The Crown of Wild Olive
is there, for practice; even the fire-irons or the pattern on the
carpet: be sure that it _is_ for practice, and not because it is a
beloved carpet, nor a friendly poker and tongs, nor because you wish to
please your friend by drawing her room.
Also, never make presents of your drawings. Of course I am addressing
you as a _beginner_--a time may come when your work will be precious to
everybody; but be resolute not to give it away till you know that it is
worth something (as soon as it is worth anything you will know that it
is so). If any one asks you for a present of a drawing, send them a
couple of cakes of colour and a piece of Bristol board: those materials
are, for the present, of more value in that form than if you had spread
the one over the other.
The main reason for this rule is, however, that its observance will
much protect you from the great danger of trying to make your drawings
pretty.
2. Never, by choice, draw anything polished; especially if complicated
in form. Avoid all brass rods and curtain ornaments, chandeliers, plate,
glass, and fine steel. A shining knob of a piece of furniture does not
matter if it comes in your way; but do not fret yourself if it will not
look right, and choose only things that do not shine.
3. Avoid all very neat things. They are exceedingly difficult to draw,
and very ugly when drawn. Choose rough, worn, and clumsy-looking things
as much as possible; for instance, you cannot have a more difficult or
profitless study than a newly-painted Thames wherry, nor a better study
than an old empty coal-barge, lying ashore at low-tide: in general,
everything that you think very ugly will be good for you to draw.
4. Avoid, as much as possible, studies in which one thing is seen
_through_ another. You will constantly find a thin tree standing before
your chosen cottage, or between you and the turn of the river; its near
branches all entangled with the distance. It is intensely difficult to
represent this; and though, when the tree _is_ there, you must not
imaginarily cut it down, but do it as well as you can, yet always look
for subjects that fall into definite masses, not into network; that is,
rather for a cottage with a dark tree _beside_ it, than for one with a
thin tree in front of it; rather for a mass of wood, soft, blue, and
rounded, than for a ragged copse, or confusion of intricate stems.
5. Avoid, as far as possible, country divided by hedges. Perhaps nothing
in the whole compass of landscape is so utterly unpicturesque and
unmanageable as the ordinary English patchwork of field and hedge, with
trees dotted over it in independent spots, gnawed straight at the cattle
line.
Still, do not be discouraged if you find you have chosen ill, and that
the subject overmasters you. It is much better that it should, than that
you should think you had entirely mastered _it_. But at first, and even
for some time, you must be prepared for very discomfortable failure;
which, nevertheless, will not be without some wholesome result.
As, however, I have told you what most definitely to avoid, I may,
perhaps, help you a little by saying what to seek. In general, all
_banks_ are beautiful things, and will reward work better than large
landscapes. If you live in a lowland country, you must look for places
where the ground is broken to the river's edges, with decayed posts, or
roots of trees; or, if by great good luck there should be such things
within your reach, for remnants of stone quays or steps, mossy
mill-dams, &c. Nearly every other mile of road in chalk country will
present beautiful bits of broken bank at its sides; better in form and
colour than high chalk cliffs. In woods, one or two trunks, with the
flowery ground below, are at once the richest and easiest kind of study:
a not very thick trunk, say nine inches or a foot in diameter, with ivy
running up it sparingly, is an easy, and always a rewarding subject.
Large nests of buildings in the middle distance are always beautiful,
when drawn carefully, provided they are not modern rows of pattern
cottages; or villas with Ionic and Doric porticos. Any old English
village, or cluster of farm-houses, drawn with all its ins and outs, and
haystacks, and palings, is sure to be lovely; much more a French one.
French landscape is generally as much superior to English as Swiss
landscape is to French; in some respects, the French is incomparable.
Such scenes as that avenue on the Seine, which I have recommended you to
buy the engraving of, admit no rivalship in their expression of graceful
rusticity and cheerful peace, and in the beauty of component lines.
In drawing villages, take great pains with the gardens; a rustic garden
is in every way beautiful. If you have time, draw all the rows of
cabbages, and hollyhocks, and broken fences, and wandering eglantines,
and bossy roses: you cannot have better practice, nor be kept by
anything in purer thoughts.
Make intimate friends of all the brooks in your neighbourhood, and study
them ripple by ripple.
Village churches in England are not often good subjects; there is a
peculiar meanness about most of them, and awkwardness of line. Old
manor-houses are often pretty. Ruins are usually, with us, too prim, and
cathedrals too orderly. I do not think there is a single cathedral in
England from which it is possible to obtain _one_ subject for an
impressive drawing. There is always some discordant civility, or jarring
vergerism about them.
