Project Gutenberg's The Practice and Science Of Drawing, by Harold Speed

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Title: The Practice and Science Of Drawing

Author: Harold Speed

Release Date: December 6, 2004 [EBook #14264]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCIENCE OF DRAWING ***

Produced by Jonathan Ingram and the Online Distributed Proofreading
Team at http://www.pgdp.net

THE

PRACTICE & SCIENCE

OF

DRAWING

BY

HAROLD SPEED

Associe de la Societe Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Member of the
Royal Society of Portrait Painters, &c.

* * * * *

With 93 Illustrations & Diagrams

* * * * *

LONDON SEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED 38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET 1913

* * * * *

[Illustration: Plate I.

FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF SAME MONOCHROME PAINTING IN DIFFERENT STAGES
ILLUSTRATING A METHOD OF STUDYING MASS DRAWING WITH THE BRUSH]

* * * * *

PREFACE

Permit me in the first place to anticipate the disappointment of any
student who opens this book with the idea of finding "wrinkles" on how
to draw faces, trees, clouds, or what not, short cuts to excellence in
drawing, or any of the tricks so popular with the drawing masters of our
grandmothers and still dearly loved by a large number of people. No good
can come of such methods, for there are no short cuts to excellence. But
help of a very practical kind it is the aim of the following pages to
give; although it may be necessary to make a greater call upon the
intelligence of the student than these Victorian methods attempted.

It was not until some time after having passed through the course of
training in two of our chief schools of art that the author got any idea
of what drawing really meant. What was taught was the faithful copying
of a series of objects, beginning with the simplest forms, such as
cubes, cones, cylinders, &c. (an excellent system to begin with at
present in danger of some neglect), after which more complicated objects
in plaster of Paris were attempted, and finally copies of the human head
and figure posed