In publishing a drawing of this kind in a book for printers we do not recommend it as an example of drawing for the press (though it would be an excellent guide for lithography), but it is full of interest in that it exemplifies what artists consider artistic draftsmanship. It is evident that the author of it has studied in an art school and that he gets his effects, not by chance, but by deliberation. He is sensitive to the different degrees of darks upon the several objects. No matter how plainly he may see the shadow upon the cast, he knows that, in order to represent it as a light object, such shadows must not be black. So there is a vast difference between its dark tones and the dark tones of the block on which it stands. Also in drawing the human face he concentrates his darks about the eyes, nose and mouth; the rest of the face is shaded with great delicacy, for he knows that if he puts darks elsewhere he will get the undesirable effect of an old face. The printer is not expected to carry his art as far as this, but we must say {70} frankly that his degree of success depends entirely upon the extent of his knowledge of the truths herein stated. One need not go to an art school to see that a cast is white, and that its shadows are not as black as the shadows upon a bronze; but unless he trains his eye by observation to see this difference in other things, no tricks of pen-technic will help him when he comes to draw a white horse, or a white collar. He does not have to study portraiture in an art school in order to make a drawing in pen and ink, for his paper, from a photograph; but unless he will train himself to observe so that he realizes that in a young face the greatest darks are limited to the eyes, nose, and mouth, he will be likely to make his pen-portrait look more like an old person than a young person, even though in executing the same he imitates the most perfect pen-technic.
Now, as the placing of the shadows in the seated girl’s face is not the same, it is a little difficult for you to realize that it contains the same kind of drawing as the blocked-in cast hand and head.
But the eye becomes trained from drawing casts to see the most delicate modeling of shadows, and the seated girl’s face is really a complex style of drawing, of which the cast head and hand are simple specimens. I mean by “complex style of drawing” a method of getting effects by imitating the light and shade upon objects, as opposed to mere outline style or silhouette style.
Now, therefore, this illustration should indicate to you that it is well to draw from casts, as art students do, if you wish to make finished pictures in black and white.
In the foregoing statements I have been careful in {71} my language. I do not say students all over the world learn to draw in light and shade, for there is a great deal of wonderful Japanese art that is done entirely without knowledge of light and shade of the sort most usual in Occidental modeling. Nor do I say that you must draw from casts to learn to see light and shade, because during the middle ages many great artists learned to draw from life and not from casts. The cast is a comparatively modern art-school accessory.
Another reason for giving this La-Tour drawing is that it brings us a step farther into the consideration of values; we notice that in it the cast appears to be white, the girls’ faces and hands lighter than their gowns, and one girl’s hair lighter than the other’s. Now, when an artist makes a difference between the degrees of the color of objects, we say he notes their values.
Bear this in mind, then, that mere shading is not the end of drawing. You can go a step farther and indicate the color value of a shadow, of which more hereafter.
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STUDY OF A HEAD, IN CRAYON OR PENCIL, BY DAGNAN-BOUVERET. Showing method of sketching the outline of a hat.