Chapter V: Letter I: On First Practice (3)

93. And touching this question of direction of lines as indicating that of surface, observe these few points:

If lines are to be distinctly shown, it is better that, so far as they _can_ indicate anything by their direction, they should explain rather than oppose the general character of the object. Thus, in the piece of wood-cut from Titian, Fig. 10, the lines are serviceable by expressing, not only the shade of the trunk, but partly also its roundness, and the flow of its grain. And Albert Dürer, whose work was chiefly engraving, sets himself always thus to make his lines as _valuable_ as possible; telling much by them, both of shade and direction of surface: and if you were always to be limited to engraving on copper (and did not want to express effects of mist or darkness, as well as delicate forms), Albert Dürer's way of work would be the best example for you. But, inasmuch as the perfect way of drawing is by shade without lines, and the great painters always conceive their subject as complete, even when they are sketching it most rapidly, you will find that, when they are not limited in means, they do not much trust to direction of line, but will often scratch in the shade of a rounded surface with nearly straight lines, that is to say, with the easiest and quickest lines possible to themselves. When the hand is free, the easiest line for it to draw is one inclining from the left upwards to the right, or vice versâ, from the right downwards to the left; and when done very quickly, the line is hooked a little at the end by the effort at return to the next. Hence, you will always find the pencil, chalk, or pen sketch of a _very_ great master full of these kind of lines; and even if he draws carefully, you will find him using simple straight lines from left to right, when an inferior master would have used curved ones. Fig. 11 is a fair facsimile of part of a sketch of Raphael's, which exhibits these characters very distinctly. Even the careful drawings of Leonardo da Vinci are shaded most commonly with straight lines; and you may always assume it as a point increasing the probability of a drawing being by a great master if you find rounded surfaces, such as those of cheeks or lips, shaded with straight lines.

94. But you will also now understand how easy it must be for dishonest dealers to forge or imitate scrawled sketches like Fig. 11, and pass them for the work of great masters; and how the power of determining the genuineness of a drawing depends entirely on your knowing the facts of the objects drawn, and perceiving whether the hasty handling is _all_ conducive to the expression of those truths. In a great man's work, at its fastest, no line is thrown away, and it is not by the rapidity, but the _economy_ of the execution that you know him to be great. Now to judge of this economy, you must know exactly what he meant to do, otherwise you cannot of course discern how far he has done it; that is, you must know the beauty and nature of the thing he was drawing. All judgment of art thus finally founds itself on knowledge of Nature.

95. But farther observe, that this scrawled, or economic, or impetuous execution is never affectedly impetuous. If a great man is not in a hurry, he never pretends to be; if he has no eagerness in his heart, he puts none into his hand; if he thinks his effect would be better got with _two_ lines, he never, to show his dexterity, tries to do it with one. Be assured, therefore (and this is a matter of great importance), that you will never produce a great drawing by imitating the execution of a great master. Acquire his knowledge and share his feelings, and the easy execution will fall from your hand as it did from his: but if you merely scrawl because he scrawled, or blot because he blotted, you will not only never advance in power, but every able draughtsman, and every judge whose opinion is worth having, will know you for a cheat, and despise you accordingly.

96. Again, observe respecting the use of outline:

All merely outlined drawings are bad, for the simple reason, that an artist of any power can always do more, and tell more, by quitting his outlines occasionally, and scratching in a few lines for shade, than he can by restricting himself to outline only. Hence the fact of his so restricting himself, whatever may be the occasion, shows him to be a bad draughtsman, and not to know how to apply his power economically. This hard law, however, bears only on drawings meant to remain in the state in which you see them; not on those which were meant to be proceeded with, or for some mechanical use. It is sometimes necessary to draw pure outlines, as an incipient arrangement of a composition, to be filled up afterwards with color, or to be pricked through and used as patterns or tracings; but if, with no such ultimate object, making the drawing wholly for its own sake, and meaning it to remain in the state he leaves it, an artist restricts himself to outline, he is a bad draughtsman, and his work is bad. There is no exception to this law. A good artist habitually sees masses, not edges, and can in every case make his drawing more expressive (with any given quantity of work) by rapid shade than by contours; so that all good work whatever is more or less touched with shade, and more or less interrupted as outline.

