Page:Pencil Sketching from Nature.djvu/19

 Pencil sketching is suggestive and not photographic. Subtleties must perforce be ignored and contrasts often forced, that simplicity may be secured while the illusion of solidity is created. As the student has but few tones of black at his command, he cannot hope to reproduce values as a painter reproduces them. He must instead, seek pleasing relations of light and shade and familiarize himself with those devices which will enable him to suggest color and present attractive relations of sunlight and shadow in his sketch.

An analysis of a simple sketch will serve to show some of these devices, and the manner in which they have been employed. Turning to the little note made at Ronda, one sees pencil drawing reduced almost to its lowest terms. We have the steep edge of the cliff, the hanging vines, the dark cedar, and the whitewashed houses, all suggested rather than drawn. The center of interest is in the center of the picture. Here a scrap or two of detail is shown. The garden wall stands up clearly, the masses of the foliage break into leaves, the windows show their iron balconies and the edge of the roof has a hint of tiling. But once we leave the center of the picture, we pass to broad masses of light and dark, which are placed one against the other, that an effective contrast and a pleasing pattern may result. Where it is required that the roofs be dark to emphasize the white- washed house fronts, a few heavy strokes of the pencil have effected the purpose, but that the more distant house-tops may not disengage the eye from the center of interest, they are shown by lighter touches rapidly melting off into line and terminal spots. The same is true of the masses of foliage. Where they must be dark "to count", they have been drawn boldly, but where they must be light to tell against the gray cliffs,