CHAPTER I

A METHOD BY WHICH THE ROUND OBJECT CAN BE REDUCED TO THE FLAT-THE NEED OF A STUDY OF ANATOMY

LET me say at once that I thoroughly disapprove of what is understood by the " blocking in " of the whole figure or object that is commonly practised.

The followers of this method begin by putting a series of hurried lines on the paper, with the object of seizing the pose and suggesting the proportions of the model.

Nothing could be more unsound, especially in the case of the beginner. The moral influence of our first stated impressions, hurried and ill-considered as they thus must be, is so great that we never entirely free ourselves from it, and the student who begins his work without due deliberation spends most of his time at the subsequent sittings in correcting the faults of his first hurried sketch.

Practise your hand to reproduce what your eye sees without any deviation from the facts. Do not attempt any idealising in your studies, whatever you may do independently, either in form,light and shade, or colour. In proportion as you [22] deviate from your model, you court a weakening of the results.

The question of pure aesthetics is another story, which does not enter into our present programme. Now we are concerned with the learning of the elements of our craft.

I do not mean to infer that you must reproduce every hair or wrinkle, but that every factor in your work should have its counterpart in fact.

Let me tell you how I should go about, and how I really did set about, the drawing from the cast of the Rosa Bonheur anatomised horse.

I foreshortened it expressly. Foreshortening is difficult, but most of the real difficulties are removed by the system I want you to use. I placed behind the cast of the horse a flat square object, indicated by the toned passages in Plate II.

I remembered that this cast, like every other object, covers a definite space on its background from any one given point of view.

I had to settle, as you will always have to, before starting, the scale of the drawing.

I looked at the cast, my eyes almost closed, and then drew the space, under A, lying between the neck and the jaw, a little island of black, treating the shape of it as I would a freehand drawing. I had by this created my Standard of Measurement.

Proceeding upon this basis, I did not ask myself yet whether I was drawing a head or legs or body, because I knew that if I drew the patterns left by [23] the white cast on the background, in proportion with the passage already indicated, my subject would be evolved.

My eyes remained always nearly closed. I was reducing the round object to. the flat-that is to say, to the spaces occupied by its parts on the background.

I had to be careful, when I came to that particular point, to keep the raised knee in its exact relative position under the nostrils, and to imitate the bay (B) left between the nostrils, the chest, and forearm. Then as I came to it, I had to consider that the raised hoof should be latitudinally opposite the point of the knee of the standing leg, and to imitate the harbour-like form at C enclosed between these legs. And in the same way I had to fix the shape between the off hind and standing leg, in its proportion and relative position to the harbour (C). I looked up and down the cast continually to make each "point" fall into its place under or over another already indicated, and then laterally across it with a similar object.

I compared the slanting lines with the set square of the book behind, and so on, and saw by the aid of a hand-glass-which is absolutely indispensable to the draughtsman-that the proportion of my black masses, the direction of my lines, and in fact the whole drawing, tallied fairly with the cast.

FIG. 1

[24]

These are just a few of the things upon which I had to fix my attention, but at the same time, and almost unconsciously, my eye was taking in all the internal drawing. I knew that every part must fit and, by indicating the various masses contained within the outline of the horse, prove the accuracy of the whole.

FIG. 2

[25]Herein lies the true secret of draughtsmanship. When we would do serious drawing we must concentrate our attention not upon the outlines only, but upon the mass contained within these outlines.

FIG.3