97. Hence, the published works of Retzsch, and all the English imitations of them, and all outline engravings from pictures, are bad work, and only serve to corrupt the public taste. And of such outlines, the worst are those which are darkened in some part of their course by way of expressing the dark side, as Flaxman's from Dante, and such others; because an outline can only be true so long as it accurately represents the form of the given object with _one_ of its edges. Thus, the outline _a_ and the outline _b_, Fig. 12, are both _true_ outlines of a ball; because, however thick the line may be, whether we take the interior or exterior edge of it, that edge of it always draws a true circle. But _c_ is a false outline of a ball, because either the inner or outer edge of the black line must be an untrue circle, else the line could not be thicker in one place than another. Hence all "force," as it is called, is gained by falsification of the contours; so that no artist whose eye is true and fine could endure to look at it. It does indeed often happen that a painter, sketching rapidly, and trying again and again for some line which he cannot quite strike, blackens or loads the first line by setting others beside and across it; and then a careless observer supposes it has been thickened on purpose: or, sometimes also, at a place where shade is afterwards to inclose the form, the painter will strike a broad dash of this shade beside his outline at once, looking as if he meant to thicken the outline; whereas this broad line is only the first installment of the future shadow, and the outline is really drawn with its inner edge.[21] And thus, far from good draughtsmen darkening the lines which turn away from the light, the _tendency_ with them is rather to darken them towards the light, for it is there in general that shade will ultimately inclose them. The best example of this treatment that I know is Raphael's sketch, in the Louvre, of the head of the angel pursuing Heliodorus, the one that shows part of the left eye; where the dark strong lines which terminate the nose and forehead towards the light are opposed to tender and light ones behind the ear, and in other places towards the shade. You will see in Fig. 11 the same principle variously exemplified; the principal dark lines, in the head and drapery of the arms, being on the side turned to the light.

98. All these refinements and ultimate principles, however, do not affect your drawing for the present. You must try to make your outlines as _equal_ as possible; and employ pure outline only for the two following purposes: either (1.) to steady your hand, as in Exercise II., for if you cannot draw the line itself, you will never be able to terminate your shadow in the precise shape required, when the line is absent; or (2.) to give you shorthand memoranda of forms, when you are pressed for time. Thus the forms of distant trees in groups are defined, for the most part, by the light edge of the rounded mass of the nearer one being shown against the darker part of the rounded mass of a more distant one; and to draw this properly, nearly as much work is required to round each tree as to round the stone in Fig. 5. Of course you cannot often get time to do this; but if you mark the terminal line of each tree as is done by Dürer in Fig. 13, you will get a most useful memorandum of their arrangement, and a very interesting drawing. Only observe in doing this, you must not, because the procedure is a quick one, hurry that procedure itself. You will find, on copying that bit of Dürer, that every one of his lines is firm, deliberate, and accurately descriptive as far as it goes. It means a bush of such a size and such a shape, definitely observed and set down; it contains a true "signalement" of every nut-tree, and apple-tree, and higher bit of hedge, all round that village. If you have not time to draw thus carefully, do not draw at all--you are merely wasting your work and spoiling your taste. When you have had four or five years' practice you may be able to make useful memoranda at a rapid rate, but not yet; except sometimes of light and shade, in a way of which I will tell you presently. And this use of outline, note farther, is wholly confined to objects which have edges or limits. You can outline a tree or a stone, when it rises against another tree or stone; but you cannot outline folds in drapery, or waves in water; if these are to be expressed at all, it must be by some sort of shade, and therefore the rule that no good drawing can consist throughout of pure outline remains absolute. You see, in that wood-cut of Dürer's, his reason for even limiting himself so much to outline as he has, in those distant woods and plains, is that he may leave them in bright light, to be thrown out still more by the dark sky and the dark village spire: and the scene becomes real and sunny only by the addition of these shades.

99. Understanding, then, thus much of the use of outline, we will go back to our question about tree-drawing left unanswered at page 48.

