^ington 
 
 DEPARTMENT OF 
 
 University of Illinois. 
 
 Books are not to be taken from the Library Room, 
 
 
RiiMOTE STORASE 
 

HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
Hints to Amateurs 
 
 31 on Jlrt. 
 
 BY 
 
 LOUISE JOPLING 
 
 HARPER 6- BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 1891. 
 

 TO 
 
 Eoeal I^icJ)nt00 
 
 i&cin«!30 of (Itllalesf, 
 
 BY WHOSE 
 
 GRACIOUS PERMISSION THIS LITTLE BOOK 
 IS RESPECTFULLY 
 DEDICATED. 
 
 ^ \ to 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 Introduction ....... ix 
 
 I. Black and White i 
 
 II. Oil Painting 22 
 
 III. Watercolours 31 
 
 IV. Pastel — Photography — Sketching from 
 
 Nature 40 
 
 V. Anatomy . 48 
 
 VI. Perspective . 
 
 57 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 It is with great diffidence that I, a labourer in the 
 field of art, stretch out a helping hand to those fellow- 
 workers who, for want of a little timely encourage- 
 ment, are apt to become disheartened. They forget, 
 whilst they cross the Slough of Despond, that beyond 
 that is the firm ground where Progress has her fair 
 abode. I want to impress this upon them, and my 
 only apology for doing so is that I have been assured 
 that my experience may help others ; those others 
 who, from force of circumstances, cannot enjoy the 
 advantages that are so accessible nowadays to the art 
 student ; and those also who, living far away in the 
 country, have no means of obtaining even the feeblest 
 art education. 
 
 My hints, such as they are, are written solely for 
 the benefit of amateurs. 
 
 In using the word ‘ amateur ’ I intend it to signify 
 its original meaning, viz., ‘ a lover.' We have cor- 
 rupted it in these days, as we English have a habit 
 
X 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of doing so many of our words, for the want of the 
 restraining influence of a recognised authority, such 
 as the ^Academie des Belles Lettres’ in France. 
 When we speak now of an amateur it is, I fear, in a 
 slight tone of contempt, for we associate the word 
 with incompetence, and we are led to do so because 
 the work of the amateur usually betrays his want of 
 knowledge. Now it is this knowledge alone which 
 makes the difference between the professional and 
 the amateur. 
 
 In every line of life in which success is aimed at, 
 an apprenticeship has to be served, of many hours 
 and days of hard work. Art is not exempt from 
 this law, and however small may be the talent one 
 possesses it can be increased tenfold by cultivation. 
 
 A Professional very often has made his start in 
 life with a lack of money, and an Amateur has been 
 burdened with too much. In that, it seems to me, 
 lies the chief difference between them. 
 
 Walter Savage Landor in his Conversations makes 
 one of his characters say, ‘ that poverty and wit use 
 the same grindstone.’ This is partly true, for poverty 
 very often brings out talents that would otherwise 
 have lain dormant, and as wealth carries no spur ‘ to 
 prick the idle intent of a man,’ it often happens that 
 in the race for honours it is the poorer ones who 
 carry off the prizes. Nevertheless, the kingdom of 
 art is open to all comers, and you can enter into it, 
 even though you were as rich as Croesus. It is 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 XI 
 
 only the want of training that marks the difference 
 between the Professional and the Amateur. 
 
 The Professional knows he can achieve nothing 
 without he thoroughly studies and masters the call- 
 ing he has embraced. 
 
 The Amateur is rather given to imagine that 
 what he calls his ‘ talent/ or his gift, or his genius, 
 is enough to carry him over all difficulties. Were 
 he to become a doctor, lawyer, or scientist, he would 
 have to pursue the usual curriculum of study long 
 before he was fitted to put his knowledge into prac- 
 tice. It is the same with art. It requires as much 
 hard work and learning as any other profession. 
 Even if not continued in later life, I consider that 
 drawing and painting ought to form a part of every 
 child's education, just as much as reading, writing, 
 and arithmetic. No special gift is requisite. All 
 the better if one possesses it, but it is not 
 necessary. 
 
 Sometimes I hear it said, ‘ It is of no use my 
 learning. I am too old.' To these despairing ones 
 I would say, ‘ Bear in mind the proverb, ‘‘ It is never 
 too late to mend," ' In learning the art of drawing 
 when you are beyond the pale of childhood, you 
 bring to your task a judgment far more matured. 
 Your mind has more strength to command the eye 
 and hand to do their part, and your will to succeed 
 is greater. You have already learnt the value of 
 time, and its brevity, which youth finds so difficult 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 xii 
 
 to realise. History tells us of many painters who 
 commenced their artistic career when they were no 
 longer quite young. John Philip, our English 
 ‘ Spanish painter,’ was a notable example of this. I 
 have heard that up to the age of thirty he followed 
 the trade ot house painter. And I myself com- 
 menced to learn the rudiments of my profession at 
 the age of three-and-twenty, heavily handicapped as 
 I was at the time by my duties of wife and mother. 
 However, I had plenty of time for each and all, but 
 of course I had to work much harder than a younger 
 woman need have done. Besides the hours spent 
 from ten to four at my master’s (M. Chaplin’s) studio, 
 I joined a class that commenced in the summer time 
 at seven a.m.. and where we drew from the undraped 
 figure. Very pleasant it was to start out in the 
 early morning, when Paris was waking into life and 
 activity, and finishing her daily toilet with the help 
 of the picturesque men in blouses, who dipped their 
 long brooms into the streams of fresh, pure water 
 that ran along the gutters, and swept the streets and 
 pavements of the impurities and stains with which 
 the preceding day and night had defiled them. In 
 the evening I studied my anatomy at home. In 
 the winter-time the same class worked by gaslight 
 from seven to ten p.m. I would have given much 
 if all this had happened in my girlhood, particularly 
 as I had to leave off studying sooner than I had 
 originally intended in order to support myself and 
 
INTRODUCTION, 
 
 xiii 
 
 my two children. Still, one is always learning, and 
 one’s studies are only ended when Death knocks 
 at the door. So you see, one can commence late ; 
 although it is far better to do so early in life, when 
 one’s mind is in a receptive state, and one’s fingers 
 are in a plastic condition. 
 
 Drawing is not at all a useless accomplishment, 
 as I have so often heard it described. It strengthens 
 many of our faculties — notably, memory and obser- 
 vation. The former is essential if we wish to paint 
 well. We can achieve nothing without its use. For 
 instance, we would find it impossible to look at our 
 object, and paint it, at one and the same time. What 
 we really do is to look at it first, and then, relying 
 upon our memory, we reproduce it as accurately as 
 it is possible for us to do. The more retentive our 
 memory the more perfect is our drawing. As to 
 our powers of observation, learning to draw trains 
 them and renders them keener. And this alone 
 ought to secure for art a permanent place in every 
 scheme of education. 
 
 At present, it is considered in most fashionable 
 schools not as a necessity, but as an ‘extra.’ 
 
 If we want another plea in its favour, let us only 
 reflect how much our enjoyment of life is intensified 
 by the power of justly appreciating the beauties of 
 form, and the glories of colour, that are contained in 
 this beautiful world of ours, and which many of us, 
 though we have eyes, see not. 
 
XIV 
 
 INTRODUCTION, 
 
 Cultivate, then, your love of art, for you may rest 
 assured that it is not waste of time. 
 
 Do not exclaim, as many do, ‘ What is the use of 
 my trying? I shall never succeed.^ You never will 
 if you listen to and act upon the advice of ‘Mr. Do 
 Nothing.' Read Marcus Aurelius, and he will give 
 you better counsel. Listen to what he says : ‘ Be 
 not disgusted, nor discouraged, nor dissatisfied, if 
 thou dost not succeed in doing everything according 
 to right principles, but when thou hast failed return 
 back again.' Herein lies the secret : return back 
 again, and back again, until you do succeed. 
 
 What I have been most struck with in amateurs 
 is their want of courage. I may be reminded of the 
 proverb that ‘fools rush in where angels fear to tread.' 
 I do not think it applies in this case. Amateurs are 
 not necessarily fools, and, I can assure you, we pro- 
 fessionals are very far from being angels. There- 
 fore I say to you. Be not afraid. Remember, that 
 very often, ‘ Our doubts are traitors, and make us 
 lose the good we oft might win, by fearing to 
 attempt.' 
 
 What I would prefer to see is a little of that 
 vaulting ambition, which even if it does ‘o'erleap 
 its selle^ and falls on ‘ t’other side,' is better than the 
 possession of prudence that counsels to venture no- 
 thing, and to be content with winning nothing. 
 
 About your capacity or genius for drawing, I can 
 only say that no one knows what they are capable 
 
INTR OD UCTION. 
 
 XV 
 
 of doing until they try. A gardener will tell you 
 that by cultivation he can convert the poorest flowers 
 of the garden into rarely beautiful ones. 
 
 But you will say, perhaps, that the little seed of 
 genius must first exist, otherwise cultivation is useless. 
 Well, what is genius? A Celtic Triad describes it, 
 or rather its three primary requisites, as ‘ an eye that 
 can see nature, a heart that can feel nature, and 
 boldness that dares to follow nature.’ Are these so 
 very rare 'i 
 
 And it was Disraeli who told us that genius 
 consists in an infinite capacity for taking pains. 
 Surely this lies within the reach of all. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci judged a man, whether he 
 possessed a talent for drawing or not, by the amount 
 of his perseverance ; and if I might adapt a French 
 saying, ‘ De Taudace ; encore de Taudace ; et toujours 
 de Taudace!’ I should use the word perseverance in 
 a similar manner. 
 
 LOUISE JOPLING. 
 
 October 1890 . 
 
/ 
 
 j 
 
HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Black and White. 
 
 Many styles of drawing come under this head, although, 
 correctly speaking, the term is only applied to drawings for 
 illustration where pen and ink, or a wash of Indian ink or 
 lampblack and Chinese white, is used, and applied with a 
 brush. We shall have to deal first with charcoal drawings. 
 No m.ore fascinating medium can be found with which to 
 translate quickly on to paper the outline of a beautiful 
 head, a time study, a happy disposition of lines in a land- 
 scape, or an idea for a picture which one is longing to put 
 into a concrete form. 
 
 The paper that takes charcoal the best is called papier 
 Michelet^ and you can buy it for a penny the sheet. In 
 Paris the same paper, I believe, is called papier Ingres^ 
 and there it only costs one halfpenny. 
 
 This cheap paper is far better for making charcoal 
 studies on than one that is dearer. The marks are easily 
 obliterated by a piece of bread, and as a paper it is much 
 less greasy in texture than the dearer sorts. When you 
 can do good drawings that require little effacing before 
 finishing, then you can use better paper. 
 
 Frenchmen excel in the use of charcoal, especially in 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 HINTS TO A MATE UTS. 
 
 landscape studies. Ordinary charcoal is easy to get at 
 four sticks a penny. You can get many varieties, from 
 sticks an inch thick in circumference to those of a much 
 smaller make. These latter are made chiefly in Paris, 
 and are called ^ Fusain a tilleuV .They are made from 
 the tiny branches of the lime-tree. 
 
 For black chalk you ask for ‘ Conte a Paris. ^ There 
 are three sizes. No. i being the finest. In using chalk you 
 must have a crayon -holder, or you can get chalk, if you 
 like, inserted into cedar pencils, as lead is. 
 
 For doing red-chalk drawings, it is much better to use 
 what the French call ^ sa7tgum.^ It is the stone in its pure 
 state, and is of a much better colour than the composition 
 usually sold under the name of red chalk. 
 
 For doing stump drawings you get little bottles filled 
 with a powder called ‘ Velours a sauce, ^ or you scrape 
 your own black chalk into a powder, and apply it to 
 your drawing with the aid of little stumps of twisted 
 paper made expressly, and sold by the dozen. These can 
 be got in several different sizes. 
 
 You will also require a small piece of chamois leather 
 or a leather stump. These will take off the charcoal or 
 chalk in places which you wish lightened. 
 
 For obliterating entirely, a piece of stale bread made 
 into a little pellet is the best thing you can use. It must 
 be in the state that is the happy medium between fresh 
 and stale ; as if used too fresh it will make your drawing 
 greasy, and if too stale it will crumble and be useless, 
 and only scratch your paper. 
 
 With bread you produce the effect that is called stippling. 
 This is a fascinating but useless accomplishment. The 
 young student is apt to devote many hours and days to a 
 process which when done only serves to make his drawing 
 look pretty, and he forgets the main object for which he is 
 striving, viz., to get what he draws in perfect proportion. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE, 
 
 3 
 
 Drawing in pencil is excellent practice, as it teaches 
 you accuracy. 
 
 The less rubbing out your drawing requires the better 
 it looks. 
 
 For line drawing, the pencils marked F or H, of either 
 single or double letters, are the best. 
 
 For drawings in lead used with the stump, get the 
 pencils marked B, BB, and BBB. 
 
 These latter can be modelled to a very finished state. 
 The old masters did a great many of their' drawings 
 in what is called silver point, and it has lately become 
 fashionable again amongst our modern men. Great 
 accuracy is necessary, and your drawing looks better if 
 all the lines take the same direction and do not cross 
 each other. 
 
 For making rapid sketches whilst travelling, the metallic 
 note-books, or rather paper prepared for the use of the 
 metallic pencil, used with an ordinary lead one, is de- 
 lightful to work upon. Your drawing does not smudge, 
 and your sketch remains clear and accurate for years. 
 
 For pen-and-ink drawing, tiny steel pens called croiv- 
 quill are used. 
 
 Charles Keene, the world-famous draughtsman for 
 Punchy tells me he prefers the Waverley pen to work 
 with, as by it he can get both fine and strong strokes 
 at will. Cardboard is the best material to work upon. 
 
 For reproduction, printers prefer a specially-prepared 
 highly-glazed surface. 
 
 The brush is mostly used by ^ black - and - white ' 
 artists. 
 
 If you work in black with the brush, leaving your paper 
 for the white, you will find Vandyke brown and indigo 
 black make a very good tone. Get these colours in waters 
 colour tubes. You can buy specially-prepared ink, but I 
 find this not half so easy to manipulate, as it stains the 
 
4 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 paper. If working with Chinese white, get it in the tube 
 instead of in a bottle. 
 
 Use a japanned or earthenware palette, and work with 
 the best water-colour sable brushes. If you are lucky 
 enough to obtain those made by the Japanese, all the 
 better. They are delightful. The point is so beautifully 
 prepared, that with it you can get the finest strokes of a 
 pen or the broadest that you care to put on. Each brush 
 is mounted on a small cane of bamboo, whilst another 
 portion fits on over the point and protects it, so that you 
 can carry it about with you without fear of its getting 
 damaged. 
 
 Be very careful to do as little as you possibly can to a 
 drawing, but let that little be correct. 
 
 Too much work when your medium is only black and 
 white is apt to make your work heavy. 
 
 It must never be forgotten that a drawing, a black 
 and white, is only a suggestion after all. It is something to 
 remind you of some other thing which is alike but different ; 
 inasmuch as your subject contains very often all the colours 
 of the rainbow, whereas your drawing only contains two, or, 
 more correctly speaking, no colour at all. 
 
 Form and purity of outline is what you must strive for 
 in a drawing. Go to the National Gallery or British 
 Museum, and study the drawings by old masters. The 
 Queen has at Windsor the most beautiful ones by 
 Holbein. 
 
