Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/455

 This section of Every Wom an's Encyclopedia tells what woman has done in the arts : how 1 she may siudy them, and how she may attain success in them. Authoritative writers will contribute 1 articles on : Art Music Literature Art Education in England Musical Education Famous Books by Women Art Education Abroad Studying Abroad Famous Poems by Women Scholarships. Exhibitions Musical Scholarships Tales from the Classics Modern Illustration Practical Notes on the Choice Stories of Famous Womrn The Amateur Artist of Instrtiments Writers Decorative Art The Musical Education of The Lives of Women Poets, Applied Arts, etc. Children, etc. etc., etc. THE ART ©F DRAWLING AND FAIHTIHG By A. S. HARTRICK, A.R.W.S., Visiting Teacher L.C.C. School of Art, Camberwell I. ON LEARNING TO SEE Introduction The great difficulty in giving advice to the beginner in what are known as the Fine Arts, especially in a written form, is that, while, as in any other kind of teaching, a system is necessary to get a good result, to he useftd if should not be of that hard and fast nature that makes no allowance for temperament, but rather a guide pointing steadfastly in the direction of the goal and giving warning of traps and pitfalls by the way. This, of course, is easier to do with personal instruction, when the teaching may be varied as circumstances arise. If anything said here appears dogmatic I would ask some indulgence, considering the form the statements have to take. The road itself is a well-worn one, but there are many side-tracks, especially at the start, in which the novice may easily go astray. In this respect I cannot do better than quote the wise words of Ascanio Condivi, the pupil and friend of Michael Angelo, as true to-day as when they were written, nearly five hundred years ago : "If anyone desires to bring forth a great work in A rt, worthy to be read or seen, he must work in the same way as the first great example, or, at least, similarly, and go by his road ; for if he does not his work will be much inferior, the worse the more he diverges from the direct path." In the following papers I do not propose to set out an elaborate scheme such as could be followed out only in an art school. I shall pre-suppose some knowledge of freehand drawing or ordinary copying, and set down some rules and observations which I have found of practical use to myself, which I am most likely to explain best for the use of others. I shall also endeavour to point out some of the commoner errors into which beginners fall. The first thing that the student of draw- ing and painting has to do is to learn to see. When representing the appearance of an object on the fiat surface of paper or canvas it must be remembered that only what the eye receives from one given point of view, and under one given set of conditions of light and shade, can be represented at one time. Nothing that the mind knows beyond what the eye can see counts in this representation. People in these days, when nearly every- thing printed is illustrated, do not, perhaps. expect to see the four sides of a house shown in a drawing at one time ; nor, like the Red Indian, to have both eyes appear on a profile ; but quite intelligent people are capable of criticising while looking at the sitter from in front, a portrait done in profile, and see nothing wrong in it. The eye receives the impression at once, much as a scene is projected on the sensitive film of a camera, but then the working of memory with its store of acquired facts steps in, confusing the relative values of them, and the picture in the untrained mind becomes rather a collection of facts, colours, and incidents in succession ; of the importance of each as compared with one another he has no means of judging until the attempt is made to set them down on paper. The faculties of women have long been acknowledged to be particularly acute in this direction. Many readily remember, in an extraordin- arily minute way, details of dress seen quite I F