To sum up this somewhat rambling chapter, I have endeavoured to show that there are two aspects from which the objective world can be apprehended.  There is the purely mental perception founded chiefly on knowledge derived from our sense of touch associated with vision, whose primitive instinct is to put an outline round objects as representing their boundaries in space.  And secondly, there is the visual perception, which is concerned with the visual aspects of objects as they appear on the retina; an arrangement of colour shapes, a sort of mosaic of colour.  And these two aspects give us two different points of view from which the representation of visible things can be approached.

When the representation from either point of view is carried far enough, the result is very similar.  Work built up on outline drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance.  And inversely, representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of form with its touch associations.  And of course the two points of view are intimately connected.  You cannot put an accurate outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the field of vision.  And it is difficult to consider the “mosaic of colour forms” without being very conscious of the objective significance of the colour masses portrayed.  But they present two entirely different and opposite points of view from which the representation of objects can be approached.  In considering the subject of drawing I think it necessary to make this division of the subject, and both methods of form expression should be studied by the student.  Let us call the first method Line Drawing and the second Mass Drawing.  Most modern drawing is a mixture of both these points of view, but they should be studied separately if confusion is to be avoided.  If the student neglects line drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of form that only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of conveying; while, if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly equipped when he comes to express form with a brush full of paint to work with.

IV

LINE DRAWING

Most of the earliest forms of drawing known to us in history, like those of the child we were discussing in the last chapter, are largely in the nature of outline drawings.  This is a remarkable fact considering the somewhat remote relation lines have to the complete phenomena of vision.  Outlines can only be said to exist in appearances as the boundaries of masses.  But even here a line seems a poor thing from the visual point of view; as the boundaries are not always clearly defined, but are continually merging into the surrounding mass and losing themselves to be caught up again later on and defined once more.  Its relationship with visual appearances is not sufficient to justify the instinct for line drawing.  It comes, I think, as has already been said, from the sense of touch.  When an object is felt there is no merging in the surrounding mass, but a firm definition of its boundary, which the mind instinctively conceives as a line.