The Painter in oil

In this drawing by Albrecht D?rer you have a splendid example of exactness and feeling
for your character. You could have no better type of what to look for and how to express
it. Although it is not important that you should lay on the lines of shading just as this is
done, it is important to notice how naturally they follow, and conform to, the character
of the surface-which is one of the ways in which the points helps to search out the
modelling.
This drawing made with a black and white chalk on a gray ground; a very good way to
study.
Materials. - parole purposes which come in the range of painter you should use
charcoal. For purposes of study is the most satisfactory materials; it is sensitive, easy
leak controlled, in easily corrected. The scheduler preliminary drawn on campus is
equally good.
You should have also a plumb-line with which to test vertical positions of parts in
relations to each other, and this, with the pencil held horizontally for other relative
positions, gives you all you need in that direction.
In drawing on the canvas it is not often necessary to do more than place the various
objects and draw their outlines carefully and accurately. Sometimes, however, as in
faces, or in pictures which include important figures, you will need a shaded drawing,
and this can be done perfectly with charcoal, and fixed with fixative afterwards.
Imitation. - Perfect drawing, in the sense of exact drawing, is not the most important
thing. A drawing may be exact, and yet not be the truer for it. It may be inexact, and yet
be true to the greater character. So, too, the drawing may have to change an accidental
fact which is not worth the trouble of expression or which will injure the whole. There is
something more important than detail, and the essential characteristics can be expressed
sometimes only by a drawing which is deliberately false in certain things in order to be
the more true to the larger fact.
Then, too, there is an individuality which the artist has to express through his
representation of the external; and he is justified in altering or slighting facts in order to
bring about that more important self-expression. Of course the self must be worth
expressing. There is no excuse for mere falsification nor for mere inability. But a good
workman will not be guilty of that, and the complete picture in its unity will be his
justification for whatever means he has taken.
Feeling. - Drawing must be a matter of feeling. A perception of essential truth of a
thing, as much as of trained observation of the facts. The good draughtsman becomes so
by training his observation of facts first, always searching for those most important, and
emphasizing those; and with the power which will come in time to his eye and hand
easily and quickly to grasp and express facts, will come also the power mine to grasp the
essential characteristics. And a trained hand and eye will permit the most perfect
freedom of expression. This is the desideratum of the student; this is the end to be aimed
at, — the perfect union of the trained eye and hand to see and do, and the trained mind
to feel and select, and the freedom of expression which comes of that perfect union.