We were, you remember, in pursuit of mystery among the leaves. Now, it is quite easy to obtain mystery and disorder, to any extent; but the difficulty is to keep organization in the midst of mystery. And you will never succeed in doing this unless you lean always to the definite side, and allow yourself rarely to become quite vague, at least through all your early practice. So, after your single groups of leaves, your first step must be to conditions like Figs. 14 and 15, which are careful facsimiles of two portions of a beautiful wood-cut of Dürer's, the "Flight into Egypt." Copy these carefully,--never mind how little at a time, but thoroughly; then trace the Dürer, and apply it to your drawing, and do not be content till the one fits the other, else your eye is not true enough to carry you safely through meshes of real leaves. And in the course of doing this, you will find that not a line nor dot of Dürer's can be displaced without harm; that all add to the effect, and either express something, or illumine something, or relieve something. If, afterwards, you copy any of the pieces of modern tree drawing, of which so many rich examples are given constantly in our cheap illustrated periodicals (any of the Christmas numbers of last year's _Illustrated News_ or others are full of them), you will see that, though good and forcible general effect is produced, the lines are thrown in by thousands without special intention, and might just as well go one way as another, so only that there be enough of them to produce all together a well-shaped effect of intricacy: and you will find that a little careless scratching about with your pen will bring you very near the same result without an effort; but that no scratching of pen, nor any fortunate chance, nor anything but downright skill and thought, will imitate so much as one leaf of Dürer's. Yet there is considerable intricacy and glittering confusion in the interstices of those vine leaves of his, as well as of the grass.

100. When you have got familiarized to his firm manner, you may draw from Nature as much as you like in the same way; and when you are tired of the intense care required for this, you may fall into a little more easy massing of the leaves, as in Fig. 10 (p. 55). This is facsimilëd from an engraving after Titian, but an engraving not quite first-rate in manner, the leaves being a little too formal; still, it is a good enough model for your times of rest; and when you cannot carry the thing even so far as this, you may sketch the forms of the masses, as in Fig. 16,[22] taking care always to have thorough command over your hand; that is, not to let the mass take a free shape because your hand ran glibly over the paper, but because in Nature it has actually a free and noble shape, and you have faithfully followed the same.

101. And now that we have come to questions of noble shape, as well as true shape, and that we are going to draw from Nature at our pleasure, other considerations enter into the business, which are by no means confined to first practice, but extend to all practice; these (as this letter is long enough, I should think, to satisfy even the most exacting of correspondents) I will arrange in a second letter; praying you only to excuse the tiresomeness of this first one--tiresomeness inseparable from directions touching the beginning of any art,--and to believe me, even though I am trying to set you to dull and hard work,

Very faithfully yours,

J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] (_N.B._--This note is only for the satisfaction of incredulous
or curious readers. You may miss it if you are in a hurry, or are
willing to take the statement in the text on trust.)

The perception of solid Form is entirely a matter of experience. We
see nothing but flat colors; and it is only by a series of
experiments that we find out that a stain of black or gray indicates
the dark side of a solid substance, or that a faint hue indicates
that the object in which it appears is far away. The whole technical
power of painting depends on our recovery of what may be called the
_innocence of the eye_; that is to say, of a sort of childish
perception of these flat stains of color, merely as such, without
consciousness of what they signify,--as a blind man would see them
if suddenly gifted with sight.

For instance: when grass is lighted strongly by the sun in certain
directions, it is turned from green into a peculiar and somewhat
dusty-looking yellow. If we had been born blind, and were suddenly
endowed with sight on a piece of grass thus lighted in some parts by
the sun, it would appear to us that part of the grass was green, and
part a dusty yellow (very nearly of the color of primroses); and, if
there were primroses near, we should think that the sunlighted grass
was another mass of plants of the same sulphur-yellow color. We
should try to gather some of them, and then find that the color went
away from the grass when we stood between it and the sun, but not
from the primroses; and by a series of experiments we should find
out that the sun was really the cause of the color in the one,--not
in the other. We go through such processes of experiment
unconsciously in childhood; and having once come to conclusions
touching the signification of certain colors, we always suppose that
we _see_ what we only know, and have hardly any consciousness of the
real aspect of the signs we have learned to interpret. Very few
people have any idea that sunlighted grass is yellow.

Now, a highly accomplished artist has always reduced himself as
nearly as possible to this condition of infantine sight. He sees the
colors of nature exactly as they are, and therefore perceives at
once in the sunlighted grass the precise relation between the two
colors that form its shade and light. To him it does not seem shade
and light, but bluish green barred with gold.