 It is a lesson to an artist to observe how much may 
 be conveyed by very slight means. 
 
 Each line of the pencil is eloquent, and there is not 
 one stroke that we could dispense with. Very good photo- 
 graphs of these can be seen and purchased at the South 
 Kensington Museum. 
 
 I generally find that amateurs are afraid of leaving 
 white spaces. Tney make their whole drawing look too* 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 5 
 
 black, so that instead of a head suggesting a white skin 
 we have a carefully modelled study, that had it only 
 Ethiopian characteristics would pass very well for a 
 negro’s. 
 
 Unless your background is distinctly white, and per- 
 ceptibly more so than the highest light in your face, I 
 should always advise you to put your background in the 
 tone that it really is. 
 
 A background, you must remember, is as much an 
 essential part of your picture as your head. 
 
 This does not apply to sketches or pure suggestions, 
 but only when you wish to make your drawing very 
 elaborate. 
 
 This elaboration in every detail is good practice before 
 you start in oils or water-colour, and for this purpose you 
 will find drawing with the stump more useful to you. You 
 are better able with it to suggest colour, reflected lights, 
 modelling, &c. For drawings that are mere suggestions, 
 and for sketching, I should recommend the point. 
 
 For drapery I should make use of both. 
 
 In fact, for all stump drawings the point must be used 
 to accentuate the form of features, hair, &c. 
 
 It is a wise thing to keep your drawings and date them. 
 
 You will then be able to observe whether you are really 
 making progress or not. If you wish to set them, to 
 fix the charcoal on the paper so that it cannot easily rub 
 off, dip them quickly and dexterously into a flat dish of 
 milk. The French use a jixatif something .simpler than 
 the one you require for pastel, and this is sprayed on the 
 drawing through a tube. 
 
 Care must be taken not to do it too near the drawing, 
 or it may become a hopeless smudge. The palm of the 
 hand or a piece of paper should be experimentalised on 
 first, and the liquid should only be allowed to touch the 
 drawing when it is at a sufficient distance to fall upon the 
 
6 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 paper like a thin mist. In doing stump drawings you will 
 find bread a delightful tool. 
 
 In drawing a head where light curly hair strays into the 
 deep shadows, nothing suggests it better than bread. 
 
 For simple studies and sketchy effects, grey-toned paper 
 is very good. 
 
 You need only put in all the dark strokes with your black 
 chalk; your grey paper suggests the half tints, and white 
 chalk will give you your high lights. Charcoal is unsur- 
 passable for commencing your studies, whether they be in 
 chalk, pencil, oil, or water-colour. 
 
 It has the merit of being easily effaced by bread, and 
 also that when your outline is completed to your satisfac- 
 tion you can flick off, with a large-sized rag, all the loose 
 charcoal, without obliterating the lines that you leave traced 
 on your paper or canvas, and which remain for you as a 
 guide when you commence to draw with your chalk, pencil, 
 or brush. 
 
 For purposes of study, in choosing a model, if you are 
 a beginner, it is better to select either an old man or old 
 woman. They sit quieter, as a rule, for their old blood 
 lends itself to repose sooner than the warm, excitable blood 
 of youth. 
 
 There is more, also, of what we call ‘ drawing ’ in a 
 face where Age, the destroyer, has been at work upon the 
 tissues, and has left more plainly visible the form of the 
 muscles and the shape of the bones of the skull. 
 
 If none of your friends be willing to sit to you — and 
 you will find few friendships capable of standing this test — 
 should you live near a village you are certain of finding 
 many aged folk, who had they lived in the days of 
 Rembrandt and Titian would have been immortalised on 
 canvas. 
 
 I met a wonderful old woman of ninety- four last 
 summer at the seaside, who was never better pleased 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 7 
 
 than when an artist was sitting in her neat liltle cottage 
 and making a sketch of her. She would tell you with 
 great pride that her portrait had been taken by some 
 gentleman, and had gone to ‘ Lunnon town.’ 
 
 When you have secured your model, put him in a 
 good light in which you can have the shadows strongly 
 defined. 
 
 Let the light come from as high up as possible, for the 
 higher your light is the better are your shadows massed. 
 
 To obtain this with an ordinary window, cover the 
 lower half with a shawl or thick covering to exclude the 
 light. 
 
 A low window at the top circumscribes the space in 
 which you can work, as the light comes in at an angle 
 of forty-five degrees, and can only fall full upon your 
 model within a certain space, part of which space you 
 yourself are obliged to occupy. 
 
 Unless, indeed, you have three windows in your room. 
 You can then use for yourself the nearer window, and 
 place your model within the light of the further one. The 
 centre window must be completely darkened. Your room 
 must be large, or you can seldom draw a full-length figure, 
 as you are bound to be twice or three times the length 
 of the model away from it, in order to accurately judge 
 of its proportions. 
 
 A local builder can with little trouble or expense extend 
 your window into the roof if your room be on the top floor. 
 In building a real studio, you must remember that the 
 higher your light is the further away from the window 
 you can place your model. 
 
 However, to return to the wants of the real amateur, 
 who must perforce perhaps be contented with an ordinary 
 window light. 
 
 This, if possible, ought to face the north, as no sun 
 must enter your room, at any rate during working hours. 
 
8 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 A north-east or east is the next best light, as the sun soon 
 rises above the level that would disturb you in your room. 
 If, as often happens in country houses, all the windows face 
 south, then you must make a thin paste of flour and water 
 mixed with a little size, and apply it with a brush to your 
 window. This will exclude the sun without affecting the 
 light. 
 
 Common Epsom salts dissolved in a little water and 
 put on in a liquid state, when dry gives the appearance of 
 frosted glass, and looks better, perhaps, than the paste. 
 
 Paintings done in a south light doctored in this 
 manner, have a warmer and more luminous effect than 
 those done in the light of the cold north. 
 
 When studying, always do things exactly life size. It 
 gives an air of meanness and weakness if done slightly 
 under the size of life. 
 
 Should you wish to do a small drawing, do it frankly 
 half the size of life, and in this case the head and face 
 ought to measure about four inches. 
 
 Try to look upon your head whilst you are drawing it 
 as a square or block of marble, and at each curve that 
 composes it as made of several short, straight lines. When 
 you have completed your drawing in this fashion, it is easy 
 to find your curves within the angles of your straight lines. 
 In this fashion you will have grander and bolder curves, and 
 will get into your drawing what the French call ‘ style.’ 
 My master used to continually impress upon me to 
 ‘ dessiner carrhnent,^ 
 
 You may tell me that ‘the line of beauty is a curve 
 and so it is. But to be really beautiful, your curve must 
 have strength in it. The least suspicion of weakness 
 detracts from its true beauty. 
 
 By drawing a square first, you can the more easily get 
 a perfect circle, should you wish to get one without the aid 
 of a compass. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 9 
 
 There is a story told of Giotto and Pope Boni- 
 face VI IL, who hearing of his marvellous skill as a 
 painter, sent a messenger to him to desire his presence 
 at Rome. On interviewing Giotto, the man wished for 
 some proof of his skill in order to be quite certain that 
 Giotto was indeed he of whom he came in search. 
 
 The artist took up his pencil, and with one movement 
 of his hand described on a sheet of paper a circle so perfect 
 that the cautious man’s doubts as to his identity were 
 immediately set at rest 
 
 The Italians crystallised this story into a proverb, and 
 to this day when they wish to describe the perfect rotundity 
 of an object, they exclaim, ‘E piu tondo che VO di Giottod 
 
 I am sure he must have looked at his circles first as 
 squares. 
 
 When you have thoroughly studied the outline of your 
 head, look at the form of your shadows. Each shadow 
 you will find has a distinct shape of its own. Those 
 formed by the hollow of the orbit of the eyes ; that under 
 the nose; and those about the mouth and chin. 
 
 If your head is hajf in light and half in shade, the 
 shadow on one side of it will have quite a distinct and 
 important form, according to the shape of the features 
 which project. 
 
 Get thoroughly acquainted firstly with the form of the 
 head in every position^ and then study the masses of the 
 shadows. 
 
 The outline and the shadows are the principal points 
 in the head. When you want to go further and study the 
 features, get those casts of Michael Angelo’s ‘ David ’ that 
 are to be bought separately in divisions of eyes, nose, and 
 mouth, and draw them over and over again, until you feel 
 that you have learnt them by heart. 
 
 Do not forget to alter their position, so that the light 
 falls upon them in a difierent manner each time. 
 
lO 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 This will give you an endless variety, so that you will 
 not feel tired of your work. For this is a thing studiously 
 to be avoided. Enthusiasm is life to the artist’s work, and 
 must be kept up at any cost. If you are feeling at all 
 weary put down your pencil, leave your drawing, and go to 
 the piano, and play through your last new morceaux^ or 
 sing the latest song. 
 
 It is astonishing with what freshness you will return to 
 your work, and how your difficulties will have taken to 
 themselves wings during your absence. 
 
 After you have massed in your shadows, and made 
 your head look as if it could see and speak, without the 
 aid of any line to express the details of the features, pro- 
 ceed to the features themselves. 
 
 Be very careful not to put in any line that you do not 
 see, and do not let any one line interfere with the value 
 of your masses. You will soon find out how little is needed 
 sometimes to express a feature. 
 
 The same with the hair. Do not put in every line. 
 Study first the great masses of the lights and shades, and 
 add only what lines are absolutely necessary to the com- 
 pletion of the hair. 
 
 You must not omit in putting in your shadows to study 
 their different values. 
 
 I mean by that to notice where they are darker in parts, 
 where they are of a middle tone, and where they are lighter. 
 
 I find students are so fond of putting in the extreme 
 darks in the shadow sides, such as the nostrils, and within 
 the ear, as clearly as if they were on the side that is fully 
 illuminated with light. 
 
 Now this is an impossible thing, for shadow would not 
 be what it is, unless it obliterated the details that we see 
 so clearly in full light. 
 
 I remember being struck with this in my student days, 
 when one of my fellow-workers carefully put in a man’s eye 
 
BLACK AND WHITE, 
 
 II 
 
 on the shadow side of his face, when it was quite impossible 
 to distinguish it. When the master came to correct her 
 work he obliterated her beautiful eye with a touch of his 
 thumb, saying, ‘ Never paint what you do not see.’ 
 
 In the same way with your background; put it in the 
 exact tone that it is. You will see that according to the 
 way the object that you are painting is lighted, your back- 
 ground will appear in parts of a darker or lighter hue. 
 
 It is never of one tone. 
 
 This is why I do not care to see studies done without 
 any background at all. They are not true. 
 
 You will find that on the lightest side of the head the 
 student has to insert an outline which does not exist. 
 The background itself is often in parts the only outline, 
 and it is in this way alone, by observing the variety of 
 tone in even the simplest background, that we get that 
 pleasant diversity of dark and light which we get in nature, 
 and which will prevent our drawing looking as if it were cut 
 out all round by a pair of scissors, and laid on a sheet of 
 paper. 
 
 There is a story told of Sir Joshua Reynolds, that one 
 of the many unsuccessful artists who called upon him 
 offered to sell him his talent to incorporate with his own : 
 ‘ He could do his backgrounds for him, for instance.’ 
 
 ‘ No, no,’ said Sir Joshua, H wouldn’t mind letting 5’ou 
 paint my portraits, but I will do my own backgrounds, 
 thank you !’ 
 
 I tell you this story only to illustrate the fact of how 
 important a background is. 
 
 If it cannot make a picture good it can certainly mar 
 one. Above all things let your background be modest. 
 
 It should know how to efface itself. 
 
 Like the garlic in a salad, it ought to be there, but 
 you mustn’t perceive it. 
 
 In painting a portrait you must always remember that 
 
12 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 when we look at our living model we have a sense of his 
 surroundings, but no actual perception. You must so 
 paint the background that it must in no way interfere 
 with what we wish to be the chief interest of the picture, 
 such as the head is in a portrait. 
 
 Whilst you are painting it, let your model be before 
 you, so that by constant comparison you run no danger of 
 making your lesser value equal to your greater. For as 
 you paint the background you look at it more intently, and 
 perceive it more accurately, in consequence, than you do 
 your head, which becomes of lesser value than you mean it 
 to be in your picture. 
 
 Whatever object you put in your background, you must 
 be careful to paint it as if there were air between the actual 
 surface of the canvas and the thing painted. If you have 
 painted a figure, the spectator ought to be made to feel, if he 
 got into the picture, as Alice did through the looking-glass, 
 that he could walk between the figure and the background. 
 
 Unless, of course, the figure is painted leaning against 
 a wall or door, and then the contrary feeling has to be 
 excited. 
 
 And this is as difficult to do in its way as the other. 
 
 I want you to remember that when you are learning to 
 draw, you must see, not only with your outward eye, but 
 with that of your inner one — ‘ the mind’s eye.’ 
 
 You must thoroughly understand what you see, before 
 you set the hand, which is the mind’s interpreter, to do its 
 work. 
 
 I have actually seen workers putting futile, meaningless 
 strokes upon their paper, ‘just to fill it in,’ they say, what- 
 ever that may mean. 
 
 And then they wonder why the copy is not like the 
 original. They might as well expect to draw were they 
 blind, as to learn with the eyes of their mind wilfully shut. 
 
 The French painter, Couture, used to say, ‘ Look five 
 
BLACK AND WHITE, 
 
 13 
 
 minutes at your model, and one at your drawing.’ 
 This is a golden rule to remember. Get what you are 
 looking at well by heart before you attempt to put it 
 down. And never put a stroke on your paper without 
 you thoroughly understand its meaning, and know why 
 you have put it there. 
 
 Nevertheless, occasionally get into the habit of giving an 
 instantaneous look, just raising your lids and down again. 
 Whatever has struck jou most In '-that cursory glance, 
 you may be sure, iS/the right thing to insist upon in your 
 drawing. You see, you would have had time only to see 
 the most important thing in the head or landscape that you 
 are doing. 
 
 To cultivate this, it is a good plan to sit before some 
 object, whatever you wish to represent^ be" it a flower, vase, 
 piece of sculpture, &c., study it well, note every detail 
 mentally, and then, covering it over, proceed to make a 
 faithful copy of it, with no other aid than your memory. 
 You will be astonished to find how easily you will be able 
 to do this after a few trials and failures. Another excellent 
 method of cultivating quickness of eye is to look out of 
 your window and observe objects passing by. Directly 
 they are out of sight, draw what you remember of them, 
 and nothing more. It may be only the line of a back, the 
 outline of an arm, or the carriage of a head. 
 
 Done in this manner, these incomplete details will all 
 have the impress of truth stamped upon them, and in a 
 very short time you will find you will be able to observe 
 and reproduce whole figures. This will help you very 
 much in composing pictures, but beware, whatever you do, 
 of inventing lines for yourself. 
 
 In these lessons of observation, truth only must be your 
 guide. 
 
 Caricaturists, by the very nature of their work, depend 
 entirely upon the faithfulness of their observation and 
 
14 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 memory. Were they seen to carry about a sketch-book, | 
 men would flee from them, and they would then have no 
 subjects to caricature. j 
 
 My lamented friend, Carlo Pellegrini, who used to draw 
 the caricatures of celebrities for Vanity Fah^ under the 
 pseudonym of ^ Ape,’ used to study his victims whilst 
 they themselves were quite unconscious that their little 
 peculiarities were all being mentally photographed on to 
 the keen brain of ‘ Ape.’ 
 
