Ashmolean The Elements of Drawing, John Ruskin’s teaching collection at Oxford

IIIINSTRUCTIONS IN USE OF RUDIMENTARY SERIES.

1. Its outline must be drawn accurately.
2. The space enclosed by the outline must be filled with colour matching the colour of the object.
3. This colour must be modified by shade, or difference in tint, so as to express solidity of form.

• Suppose you have to paint the Narcissus of the Alps, (R. 227,On the ivory label of the frame, written thus, R|2|27. In the same way R.1 is written R|1, and so on to R.99 or R|99. Also R.101 is written R1|1, and so on to R.199 or R|1|99, R.200 or R|2|0. the lowest flower). First, you must outline its six petals, its central cup, and its bulbed stalk, accurately, in the position you desire. Then you must paint the cup of the yellow which is its yellow, and the stalk of the green which is its green, and the white petals of creamy white, not milky white. Lastly, you must modify these colours so as to make the cup look hollow and the petals bent; but, whatever shade you add must never destroy the impression, which is the first a child would receive from the flower, of its being a yellow, white, and green thing, with scarcely any shade in it. And I wish you for some time to aim exclusively at getting the power of seeing every object as a coloured space. Thus, for instance, I am sitting, as I write, opposite the fireplace of the old room, which I have written much in, and in which, as it chances, after this is finished, I shall write no more. Its worn paper is pale green; the chimney-piece is of white marble; the poker is gray; the grate black; the footstool beside the fender of a deep green. A chair stands in front of it, of brown mahogany, and above that is Turner’s Lake of Geneva, mostly blue. Now these pale green, deep green, white, black, gray, brown, and blue spaces, are all just as distinct as the pattern on an inlaid Florentine table. I want you to see everything first so, and represent it so. The shading is quite a subsequent and secondary business. If you never shaded at all, but could outline perfectly, and paint things of their real colours, you would be able to convey a great deal of precious knowledge to anyone looking at your drawing; but, with false outline and colour, the finest shading is of no use.

  There is another reason, at present, for my enforcement of outline and colour practice on you. Photography, and the cheap woodcutting of the day, have introduced a morbid and exaggerated love of effects of light; and as pleasing effects of light, or appalling ones, (and these last are still more popular with dull persons,) can be easily imitated by any person who will pay a little attention to methods of execution, and need no acquaintance whatever with anything that light is given to exhibit, the desire to produce imitations of twilight, moonlight, and gaslight, has lately caused the neglect of every pure element of colour, and every noble character of form. And, therefore, though, under any circumstances, I should have arranged, as now, the order of your practice, I have taken more pains to complete for immediate service the examples of outline and flat tint, than those of chiaroscuro which are ultimately to be associated with them.

  Our first work, therefore, is to learn how to draw an outline; and this, perhaps, you fancy will be easy; at least, when you have only to draw a little thing like that Alpine Narcissus.

  It is just as difficult, nevertheless—(and you had better begin discouraged by knowing this, than fall into discouragement by discovering it,)—it is as difficult to outline one of these Narcissus petals as to outline a beautiful ship; and as difficult to outline the Narcissus cup as a Greek vase; and as difficult to outline the Narcissus stalk as a pillar of the Parthenon.

  You will have to practise for months before you can even approximately outline anyone of them.

  And this practice must be of two kinds, not only distinct, but opposite; each aiding, by correcting and counterbalancing, the other.

  One kind of practice must have for its object the making you sensitive to symmetry, and precise in mathematical measurement. The other kind of practice, and chief one, is to make you sensitive to the change and grace by which Nature makes all beauty immeasurable. Thus you must learn to draw a circle and ellipse with perfect precision with the free hand; and at the same time must learn that an orange is not to be outlined by a circle, nor an egg by an ellipse, nor any organic form whatever by any mathematical line. In drawing a face, you must be able to map the features so that one eye shall not be higher than the other; but you must not hope to draw the arch of lip or brow with compasses. And while every leaf and flower is governed by a symmetry and ordinance of growth which you must be taught instantly to discern, much more must you be taught that it obeys that ordinance with voluntary grace, and never without lovely and vital transgression.