Strive, therefore, first of all, to convince yourself of this great
fact about sight. This, in your hand, which you know by experience
and touch to be a book, is to your eye nothing but a patch of white,
variously gradated and spotted; this other thing near you, which by
experience you know to be a table, is to your eye only a patch of
brown, variously darkened and veined; and so on: and the whole art
of Painting consists merely in perceiving the shape and depth of
these patches of color, and putting patches of the same size, depth,
and shape on canvas. The only obstacle to the success of painting
is, that many of the real colors are brighter and paler than it is
possible to put on canvas: we must put darker ones to represent
them.

[2] Stale crumb of bread is better, if you are making a delicate
drawing, than india-rubber, for it disturbs the surface of the paper
less: but it crumbles about the room and makes a mess; and, besides,
you waste the good bread, which is wrong; and your drawing will not
for a long while be worth the crumbs. So use india-rubber very
lightly; or, if heavily, pressing it only, not passing it over the
paper, and leave what pencil marks will not come away so, without
minding them. In a finished drawing the uneffaced penciling is often
serviceable, helping the general tone, and enabling you to take out
little bright lights.

[3] What is usually so much sought after under the term "freedom" is
the character of the drawing of a great master in a hurry, whose
hand is so thoroughly disciplined, that when pressed for time he can
let it fly as it will, and it will not go far wrong. But the hand of
a great master at real _work_ is _never_ free: its swiftest dash is
under perfect government. Paul Veronese or Tintoret could pause
within a hair's breadth of any appointed mark, in their fastest
touches; and follow, within a hair's breadth, the previously
intended curve. You must never, therefore, aim at freedom. It is not
required of your drawing that it should be free, but that it should
be right; in time you will be able to do right easily, and then your
work will be free in the best sense; but there is no merit in doing
wrong easily.

These remarks, however, do not apply to the lines used in shading,
which, it will be remembered, are to be made as quickly as possible.
The reason of this is, that the quicker a line is drawn, the lighter
it is at the ends, and therefore the more easily joined with other
lines, and concealed by them; the object in perfect shading being to
conceal the lines as much as possible.

And observe, in this exercise, the object is more to get firmness of
hand than accuracy of eye for outline; for there are no outlines in
Nature, and the ordinary student is sure to draw them falsely if he
draws them at all. Do not, therefore, be discouraged if you find
mistakes continue to occur in your outlines; be content at present
if you find your hand gaining command over the curves.

[4] If you can get any pieces of dead white porcelain, not glazed,
they will be useful models.

[5] Artists who glance at this book may be surprised at this
permission. My chief reason is, that I think it more necessary that
the pupil's eye should be trained to accurate perception of the
relations of curve and right lines, by having the latter absolutely
true, than that he should practice drawing straight lines. But also,
I believe, though I am not quite sure of this, that he never _ought_
to be able to draw a straight line. I do not believe a perfectly
trained hand ever can draw a line without some curvature in it, or
some variety of direction. Prout could draw a straight line, but I
do not believe Raphael could, nor Tintoret. A great draughtsman can,
as far as I have observed, draw every line _but_ a straight one.

[6] Or, if you feel able to do so, scratch them in with confused
quick touches, indicating the general shape of the cloud or mist of
twigs round the main branches; but do not take much trouble about
them.

[7] It is more difficult, at first, to get, in color, a narrow
gradation than an extended one; but the ultimate difficulty is, as
with the pen, to make the gradation go _far_.

[8] Of course, all the columns of color are to be of equal length.

[9] The degree of darkness you can reach with the given color is
always indicated by the color of the solid cake in the box.

[10] The figure _a_, Fig. 5, is very dark, but this is to give an
example of all kinds of depths of tint, without repeated figures.

[11] Nearly neutral in ordinary circumstances, but yet with quite
different tones in its neutrality, according to the colors of the
various reflected rays that compose it.

[12] If we had any business with the reasons of this, I might
perhaps be able to show you some metaphysical ones for the
enjoyment, by truly artistical minds, of the changes wrought by
light and shade and perspective in patterned surfaces; but this is
at present not to the point; and all that you need to know is that
the drawing of such things is good exercise, and moreover a kind of
exercise which Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Giorgione, and Turner,
all enjoyed, and strove to excel in.