 If the celebrity to be taken off were a member of the 
 House of Commons, Pellegrini would go to the Strangers’ 
 Gallery and note every gesture, expression, and attitude of 
 his man. Occasionally, in puzzling cases, he would make 
 a memorandum on his thumb nail or his shirt cuff. 
 
 I wonder, by-the-by, if his washerwoman knew the value 
 of the strokes that she obliterated in her wash-tub. 
 
 When Pellegrini had his portrait strongly visualised, he 
 committed it straight on to the paper, with direct touches, 
 which never required any alteration. 
 
 In my school of art I give my pupils a time study once 
 a-week. 
 
 I find it of the greatest advantage to a student. 
 
 By a ‘time study’ I mean a subject done in a given 
 time. 
 
 A charcoal life-sized head is drawn from the model in 
 the space of one hour, or a rapid painting is blocked in. 
 
 This is sufficiently long, as it is necessary to keep up 
 their excitement and enthusiasm, and a longer time would 
 only exhaust them. 
 
 By this quick time-work the salient points of their model 
 are seized and noted. All details disappear, and the chief 
 characteristics of outline and proportion are perforce accen- 
 tuated in order to ensure a resemblance. This accustoms 
 them, when painting a portrait, to look for the most im- 
 portant points. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 15 
 
 The same system is carried out in making a sketch from 
 the old masters. A small canvas about 8 x 10 is used, and 
 as much, and as accurately as possible, is represented in 
 one sitting of any work which the student especially wishes 
 to study. Never mind how large the picture is, it can all 
 be contained in miniature on your small canvas. The 
 sitting can extend from one hour to the whole of the day 
 that the gallery is open to students. On no account must 
 the sketch be touched a second day. 
 
 This practice does as much good as mere slavish 
 copying does harm. It forces the student to decide 
 quickly upon the lines which form the composition and 
 upon the scale of colouring. The beauty of the work as 
 a whole impresses one, because one has no time to get 
 lost over one little unimportant bit of detail. The student 
 has all the time he is working to be constantly occupied 
 with the whole, comparing one portion with another until 
 he gets his small replica to give an impression of all 
 the qualities of line and colour that his great original 
 possesses. 
 
 This is done once a-month by the students in the 
 School of Art, and more often would be still more bene- 
 ficial, as anything that induces the students to visit the 
 National Gallery is good for them. 
 
 The mere society of the grand men inspires them and 
 educates their intelligence unconsciously. 
 
 These time studies teach us to look for and produce 
 the ‘general effect’ of our subject, and according to 
 Reynolds, ‘ wherever this is observed, whatever else may 
 be neglected, we acknowledge the hand of a Master.’ 
 
 Now I want to show you how to correct yourself if 
 circumstances prevent you going to a school of art or 
 obtaining a master. 
 
 Here I shall be reminded, perhaps, that he who teaches 
 himself has a fool for a master. 
 
i6 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 This, like many proverbs, is a sophism. 
 
 We are all of us capable of teaching ourselves if we 
 have anything in us. 
 
 Get a master to help you if you can, but if it be impos- 
 sible to do so, go on learning and you will find you must 
 improve. 
 
 The master can only act as a sort of moral whip, to 
 urge you on when you are lagging by the way. 
 
 Make up your mind to do without this, and be as 
 severe with yourself as the strictest master would be. 
 
 You see I quite expect you to make mistakes, but even 
 these will teach you, and you can make them stepping- 
 stones to your ultimate success. Whenever you -make a 
 fault, and know it, you must rub it out instantly. 
 
 The eye must not be allowed to accustom itself to an 
 ill-drawn line or a false bit of colour. 
 
 If it be allowed to do so, you lose your inner percep- 
 tion of truth. 
 
 That is why what we call a fresh eye is of such value. 
 
 Some one, no matter who, coming suddenly upon a 
 drawing, sees with an eye whose rectitude has been un- 
 tampered with, and he is able to detect at once the wrong 
 line or the inharmonious tint. He could not tell you, 
 perhaps, how to alter them, that is for you to find out. 
 
 It is of no consequence whether your critic be of 
 cultivated taste or not. 
 
 If your drawing be really right it will look so, and you 
 can defy criticism; but if it appear wrong to some other 
 than yourself, be very sure that it is in reality so. 
 
 I am now talking of your superficial faults, to which, 
 however patent they are to others, you yourself may be 
 totally blind. 
 
 For your more subtle faults, and which, perhaps, you 
 are not sufficiently advanced to see, ask the advice of some 
 one you know and have confidence in, and follow it. 
 
BLACK AND WHITE, 
 
 17 
 
 Respect a friend if he possess the faculty of perceiving 
 your errors, but beware how you listen to the ignorant 
 flattery of an incompetent person. There is no greater 
 obstacle to success than this. 
 
 Be satisfied only with the praise of a master of his art. 
 
 It requires a higher intelligence to discover merits than 
 it does to perceive faults. 
 
 You yourself can cultivate the fresh eye of your some- 
 u times unpleasantly candid friend, by leaving your drawing 
 and turning your attention to something totally different 
 for a space of five or six minutes. When you return to it, 
 stand at a great distance, and looking at it as if it were 
 some one else’s search for the faults and correct them. 
 
 If you criticise yourself severely once every hour in this 
 manner, you will find that you have an excellent master. 
 
 When you are resting, never keep your drawing in front 
 of you and gaze at it in an absent-minded manner. You 
 are not resting then; you are only accustoming your eye 
 to imperfection. If you are tired, change your occupation 
 for a few minutes. It will be a far greater refreshment to 
 the mind than idleness. 
 
 The best self-corrector you can have is the use of the 
 looking-glass. Take a hand mirror, not to look at your- 
 self but at your drawing, and study its reflection. You 
 will instantly see where you are wrong, whether you have 
 drawn one eye higher than the other, or if the mouth be 
 placed exactly where it ought to be in relation to the 
 eyes, &c. 
 
 The object being reversed in the glass, you see it as it 
 were in a fresh light. 
 
 I know many great painters who habitually paint with 
 a large looking-glass placed directly behind them, which 
 reflects both their model and their canvas. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci calls the mirror the painter^s best 
 friend and counsellor. 
 
 c 
 
i8 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 Another way is to hold your drawing upside down. 
 
 You can thus more easily detect inaccuracies of drawing. 
 
 When you want to erase your mistakes always use bread 
 a day old, in the way I have already indicated for char- 
 coal work. It cleans instead of soiling your paper, as 
 indiarubber so often does. You must take care that your 
 bread be not too fresh, or it will leave a greasy mark, which 
 you will find very difficult to work over. 
 
 An excellent thing, and one to be constantly practised, 
 is to redraw from memory, on any stray sheet of paper, 
 the subject that you were engaged on a few hours 
 previously. 
 
 Then compare your memory sketch with your drawing. 
 
 This is the best way of testing if you have thoroughly 
 understood what you were working at, and whether your 
 mind has been as occupied with it as your fingers have 
 been. 
 
 A bad habit we are apt to fall into is our imitation of 
 ourselves. 
 
 Whatever are the defects or the graces of our person, 
 we are constantly reproducing them in our drawing. 
 
 This, as you can well imagine, tends to monotony in 
 composition. Try to cure yourself of it by honestly seeking 
 to portray the individuality of the model who is sitting to 
 you. 
 
 I give my pupils once a -week a lesson in eye- 
 judgment. 
 
 A subject is placed upon the model table. It may be 
 the living model, a plaster cast, or any object one happens 
 to choose. The pupils look at it, study it mentally, and 
 learn it by heart. This generally takes from about a 
 quarter of an hour to twenty minutes — even ten minutes 
 would do — as it is not advisable to strain the attention too 
 long, or the power of concentration may be weakened. 
 The subject is then covered over, and the pupils instantly 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 19 
 
 commence their reproduction from memory of what they 
 have just seen. 
 
 This is capital training for the mind. 
 
 Measurement, I suppose, ought not to be suggested to 
 the art student. 
 
 In fact, it is scarcely practicable, so much perspective 
 is there in a head. 
 
 Still, I have promised you some hints, so if you find it 
 very difficult to hit off by the eye an exact life-size of a 
 head, you may take a sheet of note paper and hold it close 
 up to your modehs face, making a mark with your thumb 
 or pencil at each place where the corner of the eye and 
 that of the mouth touch the paper. 
 
 You can then mark these measurements off on your 
 paper, and from these two points you ought to put in the 
 rest of the features in their exact position. 
 
 A very celebrated painter taught me this method. 
 
 To get at correct proportions that cannot be managed 
 in this way, hold your pencil out perpendicularly at arm’s 
 length, and mark where the top of your pencil is level with 
 a given point, say, the forehead. Then place your thumb 
 on a line with any other point, the mouth, perhaps, or the 
 chin, and, holding your thumb securely on the spot, turn 
 your pencil round in a horizontal position, and see where 
 this length comes to across the centre of your face. Then 
 turn to your drawing and test its proportions in a similar 
 manner. You see in this way you get the width of your 
 face to correspond with its length. Anything you draw can 
 be continually tested by these means. 
 
 As a rule, the length of a face is the same as the hand. 
 In drawing a full-length figure, if you cannot succeed in 
 making it stand well it is good to use a plumb-line, 
 a line weighted at the bottom with lead. Hold it at arm’s 
 length in front of your model at a good distance, the 
 further off the better. Note which parts of the figure cross 
 
20 
 
 HINTS TO A MATE [ITS, 
 
 or touch the line of your string. Then put it to your draw- 
 ing, and if you find any difference between that and your 
 model you may be sure that your drawing is incorrect. 
 
 People who assert that they know nothing about paint- 
 ing, are continually making the remark that they think it so 
 wonderful that a round object can be represented on a flat 
 surface. 
 
 If they had studied the principle of shadows, they 
 would understand that in reproducing a rounded object, 
 and painting the shadows on it, it would be quite impos- 
 sible to make it look otherwise than round. 
 
 Rays of light travel only in straight lines. Starting 
 from one centre, they spread out in all directions. 
 
 For instance, let us imagine that we are painting a 
 ball. 
 
 The surface of the ball nearest the light will receive 
 and reflect the greatest amount of it. The rest of the 
 ball gradually recedes from the light, and receives, there- 
 fore, less and less of it, as the rays strike the surface 
 obliquely. 
 
 Then comes a portion of the ball which receives no 
 light whatever, as the ray of light passes by it. Here 
 there is the deepest shadow. Between that and the 
 extreme boundary line we get a reflected light, />., light 
 refracted or thrown back from surfaces adjacent, which 
 the rays of light have touched and illuminated in their 
 forward progress. 
 
 In painting a head, we must never forget that it is a 
 round surface, and we must look for our deepest shadows 
 and our reflected lights as if it were a ball. 
 
 If we always remembered this, our heads would never 
 have the appearance that they sometimes do of having no 
 backs to them. In painting a nose full face, the shadow 
 and reflected light must be well studied. 
 
 The word ‘Tone’ is often made use of, and in the 
 
BLACK AND WHITE. 
 
 21 
 
 artistic jargon of the day it holds a conspicuous position. 
 Now the amateur will say, ‘What is tone?’ We seem to 
 have taken it in the first instance from the sister-art Music, 
 as in the same way we have borrowed, or rather Mr. 
 Whistler has done so for us, the words ‘ harmony,’ 
 ‘ nocturne,’ and such-like phrases. 
 
 Now, tone in painting is described by a lexicographer 
 ‘ as the harmonious relation of the colours of a picture in 
 light and shade. The term is often used to qualify, or as 
 synonymous with, depths richness.^ and splendour. It has 
 also been more recently used to denote the characteristic 
 expressions of a picture as distinguished by its colour. In 
 painting, to tone down a picture is to soften its colouring 
 so that a subdued harmony of tint may prevail, and all 
 undue glare be avoided.’ 
 
 This is his explanation of the term. 
 
 I think, for my own part, the word ‘ tone ’ is used by 
 the critics principally in relation to harmony in colouring. 
 
 When all the colours in a picture are of relative value, 
 and none are too crude nor too quarrelsome with those in 
 juxtaposition with them, then we say the picture is of a 
 good tone. 
 
 The use of grey generally ensures this, provided that it 
 be not of a cold quality. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 Oil Painting. 
 
 Painting is simply drawing in colour. 
 
 I cannot sufficiently impress it upon you, that unless 
 you draw well you cannot expect to paint well. How- 
 ever true and beautiful your sense of colour may be 
 per se, it will look weak and without vigour unless you 
 furnish it with a good backbone of sound drawing. 
 
 In painting the head, draw it first carefully on your 
 canvas in charcoal. 
 
 When the outline is as correct as you can get it, flick 
 the loose charcoal off, and go over the lines with a pencil 
 or red chalk. The latter is preferable, as the colour better 
 assimilates with the flesh tones. 
 
 Be very certain of your drawing before you commence 
 to paint, and you will save yourself afterwards a great deal 
 of unnecessary trouble. It is not easy to make corrections 
 in oil paint, unless one is thoroughly master of the material. 
 The colour is apt to become dirty, and it is difficult to 
 restore it to its pristine purity. Endeavour to get at once 
 the right tone of colour, and put it on your canvas in 
 exactly the right place. 
 
 The larger your palette is the better. You will then 
 have plenty of room on it for mixing your colours. 
 
 In M. Chaplin's atelier^ where I was taught, we were 
 given what was called ‘ The Rubens Palette,' the 
 
OIL FAINTING. 
 
 23 
 
 colours we had to use were similar to those Rubens 
 painted with, and they were arranged on it in the same 
 order. There is a palette of the great master in some 
 museum abroad, preserved just as he left it after a day’s 
 work. 
 
 The look of a palette after it has been worked upon, is 
 always a source of interest to an artist. 
 
 From it a man’s style of work can so often be guessed 
 at, and every artist’s palette has quite as much individuality 
 in it as has his handwriting. 
 
 I must say, however, that the mere using of a palette 
 like Rubens’ had no magical effect upon our colouring. ' 
 
 We had all to learn from the great teacher. Experience, 
 who, as Carlyle says, ‘demandeth high wages, and is a 
 hard taskmistress, but she teacheth like none other.’ 
 
 It does not seem to me to matter much how you do a 
 thing, provided you do it well. To reach the summit of 
 the hill Excellence there are many paths, and each person 
 chooses the way which seems to him the best. 
 
 So it is with art. Each master works in his own par- 
 ticular way. 
 
 For instance, John Philip never used any brown. He 
 composed his of burnt sienna and ivory black. 
 
 Then, again, Frank Holl omitted black from his list of 
 colours, and instead used Vandyke brown and French ultra- 
 marine. 
 
 Mr. Pilleau, the water-colour artist, in making black 
 when he paints in oil, uses burnt sienna, lake, and indigo. 
 Some artists never use any medium; others use copal, 
 Roberson’s medium, or megilp ; whilst many pin their 
 faith on amber varnish. 
 
 In the use of few or many colours, there is also a great 
 variety of opinion. Some men, like the Belgian painter 
 Alfred Stevens, glory in using a very full palette. ^J'aime 
 une palette riche^ he used to say to me. 
 
24 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 Others, and amongst these may be counted men cele- 
 brated for their colouring, like to restrain themselves in 
 their use of an abundance of colour. They love to dis- 
 cover all the potentialities that exist in one primitive 
 colour, blended in greater or lesser degree with any 
 other. 
 