  To begin, then; you see the Narcissus has six white leaves. Three of these, the undermost, are its calyx, and the three uppermost its corolla. These are two parts of every flower which it is well to ascertain before you begin to draw it; on which subject, please remember this much of elementary botany, and do not be provoked at my digressions; for the first principle of all I wish to enforce in my system here at Oxford is, that you shall never make a drawing, even for exercise, without some definite matter to be learned in doing so; nay, I will even go so far as to say that the drawing will never be made rightly, unless the making it is subordinate to the gaining the piece of knowledge it is to represent and keep. Observe, then, that the calyx and corolla are not two parts of the flower, but the corolla is the flower, and the calyx its packing case: in the bud the flower is folded up and packed close within the calyx, often with most ingenious pinching and wrinkling for room; (pull a poppy bud in two, and unfold the poppy, the first you can find this year among the corn), and therefore the calyx has altogether less life in it than the corolla, and is as a leathern or wooden thing in comparison: also it stops growing, or nearly so, when the corolla begins; and sometimes drops off at once, as in the poppy aforesaid, or fades wretchedly, as in the buttercup, or stays on, stupid and bewildered, long after the flower is dead, as in the rose. But the main point for you to note is that, as a calyx has at first to shut close over the flower, its leaves are nearly sure to be sharp pointed, that they may come together and fit close at top, while a corolla leaf is as characteristically flat at the end, that is to say, heart shape, with the broad end outwards, because it usually is the fourth or fifth part of a cup, cut down from the edge to the middle.

  Well, looking close at this narcissus then, you find its calyx has three leaves, and its corolla three; and these are set in two triangles; so that if either of them be a little smaller than the other, the whole flower will be triangular, not round; (as you may see in a crocus always.) And therefore you must know first how two triangles are to be set in this alternate manner.

R. 2. Figures 1 and 2. If you cannot find out how to construct these, your master will show you. Draw them very accurately with compasses, and B pencil, not too hard; faint lines with black pencil, remember, are skilful drawing; it is only a vulgar draughtsman who wants a pale pencil to make a pale line with. Then with a brush dipped in Venetian red, (which is the red of reds, and will stand for sun-warmed shadow if you like, and shall be the first colour you touch, for the love of Venice) draw the blunt red lines beside the pencil ones. It may be beside, at first, the edge of the colour touching the pencil; but when you get more skilful it must be over the pencil, with the pencil line kept in the middle.

Then, in Fig. 2, draw the horizontal lines as well as you can, each with one movement of the brush only, not repeating. Never mind how wrong they are. Be you right; do things the right way; and in time the things will come right, and the way be easy. You may just retouch a little on the curved lines, or triangle sides, if they look very ill, I have done so myself here and there, with shame; but not the lines of shading.

Now, suppose in this second figure, one triangle to be beneath, or seen through, the other: you will then have in it the limiting lines of arrangement in the great group of flowers which I wish you to call generally Drosidæ, or Dew plants, because they delight in dew of fields.

Learn their names in this order, Rushes,Amaryllids,Irids,AsphodelsLilies.

And remember this much of them:

First—All the four beautiful orders are developed from the blossom of the first and humblest. They are literally, clothed grass of the field: and that the humblest and coarsest, the fruitless grass of waste places, made to blossom. Therefore Dante gathers the rush for his girdle, from the shore of the sea beneath the Mount of Purification. And the whole tribe of lilies, are made, as it were, to keep well in mind that they were but grass blades once, by having their calices made as good as themselves, so that till you look close, you cannot tell which is which; while the great pink tribe, which are the form of clothed grass belonging to the dry ground instead of the dewy ground, are put in mind of it by having their stems jointed like canes, and their petals made just like the white jagged membranes at grass joints; only coloured pink, and wrapped up in a green calyx like an ear of corn.

Secondly—These four orders of the clothed grass have, for their representative flowers, The Amaryllids—Christ’s Lily of the Field. The Irids—the Ion of Ionia, and Fleur-de-lys of Christian Europe. The Asphodels—the Greek flower of immortality, best represented by our wood hyacinth.The Lilies—the Lily of the Annunciation.

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  So we will begin with the Rush.

  R. 1. Juncus lævis. Smooth rush.

  This is Ray’s name for it. Linnæus called it the clustered rush, because it grows in thick clusters. But its delicately fluted polish is a more notable character.

  The plate is out of the Floræ Danicæ, a beautiful series of engravings of the flowers of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, which was begun in 1761, and is still continuing. The change, during this period, in the character of the engravings, will become interesting to you in time. They are, throughout, indeed, executed with intense and admirable care, but at first, and until the end of last century, in pure love of flowers, and art, and wholesome knowledge; while since more and more every year, they have been degraded in ambitious skill, serving the pride of science.

