Drawing

I

Introduction

Drawing, delineation of form upon a surface, usually plane, by means of lines and tints or shading. That delineation in a drawing may be of real or imaginary objects, or of purely abstract forms. Drawing is usually carried out in crayon, chalk, charcoal, metal point, pen, or pencil, or in certain combinations of these.

Because the delineation of form lies at the foundation of all the visual arts (including sculpture), drawing is one of the most important branches of study in schools of art and architecture, as well as in schools of engineering. This article, however, is concerned with freehand drawing as opposed to drafting and mechanical drawing.

II

Freehand Drawing

Drawing of visible objects is essentially the graphic recording of impressions received through the eye. Because it is not possible, however, to present all the visible facts and aspects of an object graphically on a plane surface, the art of drawing lies in suggestion, stimulating the imagination of the beholder to supply whatever is lacking in the representation. The choice of what to record and what to omit calls for a visual sensibility that develops only after some experience. A sketch is a drawing that presents in a summary way only the essential details of the object represented. In an effective sketch, the immediacy of the artist's visual impression is not sacrificed by an effort to achieve an elaborate finish.

The different kinds and schools of drawing are distinguished by the ways in which the restrictions imposed by the medium of monochrome are overcome. In outline drawings, and in some sketches, only the outlines, contours, or salient edges, and markings of an object or scene are shown. The power of pure line, even without colour, to suggest the most varied modelling of surfaces and to express the minutest detail is admirably exemplified in Chinese and Japanese art (see Chinese Art and Architecture; Japanese Art and Architecture). The Western schools, on the other hand, lay great stress upon tonal values—the rendering of gradations of light and dark. European artists have striven to achieve the desired effects by means of corresponding gradations in the monochrome tones of the drawing. Even different colours can be suggested by, or interpreted from, black and white by a careful rendering of their apparent values; a dark red, for example, is indicated by darker shading than that used to suggest a light blue or a yellow. The great artists of the Renaissance stand midway between the Japanese exponents of pure line and the modern Western interpreters of tonal values. The drawings of Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, and Michelangelo are remarkable for their purity, vigour, and delicacy of line, as well as for the skilful way in which form is expressed by shading.

III

Drawing Technique

The fundamental principles of drawing are the same, whatever the medium employed. Working from almost any object or model, the artist first observes and sketches in the dominant structural lines, contours, and masses. The more important details are added, and adjustments made, and the minor details are left to last. In executing these various stages of the drawing, lightness of touch and sureness of line are important.

Drawing techniques vary greatly depending upon the medium employed. Over the centuries, drawings have been executed on many kinds of surfaces—cave walls, clay objects, plaster, papyrus, parchment, silk, wood panels, stone blocks and metal plates (see Prints and Printmaking), and, most commonly, paper of various consistencies and tones. The chief drawing tools are pencil, pen or brush, and ink, black or red crayon, and charcoal. Of these, the pen is the most exacting, as it makes an indelible mark that is difficult to alter. Tints must be expressed by dots, closely crowded lines, and cross-hatching. The masters of pen drawing must be masters of pure line. With charcoal, the artist must “paint” on paper, fine charcoal lines being nearly impossible to draw; this exigency is also true of the brush. Pencil and crayon require the use of the line but also permit broad, soft strokes and stumped, or rubbed-in, shading. Very effective drawings are made by using a tinted paper, often either grey or pale blue, on which highlights are indicated by use of chalk or the pigment called Chinese white; the darker shades and masses are indicated with the pencil, and the tone of the paper is left to represent the intermediate values. The great masters of the Renaissance, to whom the familiar graphite (lead) pencil, a 16th-century development, was unkown, sometimes used a lead- or silver-pointed tool on parchment or heavy paper, which gave a pale grey line; more often, they used red chalk. Until it was superseded by the modern steel pen, the quill was also used for drawing.

IV

Perspective Drawing

Perspective drawing stands midway between freehand or pictorial drawing and instrumental or mechanical drawing. It aims to represent the actual three-dimensional aspect of an object from a given point of view and is a matter less of personal and artistic interpretation than of scientific determination. The object is shown with all the angular distortion and foreshortening with which the eye, from the given point of view, iterprets it but the exact angles, dimensions, distortion, and foreshortening of each part are determined by mathematical processes and not by mere visual impressions.

A perspective drawing, thus scientifically laid out in outline, may be finished with additional lines of colour, light and shade, and incidental elements rendered in a pictorial manner, as in freehand drawing; it then moves from the category of scientific drawing into that of fine art. Indeed, no artist can master the correct portrayal of form, especially of scenery and buildings, without training in perspective; it is accordingly an important branch of study in all formal schools of art, such as the famous École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. It is absolutely indispensable to scene painters and forms the basis of the illusory effects of stage settings. In Japanese drawings the treatment of perspective is very different; the point of view is, in almost all cases, assumed at a high elevation, giving an effect called bird's-eye perspective.