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THE ANTIQUE.
This plan may appear to some too methodical or mechanical, and devoid of artistic feeling, but it is only necessary to point to the disproportion and struggling incorrectness of an outline drawn entirely " by the eye," to prove that such a feeling may be affected by the beginner, not only without benefit, but to the formation of an incurable habit. If artistic feeling exists at all in the mind, method will only pave the way for its proper exercise.
It is useless to begin the shading before the outline is completed. Shade ought not to be made "the refuge of ignorance and the screen of unnumbered errors, but the support of character and the perfective of expression.
There are few however who act upon this self-evident rule, the common practice being, perhaps from impatience, that of commencing to shade before the outline is finished.
The answer is that shadow may assist in correcting the outline.
But this is altogether false. The shaded part, instead of assisting the eye in judging of an outline, entirely perverts it. For instance, suppose a figure to be sketched in roughly, and the head shaded ; the eye is upset at once, as the shaded part appears fuller and larger, and there is no longer like to compare with like, but outline with shade. The consequence will be that the parts subsequently drawn will be out of proportion.
Again, it is said that if the whole figure be equally advanced, it will assist in correcting the outline ; but let it be remembered that an object may be made to appear larger or smaller by the degree of half-tint on its receding parts ; if then this is not perfectly correct it will be of no assistance, and it will be impossible to ascertain whether the outline or shadow is at fault. And after all why should the student travel by the most difficult road? Drawing is not so easy that he can afford to trifle with himself in discovering the first principles by his failures in the second.
On the contrary, in outline, the drawing should be kept very dry and uninteresting until quite finished ; and thus the eye, having nothing with which to satisfy itself, will feel sensitive to the least error ; and comparing one clean outline with another will be able to arrive at some conclusion. As a general rule, the outline should not be altered after the shading is commenced, for in all probability it will upset the whole figure.
The danger of the practice of thus modelling the figure without drawing it, cannot be too strongly represented to the young student; the more so, as the English School, in its partiality for color and light-and -shade, has neglected the more important study of outline, to the loss of expression of character, correctness of eye, and purity of taste, and has become the ridicule of its more rigid neighbours. Outline, though only suggestive, is complete in its impression, and is able of itself to convey all the higher qualities of art, form, action and expression ; while color, light-and-shade and com- position are subservient to and dependent on it.
If then Outline or the drawing of form has always been acknowledged by the highest authorities to be what Annibal Caracci termed it, "the beginning, the middle, and the end of art," might it not be well made a separate study for the Pupil, and proficiency in it, as a separate branch, be made as much an object of acquisition as the production of a well-shaded but untimely drawing? As no principle demands more attention than this, and none carries with it a richer reward, the Student would find that in extending its application to the varied forms and actions of the human figure, and to the expression of the