  This plate was published in 1794. It is a line-engraving, coloured by hand; and is entirely exemplary; except that it has no letters for explanation, which I rudely add, the good old paper bearing my ink bravely.

  Suppose the portion B. fitted to A., you have a full grown rush, real size.

  C., a single cluster of the blossom.

  D., a separate blossom, not opened.

  E., a complete blossom, magnified.

  F., its stamens (yellow), seed-vessel (green), and three-branched pistil (white).

  The Danish draughtsman, for all his skill, could not draw a rush-blossom in perspective; we will try presently to do that for him. The triangular groups are a. b. c.; d. e. f.; though they look as if clustered in the order a. d. c.; f. b. e.

  From this obscure blossom, then, are developed the four great orders of the Drosidæ. I do not mean that they are developed in the Darwinian sense, but developed in conception. It is not of the least consequence to you at present, whether the Darwinian theory be true or false; nor should you at present trouble yourselves about any theory, but only be clear in your minds about the fact, that great orders of plants and living creatures are formed in subtle variations upon one appointed type, like a musician’s variations on an air, yet changing gradually towards another type, and approaching so close, where they meet, that they seem to join. I do not believe they join: but it is no matter whether they do or not; the classes themselves are, in main types, perfectly distinct.

  Of the four orders of beautiful rush blossom, I only want you to attend at present to the Amaryllids and Irids, of which you are familiar enough with the simplest representatives—snowdrop and crocus. When you want to remember the four, all together, say, Snowdrop and crocus, jacinth and lily, because the form Jacinth runs more prettily and shortly than Hyacinth.

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  Suppose you have to paint the Narcissus of the Alps, (R. 227,On the ivory label of the frame, written thus, R|2|27. In the same way R.1 is written R|1, and so on to R.99 or R|99. Also R.101 is written R1|1, and so on to R.199 or R|1|99, R.200 or R|2|0. the lowest flower). First, you must outline its six petals, its central cup, and its bulbed stalk, accurately, in the position you desire. Then you must paint the cup of the yellow which is its yellow, and the stalk of the green which is its green, and the white petals of creamy white, not milky white. Lastly, you must modify these colours so as to make the cup look hollow and the petals bent; but, whatever shade you add must never destroy the impression, which is the first a child would receive from the flower, of its being a yellow, white, and green thing, with scarcely any shade in it. And I wish you for some time to aim exclusively at getting the power of seeing every object as a coloured space. Thus, for instance, I am sitting, as I write, opposite the fireplace of the old room, which I have written much in, and in which, as it chances, after this is finished, I shall write no more. Its worn paper is pale green; the chimney-piece is of white marble; the poker is gray; the grate black; the footstool beside the fender of a deep green. A chair stands in front of it, of brown mahogany, and above that is Turner’s Lake of Geneva, mostly blue. Now these pale green, deep green, white, black, gray, brown, and blue spaces, are all just as distinct as the pattern on an inlaid Florentine table. I want you to see everything first so, and represent it so. The shading is quite a subsequent and secondary business. If you never shaded at all, but could outline perfectly, and paint things of their real colours, you would be able to convey a great deal of precious knowledge to anyone looking at your drawing; but, with false outline and colour, the finest shading is of no use.

  There is another reason, at present, for my enforcement of outline and colour practice on you. Photography, and the cheap woodcutting of the day, have introduced a morbid and exaggerated love of effects of light; and as pleasing effects of light, or appalling ones, (and these last are still more popular with dull persons,) can be easily imitated by any person who will pay a little attention to methods of execution, and need no acquaintance whatever with anything that light is given to exhibit, the desire to produce imitations of twilight, moonlight, and gaslight, has lately caused the neglect of every pure element of colour, and every noble character of form. And, therefore, though, under any circumstances, I should have arranged, as now, the order of your practice, I have taken more pains to complete for immediate service the examples of outline and flat tint, than those of chiaroscuro which are ultimately to be associated with them.

  Our first work, therefore, is to learn how to draw an outline; and this, perhaps, you fancy will be easy; at least, when you have only to draw a little thing like that Alpine Narcissus.

  It is just as difficult, nevertheless—(and you had better begin discouraged by knowing this, than fall into discouragement by discovering it,)—it is as difficult to outline one of these Narcissus petals as to outline a beautiful ship; and as difficult to outline the Narcissus cup as a Greek vase; and as difficult to outline the Narcissus stalk as a pillar of the Parthenon.