If you live in a mountain or hill country, your only danger is
redundance of subject. Be resolved, in the first place, to draw a piece
of rounded rock, with its variegated lichens, quite rightly, getting its
complete roundings, and all the patterns of the lichen in true local
colour. Till you can do this, it is of no use your thinking of sketching
among hills; but when once you have done this, the forms of distant
hills will be comparatively easy.
When you have practised for a little time from such of these subjects as
may be accessible to you, you will certainly find difficulties arising
which will make you wish more than ever for a master's help: these
difficulties will vary according to the character of your own mind (one
question occurring to one person, and one to another), so that it is
impossible to anticipate them all; and it would make this too large a
book if I answered all that I _can_ anticipate; you must be content to
work on, in good hope that nature will, in her own time, interpret to
you much for herself; that farther experience on your own part will make
some difficulties disappear; and that others will be removed by the
occasional observation of such artists' work as may come in your way.
Nevertheless, I will not close this letter without a few general
remarks, such as may be useful to you after you are somewhat advanced in
power; and these remarks may, I think, be conveniently arranged under
three heads, having reference to the drawing of vegetation, water, and
skies.
And, first, of vegetation. You may think, perhaps, we have said enough
about trees already; yet if you have done as you were bid, and tried to
draw them frequently enough, and carefully enough, you will be ready by
this time to hear a little more of them. You will also recollect that we
left our question, respecting the mode of expressing intricacy of
leafage, partly unsettled in the first letter. I left it so because I
wanted you to learn the real structure of leaves, by drawing them for
yourself, before I troubled you with the most subtle considerations as
to _method_ in drawing them. And by this time, I imagine, you must have
found out two principal things, universal facts, about leaves; namely,
that they always, in the main tendencies of their lines, indicate a
beautiful divergence of growth, according to the law of radiation,
already referred to;[226] and the second, that this divergence is never
formal, but carried out with endless variety of individual line. I must
now press both these facts on your attention a little farther.
You may perhaps have been surprised that I have not yet spoken of the
works of J. D. Harding, especially if you happen to have met with the
passages referring to them in "Modern Painters," in which they are
highly praised. They are deservedly praised, for they are the only works
by a modern draughtsman which express in any wise the energy of trees,
and the laws of growth, of which we have been speaking. There are no
lithographic sketches which, for truth of general character, obtained
with little cost of time, at all rival Harding's. Calame, Robert, and
the other lithographic landscape sketchers are altogether inferior in
power, though sometimes a little deeper in meaning. But you must not
take even Harding for a model, though you may use his works for
occasional reference; and if you can afford to buy his "Lessons on
Trees,"[227] it will be serviceable to you in various ways, and will at
present help me to explain the point under consideration. And it is well
that I should illustrate this point by reference to Harding's works,
because their great influence on young students renders it desirable
that their real character should be thoroughly understood.
You will find, first, in the title-page of the "Lessons on Trees," a
pretty woodcut, in which the tree stems are drawn with great truth, and
in a very interesting arrangement of lines. Plate 1. is not quite worthy
of Mr. Harding, tending too much to make his pupil, at starting, think
everything depends on black dots; still the main lines are good, and
very characteristic of tree growth. Then, in Plate 2., we come to the
point at issue. The first examples in that plate are given to the pupil
that he may practise from them till his hand gets into the habit of
arranging lines freely in a similar manner; and they are stated by Mr.
Harding to be universal in application; "all outlines expressive of
foliage," he says, "are but modifications of them." They consist of
groups of lines, more or less resembling our Fig. 23.; and the
characters especially insisted upon are, that they "tend at their inner
ends to a common centre;" that "their ends terminate in [are enclosed
by] ovoid curves;" and that "the outer ends are most emphatic."
Now, as thus expressive of the great laws of radiation and enclosure,
the main principle of this method of execution confirms, in a very
interesting way, our conclusions respecting foliage composition. The
reason of the last rule, that the outer end of the line is to be most
emphatic, does not indeed at first appear; for the line at one end of a
natural leaf is not more emphatic than the line at the other: but
ultimately, in Harding's method, this darker part of the touch stands
more or less for the shade at the outer extremity of the leaf mass; and,
as Harding uses these touches, they express as much of tree character as
any mere habit of touch _can_ express. But, unfortunately, there is
another law of tree growth, quite as fixed as the law of radiation,
which this and all other conventional modes of execution wholly lose
sight of. This second law is, that the radiating tendency shall be
carried out only as a ruling spirit in reconcilement with perpetual
individual caprice on the part of the separate leaves. So that the
moment a touch is monotonous, it must be also false, the liberty of the
leaf individually being just as essential a truth, as its unity of
growth with its companions in the radiating group.
It does not matter how small or apparently symmetrical the cluster may
be, nor how large or vague. You can hardly have a more formal one than
_b_ in Fig. 9. p. 276., nor a less formal one than this shoot of Spanish