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.
Author’s Introduction
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.
A few of the lessons deal with the strokes and their application to the very simplest objects possible, but even these may be found useful as illustrative material. They are recommended in order that the teacher may become familiar with the medium, and with the simplest and the most direct manner of handling it before attempting sketches which require a great variety of touches. I have tried to have the other sketches cover as great a variety of subjects as possible.
Plates [3], [5], [8], [10], [11], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [22], [23] and [29] have been used with the little people in different forms of stories, language and reading lessons. Plates [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [18], [27], [28] and [29] are suggested for geography lessons in various grades. Plates [8], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [27], [28] and [29] may be used in history lessons. Plates [1] and [3] have been used in primary numbers, and plates [27] and [28] for arithmetic, when the problems had to do with commission, measurement, etc., or when the problems referred to lumbering or manufacturing. Plates [4], [5], [6], [11], [12], [13], [19], [20], [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], [27] and [28] will be found helpful in many lines of nature study, especially when the nature specimens are difficult to obtain. Plates [9], [24], [25] and [26] illustrate the value of this line of drawing in the study of literature; and many of the other drawings may be used in a similar manner. The teacher who uses this type of illustrative sketching will readily see how the drawings may be applied to other subjects.
Teachers have occasionally asked for illustrations for the different months of the school year, something to use with calendars, or for different holiday drawings. Several sketches given on the plates are suitable for the various months. For calendars I suggest discarding the plaided pumpkin for November, the numbered bricks in a fireplace for December, the kite covered with numbered squares for March, etc., etc. A regular numbered calendar may be used, with an appropriate sketch above or at one side. See Plate [13], goldenrod. The holiday itself should suggest the character of the sketch.
Although these sketches are recommended as illustrations for certain subjects, it is not intended that the teacher should merely copy these drawings, but that she should be able to appropriate these strokes, enlarge upon them, and apply them in illustrations for the particular subjects she is teaching; and there are many subjects which require just this sort of expression on the part of the teacher.