  You will have to practise for months before you can even approximately outline anyone of them.

  And this practice must be of two kinds, not only distinct, but opposite; each aiding, by correcting and counterbalancing, the other.

  One kind of practice must have for its object the making you sensitive to symmetry, and precise in mathematical measurement. The other kind of practice, and chief one, is to make you sensitive to the change and grace by which Nature makes all beauty immeasurable. Thus you must learn to draw a circle and ellipse with perfect precision with the free hand; and at the same time must learn that an orange is not to be outlined by a circle, nor an egg by an ellipse, nor any organic form whatever by any mathematical line. In drawing a face, you must be able to map the features so that one eye shall not be higher than the other; but you must not hope to draw the arch of lip or brow with compasses. And while every leaf and flower is governed by a symmetry and ordinance of growth which you must be taught instantly to discern, much more must you be taught that it obeys that ordinance with voluntary grace, and never without lovely and vital transgression.

  To begin, then; you see the Narcissus has six white leaves. Three of these, the undermost, are its calyx, and the three uppermost its corolla. These are two parts of every flower which it is well to ascertain before you begin to draw it; on which subject, please remember this much of elementary botany, and do not be provoked at my digressions; for the first principle of all I wish to enforce in my system here at Oxford is, that you shall never make a drawing, even for exercise, without some definite matter to be learned in doing so; nay, I will even go so far as to say that the drawing will never be made rightly, unless the making it is subordinate to the gaining the piece of knowledge it is to represent and keep. Observe, then, that the calyx and corolla are not two parts of the flower, but the corolla is the flower, and the calyx its packing case: in the bud the flower is folded up and packed close within the calyx, often with most ingenious pinching and wrinkling for room; (pull a poppy bud in two, and unfold the poppy, the first you can find this year among the corn), and therefore the calyx has altogether less life in it than the corolla, and is as a leathern or wooden thing in comparison: also it stops growing, or nearly so, when the corolla begins; and sometimes drops off at once, as in the poppy aforesaid, or fades wretchedly, as in the buttercup, or stays on, stupid and bewildered, long after the flower is dead, as in the rose. But the main point for you to note is that, as a calyx has at first to shut close over the flower, its leaves are nearly sure to be sharp pointed, that they may come together and fit close at top, while a corolla leaf is as characteristically flat at the end, that is to say, heart shape, with the broad end outwards, because it usually is the fourth or fifth part of a cup, cut down from the edge to the middle.

  Well, looking close at this narcissus then, you find its calyx has three leaves, and its corolla three; and these are set in two triangles; so that if either of them be a little smaller than the other, the whole flower will be triangular, not round; (as you may see in a crocus always.) And therefore you must know first how two triangles are to be set in this alternate manner.

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  Secondly, for the group of Irids.

  R. 228. The Golden Iris; (Water-flag.)

  Here in Oxford, where it grows everywhere near us, we must take this for our own type of the Fleur-de-lys, and the rather that I believe this to be Pindar’s water-flag, the true Ion. The plate is from the Floræ Danicæ.

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• R. 229. Group of Irids. (Mrs. Loudon.)

  I give you this especially for the pale Iris Persica, No.5, which was first brought into England by Charles the First’s Henrietta , and it has many characters belonging especially to the heraldic Fleur-de-lys. But the Iris Florentina, which I have drawn as well as I can, in Edu. 8, is the true Fleur-de-lys.

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Now that we know what we are coming to, we will go back to our rushes, please, patiently. And very patiently, for it will be long before we can draw the rush-blossom itself. I want first to derive some easier form from its complex one. From Fig. 2 (R. 2), draw the spherical triangle A. B. C. over again, in its circle, as in Fig. 3, (mine is only smaller for convenience on the paper; draw yours the same size).

Then raise the verticals A. c., B. b., and draw the horizontal a. b., all with light pencil, compasses, and ruler.

Then draw over the pencil with the brush, as finely as you can, as I have drawn Fig. 3. I have left all the shakes and failures of my hand to encourage you.

Now the figure a. b. c. is exactly as wide as it is high, so that it can be enclosed in a square.

Draw Fig. 3 over again; and complete it into Fig. 4, by letting fall verticals from a. and b., and drawing the horizontal A. D. (Note.—I always letter the lowest line of a square with Albert Dürer’s initials, and if I have only a square to talk about, I letter it at the four corners, A. B. C. D. so that A. C., B. D., are the diagonals.)

