The elements in a perspective drawing which present most difficulties to the architectural draughtsman are foliage and figures.  These are, however, most important accessories, and must be cleverly handled.  It is difficult to say which is the harder to draw, a tree or a human figure; and if the student has not sketched much from Nature either will prove a stumbling-block.  Presuming, therefore, that he has already filled a few sketch-books, he had better resort to these, or to his photograph album, when he needs figures for his perspective.  Designing figures and trees out of one’s inner consciousness is slow work and not very profitable; and if the figure draughtsman may employ models, the architect may be permitted to use photographs.

[Illustration:  FIG. 46 HARRY ALLAN JACOBS]

Unhappily for the beginner, no two illustrators consent to render foliage, or anything else for that matter, in quite the same way, and so I cannot present any authoritative formula for doing so.  This subject has been treated, however, in a previous chapter, and nothing need be added here except to call attention to an employment of foliage peculiar to architectural drawings.  This is the broad suggestive rendering of dark leafage at the sides of a building, to give it relief.  The example shown in Fig. 47 is from one of Mr. Gregg’s drawings.

[Illustration:  FIG. 47 D. A. GREGG]

The rendering of the human figure need not be dealt with under this head, as figures in an architectural subject are of necessity relatively small, and therefore have to be rendered very broadly.  Careful drawing is none the less essential, however, if their presence is to be justified; and badly drawn figures furnish a tempting target for the critic of architectural pictures.  Certainly, it is only too evident that the people usually seen in such pictures are utterly incapable of taking the slightest interest whatever in architecture, or in anything else; and not infrequently they seem to be even more immovable objects than the buildings themselves, so fixed and inflexible are they.  Such figures as these only detract from the interest of the drawing, instead of adding to it, and the draughtsman who has no special aptitude is wise in either omitting them altogether, or in using very few, and is perhaps still wiser if he entrusts the drawing of these to one of his associates more accomplished in this special direction.

The first thing to decide in the matter of figures is their arrangement and grouping, and when this has been determined they should be sketched in lightly in pencil.  In this connection a few words by way of suggestion may be found useful.  Be careful to avoid anything like an equal spacing of the figures.  Group the people interestingly.  I have seen as many as thirty individuals in a drawing, no two of whom seemed to be acquainted,—­a very unhappy condition of affairs even from a purely pictorial point of view.  Do not over-emphasize the base