 Place your colours on your palette as best pleases you, 
 but I should advise you to do so with a certain method. 
 If the colour you want is always in the* same place, your 
 brush will mechanically find it for you. 
 
 I will give you a list of the colours as I use them, in 
 rotation from right to left of the palette : — Scarlet vermi- 
 lion, flake white, French Naples yellow, yellow ochre, raw 
 sienna, burnt sienna, Indian red, pink madder, crimson 
 madder, cobalt, ultramarine, mummy, Cassel earth, and 
 ivory black. 
 
 I use Vandyke brown now instead of mummy, which, 
 though a most beautiful colour, is not considered a good 
 standing one. 
 
 Raw umber might be added with advantage to one’s 
 palette. 
 
 These colours are more than sufficient to paint the 
 "figure with. 
 
 For landscape, you may require Antwerp blue and 
 chrome yellow and emerald green. In the use of the two 
 latter you must be very careful, as contact with the air 
 oxidises them and turns them black. Prussian and 
 Antwerp blue are apt to fade, or fly as we term it. 
 Cadmium yellow is a good substitute for chrome, but 
 it is not so strong. These latter colours I have named 
 must never be used for painting a head. 
 
 Learn to paint without any medium whatever. You 
 will find your difficulties much more easily overcome if, 
 in the first instance, you accustom yourself to do without 
 its fallacious aid. 
 
OIL PAINTING. 
 
 25 
 
 In Paris I never used anything, but as I find the 
 colours prepared in London are mixed with less oil, and 
 consequently of a thicker subsistence than those sold in 
 Paris, I sometimes use a mixture of half turpentine and 
 half oil. This will make your brush move more easily 
 over the canvas when you are drawing in your head. 
 
 Take a fine-pointed cameFs-hair brush, and go steadily 
 over your lines of red chalk, always remembering never to 
 omit testing them again from nature, and do not merely 
 make a tracing over your drawing. 
 
 For this purpose use a little burnt sienna and French 
 ultramarine, or any colour that you like, provided it be 
 not opaque. 
 
 If the head be at all in shadow, rub in the shadows 
 thinly with some transparent mixture, such as blue and 
 burnt sienna, so as to give a certain amount of rotundity 
 to your head. This will help you in deciding where to 
 place your highest light, which is generally on the roundest 
 part of the forehead and cheek bones. On the lip and 
 bridge of the nose you will perceive it also. Sometimes if 
 the hair is very brilliant, as in an old woman’s head with a 
 quantity of grey hair, the highest light would be there. 
 
 It is for you to find it out. Don’t think of any general 
 rule, but look, and put the highest light where you see that 
 it falls on the head that you are painting. 
 
 Fill your brush with plenty of colour. The light part 
 of the head ought always to be painted on thickly. 
 
 Try and get it exactly the right colour — with plenty of 
 white, a little yellow, and a little red. It depends upon the 
 head you are painting what yellow and what red to mix. 
 
 Put it boldly on in exactly the right place, and leave it 
 there. Don’t touch it again if you can help it. 
 
 To get the proper warm tone of your high lights, com- 
 pare them with a white collar or handkerchief. Beginners 
 are apt to get the light parts of their head too sickly in tone. 
 
26 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 Don’t forget that you are trying to paint transparent flesh, 
 with warm blood coursing through it 
 
 To arrive at the exact value of tones, to give to 
 each separate touch its due share of importance in relation 
 to another one, you must compare each tone with every 
 other whilst you are painting, and this you must continually 
 do if you wish your head to assume the appearance of a 
 complete whole. 
 
 If it were possible to paint a picture straight through 
 without stopping, you would have the perfection of 
 painting. 
 
 This I want you to bear in mind always, as it wil) 
 prevent your putting down meaningless touches. 
 
 Each touch should express something of the modelling 
 of the face. 
 
 If done quickly, a portrait has more truth and life in 
 it, because the effect of the whole has never been lost 
 sight of. 
 
 This is why a sketch has so often such charm in it. 
 
 Directly one sees the labour that has produced the 
 picture, half its fascination has gone. 
 
 The great art is to hide one’s art. 
 
 When you have got your highest light well placed, turn 
 your attention to where your strongest dark will be. This 
 mix with transparent colour, keeping it rich in tone — not 
 dirty, whatever you do. Do not use at first in the shadows 
 any of the opaque colours, such as white or the lighter 
 yellows. Neither make your shadows too hot in tone, as 
 if they are they will tend to make your high lights look 
 cold. Blue, either cobalt or ultramarine, mixed with 
 warmer colours, tends to keep them cool. Now, having 
 the deepest dark and the highest light of your head on 
 your canvas, you must paint the rest of it in relation to 
 these two. You have plenty of colours on your canvas, 
 so work away with them, never forgetting that you must 
 
OIL FAINTING. 
 
 27- 
 
 model your head, i.e., produce on your flat surface a 
 rounded object. 
 
 Always take great care that whatever background you 
 put in it is always there before you. Your background 
 affects your head to a great extent. 
 
 If your background is painted without relation to the 
 head, the latter, however well painted, will look false. 
 
 Note especially how the head relieves against it, in 
 which part, for instance, it is lighter than the background, 
 and in others where it is darker. 
 
 I can give you no cut-and-dried recipes for mixing your 
 colours. 
 
 As well ask a poet what words he would choose to 
 clothe his ideas in ; or, to give you a more homely simile, 
 to expect a cook to tell you the exact quantity of salt or 
 pepper she puts into each dish to give it the right savour. 
 
 This mixing of colours you must find out for yourself, 
 as indeed we must most things in this world. 
 
 I can give you, as I promised, a few hints only. 
 
 Remember that in whatever you do it is you yourself 
 who have to do it and not your master. Your own indi- 
 viduality must imbue your work. 
 
 You cannot give to the world anything but what is in 
 you. Poetry, music, and painting are only the visible 
 expressions of one’s inward feelings. 
 
 In painting a head you must never forget that you are 
 drawing it, although you do it in colour instead of in black 
 and white. The latter is but modelling in one colour and 
 the former in many. 
 
 Don’t forget, also, that your head is a round and not a 
 flat object — make it so. Make us feel that we can walk 
 round your head. 
 
 Ingres used to say, ‘ Good drawing is probity in art.’ 
 
 The truth of a thing must always impress us, and that 
 you can only give by perfection in your drawing. 
 
28 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 In making corrections or alterations on your oil paint- 
 ing when it is dry enough, there is a delightful loose- 
 textured white chalk called ^craieJ It never scratches the 
 surface, and is easily washed off. A piece of common 
 whitening would answer the same purpose, but it crumbles 
 more readily, and is not so convenient to hold. 
 
 For brushes, use either round or flat hog’s hair; the 
 larger the better. For fine work and small details and 
 delicate drawing you can get hog’s hair, which you can 
 manipulate as easily as you can a sable. This latter is 
 to be used at first only for drawing in. 
 
 It is unwise for the student to use sables for anything 
 else until he is quite au fait with his brush work, as the 
 quality of smoothness they easily obtain for the artist is 
 detrimental to him in the earlier stages of his work. 
 
 There are some brushes called ‘ Landseer,’ arranged 
 very thinly in a semicircle. These are delightful to use in 
 giving finishing touches to an animal’s coat. Many Ger- 
 man painters use brushes two or three feet long. Hogarth 
 is supposed to have done so too. Anyway, it is splendid 
 training for freedom of hand. 
 
 For studies, I find what is called single primed canvas 
 the best. It is easier to work on. If you want your 
 painting to look very solid, then get your canvas doubly 
 primed. French canvas is of a very fine texture, and is 
 charming for delicate work. Then there is a coarse twill 
 which is well adapted for landscapes and seascapes. 
 
 For sketches, there is a paper prepared with oil, and 
 which you can buy in blocks like that made for water 
 colour, and there is brown cardboard called millboard. 
 
 For finished outdoor sketches there is nothing nicer 
 than pine wood or oak. You can buy them any size you 
 wish, by the dozen, to fit the Fortuny sketching-box, and 
 if you live in the country your local carpenter can easily 
 prepare them for you. They want to be smoothly planed, 
 
OIL FAINTING, 
 
 29 
 
 about one-eighth of an inch in thickness. Care must be 
 taken that the wood is well seasoned, so that it does not 
 warp. 
 
 It is as well to be provided for outdoor sketching with 
 a palette that has hinges in the centre, so that it can double 
 up, and the paint being thus protected it can easily be 
 carried about, without fear of the thousand and one 
 accidents that are liable to happen to an uncovered 
 palette. 
 
 You will want also a dipper containing a little tur- 
 pentine and oil, as colours often dry too quickly in the 
 open air, and it is difficult when this happens to get along 
 as fast as we should like. 
 
 Rapidity in sketching is a thing to cultivate, as nature 
 does not keep the same face on for long together. After 
 being used to a steady studio light, we find the instability 
 and fickleness of open-air light very puzzling. But it is 
 capital practice, and prevents our being a slave to the 
 conventional effect of light and shade. 
 
 I cannot impress upon you too much to keep your 
 palette and brushes clean. If at the end of your day’s 
 work you have lumps of paint left upon your palette, take 
 each colour off separately with a palette knife and place 
 them in a soup plate. Pour water on them until they are 
 covered. This keeps them from the dust and air, and 
 whenever you want them again, either on the following day 
 or a week after, you will find their condition unaltered. 
 After you have taken off the colour that you wish preserved 
 for another day, scrape off with a palette knife all the rest 
 of the paint still left upon your palette, and rub it perfectly 
 clean and dry with a little turpentine upon a piece of rag. 
 If you clean your palette directly you have done with it, 
 you will find no difficulty whatever; but if you leave it 
 untouched for a few hours, or, worse still, until the next 
 day, you will find it no easy task to get off the dry paint. 
 
30 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 and in the effort to do so you will perhaps spoil the look 
 of your palette for ever by making little notches in it with 
 your knife. 
 
 This direction applies equally to your brushes, which 
 are easy to wash if attended to at once. 
 
 A little soft soap and lukewarm water will cleanse them 
 best. 
 
 If you find it difficult to take out all the paint, rub 
 your brushes about in the palm of your hand, and then 
 when quite clean rinse them out in cold water, which 
 will prevent them getting too soft. 
 
 Your camebs-hair brushes you must treat more tenderly. 
 They must not be rubbed in the hand, and care must be 
 taken to leave them pointed after drying, otherwise they 
 become useless to draw with. 
 
 Sometimes people are affected by the smell of oil 
 paints. The lead of which some of them are composed 
 enters into the system, and gives pains that are known by 
 the name of painters’ colic. It affects also the muscles, 
 paralysing them occasionally. 
 
 The way to obviate these unpleasantnesses is to have 
 your room well ventilated. 
 
 Tobin’s ventilators are excellent to bring fresh air into 
 a room, but it is more important that the used-up air 
 should be carried out of the room. To do this a ven- 
 tilator must be put into the outer wall close to the ceiling. 
 If this is attended to you will never suffer from any ill 
 •effects. 
 
 A basin ot water takes away the mere smell of the 
 paint, which is often so disagreeable. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Water Colours. 
 
 About water colours I find it easier to preach than to 
 practise, but this I think we all do about a great many 
 things. 
 
 However, I have had lengthy talks with many ‘ potent, 
 grave, and reverend seigneurs,’ and the gist of our conver- 
 sations I will retail to you. 
 
 For my own part, I cannot offer you a better guide 
 than simplicity. 
 
 Do the thing you wish to do simply and boldly, and 
 give it the impress of your own mind. 
 
 The way in which another person works is only valuable 
 because it is his way. As soon as you copy it, in you it 
 becomes valueless, and an expert can with facility dis- 
 tinguish the copy from the original. 
 
 The French and Spanish school of water-colour painters 
 — in which there are many famous disciples, notably Men- 
 doza and Fortuny — follow this plan of painting, simply and 
 directly from nature. Being thorough masters of their 
 craft, they arrive at an effect in the simplest and most 
 facile manner. Hence much of their \york possesses the 
 great charm that a hurried sketch exercises, that of being 
 vividly fresh, and painted ^ au premier coup.^ 
 
 They know, you see, what they want to paint, and do it. 
 
 But there is another style of water colour, whose fasci- 
 
32 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 nation consists in the result having been arrived at in a 
 more subtle and laborious manner. 
 
 It is essentially an English school, and its great apostles 
 were the ever-lamented Frederick Walker, and a man less 
 known but of even more original genius named Pinwell. 
 The method of this work is entrancing, and these men 
 thoroughly carried out the precept that ‘ artis est celai'e 
 artem.' 
 
 Although I was a personal friend of Mr. Frederick 
 Walker, I never dared to question him about the mysteries 
 of his method. 
 
 For what I know about it, I am indebted to another 
 friend, Mr. Pilleau, who is himself a distinguished member 
 of the Institute of Water Colours. 
 
 He tells me that Walker used a moderately fine-grained 
 paper. He first damped it thoroughly, and then with a large 
 hog’s-hair brush, similar to those used for oil, he spread on 
 a mixture, the consistency of thin cream, composed of 
 large quantities of Chinese white, with a little cadmium 
 and black, the colour of the whole being a warm grey. 
 Before it dried on the paper it was rubbed well into the 
 surface by the finger, protected by a soft linen rag. When 
 this was done, and an even surface produced, it was allowed 
 to dry for three or four days at least. When thoroughly 
 dry, he painted his picture on it in pure transparent 
 colour. 
 
 This method requires great knowledge and savoir faire 
 on the part of the painter. 
 
 No second thoughts, which are so often considered 
 best, are advisable, as once the work of obliteration com- 
 mences the under ground gets disturbed, and mixing too 
 freely with the surface results in muddiness. 
 
 Mr. Pilleau tells me of another method, which I see by 
 the result is excellent, although I myself have not tried it. 
 This is painting on glass. It is done in this way. 
 
WATER COLOURS. 
 
 33 
 
 Take your paper, draw in the outlines of your subject 
 in colour, and then let it get thoroughly soaked by allowing 
 it to remain in a bath all night. Then put it, wet, on to a 
 sheet of glass, and whilst in this state paint in your atmo- 
 spheric effects, letting the colours blend one into another. 
 
 Keep the edges of your paper moist by repeated 
 spongings. 
 
 When you are ready for the finishing details, mount 
 your paper in the ordinary way and work on it in the 
 usual manner. 
 
 Many amateurs are under the impression that you can- 
 not obliterate in water colour, that mistakes once made are 
 ineradicable. 
 
 This is far from being the case. 
 
 It is quite as easy to alter as it is in oils, and water 
 colour has the advantage over the other method of never 
 getting into a mess, or in that condition which is described as 
 ‘ tacky,’ and which is so heart-breaking for the tyro in oils. 
 
 A hog’s-hair brush can do wonders in the way of 
 erasing, and so can a sponge. 
 
 Then there is the knife, carefully and delicately used 
 so as not to destroy too much of the paper. 
 
 If you damp with a brush any particular spot you wish 
 taken out, and then wipe it with a piece of clean linen rag 
 or blotting-paper, or, better still, indiarubber, you will 
 attain your object. Sometimes in painting hair you want 
 some fine light lines to stray over your background : take a 
 steel drawing pen, dip it in water, and then make your line, 
 and wipe it dry with a rag. 
 
 The best brushes for blending your colours are broad, 
 flat camel’s-hair. 
 
