Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/457

 THE ARTS This demands great patience and per- sistence as well as no little natural aptitude. So much so, that few who have not practised it from early youth acquire the facility neces- sary for the best work. Yet much pleasure and a great widening of the interests, with the resultant edu- cational benefits, can be obtained with reasonable practice. One of the sim- plest studies one can suggest as a preliminary exer- cise in training the eyes to see and the hand to obey will be found in watch- Fig. 3.— This IS a silhouette of buildings in the simplest terms of si,'ht. the division of light from darkne**. Observ* how the great mass ol the buildings and the space of the sky make tw.i ^reat shaj>es in the picture. Then the variety given to them by being broken up by the tower, spire, chimneys, etc., and the different proportions these parts nak* with each other, and the angles at which they incline. On the observing and setting down of the<.e correctly to oiM another the likeness of the picture to the scene depends. One rcilises how m.ich cm l)e done by thes*- simple mcMW when one remembers the little old-fashioned portraits that used to be cut out of black piper, nuny of them conveviay a far more perfect idea of the actual appearance of the individuals they represented than a tlious.md pages of writing would do ing the skyline from the window or from the street when the outlines of buildings tell boldly against the light. If looked at through a small square frame of cardboard (Fig. i, easily made by oneself) held up at a few inches from the eye, the scene will be shown as a picture or whole in its simplest form. Of course, the amount of landscape contained by the frame will vary with the distance it is held from the eye. Seen through this frame the main propor- tions of the picture can be more easily analysed. How to See the Picture Proceed from the general to the particular* beginning with the great division of the mass of light in the sky from the dark mass of the houses ; then the size of one set of buildings as compared with another, the inclinations of the various roofs, and the serrated edges of the chimney-stacks. This would be about the order in which to think of the different parts before attempting to set them on paper. The drawing should be made as freely as possible with an F. or H.B. pencil in a sketchbook or on a piece of paper pinned securely on a board. Then test it by measurements for correction ; the squares on the frame will be a help in this, as so many squares will include so much mass, and an idea formed of its exact pro- portions. The drawing should not be made too small, but about 14 inches by 10 inches in size. Set upright about 20 inches from the eye, so that the pencil be held almost at arm's length. In this way the whole drawing and the whole scene in nature can be looked at together with the least possible trouble. The ideal would be that the drawing is fixed at just such a distance from the eye and object that mentally the natural scene might be taken down and placed on the drawing, when the lines would coincide. It does not matter if the result at first looks shaky and clumsy ; practice will soon put that right ; and this method persisted in wiU result in greater freedom in the end. To be continued. I Fig. 4.-A second more complicated silhouette, ^^^o^ing^^v^e^ra.^^^^ tS^^S^^^"^ " •"' '""'•  '