Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/88

 is an invaluable help, indeed, a necessity, for the studying and drawing of our own features.

And at the outset I would utter a word of warning about the drawing of a face.

It is surprising that young artists often draw the eyes and mouth as if they were mere patterns stuck on the face, a method that is evidently copied from fashion and poster artists, who are very fond of this effective but mask-like effect. The eyes in their pictures are heavily outlined, the lips are thickly painted with purple crimson tints. It is a wrong point of view, and a very harmful one, as you will soon discover.

Look at the eye, your eye, anyone's eye. What a luminous, expressive feature it is, composed of most subtle and exquisite parts!

Look at the iris, the ring of colour, the velvety depths of the pupil, the shining white surface of the 'sclerotic tissue' surrounding the eyeball, and the soft pink inner corners. Remember the ball of the eye is a large object covered by lids which reveal only part of the whole. Look at the curve of the lid and its graceful fringe.

But lashes, though dark and sweeping, are not as important as pupil and lid. Do not draw the lower lid in a thick hard outline. You will produce at once a mask, not a face. If, for theatrical purposes, you rub a stick of darkening stuff beneath your eyes, you then see your eye forced into a slit-like feature. Laugh, and your eye must laugh. I have seen people smile with their lips when the eyes were not smiling, and what a futile smile it was!

To picture the lips as two thick slabs of colour is just as great a crime.

Your mouth may be full and dimpled, it may be small and thin, it may be wide and of no very definite shape. But it is not, it can never be, a moulded pattern stuck like a postage-stamp on your face.

Draw down your mouth, pout, smile, laugh&mdash;and note the