DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18975#0054
16
THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING
as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or stirrups;
my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."*
11. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always
been with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise
anything like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the
unassisted student, such formalities are indispensable, and I
am not without hope that the sense of secure advancement,
and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the fol-
lowing out of even the more tedious exercises here pro-
posed, possible to the solitary learner, without weariness.
But if it should be otherwise, and he finds the first steps
painfully irksome, I can only desire him to consider whether
the acquirement of so great a power as that of pictorial
expression of thought be not worth some toil; or whether
it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those
who will give no price for it.
12. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will
find I have not imposed upon him: namely, learning the
laws of perspective. It would be worth while to learn them,
if he could do so easily; but without a masters help, and
in the way perspective is at present explained in treatises,
the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You
can draw the rounding line of a table in perspective, but
you cannot draw the sweep of a sea bay; you can fore-
shorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot foreshorten an
arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle
forms by the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones.
No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective,
and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything
by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts
of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult ones.
i F., v. 2.]
THE ELEMENTS OF DRAWING
as country lads learn to ride, without saddle or stirrups;
my main object being, at first, not to get my pupils to hold
their reins prettily, but to "sit like a jackanapes, never off."*
11. In these written instructions, therefore, it has always
been with regret that I have seen myself forced to advise
anything like monotonous or formal discipline. But, to the
unassisted student, such formalities are indispensable, and I
am not without hope that the sense of secure advancement,
and the pleasure of independent effort, may render the fol-
lowing out of even the more tedious exercises here pro-
posed, possible to the solitary learner, without weariness.
But if it should be otherwise, and he finds the first steps
painfully irksome, I can only desire him to consider whether
the acquirement of so great a power as that of pictorial
expression of thought be not worth some toil; or whether
it is likely, in the natural order of matters in this working
world, that so great a gift should be attainable by those
who will give no price for it.
12. One task, however, of some difficulty, the student will
find I have not imposed upon him: namely, learning the
laws of perspective. It would be worth while to learn them,
if he could do so easily; but without a masters help, and
in the way perspective is at present explained in treatises,
the difficulty is greater than the gain. For perspective is
not of the slightest use, except in rudimentary work. You
can draw the rounding line of a table in perspective, but
you cannot draw the sweep of a sea bay; you can fore-
shorten a log of wood by it, but you cannot foreshorten an
arm. Its laws are too gross and few to be applied to any
subtle form; therefore, as you must learn to draw the subtle
forms by the eye, certainly you may draw the simple ones.
No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective,
and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything
by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts
of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult ones.
i F., v. 2.]