 For sky effects, damp your paper thoroughly, and put 
 your colours on strongly and rather dryer than your moist 
 surface, in order to avoid too much running. Then exhaust 
 the moisture by using one of the large, flat brushes, without 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 HINTS TO AMA TENTS. 
 
 water, and continually kept dry by wiping it on blotting- 
 paper. Very small sponges fastened on to sticks can be 
 obtained for sky work. 
 
 Hog’s-hair brushes are very useful for putting in foliage 
 and grasses. 
 
 The ones called the Landseer brush, consisting of only 
 a few thin hairs, are the best ones for the purpose. 
 
 A sponge dipped in colours and managed with dex- 
 terity, gives charming unforeseen touches, with surprising 
 effects of finish, without the labour usually necessary. 
 
 To draw a fine line easily on the paper, dip your brush 
 into a pot of ox-gall before applying it to the colour. Some 
 painters habitually put a little ox-gall into their water. It 
 causes the colour to flow more easily. 
 
 For sky effects, distances, and middle distances, paint 
 them always on a wet surface, otherwise they will be hard 
 and painty, and will give no sense of atmosphere. 
 
 Endeavour always to avoid mixing your colours on the 
 palette. 
 
 The three primitive colours, viz., red, blue, and yellow^ 
 put on separately on a wet surface, produce in blending a 
 beautiful opalesque tone. 
 
 Turner and De Wint painted in this way all their most 
 bewitching effects. 
 
 If you study Turner’s water-colour drawings, which can 
 be seen by application at the National Gallery, you will 
 understand what I mean. 
 
 Your shadows you must always keep very transparent ; 
 the opacity of your light will then make your object look 
 solid. 
 
 If you want sun in your sky, tone your paper with 
 yellow ochre ; or should you wish to suggest great heat, 
 as in Eastern skies, use cadmium very delicately. 
 
 For faint, far-away distances, use blue, but as on your 
 yellowed sky it may, and probably will, look green, use 
 
WATER COLOURS. 
 
 3S 
 
 with it a homoeopathic dose of Chinese white — not enough^ 
 remember, to suggest body colour. 
 
 You can, if you like to enhance the brilliancy and 
 transparent depth of your shadow, use with your colour a 
 little of what is called ‘glass medium.’ 
 
 When body colour is used, be careful to avoid making 
 your drawing appear cold, which the use of it so often 
 produces in landscape sketching. 
 
 A story is told of a painter who, to avoid this, used to 
 put on his canvas a lump of yellow ochre, exclaiming while* 
 he did so, ‘ Stay there, my friend, until you become white.’ 
 
 This illustrates the fact that everything in painting is a 
 question of degrees of tone. 
 
 You may paint in as high a key or as low a key as you 
 like, provided it is all in keeping. If the proper values are- 
 kept your picture will look true. 
 
 About colours. Those called slow-drying tubes are the 
 best. A little honey is, I believe, mixed in their prepara- 
 tion with the water, and this keeps them longer in a state- 
 of moisture. 
 
 Learn to paint with as simple a palette as you can, i.e.y 
 using few colours. 
 
 You will in this way find out the potentiality that each 
 colour possesses, and you will discover all the charm that 
 lies hidden away in grey neutral tones. 
 
 Any further elaboration in the schemes of colour you 
 wish to produce can be better evolved by the adept than 
 the tyro. 
 
 Be very sparing in your use of emerald green, which, as- 
 well as cadmium, has a fatal tendency to turn black, i.e.^ 
 to get oxidised by exposure to the air. 
 
 Cobalt and indigo are both good blues. 
 
 Of yellows, there are ochre, Indian yellow, raw sienna^ 
 and gamboge. 
 
 This latter is chiefly used as a glaze over yellow ochre 
 
3 ^ 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 to give a sunny, luminous effect. I have already told you, 
 I think, that cadmium must be sparingly used. 
 
 Of the reds, you can use lake, rose madder, Indian red, 
 or Venetian red and vermilion. Of browns, burnt sienna, 
 brown madder, Vandyke brown, and sepia. Olive green 
 is a good colour. Black is useful, chiefly for grey tones. 
 It seldom conveys the impression of black when used 
 alone. 
 
 There are so many tones and colours in black. The 
 ‘ black as my hat ’ expression conveys the impression of the 
 deepest depth of black one can arrive at ; but we see at 
 once the fallacy of this idea when w^e are asked the ques- 
 tion, ‘What is blacker than my hat?’ and we are told when 
 we give up the riddle, ‘A hole in it’ A black hat reflects 
 so much light on its shiny surface, that by the side of a 
 hole in it into which no rays of light penetrate, the hat 
 appears and has to be painted quite grey. 
 
 To make a black, burnt sienna and French ultramarine 
 are a good mixture. 
 
 For strong effects of light and shade — in Eastern 
 interiors, for example, where a pervading warmth of tone 
 is desired — Mr. Carl Haag and Mr. Pilleau’s method is 
 to make use of the three primitive colours — yellow, red, 
 ind blue. 
 
 Damp your paper and then wash it over boldly with 
 yellow ochre. 
 
 After that is dry, give it a wash of Venetian or light 
 
 red. 
 
 Let it again dry, and give it a last wash of blue. 
 
 This gives a delightful tone on which you can paint 
 your picture. 
 
 The portions which you wish white damp with a wet 
 brush, dry with blotting-paper, and then take your india- 
 rubber and rub off any tone that may be left. 
 
 You will find that your paper shows brilliantly white. 
 
WATER COLOURS. 
 
 37 
 
 If you wish to get a delicate high light, or a line of 
 white, make use of bread instead of indiarubber. 
 
 You can always get rid of any colour that you wish to 
 change by rubbing it off your paper with a wet hog’s-hair 
 brush, the same as those used for oils, and then applying 
 blotting-paper to absorb the liquid colour. Sometimes in 
 painting a water colour, one wishes a portion of the paper 
 to be smoother than another — for the face, for instance. 
 Rub the part carefully with No. o sandpaper, and you 
 will get a surface as smooth and polished as ivory. 
 
 Try to make up your mind at first as to the strength of 
 your different washes, and put them in at their right degree 
 of depth at once. 
 
 They are apt if painted over and over again to become 
 muddled, especially when brown is used. 
 
 The under surface gets swept up when applying a wash. 
 
 Some people think it a good plan to make a black and 
 white sketch of their subject, which they keep near their 
 picture as a guide for the effect they are seeking for. 
 
 It is a good test, as a rule, for a picture to translate well 
 into black and white. 
 
 Gustave Dore understood better the monochromed side 
 of nature than the coloured one. The French used to say 
 of him that he drew with his brush and painted with his 
 pencil. 
 
 Should your colours get dry with non-use, a good 
 sluicing under a pump will ' benefit them, and then for any 
 obstinate dryness a drop of glycerine carefully placed will 
 work wonders. 
 
 For your paper, always use Whatmaffs hand-made. It 
 is by far the best. You can get it specially prepared in 
 blocks of any dimensions. 
 
 These are useful if you wish to do a quantity of rough 
 sketching ; but if you wish to do a drawing that will take 
 some time, and you do not want to be incessantly troubled 
 
.38 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 with the puckering of your paper when it gets damped, you 
 must have your paper stretched. This you can have done 
 on canvas, or a panel of wood made expressly for the 
 purpose. The paper is simply pasted on. It is much 
 nicer to work on in this way, and it never puckers. 
 
 You can always buy good water-colour paper mounted 
 on cardboard, which you can cut to any size, and which 
 does admirably for sketching or studies. The convenience 
 of these cardboards is their portability and the small space 
 they take up when one is travelling. 
 
 You must be careful to keep your paper in a dry place, 
 as it easily mildews. Spots then appear on its surface, but 
 only after you have commenced your painting, and then they 
 are as impossible to get rid of as the imaginary spot of blood 
 on Lady Macbeth’s hand. When this happens, one is sadly 
 tempted to quote her verbatim. In buying paper, it is best 
 to test it by passing a brush full of water over it. If no 
 spot appear then it is sound, and the paper will be none the 
 worse for its wetting. For the different qualities of paper 
 to buy, it depends upon the subject you wish to paint. 
 
 If for a rapid outdoor sketch, roughly-grained paper 
 helps to give a ^finished effect, and for buildings, stone 
 walls, and shops, it is very effective. 
 
 For very highly-finished drawings, heads especially, the 
 absence of grain in the paper is preferable, as its presence 
 would destroy the illusion we wish to preserve. 
 
 Mr. Birket Foster, I am told, for his small landscapes 
 uses Bristol board of a very fine quality. 
 
 There is a rougher sort made, excellent for painting 
 flowers on. 
 
 Another paper that water-colourists affect is called 
 Varley’s sugar-paper. It is similar to the paper that 
 white sugar cones are encased in. 
 
 Curling -paper, which has a whitey-brown tone about 
 it, pasted on cardboard makes capital boards for sketching. 
 
WATER COLOURS. 
 
 39 
 
 The tone of the paper shows through and has a good 
 effect, particularly in* slight body-colour sketching. 
 
 Old paper, provided the damp has not touched it, is far 
 better than new, on account of the absence of the size used 
 in its preparation, which time has caused to evaporate. 
 
 There is good paper for sketching called ‘ Creswick,’ 
 after the celebrated landscape painter, and of two kinds, 
 rough and smooth. 
 
 Another good paper bears the strange-sounding name 
 of ‘ 140 Not,’ and is excellent for sketching. 
 
 For highly-finished work there is antiquarian paper. 
 
 Fland-made paper is always the best, but there is a 
 very good machine paper called ‘ Harding.’ You can get 
 it of any quality and texture. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Pastel — Photography — Sketching from Nature. 
 
 Pastel. 
 
 I PREFER to call it Pastel, although one can, and many do, 
 speak of it as ^ Pastil.’ 
 
 This, to my mind, savours too much of the druggist’s 
 shop, of sick-rooms, foetid atmosphere, and other abomina- 
 tions. 
 
 Pastel is pure colour ground up with gum-water to 
 make it slightly adhesive. It is made into small sticks, 
 and the colours chromatically arranged in smaller or larger 
 boxes, containing from about a dozen to seven hundred 
 and fifty. 
 
 I find it an excellent intermediary between black and 
 white and the more difficult and exacting mediums of oil 
 and water colours. 
 
 It is an easier method as far as the mere colour goes, 
 and it never gets ‘ tacky,’ nor does it sink in after the 
 second coating and become ‘ dead.’ 
 
 But, for all that, to do it well one must know how to 
 draw. 
 
 This is the chief difference that exists between a good 
 or a bad pastel, whether it is or is not well drawn. 
 
 Colour often hides a multitude of sins of drawing, but 
 in nothing is it less efficient in doing so than in a pastel. 
 
PASTEL. 
 
 41 
 
 A badly-drawn pastel gives one at once the effect of a 
 vulgar ‘ plum - box ^ advertisement, whilst a well-drawn 
 pastel, with its purity of colouring, strikes one as an 
 impress of truth and vitality. 
 
 For practising on, there is a paper sold rather like 
 sandpaper. Its gritty surface serves as a ground for the 
 pastel powders to hold on to. When you do a really 
 important work, get specially - prepared canvas, which is 
 mounted in the ordinary way. This to the touch is like 
 soft velvet, and is infinitely pleasanter to work upon. 
 
 On occasions — its tint being of a beautiful neutral 
 tone — it serves as a background; only when so used 
 care must be taken not to soil it, as the greasy stain 
 which the pastel chalk leaves is very difficult to erase. 
 
 Of course one’s outline in such a case must be absolutely 
 perfect, and requiring no alterations, otherwise ‘ good-bye ’ 
 to your canvas background. 
 
 The best pastels to use are the very soft ones. You 
 can get a box with about fifty different tints, for in pastel 
 you require a multiplicity of shades of one colour — mixing 
 colours, as one does oiF paint, being unknown. You 
 require many strokes or layers of various pure colours to 
 compose the one you wish to produce. 
 
 In the first instance you draw your subject — a head, let 
 us say — in any one warm tint, either red or brown. You 
 then fill in the rest of the face and hair with the warmest 
 crude colours, exaggerating every tone. After that you lay 
 in your greys and all the other colours that are necessary 
 in order to produce the look of flesh. It will be fatal to 
 the result you wish to obtain if you commence with greys. 
 You will get a cold tone which will pervade your pastel, 
 and which nothing can get rid of. 
 
 At your first sitting, your victim’s head will look like a 
 Red Indian’s illumined by an orange sunset. Never mind, 
 work in your greys, and you will get cool, transparent skin, 
 
42 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 underneath which the warm life-blood is coursing. The 
 same with the hair — make it warm underneath and put 
 your grey lights on afterwards. 
 
 Try and avoid too much rubbing in of your colour. 
 Superimpose one tint upon another lightly. They will mix 
 sufficiently, and the general effect in the end is far better. 
 In rubbing in, you get your colours into a greasy paste, 
 upon which it is difficult to get any other tint to hold. In 
 fact, you lose the grit, the resistance in your ground, which 
 is so essential to pastel drawing. In commencing your 
 head in this fiery manner, be careful to obliterate all traces 
 of it. Your reds must only be seen through your greys, and 
 not left alone in their crudity. I find students are afraid 
 to obliterate their warm colours, forgetting they are only 
 intended as groundwork. It is as unpleasant to see too 
 red a pastel as too cold a one. The only places where 
 your vivid crimsons may be left are in the nostrils, corners 
 of eyes, and mouth. This gives a vitality to the intense 
 depths you wish you produce. 
 
 I have been often asked whether pastel will last. The 
 other day I saw one beautiful in colour and quite uninjured 
 in any way. I looked at the date, 1790. This speaks 
 for itself. There is in Venice a beautiful pastel by Van- 
 dyke. In the Louvre one has many masterpieces in good 
 preservation. 
 
 It is wiser, particularly if your pastel drawing has to 
 make a journey, after you have finished it, to set it before 
 framing it. You can buy a liquid prepared especially for 
 this purpose. Directions for using it will be upon the 
 bottle. The liquid has to be sprayed through a tube 
 similar to one used for scent. Take great care to stand a 
 sufficient distance from your drawing, so that the moisture 
 will disperse itself upon it like an impalpable dust. I 
 find beginners so often put too much liquid on by 
 standing too close, and then their drawing gets smudged. 
 
FHOTOGI^AFIIY. 
 
 43 
 
 By touching a part carefully with the tip of the finger you 
 can judge whether it is sufficiently set. You can spray it 
 many times, until you get the desired result. By setting it, 
 however, I find the whole tone is slightly lowered — your 
 whites are never quite so brilliant afterwards. This you 
 can remedy by retouching the portions you consider have 
 been too much lowered in tone. The setting a pastel, 
 unlike the finishing varnish on an oil painting, never pre- 
 vents your working on it again. 
 
 Photography. 
 
 Photography is an expensive amusement to the amateur, 
 who cannot cope with the professional in making it pay 
 by selling his productions. Still, it is a most delightful 
 and engrossing pursuit, and to the artist is of incalculable 
 advantage in photographing his picture when finished, and 
 also in photographing it whilst in process of being done. 
 The faults of his drawing and composition proclaim them- 
 selves with unerring exactitude, and he is forced in con- 
 sequence to get rid of the defects the unflattering lens 
 has given prominence to. 
 
 If the drawing be good on the canvas, it will look life- 
 like when reproduced by photography. 
 
