es art. They are impelled, it is to be assumed, by a natural
desire to express themselves by painting, and, if their intuitive
ability is strong enough, it perhaps matters little whether they know or
not. But to the larger number who are not so violently impelled, it is
highly essential that they have some better idea of art than that it
consists in setting down your canvas before nature and copying it.

Inadequate as this imperfect treatment of a profoundly interesting
subject is, it may serve to give some idea of the point of view from
which the following pages are written, and if it also serves to disturb
the "copying theory" in the minds of any students and encourages them to
make further inquiry, it will have served a useful purpose.

II

DRAWING

By drawing is here meant #the expression of form upon a plane surface#.

Art probably owes more to form for its range of expression than to
colour. Many of the noblest things it is capable of conveying are
expressed by form more directly than by anything else. And it is
interesting to notice how some of the world's greatest artists have been
very restricted in their use of colour, preferring to depend on form for
their chief appeal. It is reported that Apelles only used three colours,
black, red, and yellow, and Rembrandt used little else. Drawing,
although the first, is also the last, thing the painter usually studies.
There is more in it that can be taught and that repays constant
application and effort. Colour would seem to depend much more on a
natural sense and to be less amenable to teaching. A well-trained eye
for the appreciation of form is what every student should set himself to
acquire with all the might of which he is capable.

It is not enough in artistic drawing to portray accurately and in cold
blood the appearance of objects. To express form one must first be moved
by it. There is in the appearance of all objects, animate and inanimate,
what has been called an #emotional significance#, a hidden rhythm that
is not caught by the accurate, painstaking, but cold artist. The form
significance of which we speak is never found in a mechanical
reproduction like a photograph. You are never moved to say when looking
at one, "What fine form."

It is difficult to say in what this quality consists. The emphasis and
selection that is unconsciously given in a drawing done directly under
the guidance of strong feeling, are too subtle to be tabulated; they