Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/250

 a matter of degree. From simple objects grouped on a table to complicated scenes in a landscape, all will present their own peculiar and fascinating problems of light and shade.

No doubt you will wish to try other methods of drawing light and shade than drawing on tinted paper with chalks of black and white.

There is the much vaunted method of rubbing on powdered chalk with a stump of twisted paper or kid in varying tints upon a white paper. With this method we can obtain very subtle gradations by erasing with rubber or bread and by stippling in with the stump. Provided that we attack the study with vigour, sketching it in the first place with charcoal, and rubbing on the chalk speedily, and not spending too much time smoothing the surfaces, it may help us to learn a good deal about light and shade. Nevertheless there is a very great danger of expending too much time over the surface at the expense of the structure. It is quite possible to stipple in a head or an arm with such beautiful shades of light and tint that the essential shape of the nose, head, and arm, is forgotten. In other words, the drawing is lost.

Have you not seen old-fashioned stipple-drawings of bygone days so lacking in definite shape that the gentlemen and ladies are dropping into a sugar, boneless state? And that constitutes one great danger of drawing with the stump.

There is another method. By covering a sheet of Michelet or other grained paper with charcoal lines lightly rubbed to a fairly even tint, wiping out the lights with rubber or bread, and drawing the shapes with charcoal, one can achieve a very artistic study of light and shade.

Another method strongly advocated by one very famous art teacher is drawing with pen and ink on a smooth white surface. It is certainly a very direct method. Pen and ink, however, is not for beginners a very good method of drawing light and shade. In the first place, it is an