 I know an artist, an R.A., who when he paints a land- 
 scape takes the precaution of causing to be photographed 
 the identical spot he is going to portray, and he is never 
 satisfied unless nature and his own work when photo- 
 graphed give the same effect on the sensitised paper. 
 
 Sometimes, provided the camera is all ready for use, an 
 effect of drapery is useful to seize and retain. So many 
 transitory beautiful arrangements of line are lost for ever 
 unless photography with its ‘ artful aid ’ comes to the 
 rescue. Do not, however, be persuaded to call in its help 
 for portraiture. It is a delusion and a snare. Under no 
 
44 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 circumstances can you get rid of the conscious uneasiness 
 which pervades the unhappy victim of photographic experh 
 ment. Hence the ‘stiffs portrait. Besides, a photograph 
 is never quite true in drawing ; the feature nearest the lens 
 is always too large. Looking at a profile, one sees at once 
 how disproportionate is the size of the ear to the rest of the 
 features. 
 
 Sketching from Nature. 
 
 There is no more delightful occupation in the world,, 
 provided there be not much wind, nor many flies, nor,, 
 what is far worse than all, children — strangers to baths and 
 pocket-handkerchiefs — who come, as a Yankee would ex- 
 press it, ‘sniffing around.’ At these moments you feel it 
 had been better had you never been born. 
 
 But outside these discomforts, and given a bright, fresh 
 day, with just enough elasticity in the air to enable one to- 
 feel a pleasure in living, the delight of working in the open 
 air is most invigorating. How beautiful is the sky with its 
 ever-changing panorama of fleecy clouds, which tell some- 
 times dark against the blue ether or sometimes bright as 
 the lightest white on our palette. 
 
 Anon there is a grey sky, with a pearly warmth in its 
 tone that makes us despair of ever rendering its exact hue, 
 guiltless as it is of anything cold or raw. 
 
 And then the sunsets ! Can any mere black fluid, such 
 as ink, convey to you all I should like to say about the 
 glorious wealth of colour nature spreads before us with a 
 lavish hand for our delight ? Where else can we see such 
 opalescent hues, such tender pinks, fading into palest 
 greens and blues ? And sometimes, by the side of still 
 waters, when our eyes are satiated with the radiance of the 
 perfect colouring above, we cast them down, and lo ! the 
 wonder of it ! in the bosom of the lake beneath us we have 
 a reflex of it all, more tender and more beautiful still. 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE. 
 
 45 
 
 It is despairing work attempting to reproduce some of 
 the loveliness of this beautiful world — the world that God 
 saw was good — with morsels of ground earth and bits of 
 mineral, yet the mere trying to do so is a ^joy for ever.’ 
 
 Truly, work is a heaven-sent blessing, and when it falls 
 in such pleasant places as a landscape painter’s does, he has 
 cause to be eternally grateful. 
 
 Now to descend to the practical part of it. Any 
 colour-shop will fit you out for any lengthy sketching 
 expedition. I find the large Fortuny boxes for oil, con- 
 taining panels of wood, or a frame for fastening pieces of 
 canvas on, the best. 
 
 There is a strap which you can pass round your waist, 
 which relieves the weight and prevents its tumbling off 
 your lap. You can use the box without an easel, the lid 
 holding your board at a proper angle. With this containing 
 all you want, an umbrella with a long spiked handle, and a 
 camp-stool, you can spend many happy hours. 
 
 Fix upon the exact spot you wish to do, and if you are 
 in doubt as to how much will come on to your canvas, 
 make an opening in a piece of cardboard — your own 
 visiting-card will do — leaving on all four sides a narrow 
 strip as frame, and look through this on to your land- 
 scape. 
 
 Just what you see through that and no more you must 
 put on your canvas, as that is all that actually meets your 
 eye at one time. 
 
 Sketching must, to be worth anything, be done alia 
 prima — that is, every touch must be put down as you wish 
 it left. 
 
 You cannot return to a spot to finish a sketch. 
 
 The sky you left blue one day perhaps is an iron grey 
 the next, and the whole landscape in consequence has 
 changed its tone under its influence. To see this exem- 
 plified at its clearest, watch the sea on a stormy day. One 
 
46 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 moment it is indigo blue, black, and sullen, then a grey- 
 green steals over it, which gives place in its turn to a murky 
 drab. Sometimes the sea-line tells dark against the sky, 
 and again it is just the reverse. All these things have to 
 be studied, and the moment desired only depicted. Many 
 sketchers make the mistake of painting effects that could 
 not co-exist at the same moment. 
 
 I find it a good plan in painting a large landscape 
 which could not be done under many days, of making a 
 small sketch of it under the effect I wish to paint, and 
 then I always have this by me as a reminder of my first 
 intention. Nothing in this world is more difficult to fight 
 against than ‘ the being led away with,^ and in nothing is it 
 more disastrous in its consequences, at least to an artist, 
 than in landscape painting. 
 
 In doing a sketch pure and simple, do it and leave it. 
 Never patch it up, and try to finish it when your landscape 
 is no longer before you. 
 
 A sketch half finished from nature will have more 
 merit in it to the person who knows, than the same 
 one tidied up and finished out of nothing but your own 
 head. 
 
 You would not dare to finish a copy of an old master 
 without the original before you. 
 
 As a form of amusement, copying may be freely 
 indulged in, but the student must not imagine that he 
 is really learning anything when he sets himself to 
 mechanically reproduce the thoughts of another. 
 
 As well might a would-be poet sit down and transcribe 
 the verses of a laureate, and fondly imagine that he is 
 developing his own latent talents. No ! Art is only art 
 when it is creative, and to be a creator you must be self- 
 reliant. At the same time, in your upward progress you 
 must study well what others have done before you. 
 
 As our great master in Modern Painters writes, ‘ Every 
 
SKETCHING FROM NATURE, 
 
 47 
 
 great man is always being helped by everybody, for his gift 
 is to get good out of all things and all persons.’ 
 
 For this reason I like my pupils to spend at least one 
 day a-month at the National Gallery, and whilst there to 
 do a sketch in colour of a picture, noting as they do so the 
 principle of its composition and its scheme of colour. In 
 this way they learn the effect of things, and insensibly 
 develop the art of composition in themselves. They 
 understand how to express themselves, when, later on, 
 they also have something to say. 
 
 To further this latter end, I give once a-month a 
 subject for composition on which they try their ^ ’prentice 
 hand.’ 
 
 There is a very good game — I forget what it is called — 
 in which the players have a sheet of paper and a pencil, 
 and they draw an historical subject without giving it a 
 title. The other players have to guess the subject. 
 
 It often happens that a person thoroughly devoid of ail 
 art training is better able to give us an idea of his meaning 
 than one who knows how to draw accurately the anatomy 
 of a figure. 
 
 The reason of this is because the former has a more 
 dramatic mind. He is better able to conceive in his inner 
 eye the attitudes and gestures certain people would assume 
 under given circumstances. 
 
 This faculty is called visualising, and is of immense 
 help to an actor or artist. Whether we are born with it 
 or not, we ought all of us to try and develop it. I give 
 in my school of art a subject once a-month, which the 
 pupils have to illustrate without any external aid. It 
 teaches them to develop their feeling for composition of 
 line, and also their perception of the harmonies of 
 colour. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Anatomy. 
 
 If you wish to draw well, you must certainly understand 
 a little about anatomy. 
 
 The knowledge of it will prevent you making glaring 
 faults, and it will teach you if your drawing of a figure 
 look incorrect to understand why it be so. 
 
 You will also find it a great help in composing your 
 pictures. 
 
 It will do you no harm to study anatomy thoroughly, 
 but you must be very careful not to put too much of your 
 knowledge into your pictures. 
 
 The great thing, remember, is to hide all evidences of 
 the mechanism of your art. 
 
 An artist deals only with nature, as far as form goes, in 
 her most superficial state. 
 
 I once asked a celebrated surgeon, whose talent with 
 his brush put him outside the pale of amateurism in the 
 sense in which the word is generally understood, whether 
 his knowledge of anatomy helped him at all in his drawing. 
 
 ‘ On the contrary,’ he said, ‘ it puts me out.’ 
 
 You see by this what you have to avoid. Your too 
 intimate knowledge of the subject is apt to affect your 
 treatment of what is only seen by the eye. 
 
 The same rule applies to perspective. Your knowledge 
 of the forms and colours of objects must be second to your 
 observation of them, of what is seen by the eye only. 
 
ANATOMY, 
 
 49 
 
 The artist’s province is only to paint what he sees. 
 
 Even in the most imaginative pictures, everything 
 depicted must bear a certain look of familiarity to the 
 eye, otherwise it would be voted unnatural, and so lose 
 its power of appealing to the spectators. 
 
 We ought to know the form of the skeleton, and be 
 able to draw it pretty accurately from memory. 
 
 The knowledge of it will teach us to judge whether the 
 model is in good proportion or not, and will enable us to 
 correct what is faulty in nature. 
 
 The relative size and position of the muscles is most 
 important. 
 
 Without a certain knowledge of how they act, you will 
 find it difficult to place your figures in motion. 
 
 There are people who have a gift of depicting action 
 without an apparent knowledge of anatomy — like the 
 Japanese, for instance. But then it must be remembered 
 they have the human form much more often before them 
 with little or no garments to impede their study of it, and 
 their eyes get insensibly accustomed to the right lines. 
 
 The Greeks had many more facilities than we have in 
 the present day, for not only did they constantly see the 
 nude before them, but they saw it in its most perfect state, 
 from the training it received through public games and 
 athletic exercises. 
 
 The first thing an artist ought to learn by heart is the 
 true proportions of the human figure. 
 
 I will give you a few important rules to remember. 
 
 The Greeks considered a small head to be a beauty, 
 and in all their statues typical of mere beauty they divide 
 the human figure into eight heads, and this gives a certain 
 dignity and grace. 
 
 If a full-length be divided into more than eight heads 
 it will only suggest weakness and disproportion. 
 
 For figures requiring a display of greater strength, one 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 should never put more than seven and a half heads. The 
 difficulty in England is to get a model of proper propor- 
 tions. The generality of English people are only seven 
 heads in height, or even six and a half. Their chief defect 
 lies in the shortness of the thigh-bone or femur, and one 
 recognises the work of artists who have not studied anatomy 
 by the figures depicted in their pictures having very long 
 bodies and abnormally short legs. 
 
 Professor Marshall gives us in his ‘ Table of Propor- 
 tions ’ the rules for a figure of a little more than seven 
 heads and a half. Your figure may be any size, from one 
 inch or less to six feet or more, but whatever length you 
 make it you must remember to subdivide it into seven 
 divisions and a half. 
 
 The head will take one entire length always from the 
 vertex or crown to below the chin. Hence it is we call our 
 lengths ‘ heads, ^ for by the head we can always measure and 
 test the accuracy of our divisions. 
 
 If you are drawing from life, you take your measure- 
 ments, by holding out your pencil at arm's length, and 
 with your thumb mark off the part measured. 
 
 The second length, or head, will extend from the chin, 
 to the lower end of the sternum or chest-bone, a little below 
 the level of the nipples. 
 
 The third part reaches from the sternum to the top of 
 the hip, and comes a little lower than the elbow-joint. 
 
 The fourth ends at the lowest portion of the trunk, 
 exactly on a line with the wrist. 
 
 Always remember that the head and trunk can be divided 
 into four divisions, of which the head is exactly one-fourth. 
 
 The fifth division comes to a little above the knee-joint. 
 
 The sixth to the angle that the muscle of the calf makes 
 at its greatest width, and the seventh at the ankle-bone. 
 
 This will leave half a head for the rest of the body from 
 the ankle to under the foot. 
 
ANA TOA/K 
 
 51 
 
 These measurements, if remembered, will help you im- 
 mensely in putting your figure into proper proportions. 
 
 You will also want to know the proper lengths for your 
 arms and legs. 
 
 You will find that in the man, the top of the arm com- 
 mences at a little above the half of the second head, and 
 that in a woman it comes at exactly the half, measuring 
 from the top of the head ; the elbow comes to a little above 
 the third division, and the wrist to just a little above the 
 fourth, whilst the tip of the second finger comes to about 
 four and three-quarters. 
 
 Measuring from the top of the arm, the upper part takes 
 a little less than one and a half, the wrist a little less than 
 two divisions and a half, whilst the whole of the arm takes 
 about three divisions and a quarter. 
 
 Now the leg takes about four heads, or divisions, from 
 the socket of the thigh-bone to the heel, or base of the foot, 
 and is divided in the centre by- the k^ee-joint. The socket 
 is not shown externally, but is just about one-fourth of a 
 division higher than where one can see the. head of the 
 thigh-bone. 
 
 I will give you. the nam€s of the bones, which it is as 
 well to be conversant with. 
 
 The skull, which^Comprises the head an^^ace ; 
 
 The spine, or ^[spinal column^ it is called, starting 
 from the skull to a little below the top of the thigh-bone \ 
 
 The ribs, which, twelve in number, are attached behind 
 to the spinal column; in front the first seven join the 
 sternum or chest-bone, and these are called the true ribs ; 
 the five next are shorter, and are attached to the seventh 
 rib by what is called ^costal cartilage; and the two last, 
 being unattached in front, are named floating ribs. 
 
 To the sternum is attached also the collar-bones or 
 clavicle, which extend ,to the scapula or shoulder-blades 
 and to the humerus, or large arm-bone. 
 
52 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 Then we have the pelvis, which contains and pro- 
 tects in its hollowed centre all the soft lower portions 
 of the body which we commonly speak of as ‘ our 
 interior.’ 
 
 On to the pelvis the large thigh-bone or femur is at- 
 tached. 
 
 In the arms we have the large bone, the humerus, which 
 constitutes that portion of the arm from the shoulder to 
 the elbow. 
 
 Medical students make it the subject of a joke, and ask, 
 
 ‘ Why is it named the humerus ?’ ‘ Because the funny-bone 
 
 is situated in it.’ 
 
 As a matter of fact we have no funny-bone. That un- 
 pleasant sensation which we call hitting our funny-bone, is 
 caused by contact with the nerve which crosses the bone at 
 about the elbow. 
 
 The ulna is in the lower portion of the arm, and is one 
 of the two bones which compose the forearm. 
 
 The elbow is at one extremity of it, and at the other is 
 the little round end we call the wrist-bone, which we find 
 on the same side as our little finger. This bone, the ulna, 
 works with a hinge-like movement on the humerus. 
 
 The radius is an extremely interesting bone. It works 
 with a rotating movement on the humerus, and is joined 
 to one of the small bones which constitute the wrist proper. 
 On a line with the thumb, when the arm is extended with 
 the palm upwards, the radius will be found to be parallel 
 with the ulna ; but when the palm is turned downward, the 
 movement causes the radius to cross over the ulna. 
 
 This movement you can watch on your own arm. 
 
 There are eight little bones which form the wrist, and 
 these are called the bones of the carpus. 
 
 Then come the five metacarpal bones, which form the 
 back and palm of the hand. 
 
 The phalanges, or finger-bones, are five in number,, 
 
ANA TO MY, 
 
 53 
 
 and they are sub-divided into three portions, excepting the 
 thumb, which contains only two. 
 
 The large thigh - bone is called the femur, and is 
 inserted at its upper portion into the ilium. At its lower 
 it joins only the larger bone of the leg, which is called the 
 tibia, and where the shin-bone is situated, and these two 
 bones are protected at the knee-joint by a small bone called 
 the patella. 
 
