“Remember that I am not saying that I regret the time I spent studying, either here or in Paris. I am only telling you what I regard as necessary for one who wants to learn.
“Now, just as the way to learn to write is to write, so the way to learn to draw is to draw. I think it is best to begin with objects in the room, and with figures,—any objects, any figures,—it does not matter. But draw one over and over again; draw it from all sides; draw it big, and draw it little, and draw it again. Then go to something else, and then come back to it later the same day. Put them all away till the next day, and then find the mistakes in them. Here is something to remember, and something which ought to hearten many a discouraged student quite blue because of what really should have encouraged him: Do not be discouraged at the mistakes you can find in your own work, unless you find only a small number. The more mistakes you can detect, the better able you are to draw. Do not leave a thing until you are satisfied, after going back to it every day for weeks, that you can draw it no better. Then, if you come upon it the next year, and still see no room for improvement,—well, then there is still room for discouragement about yourself.”
WHILE STUDYING ART, ONE SHOULD WORK INCESSANTLY.
“In all this work, observe one rule: Never mind about drawing a thing as you may possibly have been told to do in the course of instruction. Draw it the way it looks to you. You will see it differently as you go back to it again and again. If you do not see it differently, you cannot see your own mistakes, and that is positive proof that for you fame is waiting at some other door,—or, at any rate, that it will not come to you from art.
“How much ought one to work? All the time. Draw all the time. Look all the time for something to draw. In the beginning, never pass anything without wresting from it its blessing, so to speak. Before you pass, be sure you can draw it; and the only way to be sure of that is to draw it several times. The objects in a room are a little simpler than figures, at first, but figures are the most interesting, and you must draw whatever interests you. If you would rather draw crawfish and bootjacks than men and women, draw crawfish and bootjacks. It really doesn’t so much matter what you draw; the point is that you draw. But it is important to you that you develop a taste for drawing something special,—and of that you need have no fear if you are a born artist. If you are not, as I said, it doesn’t matter.
“I always feel that any general talk about the way to succeed, in any art one selects, is rather unnecessary. I cannot repeat too often that I believe, if the student has it in him to draw, he will not need to be told to persevere, or to work hard, or to be careful of bad influences in his work, or to avoid imitation,—he will do all these as naturally as he will hold a pencil. Holding a pencil, by the way, is another example of what I just spoke of. Do you remember that they used to tell us just how our fingers must hold the pen, and how the whole arm ought to move? ‘What will they think of you,’ they said, ‘when you get out in the world, if you hold your pencil like that?’ As a matter of fact, nobody gives the matter a thought, and hardly one of us holds a pencil that way. It is so with many of the formulae of an art. But isn’t it curious that I never did get out of holding my pencil that prescribed way? I do happen to hold my pencil correctly.”
“Maybe you held some of the other formulae the same way,” I suggested, “and they are influencing you.”
“Oh, well,” said Mr. Gibson, “so far as the pencil goes, I fancy, perhaps, that I draw in spite of the way I hold it rather than because of it.”
Then he made a small retraction of his remark.