. As some slight protection against this evil genius of
beginners, the following general warnings may be useful:
1. Do not draw things that you love, on account of their associations;
or at least do not draw them because you love them; but merely when you
cannot get anything else to draw. If you try to draw places that you
love, you are sure to be always entangled amongst neat brick walls, iron
railings, gravel walks, greenhouses, and quickset hedges; besides that
you will be continually led into some endeavour to make your drawing
pretty, or complete, which will be fatal to your progress. You need
never hope to get on, if you are the least anxious that the drawing you
are actually at work upon should look nice when it is done. All you have
to care about is to make it _right_, and to learn as much in doing it as
possible. So then, though when you are sitting in your friend's parlour,
or in your own, and have nothing else to do, you may draw any thing that