 The tibia, starting from the knee-joint, is the inside 
 bone of the lower leg, and on its inner side forms the 
 ankle. 
 
 The fibula is a much smaller bone attached to the 
 tibia, running very nearly its whole length. 
 
 Both these bones are attached to the small bones of 
 the foot, of which there are seven, the tarsus bones, and 
 from these again start the five phalanges which form the 
 rest of the foot, and which correspond to the same bones 
 in the hand. 
 
 The big toe plays the part of the thumb, and has one 
 bone less than the other four. 
 
 It is much more powerful than the thumb of the hand, 
 as is also the phalange of the little toe. 
 
 The three middle ones play but an unimportant part in 
 the construction of the foot, and in course of time, with 
 the development of the two outer ones, could be dispensed 
 with altogether. 
 
 The muscles are a much more complicated study, and 
 cannot be learned without diagrams, which are not in the 
 purpose of this book to give. 
 
 I can only advise you, if you do not care to study the 
 subject seriously, to learn at any rate the muscles of the 
 throat, which in doing portraits will be of immense value 
 to you. 
 
 A head well set upon the shoulders adds much to its 
 dignity and grace: 
 
54 
 
 HINTS TO AMA TENTS. 
 
 / 
 
 At the South Kensington Museum library you can get 
 any book on anatomy you like to look at. For home 
 study I should recommend Mr. Sparkes’, whiph is by far 
 the simplest and most artistic I have seen. 
 
 From lectures I find one can imbibe a great deal of 
 knowledge, therefore to supplement the work done in my 
 school of art, we have a course of twelve lectures given 
 once a-month by a doctor, who is ready to explain to any 
 pupil any portion of the science he fails to grasp. 
 
 Of course, if you wish to draw whole-length figures, 
 drawing from the life or undraped model is imperative. 
 
 You will never thoroughly understand how to make a 
 figure sit or stand without doing so. For landscapes, or 
 portraits of heads only, it is not so essential, neither of 
 them ever being draped. 
 
 Many people find it a very difficult thing to make a 
 figure stand upright, or, when placing it in a difficult posi- 
 tion, to make it preserve its equilibrium. 
 
 There is always this to be remembered, that the central 
 line of gravity must always remain in the centre of the 
 body, z.e., with the equal parts of the weight distributed on 
 each side of it. 
 
 If more is to the one side than to the other the figure 
 must tumble down. 
 
 In a figure standing straight up, the central line of 
 gravity will be all down the centre of the body, and exactly 
 between the two ankle-bones. 
 
 In making your figure stand upon one leg, the line of 
 gravity will be in the centre of the leg stood upon. 
 
 If a man carry a weight which influences one side of 
 his body only, he has to force the opposite side over the 
 central line of gravity, in order to equalise the weight on 
 each side of the line, otherwise the undue preponderance 
 of the weight that he carries would cause him to topple 
 over. 
 
ANATOMY, 
 
 55 
 
 This is best exemplified by an amusing trick, which 
 consists of placing your shoulder and one foot close 
 against the wall, and then trying whilst in that position to 
 lift up your other foot. 
 
 You would find that you could not do it, because you 
 have not equalised the weight on each side of your centre 
 of gravity. 
 
 In representing the motion of walking the reverse has 
 to be studied, in order not to let your figures look as if they 
 were standing still, for motion is described as the perpetual 
 loss and gain of equilibrium. 
 
 There is not much variation from the perpendicular, 
 however, to be observed in the slow movements of a 
 gentle walker, but in the runner, who extends his legs at 
 wide angles, the upper part of his body is thrown well for- 
 ward to maintain as much as possible an equal amount 
 of weight on each side of the line of gravity. 
 
 In drawing a figure standing on one foot, you will be 
 forced to curve the upper part of the body in order to 
 adjust the weight. 
 
 The shoulder on the same side of the foot that bears 
 the body will be found to be always lower than the other 
 side, and the line of gravity will run through the centre of 
 the neck and the centre of the foot which bears the weight. 
 
 In studying the positions of figures, it is always well to 
 remember that a graceful variety in corresponding members 
 is always more pleasing than when the two are placed 
 exactly in line. 
 
 Each action of one member which places it out of line 
 forces the others to be equally inexact. 
 
 For instance, supposing the head to be bent on one 
 side so as to take this angle the shoulders 
 
 naturally take the angle so and these again 
 
 force the lines of the hips to be in the exactly opposite 
 angle, repeating, indeed, the inclination of the head. 
 
56 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 / 
 
 Whichever leg the body rests upon, the hip that side 
 will be the highest and the hip and knee of the other leg 
 will be lower. 
 
 Now if we turn the figure in profile and study the line 
 of gravity, we find that it starts from the centre of the head 
 in a line with where the ear is attached to the skull, passes 
 through the centre of the spine at the neck and head of 
 the upper arm, then the centre of the head of the thigh- 
 bone, the patella or knee-joint, and the arch of the foot. 
 
 It must be noticed that it does not touch the end of the 
 thigh-bones and lower bones of the leg, but passes just in 
 front of them, and that it is in considerable advance of the 
 ankle-bone. 
 
 The natural position of the leg, therefore, from the 
 ankle upward is a little forward. 
 
 The line of the toes does not extend beyond the 
 furthest point of the ribs. 
 
 These are little points that you will find it useful to 
 remember when you wish to paint subject pictures, and 
 which one is apt to forget when one attempts to master 
 the whole science of anatomy. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Perspective. 
 
 Perspective to the draughtsman is what grammar is to the 
 writer, both necessary adjuncts to production. 
 
 I should advise you, whenever feasible, to attend 
 lectures on perspective, or to get a master to give you 
 lessons, as practical demonstration will teach you more in 
 ten minutes than you could acquire by an hour’s reading. 
 As a rule, by the time you are able to paint pictures, you will 
 find that your eye has been sufficiently trained to enable 
 you to copy what you see without the aid of perspective, 
 but in composing pictures a little knowledge is absolutely 
 necessary. 
 
 You would often find it difficult to express your thoughts 
 clearly, and knowing the primary rules of perspective will 
 help you immensely. 
 
 When you have learnt your perspective by book, a very 
 good way to perfect yourself in it is to copy accurately 
 what you see of a room through a looking-glass. 
 
 The perspective of objects, means the manner in which 
 they are seen by our eye. 
 
 This is often, in apparent opposition to what the thing 
 seen actually is, so that sometimes we must forget our 
 knowledge of it in order that we may represent the object 
 only as it appears to us. 
 
 This is our western idea of art. The Japanese do not 
 
HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 58 
 
 '/ 
 
 consider themselves bound by any rules. They place 
 their personages and draw their buildings to suit their 
 design. So far do they carry out their consistency in this 
 respect, or rather their inconsistency, that our photographic 
 lens displeases them. They are busily employed in invent- 
 ing one that will represent objects as they are, and not as 
 they appear. 
 
 Now there are Uvo kinds of perspective we must notice ; 
 that of line, and of colour. 
 
 The former can be taught you, but the latter, which is 
 known as aerial perspective, can only be acquired by obser- 
 vation and experience. 
 
 Linear perspective teaches you to draw the form of any 
 object correctly, and aerial perspective to paint the proper 
 distance between each object. 
 
 For instance, you might draw the objects perfectly 
 correctly as far as the pure outline goes, still, if you did 
 not give, as well, the aerial perspective, your objects in the 
 background would touch those in the foreground, and you 
 would not be able to properly detach them. 
 
 It is m.ost important that you should understand this 
 principle for portrait painting, for you ought to make us 
 feel that your head is completely round — i.e.^ that it has a 
 back to it, as well as a face, and that one might, were 'it 
 possible, get into the canvas and walk all round between 
 the head and the background. 
 
 When you hear some one complaining that their head 
 will insist upon sticking to the background, it shows that 
 they have no knowledge of aerial perspective. 
 
 If you give the tones in your background as much value 
 as those in your head, you are wrong, because you have not 
 given us the perspective of colour. 
 
 You must paint the air that is between the head and 
 the background, and you must remember that, in conse- 
 quence of this very air, all lines and colours are stronger 
 
PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 59 
 
 in the foreground, and as they recede from the eye are 
 fainter. 
 
 A child who has no experience to teach him, or much 
 reasoning power to reflect, imagines that everything he sees 
 is quite close to him ; within his reach, in fact. 
 
 The child’s crying for the moon is quite natural. He 
 sees what he imagines to be a beautiful silver ball within 
 reach of his little hands ; naturally he would like to have it 
 to play with, and no doubt in his baby mind he thinks his 
 mother very hard-hearted for not giving it to him. 
 
 If he had only come into the world armed with as great 
 a knowledge of perspective as is his knowledge of suction, 
 he would spare himself many disappointments. 
 
 This theory of the child’s want of knowledge of the first 
 principles of perspective is practically demonstrated in the 
 case of a man blind from his birth, who, undergoing an 
 operation at mature age, receives his sight. 
 
 His first impressions are, that he can touch everything 
 he sees, and he can form no idea of how many steps it will 
 take him to get to any object. 
 
 His power of vision, you see, is in its infancy a little 
 experience teaches him quicker than all the books that were 
 ever written on the subject. 
 
 There are two lines used in perspective that we must 
 know the names of, viz., the horizontal and the vertical. 
 The horizontal, as its name indicates, corresponds to the 
 horizon, the line that divides the earth from the sky. 
 
 You will best understand it when you face the ocean. 
 
 The line dividing the sea and sky is the horizon. 
 
 Now this horizon is always on the same level with our 
 eyes. We cannot under any circumstances get above or 
 below it. 
 
 If we sit down upon the shore, the horizon apparently 
 sinks down with us, and our eye travels along the surface of 
 the water, which takes up a comparatively small space 
 
6o 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 /, 
 
 between the shore and horizon ; just the height we are 
 sitting, in fact. 
 
 If we climb up to the top of a very high cliff, and look 
 towards the horizon, it has apparently mounted with us, and 
 we look down upon a vast expanse of sea. 
 
 Every straight line and curve that is above the horizon 
 comes down to it, provided they are not parallel with it, 
 and we see under all objects. 
 
 We see above all objects placed under the horizon, and 
 their straight lines and curves follow the same rule. 
 
 When objects are on a level with our eye, viz., on the 
 horizon line, all their curves become parallel with the 
 horizon, and they appear perfectly straight. 
 
 You can test this for yourself by holding a penny on a 
 level with your eye, at about the distance of a yard, and 
 then looking at it, when placed above or below the level 
 of your eye. 
 
 The vertical line is one at right angles with the horizon, 
 •so : — 
 
 Vertical. 
 
 Horizon. 
 
 The point of sight, or what is often called the vanish- 
 ing point, is the spot that is exactly opposite to our 
 eye. 
 
 We have to be very particular as to where we intend to 
 place this, either in our landscape or interior, as to this 
 point all the lines on either side have to converge, from 
 either above or below the horizon. 
 
PERSPECTIVE, 
 
 6i 
 
 It must come exactly on the horizon, either in the 
 exact centre, or to the right or left of it, [according to the 
 feeling of the artist. For an interior, about one-third of 
 the height from the base of the picture, is a very good 
 position to place the horizontal line. 
 
 If I tell you how to put a square in perspective, you will 
 be able, by its use, to draw correctly many other objects, 
 such as [chairs, tables, &c. 
 
 There is, first of all, the geometrical plan, giving you 
 the square in all its proportions as its really exists, such as 
 this : — 
 
 Then the perspective plan showing us, how a square 
 looks to the eye, as seen at any place under the horizon, or 
 over it. 
 
 When a square is seen on a level with one’s eyes — on 
 the horizon, in fact — it becomes one single line. 
 
 Placing it under the horizon we choose our point of 
 sight, P, to which, remember, all our lines must converge. 
 
 We draw the lines from A to B, for the base of our 
 square. 
 
62 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 /. 
 
 We then draw the lines from A to P, and from B to P, 
 which give us the sides of our square. 
 
 To get at the exact place where the fourth line, or line 
 farthest from us comes requires a different process. 
 
 We make use of points of distance, which are points 
 placed outside the picture on a line with the horizon. 
 
 To determine where to put these points, take double 
 the distance of the width of your picture, and measure it 
 out on either side, starting from the point of sight on the 
 horizon. 
 
 Say that your picture is a block of paper a foot in width, 
 and that your point of sight is in the centre. 
 
 You will find that your distance points are placed two 
 feet to the right, and two feet to the left of your point of 
 sight, making the whole line four feet in length. 
 
 This is an easy way of finding the distance points. 
 
 You can do it in a more correct and complicated 
 manner, by using a pair of compasses and studying the 
 accompanying diagram. The square represents your pic- 
 ture. Draw your horizontal line, and place on it your 
 point of sight. Through this point draw a vertical line, 
 which will determine the centres of your circles. Now 
 take your compasses and describe No. i circle, by placing 
 one of the points of the compass on the point of sight and 
 the other on the farthest corner of your square. This 
 
PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 63 
 
 CIE- 
 
 J 
 
/ 
 
 64 ’ HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 circle represents the largest extent one can take in when 
 one’s eyes are fixed upon the point of sight, and is styled 
 the base of the cone of rays (see page 76). This circle 
 gives us the width for making our circles No. 2 and 
 No. 3, which we produce from their respective centres. 
 Where these two circles cut the horizontal line we place 
 our distance points. The length from these points to the 
 point of sight determines the size of circle No. 4, which, 
 cutting our vertical line, gives us the distance the spectator 
 ought to stand from the picture. 
 
 You will see that the distance points are not in reality 
 placed at as great a distance from the point of sight as 
 I have directed you to do, and in theory this of course is 
 correct, but practically the further off the distance points 
 are placed, the pleasanter and less abrupt is the perspective 
 of objects in your picture. 
 
 In composing a picture, it is better to allow one’s sub- 
 ject to influence one as to the position of these points. 
 
 In our square, we will consider the base of it, the width 
 of the picture, and we place our distance points accordingly. 
 
 If we draw a line from B to the left-hand distance 
 point, and from A to the right-hand, we find that in their 
 progress they cut the first two upward lines we drew. 
 
 If we draw a horizontal line between these two points, 
 which we have marked a and we get the line we are 
 seeking, viz., the furthest side of our square. 
 
 Where the last two lines cross each other will be the 
 centre, marked O. This method entails your having a great 
 deal of space on either side of your canvas, supposing your 
 paper or canvas be of a very large size, and this some- 
 times is impossible to get. 
 
 A similar result as the above is obtained by taking one- 
 fourth of your distance line, which you will find comes 
 exactly at the edge of your canvas, and then drawing a line 
 from that to the fourth portion of your base line on the side 
 
PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 65 
 
 nearest to it. You see it intersects in exactly the same 
 place, thus : — 
 
 You cannot always place the ruler on your canvas, nor 
 can you often get one the required length, so you can make 
 your lines by means of a fine string or strong thread, which 
 you can attach to the edge of your canvas by a drawing- 
 pin. 
 
 You will find it perhaps useful to know how to put a 
 room into perspective. Your knowledge of the square will 
 help you in this. 
 
 Now I have drawn you an interior of a room, which I 
 have made twenty-five feet in width, twenty feet in height, 
 and thirty feet deep. 
 