Find the centre of this square by drawing the diagonals, of which portions are shown, from A. to b. and D. to a. Divide the square into four quarters, and copy the rest of the figure by hand and eye merely; drawing the Fleur-de-lys with pencil first; but the lines and dots as you best can, by guess.

Then the figure a. b. c. is a perfect central type of an English shield; and the bearings upon it are those of that accomplished gentleman and lover of Arts, and cherisher of Industry and Ingenuity, Elias Ashmole, of the Middle Temple, Esquire, which you are to blazon thus:— He beareth, quarterly, Gules and Or, a Flower-de-Luce in the first quarter, Argent. Guillim, Edition of 1660, p. 362.

You will please observe very carefully that my Fleur-de-lys is not in the middle of the quarter, nor is one side of it the same as the other. It would be only coachmakers’ heraldry, and utterly bad drawing, if it were set even, and had both sides alike. Also you see my dots are all set obliquely, so that you cannot tell when or where they will reach the side. And the vertical lines are drawn by guess of distance with one line of the brush, and never retouched. My hand is not at 53 what it was at 23, but observe that I have let it shake partly on purpose in these lines, to keep them from looking ruled.

Recollect, henceforward, clearly, that horizontal lines, as in Fig. 2, mean blue in heraldry; vertical ones, as in Fig. 4, red, and dots, gold.

Now, though the figure a. b. c. is a perfect central type of shield form; especially English, (the contour on the coins of our Henrys being even much blunter) it is un-graceful when compared with the sharper pointed shield of the Normans; and for all art-heraldry we must have a finer form.

R. 3, Fig. 5. Draw the semicircle A. c. E., divided into half at c. With centre A. and distance A. c. describe the arc c. b., and with centre E. and distance B. c., describe arc c. a. Draw all with the brush as before—mine is left in ink to save my time; as Figs. 3 and 4 are enough to show you what is to be done. But the figures are to be drawn, remember, to exercise your hand, not for illustration only. Then a. b. c. is a very beautifully proportioned form of shield, but it is inferior to a. b. c. in Fig. 4 because it is limited by entirely circular curves, while in Fig. 4 the upper part of the side of the shield is a straight line, pleasantly differing from the lower.

But even that form is a rude one, because no good designer would allow any part of such an important curve as this to pass suddenly into a straight line. We will try to change the curves in our more slender shield, gradually.

Now we may change the curve a. c. either by making it straighter at the bottom and more bent at the top, Fig. 6, or straighter at the top and more bent at the bottom, Fig. 7.

We will do so as delicately and cunningly as we can, so that for some distance there is scarcely any perceptible interval between the lines. Yet the two resulting forms, Fig. 6 and Fig. 7, are completely distinct from each other.

Now these are each of them main types of a vast group of forms of beautiful shields. I have cast an example from the north aisle of Westminster Abbey, of Fig. 6; drawn half size, my paper not being large enough, in R. 10. If next time you go to London, you look at William de Valence’s shield in the first chapel on the south side of the choir, you will see an entirely exquisite example of Fig. 7; we will study the lines by which they are limited presently; but first, observe that hitherto, we have thought of shields only as flat things: now they are never flat, but rounded, often considerably: therefore to draw them rightly we must both arch the upper edge, and slightly shade the surfaces, as in Figs. 8 and 9. And now we have to lay our first wash of colour—a grave business, respecting which, please observe the following points.

I wish you at once to learn to manage two different kinds of pigments.

One, pure water-colour, to be laid so wet that it will run.

The other, smoothly mixed body-colour, which must be spread like mortar.

Turner’s heraldic drawing, R. 14 , and his sepia sketch of trees, R. 300, are faultless examples of the first, and his Loire drawings generally of the second, as applied to purposes of the highest art.

In solid pigments applied to illumination, Mr. Laing’s drawings, Edu. I. F. and I. G. , are unsurpassable.

Now you have to learn, in both kinds of colour, to lay flat tints, and gradated tints. It is much more difficult, as manual work, to lay them flat; but if the gradation is to be right, it is more difficult mentally to watch and distribute gradation.

But the point I wish to insist on is that you must learn to gradate, and to lay an even tint, of the depth you want, in one wash, without retouching.

All final skill in painting depends upon your being able to lay the colour right at once.

