Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/173

 perspective were all but unknown until the fifteenth century.) And what do you find? The head in profile, the shoulders squarely and flatly presented (front view), the legs apparently tacked on to a flat surface instead of a rounded body, for they do not recede one behind the other, but present knee against knee-joint, ankle against ankle, and foot against foot. And to add to the peculiarities of early Egyptian art, the front view of the eye is inserted along the profile view of the forehead, nose, mouth, and chin.

Does this not bring home that unless you absorb a few laws of perspective, proportions, and foreshortening, you will find yourself heavily handicapped?

You can provide yourself with a good deal of amusement and useful instruction by searching for perspective, not only in your own paintings and drawings, but in the work of other people.

Study pictures in books and magazines, and photographs in the daily papers, and you will find endless examples of perspective.

By tracing parallel lines and finding vanishing points of planes and surfaces, much that bewildered you in the past will become clear and reasonable.

Planes, horizontal planes and perpendicular planes, are terms constantly used with regard to perspective.

A horizontal plane is a plane parallel with the earth; a perpendicular plane is one perpendicular to the earth. The top of a table and the ceiling of a room are horizontal planes; the walls of the room are perpendicular planes.

It might, very reasonably, be concluded that in using the words "tracing parallel lines" I intend to convey that lines should be drawn across the pictures. But that certainly was not my intention. There is no necessity to commit the