The Wilmingtonian. (Wilmington, Del.) 1882-188?, 1884-06-07
ART NOTES.

pretty faces especially. In recent eXcnr
: sion he succeeded in satisfying three of til,
ladies perfectly, and his brother artist,
retired in horribly envious state to the
mountains and sketched the eraggiest bit,
they could find By the way Mr.. Bell is
accommodating quite little portrait gallery
at the Star Office, and whenever journalist
or politician drops in, Brother b. is down
on him for sitting.
1t is much easier, as every one knows, tc
draw face in profile pointing to the left
than one looking to the right. And yet by
reason of the fact that all wood-cuts reverse
the conditions Of the drawing, artists on
wood have to accustom themselves to draw.
ing the bulk of their profles ''the wrong
way" very little practice overcomes the
difficulty, aud it is even found that the
average draughtsman for wood-engavers
draws more easily under the unnatural than
the natural condition.
One curious characteristic of the Art of
semi-civilized Oriental races is that they
have never mastered the sim lest principles
of "relief." The men who wrought the
wondrous stones of Karnac and Luxor, could
not draw face. In despair of indicating
the projection of the nose and chin, they
drew most of their faces in profile, but here
they encountered fresh difficulty. Men
have two eyes, but profile shows only one;
yet the conscientious artists of the Chaldean
Era felt bound to indicate the other Que.
Accordingly they squeezed the second one
in at the edge Of the face, in the same way
that Nature has done in the founder, to
make room for the mouth. The two-eyed
profile is characteristic of Oriental Art,
from the Ancient Egyptians down to the
Japanese and Chinese of the present day.
| This matter of '.rslief' is one Of the chief
troubles of the amateur artist. Where a
| sketch is in outline only, no difficulty need
| be experiet ced. 1t is only necessary to
| thicken portions Of the lines which are to be
| represented as near the eye and to attenuate
| those more remote. But the case is very
different where we are dealing with color or
masses Of light and shadow to be represented
| with crayon, charcoal or even the pen or
pencil. To obtain the appearance of ''relief,''
and get rid of the fiatness which is charac-
teristic of amateur work, something
more is necessary than accurate drawing and
The great art of giving easy and agreeable
relief,i sketchng from Nature for instance,
is to fill up the picture with masses of mid
die tone, neither light nor dark, bringing the
lightest of these middle tints naturally and
unobtrusively against the darker, SO as to
cnt the picture into triangular or wedge
shaped masses of light and shade. Then by
marking the catching lights in the fore
ground and getting in few dark shadows
in the heart Of the deeper tones, we get the
'gradations'or 'values'' as they are termed,
and the eject is achieved. But, after all
said and done, it is the essence of art to be
able to accomplish purpose without any
suggestion of the means by which it was
gained Ars eat celdre artem. Most men,
who have a real soul for art obtain their
best effects without thought or considcra-
ton; they paint by impulse and not by rule.
Hence if the amateur asks despairingly,
''How did you get that effect? ?"-the answer
| is very likely to be-"I don't know; it came
| there of itself"
John Linnell, one of the greatest Of mod
ern British Landscape artists used to teach
his pupils that the order of precedence in
drawing was ID Form, (2) Light and Shade,
| (3) Color. There is good deal of whole
some truth in this for the large majority OF
our lady amateurs, who seem to think that
| so long as the color is all right it does not
matter greatly whether tree looks like a
| wisp-brush or not; whether the branches are
connected with invisible trunks or ramify
naturally from the main-stem; and whether
the masses of foliage are rounded and
breezy, or simply fiat daubs of green paint,
Trees are very perplexing to the sketcher
from nature, in the early stages of his noyti-
ate. 1t is difficult for the novice to realize
that lie has to represent the masses and the
special character of the tree; not the individ-
ual leaves. We know the remark OF the old
artist whose pupil was trying to draw a
poplar tree, leaf by leaf. "You need not
count those leaves, young man; they don't
cost anything!"
Apropos of sketching trees from nature in
Water Colors, it is well TO remind the
learner that the too-free use of Indigo in the
shadows will produce opacity and muddi-
ness. The less Indigo used the better A
much safer green is produced with Gamboge
and Sepia, using more Gamboge in The
lights and more Sepia in the dark tints. A