[Illustration:  Diagram II.

Showing where SQUARENESSES may be looked for in the drawing on the
opposite page]

[Illustration:  Plate XVI.

Study by Rubens from the collection of Charles Ricketts and Charles
Shannon

A splendid example of Rubens’ love of rich, full forms.  Compare with the diagram opposite, and note the flatnesses that give strength to the forms.]

From lack of this elementary tone study, the student, when he approaches painting for the first time, with only his outline and light and shade knowledge, is entirely at sea.  With brushes and paint he is presented with a problem of form expressions entirely new.  And he usually begins to flounder about, using his paint as much like chalk on paper as possible.  And timid of losing his outlines, he fears to put down a mass, as he has no knowledge of reducing appearances to a structure of tone masses or planes.

I would suggest, therefore, that the student should study simultaneously from these two points of view, beginning with their most extreme positions, that is, bare outline on the one side and on the other side tone masses criticised for their accuracy of values only in the first instance.  As he advances, the one study will help the other.  The line work will help the accuracy with which he observes the shapes of masses, and when he comes to light and shade his knowledge of tone values will help him here.  United at last, when complete light and shade has been added to his outline drawings and to his mass drawing an intimate knowledge of form, the results will approximate and the two paths will meet.  But if the qualities appertaining to either point of view are not studied separately, the result is confusion and the “muddling through” method so common in our schools of art.

VIII

LINE DRAWING:  PRACTICAL

Seeing that the first condition of your drawing is that it has to be made on a flat surface, no matter whether it is to be in line or mass you intend to draw, it is obvious that appearances must be reduced to terms of a flat surface before they can be expressed on paper.  And this is the first difficulty that confronts the student in attempting to draw a solid object.  He has so acquired the habit of perceiving the solidity of things, as was explained in an earlier chapter, that no little difficulty will be experienced in accurately seeing them as a flat picture.

[Sidenote:  Observing Solids as a Flat copy.]

As it is only from one point of view that things can be drawn, and as we have two eyes, therefore two points of view, the closing of one eye will be helpful at first.