Chap. IV. DRAWING JN GENERAL.

805
2;383rf. It is very remarkable that all the inferences are false, wliich usually are ckrivcd
from tile assertion tliat he who can draw tlie human figure will be ahle to draw any other
object tiiat is submitted to him for representation. The few men who can faulilessly draw
the human figure as they see it, may doubtlessly have eyes keen enough and hands true
enough to repeat the minutest details so accurately that any comparison of a particular detail
wiih the original siiall be creditable to them
;
but these men have spent years in obtaining,
besides delicacy of handling, that knowledge of anatomy wliich reminds them at every
stroke of the pencil that sucli a muscle is in such a place, that here it overlaps another,
that there it dies into a bone, and that consequently they have to inark tiie curves and
angles which occur, for instance, six or seven times between the elbow and the wrist, and
to determine how many can be omitted if the scale be less t'lan that of life.
2384. The majority of men who can draw the figure tolerably well can draw nothing
else equally correctly : for the reason that their attention has been given to the mechanism ot
tlie human form solely
;
the representation, by our best portrait-painters, of tlie accessories
which they introduce into their pictures, especially of architectural details, is almost with-
out an exception ludicrously inaccurate. Every ])erson who has tried to apply his power
of representing geometric forms to tlie task of copyir.g in chalk from a mask, must be aware
of the enormous facility which he acquires by previously studying the usual methods ot
expressing tlie totality of the eye, the ear, the nose, and the lips. In a similar manner, the
artist who wishes to give the effect of a suite of mouldings, or of a carved ornament, requires
to know previously all the parts which compose the work. In other words, some men can
pretend to sketch distant rocks and yet miss the very features by which the outlines inti-
mate the geological character.
2.T85. Such are the reasons which have for many years led to the conviction that the
architect's course of drawing should leave the figure alone until he has made one or more
studies from carving in each style of art that opportunity presents to him; this is aflirmed
to be the only method of obtaining a satisfactory appreciation of the minute characteristics
which sometimes constitute the differences between styles; and tiie only method of making
a royal road to the object, which some teachers pretend is the easiest, l)ut is truly the most
difficult, in art. Having acquired the power of accurate representation of ornament,
which involves dexterity in the use of his materials, the student may commence his
operations with the figure.
2;386'. The method proposed in the following pages is old, at least in principle, yet
it has been of late years published as new in Paris, by M. ]")upuis. {^' DelEuseignement die
Dcsshi sous le point de viie iudustriel," 1S36.) The principles of the work, however, are
perhaps better expressed and arranged, in some respects, than we might have presented
them to the reader : and we shall not, therefore, apologise for the free use we make of it,
premising, however, that in respect to the whole figure and the application of the method
to landscapes, what follows is not found in the work of M. Dupuis.
2387. Between the ancient mode of teaching the student (we will take the head, for
instance, shown in
Jig.
S09. as the first roughing of the leading lines of that wh.ich in
fiff.
812. has reached its completion) and
the method practised by M. Dupuis, the only
difference is this, that M. D., instead of let-
"
ting the student form the rough outline at
once from the finished bust, roughing out
on paper the principal masses, provides a
series of models roughly bossed out in their
dilferent stages, which he makes the student
draw. The system is ingenious ; but as the
greatest artists iiave been made without the
modification in question, we do not think it
material ; at all events, the principles are the
same. M. Dupuis, for this put pose, has a
series of sixteen models, the first of each four
of the series are quite sufficient to show the
old as well as his own practice. Thus, in
fy-
809., the general mass of the oval of the head is given, in which it is seen that the
profile is indicated by an obtuse angle, whose extreme point corresponds with the lower
part of the nose, and the lines at one extremity terminate with the roots or commencement
of the hair, and at the other with the lower jaw. The form of the rest of the head is the
result of combining the most projecting points of it by curved lines, in short, of supposing
a rough mass, out of which the sculptor might actually, in marble or otlier material, form
the head.
2;!88. The next step is exhibited
mfig.
810., with the four principal divisions: the occi-
pital to the beginning of the hair, the forehead to the line of the eyes, the projection of the
nose, and the inferior part of the face, with some indication of the mouth.
Fig. 81)9. Fig. 810.