[13] The use of acquiring this habit of execution is that you may be
able, when you begin to color, to let one hue be seen in minute
portions, gleaming between the touches of another.

[14] William Hunt, of the Old Water-color Society.

[15] At Marlborough House, [in 1857] among the four principal
examples of Turner's later water-color drawing, perhaps the most
neglected was that of fishing-boats and fish at sunset. It is one of
his most wonderful works, though unfinished. If you examine the
larger white fishing-boat sail, you will find it has a little spark
of pure white in its right-hand upper corner, about as large as a
minute pin's head, and that all the surface of the sail is gradated
to that focus. Try to copy this sail once or twice, and you will
begin to understand Turner's work. Similarly, the wing of the Cupid
in Correggio's large picture in the National Gallery is focused to
two little grains of white at the top of it. The points of light on
the white flower in the wreath round the head of the dancing
child-faun, in Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, exemplify the same
thing.

[16] I shall not henceforward number the exercises recommended; as
they are distinguished only by increasing difficulty of subject, not
by difference of method.

[17] If you understand the principle of the stereoscope you will
know why; if not, it does not matter; trust me for the truth of the
statement, as I cannot explain the principle without diagrams and
much loss of time. See, however, Note 1, in Appendix I.

[18] The plates marked with a star are peculiarly desirable. See
note at the end of Appendix I. The letters mean as follows:--

_a_ stands for architecture, including distant grouping of towns,
cottages, etc.
_c_ clouds, including mist and aërial effects.
_f_ foliage.
_g_ ground, including low hills, when not rocky.
_l_ effects of light.
_m_ mountains, or bold rocky ground.
_p_ power of general arrangement and effect.
_q_ quiet water.
_r_ running or rough water; or rivers, even if calm, when their
line of flow is beautifully marked.

_From the England Series._

_a c f r._ Arundel. _a f p._ Lancaster.
_a f l._ Ashby de la Zouche. _c l m r._ Lancaster Sands.*
_a l q r._ Barnard Castle.* _a g f._ Launceston.*
_f m r._ Bolton Abbey. _c f l r._ Leicester Abbey.
_f g r._ Buckfastleigh.* _f r._ Ludlow.
_a l p._ Caernarvon. _a f l._ Margate.
_c l q._ Castle Upnor. _a l q._ Orford.
_a f l._ Colchester. _c p._ Plymouth.
_l q._ Cowes. _f._ Powis Castle.
_c f p._ Dartmouth Cove.* _l m q._ Prudhoe Castle.
_c l q._ Flint Castle.* _f l m r._ Chain Bridge over
_a f g l._ Knaresborough.* Tees.*
_m r._ High Force of Tees.* _m q._ Ulleswater.
_a f q._ Trematon. _f m._ Valle Crucis.

_From the Keepsake._

_m p q._ Arona. _p._ St. Germain en Laye.
_l m._ Drachenfels.* _l p q._ Florence.
_f l._ Marly.* _l m._ Ballyburgh Ness.*

_From the Bible Series._

_f m._ Mount Lebanon. _a c g._ Joppa.
_m._ Rock of Moses at _c l p q._ Solomon's Pools.*
Sinai. _a l._ Santa Saba.
_a l m._ Jericho. _a l._ Pool of Bethesda.

_From Scott's Works._

_p r._ Melrose.* _c m._ Glencoe.
_f r._ Dryburgh.* _c m._ Loch Coriskin.*

_a l._ Caerlaverock.

_From the Rivers of France._

_a q._ Château of Amboise, with _a p._ Rouen Cathedral.
large bridge on right. _f p._ Pont de l'Arche.
_l p r._ Rouen, looking down the _f l p._ View on the Seine,
river, poplars on right.* with avenue.
_a l p._ Rouen, with cathedral _a c p._ Bridge of Meulan.
and rainbow, avenue _c g p r._ Caudebec.*
on left.

[19] As _well_;--not as minutely: the diamond cuts finer lines on
the steel than you can draw on paper with your pen; but you must be
able to get tones as even, and touches as firm.

[20] See, for account of these plates, the Appendix on "Works to be
studied."

[21] See Note 2 in Appendix I.

[22] This sketch is not of a tree standing on its head, though it
looks like it. You will find it explained presently.