Page:Drawing for Beginners.djvu/97

 nostrils, puckering our eyes into sad half-moons&mdash;like Mr Sad in very truth?

While you are studying the features, choose some interesting subject to enliven model and artist alike. Though you may not complete your original intention, make a beginning on, say, the subject of a small child sniffing up a slightly disagreeable scent from a small bottle. Such a conception may provoke such hilarious amusement that your drawing will bubble with laughter. Art students often begin their studies by painting the head of an old man or old woman. And the reason is that it is far easier to draw age than youth, for the features become more marked with age and therefore more distinct. Compare, for instance, the nose of the old man and the nose of the infant; the tiny button of a baby's nose, as against the big bold bridge, the heavily marked nostril. As the saying goes, one can hardly 'miss' the drawing of an old man's nose.

Compare the mouth of a young girl, full and pouting, parted over the white teeth, and the old man's, grim, straight, and lined; and the wide clear gaze of the boy with the heavily lidded eye of age. Even the ear of the old is loose in shape and wrinkled about the lobe.

Which brings us to those very important organs&mdash;the ears. There is something peculiarly interesting in the drawing of an ear. There is soft texture, the delicacy of its curves, and the contrasting shapes of the large upper part and the slender lobe. It is a feature of which the amateur too often falls foul. For some inexplicable reason the ear in a weak drawing is often its worst feature. Invariably it is given a queer little waist at the central part.