These two shields are to be gradated with one wash of Indian red. Their outlines are then to be drawn as frequently over and over with the brush as you like, but the surfaces not retouched. Your master will show you, in a few minutes, once for all, how to lay a gradated tint, beginning with water, and adding colour as you go on, and in all the exercises following you will find my chief endeavour is to do them with single washes, retouching only when different colours are to be used.

For instance, the entire background of the shield from Westminster, R. 10 , is laid with one wash of lamp-black, never stopping all the way, and carrying it down the opposite sides by touching first on one and then at the other. It gets too light at the bottom, because I had not mixed colour enough to begin with; but I would not retouch. At the upper corner, indeed, I had to alter the shape of the shield, and retouch clumsily; but never mind confessing having bungled for want of skill; be only ashamed of having bungled for want of attention, or having tried to conceal want of skill by any false process

Again, the hollow of the cup, R. 61, is done with absolutely one wash of cobalt and light-red, with a little yellow tinting that came handy, adding some lamp-black in the shadow while all was wet. You may see the edge of the cup left with a pure cutting-line by the flat wash.

Again; every green leaf in the study of rose, R. 250, is done with one wash. The use of that study is entirely for practice in flat tints of this kind. I am forced to retouch the petals of the flowers, because there are different colours in them; but you may easily see that every leaf has only one edge to its colour.

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  Finally. Look at the patches of colour with which the boat is drawn in Turner’s scene on the Loire (Ref. 3), and you will see every colour is laid with one flat touch, and so done with. Try these two shields, then, with your master’s help, and then Chaucer’s, and the two others in R. 7. Sketch all the three in pencil, measuring breadth, height, and distance of shields, but drawing them by hand and eye only. I have done them quite carelessly and weakly on purpose. You can easily do nearly, or quite, as well. Then wash in the tints at once, noting only.

  Sir Francis Drake’s is diamond (sable), with stars argent. I almost always put a slight wash of grey on argent bearings, to distinguish them from white ground; then you must outline very finely pointed forms, like these stars, first with the dark colour, and spread it in the spaces round, afterwards. That is the way all Greek vases are done; you may see my first brush line about the stars, done with blacker paint on purpose. Secondly, I shall always wash Gules with rose madder, because I don’t like the glare of vermilion, unless one has real gold, and full colour to match it with. Only remember, heraldic Gules is full scarlet, not pink, and rose madder is very difficult to wash with, but I have left the stains just as they came.

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  And now we must go back to our outlines.

  I drew the sides of the shields in figures 6 and 7 by my eye only; yet I know that they obey some certain law, else they would not be beautiful; but I do not know the law, nor is it necessary that I should. We must be able to draw rightly at pleasure; and to obey by instinct laws unknown to us, else we are no draughtsmen. But we must begin by recognising that such laws exist. So we will examine definitely, the aspect of the curve which we shall have to draw by instinct most frequently, the catenary.

  Draw the semicircle A. B. C. with its diameter, at least the size of half a dinner-plate, (Fig. 10, R. 4,) and take any fine metal chain, a common steel one will do, small in the link; and adjust it over the semicircle as at a. b. c., so that you may measure off a piece of it of the same length as the semicircle: (to draw your semicircle with the edge of a large bowl, and stretch the chain all round the edge, and then take half that length, is a short rough way.) Then set your drawing-board as upright as it will stand; pin your paper on it so that the diameter A. B., may be quite level; and pin your semicircle length of chain at its ends, to the points A. and B., so that it may hang down between them. It will hang in the line A. B. D. Trace a pencil line delicately beside it, not disturbing the chain, draw over the pencil with your brush; and you have the first simple relation of the catenary to the circle.

  Next, with the length of the diameter A. B. in Fig. 10, for a radius, draw the semicircle C. D. Figure 11, R. 4, and here in margin divide the whole semicircle into six equal parts by the points E. F., &c. and then fasten one end of your semicircle of chain to the point A. and the other successively to E. F. B. G. H., and draw all the curves it falls into. These will show you the kinds of curve which a rope of given length would fall into from the yard of a vessel, sloped at different angles: of course you might have an infinite number of curves by taking different points in the circle, but these five are enough at present.

  Lastly,—From the two points A. B. in Fig. 10, hang first the semicircle-length of chain, then three-quarters round the circle of chain, and then the whole circle’s length of chain; and on each of these lengths of chain, fasten in the middle any very light pendant: two or three glass beads in a bunch will do, enough to stretch it a little, yet not to pull it nearly straight; and you will get three curves as in R. 5, which will give you a general idea of the look of the catenary under tension.

