The Practice and Science of Drawing by Harold Speed
page 37 of 283 (13%)
page 37 of 283 (13%)
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there be in their work. The commonplace painter will paint a commonplace
picture, while the form and colour will be the means of stirring deep associations and feelings in the mind of the other, and will move him to paint the scene so that the same splendour of associations may be conveyed to the beholder. [Illustration: Plate VII. STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF APOLLO IN THE PICTURE "APOLLO AND DAPHNE" In natural red chalk rubbed with finger; the high lights are picked out with rubber.] But to return to our infant mind. While the development of the perception of things has been going on, the purely visual side of the question, the observation of the picture on the retina for what it is as form and colour, has been neglected--neglected to such an extent that when the child comes to attempt drawing, #sight is not the sense he consults#. The mental idea of the objective world that has grown up in his mind is now associated more directly with touch than with sight, with the felt shape rather than the visual appearance. So that if he is asked to draw a head, he thinks of it first as an object having a continuous boundary in space. This his mind instinctively conceives as a line. Then, hair he expresses by a row of little lines coming out from the boundary, all round the top. He thinks of eyes as two points or circles, or as points in circles, and the nose either as a triangle or an L-shaped line. If you feel the nose you will see the reason of this. Down the front you have the L line, and if you feel round it you will find the two sides meeting at the top and a base joining them, suggesting the triangle. The mouth similarly is an opening with a row of |
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