The Mind of the Artist Part 11

_Delacroix._

CXXVI

Take a style of silver or bra.s.s, or anything else provided the point is silver, sufficiently fine (sharp) and polished and good. Then to acquire command of hand in using the style, begin to draw with it from a copy as freely as you can, and so lightly that you can scarcely see what you have begun to do, deepening your strokes little by little, and going over them repeatedly to make the shadows. Where you would make it darkest go over it many times; and, on the contrary, make but few touches on the lights. And you must be guided by the light of the sun, and the light of your eye, and your hand; and without these three things you can do nothing properly. Contrive always when you draw that the light is softened, and that the sun strikes on your left hand; and in this manner you should begin to practise drawing only a short time every day, that you may not become vexed or weary.

_Cennino Cennini._

CXXVII

_Charcoal._ You can't draw, you paint with it.

_Pencil._ It is always touch and go whether I can manage it even now.

Sometimes knots will come in it, and I never can get them out--I mean little black specks. If I have once india-rubbered it, it doesn't make a good drawing. I look on a perfectly successful drawing as one built upon a groundwork of clear lines till it is finished. It's the same kind of thing with red chalk--it mustn't be taken out: rubbing with the finger is all right. In fact you don't succeed with any process until you find out how you may knock it about and in what way you must be careful. Slowly built-up texture in oil-painting gives you the best chance of changing without damage when it is necessary.

_Burne-Jones._

CXXVIII

The simpler your lines and forms are the stronger and more beautiful they will be. Whenever you break up forms you weaken them. It is as with everything else that is split and divided.

_Ingres._

CXXIX

The draperies with which you dress figures ought to have their folds so accommodated as to surround the parts they are intended to cover; that in the ma.s.s of light there be not any dark fold, and in the ma.s.s of shadows none receiving too great a light. They must go gently over, describing the parts; but not with lines across, cutting the members with hard notches, deeper than the part can possibly be; at the same time, it must fit the body, and not appear like an empty bundle of cloth; a fault of many painters, who, enamoured of the quant.i.ty and variety of folds, have enc.u.mbered their figures, forgetting the intention of clothes, which is to dress and surround the parts gracefully wherever they touch; and not to be filled with wind, like bladders puffed up where the parts project. I do not deny that we ought not to neglect introducing some handsome folds among these draperies, but it must be done with great judgment, and suited to the parts, where, by the actions of the limbs and position of the whole body, they gather together. Above all, be careful to vary the quality and quant.i.ty of your folds in compositions of many figures; so that, if some have large folds, produced by thick woollen cloth, others being dressed in thinner stuff, may have them narrower; some sharp and straight, others soft and undulating.

_Leonardo._

Cx.x.x

Do not spare yourself in drawing from the living model, draped as well as undraped; in fact, draw drapery continually, for remember that the beauty of your design must largely depend on the design of the drapery.

What you should aim at is to get so familiar with all this that you can at last make your design with ease and something like certainty, without drawing from models in the first draught, though you should make studies from nature afterwards.

_William Morris._

Cx.x.xI

A woman's shape is best in repose, but the fine thing about a man is that he is such a splendid machine, so you can put him in motion, and make as many k.n.o.bs and joints and muscles about him as you please.

_Burne-Jones._

Cx.x.xII

I want to draw from the nude this summer as much as I possibly can; I am sure that it is the only way to keep oneself up to the standard of draughtsmans.h.i.+p that is so absolutely necessary to any one who wishes to become a craftsman in preference to a glorified amateur.

_C. W. Furse._

Cx.x.xIII

Always when you draw make up your mind definitely as to what are the salient characteristics of the object, and express those as personally as you can, not minding whether your view is or is not shared by your relatives and friends. Now this is not _carte blanche_ to be capricious, nor does it intend to make you seek for novelty; but if you are true to your own vision, as heretofore you have been, you will always be original and personal in your work. In stating your opinion on the structural character of man, bird, or beast, always wilfully caricature; it gives you something to prune, which is ever so much more satisfactory than having constantly to fill gaps which an unincisive vision has caused, and which will invariably make work dull and mediocre and wooden.

_C. W. Furse._

Cx.x.xIV

In j.a.panese painting form and colour are represented without any attempt at relief, but in European methods relief and illusion are sought for.

_Hokusai._

Cx.x.xV

It is indeed ridiculous that most of our people are disposed to regard Western paintings as a kind of Uki-ye. As I have repeatedly remarked, a painting which is not a faithful copy of nature has neither beauty nor is worthy of the name. What I mean to say is this: be the subject what it may, a landscape, a bird, a bullock, a tree, a stone, or an insect, it should be treated in a way so lifelike that it is instinct with life and motion. Now this is beyond the possibility of any other art save that of the West. Judged from this point of view, j.a.panese and Chinese paintings look very puerile, hardly deserving the name of art. Because people have been accustomed to such daub-like productions, whenever they see a master painting of the West, they merely pa.s.s it by as a mere curiosity, or dub it a Uki-ye, a misconception which betrays sheer ignorance.

_s.h.i.+ba Kokan_ (j.a.panese, eighteenth century).

Cx.x.xVI

These accents are to painting what melody is to the harmonic base, and more than anything else they decide victory or defeat. A method is of little account at those moments when the final effect is at hand; one uses any means, even diabolical invocations, and when the need comes, when I have exhausted the resources of pigment, I use a sc.r.a.per, pumice-stone, and if nothing else serves, the handle of my brush.

_Rousseau._

Cx.x.xVII

The n.o.blest relievo in painting is that which is resultant from the treatment of the ma.s.ses, not from the vulgar swelling and rounding of the bodies; and the n.o.ble Venetian ma.s.sing is excellent in this quality.

Those parts in which there is necessity for salient quality of relief must be expressed with a certain quadrature, a certain varied grace of accent like that which the bony ridge develops in beautiful wrists and ankles, also in some of the tunic-folds that fall behind the arm of the rec.u.mbent Fate over the middle of the figure of the Newlands t.i.tian; and again in some of the happiest pa.s.sages in the graceful women of Lodovico Caracci, and in their vesture folds, _e.g._ the bosom and waist of the St. Catherine.

Doubtless there is a choice, or design were vain. There must be courage to _reject_ no less than to _gather_. A man is at liberty to neglect things that are repugnant to his disposition. He may, if he please, have nothing to do with thistle or thorn, with bramble or brier....

Nevertheless sharp and severe things are yet dear to some souls. Nor should I understand the taste that would reject the wildness of the thorn and holly, or the child-loving labyrinths of the bramble, or wholesome ranges of the downs and warrens fragrant with gorse.

No one requires of the painter that he even attempt to render the mult.i.tude and infinitude of Nature; but that he _represent_ it through the chastened elements of his proper instrument, with a performance rendered distinctive and facile by study and genial impulse.

_Edward Calvert._

Cx.x.xVIII

Modelling is parent of the art of chasing, as of the art of sculpturing.