  Now, I believe that the curves by which I have limited the shields in Figs. 8 and 9, are the halves of catenaries under very slight tension, but I am not sure; all I know is, that they are good curves obeying some subtle law.

  Now, my first object in the course of exercises, which I shall request you to go through, will be to make your eye sensitive to the character of subtle curves of this kind, and to enable your hand to trace them with easy precision.

  In the engraving of the woolly rush, R. 226, you may not at first perceive that the curves are subtle at all. But the difference between this entirely well-done piece of work and a vulgar botanical drawing, depends primarily on the draughtsman’s fine sense of truth in curvature: and when you see the outline alone, R. 276, you will probably recognize, even now, the value of this quality; but it would be vain for you to attempt to follow lines of this degree of refinement at first; and the exercises through which I shall lead you up to them will not, I hope, be uninteresting. The simplest elements of curvilinear design are, of course, to be found in good writing, and in the modes of ornamentation derived from it, and you cannot possibly learn to draw good curves more quickly than by attentively copying a few pieces of illuminator’s penmanship.

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• Process A. Pure pencil or chalk on white paper.(Standard. Leonardo’s head. Ref. 12. )Copy for practice. R. 43 or R. 44.

  All students are to copy one or other of these: if the smaller hurts their eyes, they are to take the larger. The work is to be entirely with B and HB pencil, on our standard white paper. The subject is (R. 43,) the Venetian Sea Horse, natural size; (R. 44,) its tail enlarged, both from a dried specimen. The living creature is green, almost transparent; and is a kind of animated tendril of sea-grass; abides generally with his spiral tail twisted round a reed in the shallows; swinging, so, to and fro with the tide; swims, superbly, when he changes place, by quivering undulation of his transparent crest and dorsal fin. He is to be drawn that you may learn, first, how to manage an HB pencil so as to show spots, local colour, &c.; secondly, that it may be impressed on your mind that a fish, generally, is a floating head, breast, and stomach, with a tail rather awkwardly put on behind, to steer, or, as in this case, grip with.

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• R. 202. Pencil on white paper reinforced with black.Study of Halcyon.

  To be drawn with BB pencil, on standard white, and touched with common ink, nothing else.

  The object of this study is to enable you to use a BB pencil as if it were black paint; gradating with it rapidly. The use of the ink is to define essential lines which the dusty pencil is apt to lose; and to secure blacks that do not shine.

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• Process B. With pencil on tinted paper, reinforced with white.Example for practice. Study of profile of violet leaf R.278.

  This is the most convenient and rapid mode of chiaroscuro study; all shades below the tint of the paper being carefully worked with the black; and all lights higher than the tint of the paper being as carefully worked with the white: but the method is greatly liable to the abuse of laying the pigment at random on the light.

  Dürer, Mantegna, and other such perfect draughtsmen, lay the light on such studies with a pen or brush line, gradating it as the lines of engraving. This is not an advisable method for the general student, being much too laborious, and requiring consummate skill. But he is to remember that the difference between daubing and painting is in the perfect gradation and intention of his imposed light.

  This study of violet leaf is rudely and imperfectly done, but well enough for example: I wish every student to draw the profiles of every common leaf from nature in this manner.

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• Process C. With pencil on white paper washed with neutral tint.Edu. 6. D. Study of box leaves. (This must be lent during the present term to the rudimentary school.)

  The use of the neutral tint (in this study, cobalt and Venetian red) is merely to fill up the white points inevitably left in any but the most finished pencil study; to take off the offensive metallic lustre, and to reinforce the gradations finally. A perfect study in any black material that did not shine would be better; but it would take a week to finish instead of a couple of hours: and the use of the neutral wash is, besides, a good preparation for future brush work.

  Do all you can, first, with an HB pencil in moderate time, (I can do one of these leaf studies myself in a couple of hours; do not spend more than four or five in copying them), then put a thin wash of neutral tint over all except the highest lights: gradating it away to these. Let it dry perfectly, and then reinforce the shadows and define the lines, where necessary, with the same colour: but let the entire power of the drawing depend on the pencil, not the tint.

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• R. 78. Study from leaves on tomb of Eleanor of Castile.

  Do any small piece of this for exercise in finer tones.

  A little white is mixed with the neutral tint over the pencil in this drawing.

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