Blackboard Sketching

By FREDERICK WHITNEY Director of Art, State Normal School, Salem, Massachusetts
Published by MILTON BRADLEY COMPANY SPRINGFIELD, MASS. BOSTON NEW YORK PHILADELPHIA ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 1909
Copyright, 1908 By MILTON BRADLEY CO. Springfield, Mass.
Ability to draw easily and well on the blackboard is a power which every teacher of children covets. Such drawing is a language which never fails to hold attention and awaken delighted interest.
It has been considered impossible for most of us, because we have never done it. It has been strongly recommended, but no one has really shown us how.
A book like this which does show how, step by step, from the first practice strokes to completed and effective sketches, will be everywhere welcome. No one can follow the plain suggestions given without appreciating the possibilities of chalk and charcoal for ordinary school-room illustration, and finding in himself a steady development of power to sketch on the blackboard.
The book is not the product of theories about drawing, but the fruit of long experience of one who has drawn with and for children and students and teachers, and has been more successful than any one I know in inspiring them by that means. I welcome the book and predict for it a potent influence for increasing and improving blackboard drawing throughout the schools of the land.
Walter Sargent.
North Scituate, Mass.
This collection of blackboard sketches and the accompanying text has been planned at the request of many teachers and pupils who desire lessons and suggestions along this line, but who are unable to secure personal instruction.
In general, these requests have been for simple sketches dealing with the various lines of school work, and at the same time for strokes and explicit directions for using these in the drawings. For these reasons there are given upon nearly every plate the strokes of the chalk useful in producing the desired effect, and upon the opposite page such directions as are generally given to the students in the classroom.