 For you to do it easily yourself, take your inch measure, 
 call each eighth of an inch one foot, and draw a line for the 
 base of your room representing twenty-five feet. You will 
 find that it will be just three inches and one-eighth. 
 
 For your upright line, or height of your room, make it 
 two inches and a half. 
 
 To find the depth of the room, you will do as you did 
 with the square. 
 
 First, you must make your horizontal line, which you 
 know will be at the level of your eyes. We will say five 
 feet as a convenient height, which will make it on your 
 plan five-eighths of an inch. 
 
 F 
 
/ 
 
 o 
 
 
 
PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 6r 
 
 Now you put your central point of sight where you like^ 
 provided it be on the horizon line. 
 
 In this instance we will measure off one inch and two- 
 eighths from the right side of wall, so that we place the 
 point of sight ten feet within the room, nearest the right 
 wall. 
 
 Now we will put the ceiling and the floor in, otherwise 
 we shall not be able to get our further wall. 
 
 We draw lines from the four corners, A, B, C, D, to the 
 central point. 
 
 We then extend the horizontal line on each side, and 
 place the distance points. In this instance I have pur- 
 posely placed the distance points nearer to the point of 
 sight or vanishing point. You are thus enabled to see 
 more of the surface of your floor. 
 
 Our room being thirty feet deep, we have to get the 
 length in perspective. 
 
 To do this, we extend the base line of our picture to 
 the right, and we measure from C thirty feet, or, in this 
 instance, three inches and three-quarters of an inch. 
 This will bring it to E. 
 
 From E to the left-hand distance point draw a line, and 
 where this cuts the line C to P at /will be the other end of 
 the room. 
 
 From the point /draw a horizontal line to the opposite 
 line D to P. Then your inner wall ps easily made by 
 making two uprights, until they touch the lines A to P 
 and B to P, and then making a horizontal line across. 
 
 Now we want to put a door, two windows, and a fire- 
 place in, for our room at present looks more like the 
 interior of a box. 
 
 Too many lines are apt to confuse you, so you shall 
 have the same interior in No. 2, with only the lines that 
 are necessary to show you how to put in your door and 
 windows. 
 
SCALE OF FEET 
 
PERSPECTIVE, 
 
 69 
 
 Now we must first make up our minds as to what 
 height and width we require them. 
 
 We will put the door on the left-hand side and the 
 windows on the right, and our mantelpiece in the 
 centre. 
 
 We will begin with the latter. 
 
 Let us make an old-fashioned fireplace, seven feet high 
 and five feet wide. 
 
 Find the centre of your base line, and take it up to 
 point of sight. 
 
 This will give you the centre of the floor of the opposite 
 wall, where you are going to put your fireplace. 
 
 Measure off two feet and a half on either side of your 
 central point on the base line. Take these lines up to 
 your point of sight. . ^ 
 
 These will giyir^^u your five feet-.across for the width 
 of your mantelpiece. Carry up two uprights from the 
 floor of opposite side where the two lines cross it. 
 Measure seven feet off on left-hand edge of wall and 
 from thence draw a line to the point of sight. 
 
 Where this line cuts your upright on the left-hand side 
 will be the height for your fireplace;' 
 
 Now for the door on your left hand. 
 
 We will place it exactly in the centre of the wall, and 
 make it nine feet in height. 
 
 We measure off two feet more on our left-hand side, 
 and draw a line from thence to our point of sight. This 
 gives us our height. Now we will make it six feet wide; 
 our room being thirty feet long, we shall have twelve feet 
 on one side of the door and twelve feet on the other. 
 
 Now to get twelve feet within the left-hand side of the 
 wall, we measure off twelve feet on the base line of room, 
 starting from the left-hand corner. From that point we 
 take a line to the distance point on the left, and where 
 this line cuts the wall will be one side of the door. 
 
70 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS. 
 
 We then measure six feet more on our base line, and, 
 proceeding in the same manner, we find the exact width of 
 door. Two uprights from the floor to the top of door will 
 complete it. 
 
 Now for our windows. We will make them three feet 
 from the ground and nine feet high, and six feet within the 
 picture, four feet wide each, and a space of ten feet dividing 
 them. 
 
 To do this we act in precisely the same way as we did 
 for the door, only utilising the right-hand distance point in- 
 stead of the left. 
 
 We measure three feet off right wall, and from thence 
 draw a line to point bf sight. Measure nine feet above 
 that, and do the same. This gives us the height of the 
 windows. 
 
 To get our first line of six feet within the room, we 
 measure three-quarters of an inch on our base line from 
 the right-hand corner towards the left, and so on with 
 the other measurements required of four, ten, and 
 four feet, bringing them all to our right-hand distance 
 point. 
 
 Now we will put a chandelier in the centre of our ceiling, 
 and it shall hang down eight feet deep into the room. 
 
 First we have to find the centre of the room, which we 
 do by drawing two diagonal lines from each corner, and 
 where they cross we shall get our centre. 
 
 We next find the centre of the top line of our room 
 (A, B, Interior No. i), which we can do either by measure- 
 ment or by ruling a line from our point of sight, through 
 the centre of the ceiling, and on beyond until it cuts 
 A, B. 
 
 From this last point draw a straight line downwards 
 the distance of eight feet. 
 
 This will be eight feet on the outside plane of your 
 picture. 
 
PERSPECTIVE. 
 
 71 
 
 To get the right perspective for this length in the centre 
 of the ceiling, draw a straight line from the extreme end of 
 the eight feet to the point of sight, and then draw another 
 straight line down from the centre of ceiling to this line, 
 and where they touch will give you the required length in 
 its proper perspective. 
 
 Now that you have your room, you will no doubt, want 
 to put some people into it. 
 
 To get at their required heights, you have only to 
 measure off on the outside plane of your picture, either five 
 feet ten inches, or six feet, according to the size of your 
 personages, and then, from wherever you place these 
 measurements on base line, draw two straight lines to 
 your point of sight, as we previously did with the door. 
 
 Avenues of trees are done in the same manner. 
 
 A capital illustration of the rules of perspective you will 
 find, on standing on a bridge crossing the railway. The 
 rails that start from the spot where you are standing are 
 actually so many feet apart. As you look along them, and 
 they come up to the level of your eyes, they apparently 
 touch each other until they vanish quite out of sight. This 
 they do at the point of sight, and this is why it is often 
 called the vanishing-point, or point where the perspective 
 lines of objects vanish out of sight. 
 
 As I have already told you by means of the square, you 
 can put any object into perspective, such as a chair (the seat 
 of which forms a square), a table, &c., &c. If your table 
 or other object is round, you turn it into a square whilst 
 drawing it in perspective, and then it is very easy to round 
 the corners off. 
 
 This that we have been doing is parallel perspective; 
 called so because two of its lines are parallel with the line 
 of the horizon. It is quite the easiest to do. 
 
 In sketching outdoor buildings or interiors, you will 
 often require to put objects into angular perspective. 
 
distance point 
 
 72 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 I can show you this best 
 by putting a diamond-shaped 
 square into perspective for 
 you. 
 
 You will notice that none 
 of its four lines are parallel 
 with the horizon. You only 
 make use of the point of sight 
 to find the centre of your dia- 
 mond. All other lines are 
 taken on to your distance 
 points on either side. 
 
 Now for the square, chain 
 or table, in oblique perspective. 
 
 I will suppose that the size 
 of the top of your dining-room 
 table is represented on our 
 plan. 
 
 I place the geometrical plan 
 of our table under the line of 
 the base of our picture, as far 
 away from it as we wish the 
 table to be within our picture, 
 and in exactly the inverse angle 
 to which we wish it to be ; as 
 if, in fact, the base line were 
 a looking-glass and we reflected 
 the table in it. We can make 
 our table any size we wish, and 
 place it in any position. 
 
 I will name the four corners 
 A, B, C, D. 
 
 I draw four upright lines 
 from each corner to the base 
 line, and then carry them along 
 
DiSTANC£ PO/NT POP/ZOAfTAL L/N£ PO/A/T OP S/GHT 
 
 TABLE IN OBLIQUE PERSPECTIVE 
 
74 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 to the point of sight. To make it clear, I have drawn 
 each line with a different pattern. 
 
 Now we must use our compasses. The one with a point 
 at one end and pencil at the other you will find the best. 
 
 Take the measure of the corner of table marked A to 
 where the upright intersects the base line. Place the point 
 of the compass on the base line at A, and making this the 
 stationary one describe the fourth of a circle with the 
 pencil end from the corner marked A towards the right 
 until it again touches the base line. 
 
 From this take a line to left-hand distance point. 
 
 Where this intersects the A line will be one of the 
 corners of your table. 
 
 Do the same with B line, and you get the further 
 corner of table in perspective. 
 
 Then take C in a similar way, and you find your right- 
 hand upper corner, and with D you get your lower right- 
 hand corner. Draw lines from point to point and you 
 have the top of your table in oblique perspective. 
 
 Some artists in painting portraits have made use of two 
 points of sight, one for their sitter and another for their 
 background ; but this practice is not to be commended, as 
 it gives an air of falseness to the picture. 
 
 In the composition of figures, the horizontal line is 
 generally placed just under the throat at the top of the 
 sternum, or chest bone. 
 
 Needless to say, one need follow no fixed rule about 
 where this line is placed, as long as one puts all objects 
 in one’s picture under the influence of the one point of 
 sight, wherever its position. There must be a certain 
 harmony in one’s pictures, as there is in nature, from 
 whatever position one looks at them, and as you are bound 
 to place your point of sight opposite to the level of your 
 eye, you will generally find in figure composition that it 
 is always in the same place. 
 
PERSPECTIVE, 
 
 75 
 
 In painting a head, however, it is better to place the 
 horizontal line a little lower than it actually is in nature, as 
 it adds to the dignity and apparent height of the sitter if 
 the head appear to be above that of the painter. 
 
 This is why we make use of a platform, where we can 
 always obtain this result whether our model is standing or 
 sitting. 
 
 For a man, this is a golden rule — make him higher than 
 yourself, look up to him ; for a woman, let her be on your 
 level, or very slightly higher; and in painting a child’s 
 IDortrait, take care, to let the child look up to you, letting 
 the eyes be a very little below your point of sight. 
 
 This gives the idea of size, which otherwise, in only 
 painting a head, would be difficult to suggest. 
 
 In composing a picture, make a definite sketch on a 
 small canvas, and to this you can apply the rules of 
 perspective. 
 
 When you have it perspectively correct, you can draw 
 horizontal and vertical lines on your sketch, making a net- 
 work of small squares with either black or white chalk or 
 threads of cotton. 
 
 Supposing you have divided its length into ten one-inch 
 squares and its width into six. 
 
 Put the same number of squares on to your larger 
 canvas, and copy on to it the sketch of your picture. 
 
 You will find that you have your small sketch accurately 
 and easily magnified twice or any number of sizes you wish. 
 
 I have already mentioned that in landscape painting, it 
 is a good thing to cut the inner portion of a visiting card 
 out, leaving an edge all round to frame the black space. 
 This defines what the student can see at a glance from 
 one point. Many are distracted when they sit down to 
 make a sketch, at seeing too much. They attempt the 
 impossible task of painting more than they could naturally 
 see. 
 
76 
 
 HINTS TO AMATEURS, 
 
 Rays of vision proceeding from the eye, take the form 
 of a cone — they start from the single point of the eye, 
 and spread out in all directions, but their limit is circum- 
 scribed always to the size of the circle, where the invisible 
 cone is cut off by the object we wish to paint. 
 
 The nearer it is to the eye, the less space the rays of 
 vision take, and the further off the distance is, the wider the 
 base of our cone becomes. 
 
 It must be thoroughly understood, that if we put on our 
 canvas whatever lies beyond the circumference of this cone, 
 we paint more than we can see at one given moment, and 
 the result is confusion. 
 
 I am afraid, after all, I have given you but few hints. 
 But then there is no royal road to art. There is only the 
 old-fashioned one of hard work. 
 
 What I chiefly wished to do in writing this little 
 book was to encourage you in the pursuit of art, and 
 if I have given any of you a helping hand, I am richly 
 repaid. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Action, 49 
 Aerial perspective, 58 
 Amateur, ix.-xi. 
 
 Angular perspective, 72 
 Ankle, 54 
 Arm, 51 
 
 Background, 5, li, 27 
 Black and white, i, 4, 37 
 Blotting paper, 36, 37 
 Bread, 2, 6, 18, 37 
 Brushes, 4, 28-30, 33, 34 
 
 Carpus, 52 
 Caricature, 13, 14 
 Charcoal, i, 2, 6, 22 
 Chalk, 2 
 
 Chinese white, 35 
 Circle, 9, 62, 64 
 Clavicle, 51 
 Correction, 15, 16 
 Colours, 23, 24, 35, 36 
 Cone, 64, 76 
 Composition, 64, 74, 75 
 Compasses, 62 
 Criticism, 16, 17 
 
 Damp, 38 
 Distance, 34 
 Distance points, 64 
 
 Elbow, 51, 52 
 Erasing, 33, 36 
 
 Experience, 23 
 Eye judgment, 18 
 
 Figure, 49 
 Fibula, 53 
 Fixing pastels, 42 
 
 Geometrical, 61 
 Genius, xi. 
 
 General effect, 15 
 Greys, 41 
 
 Hair, i 
 Hips, 55 
 Horizon, 59, 60 
 Horizontal, 60, 64 
 
 Knee-joint, 53 
 
 Landscape, 75 
 Leg, 51 
 Lighting, 7 
 Line of gravity, 54 
 Linear perspective, 58 
 
 Measurement, 19, 50, 51 
 Memory, 13 
 Metallic pencil, 3 
 Mirror, 17 
 Models, 6 
 
 National Gallery, 4, 15, 47 
 North light, 7 
 North-east, 8 
 
78 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shadows, 9, 10, 34 
 Silver point, 3 
 Skeleton, 49 
 Sketching, 45 
 Skull, 51 
 
 Sky effects, 33, 34 
 South light, 8 
 Spine, 51 
 Sponging, 33 
 Squares, 8, 64 
 Stumping, 2 
 Sternum, 51 
 Sun, 34 
 
 Thigh-bone, 53 
 Tibia, 53 
 Time studies, 14 
 Tone, 20, 21 
 
 Ulna, 52 
 
 Values, 12, 26 
 Vanishing point, 60, 67 
 Velours a sauce, 2 
 Ventilation, 30 
 Vertical, 59, 60, 75 
 Visualisation, 14, 47 
 
 Walking, 55 
 Washes, 36, 37 
 Wrist, 51 
 
 Printed by Strangeways & Sons, Tower Street, Cambridge Circus, W.C. 
 
 Oblique perspective, 72, 73 
 Observation, 13 
 Old masters, 15 
 Outline, 4, 9, 41 
 Out-of-door sketching, 29 
 Ox-gall, 34 
 
 Palette, 23, 29 
 Paper, i, 6, 37-39, 41 
 Pastel, 40 
 Patella, 53 
 Pelvis, 52 
 Pen and ink, 3 
 Pencil, 3 
 Perspective, 57 
 Perspective plan, 61 
 Plumb line, 19 
 Point of sight, 60, 62, 64 
 Professional, x. 
 
 Proportion, 49 
 
 Radius, 52 
 Rays of light, 20 
 Rays of vision, 76 
 Red chalk, 22 
 Reflection, 20 
 Ribs, 51 
 
 Sandpaper, 37 
 Sanguin, 2 
 Scapula, 57