Line and Form (1900) Part 1

Line and Form (1900).

by Walter Crane.

PREFACE

As in the case of "The Bases of Design," to which this is intended to form a companion volume, the substance of the following chapters on Line and Form originally formed a series of lectures delivered to the students of the Manchester Munic.i.p.al School of Art.

There is no pretension to an exhaustive treatment of a subject it would be difficult enough to exhaust, and it is dealt with in a way intended to bear rather upon the practical work of an art school, and to be suggestive and helpful to those face to face with the current problems of drawing and design.

These have been approached from a personal point of view, as the results of conclusions arrived at in the course of a busy working life which has left but few intervals for the elaboration of theories apart from practice, and such as they are, these papers are now offered to the wider circle of students and workers in the arts of design as from one of themselves.

They were ill.u.s.trated largely by means of rough sketching in line before my student audience, as well as by photographs and drawings. The rough diagrams have been re-drawn, and the other ill.u.s.trations reproduced, so that both line and tone blocks are used, uniformity being sacrificed to fidelity.

WALTER CRANE.

Kensington, July, 1900.

CHAPTER I

Origin and Function of Outline--Silhouette--Definition of Boundaries by--Power of Characterization by--Formation of Letters--Methods of Drawing in Line--The Progressive Method--The Calligraphic Method--The Tentative Method--The j.a.panese Direct Brush Method--The Oval Method--The Rectangular Method--Quality of Line--Linear Expression of Movement--Textures--Emotion--Scale of Linear Expression.

Outline, one might say, is the Alpha and Omega of Art. It is the earliest mode of expression among primitive peoples, as it is with the individual child, and it has been cultivated for its power of characterization and expression, and as an ultimate test of draughtsmanship, by the most accomplished artists of all time.

The old fanciful story of its origin in the work of a lover who traced in charcoal the boundary of the shadow of the head of his sweetheart as cast upon the wall by the sun, and thus obtained the first profile portrait, is probably more true in substance than in fact, but it certainly ill.u.s.trates the _function_ of outline as the definition of the boundaries of form.

[Silhouette]

As children we probably perceive forms in nature defined as flat shapes of colour relieved upon other colours, or flat fields of light on dark, as a white horse is defined upon the green gra.s.s of a field, or a black figure upon a background of snow.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f003a): Silhouette]

[Ill.u.s.tration (f003b): Silhouette]

[Definition of Boundaries]

To define the boundaries of such forms becomes the main object in early attempts at artistic expression. The attention is caught by the edges--the shape of the silhouette which remains the paramount means of distinction of form when details and secondary characteristics are lost; as the outlines of mountains remain, or are even more clearly seen, when distance subdues the details of their structure, and evening mists throw them into flat planes one behind the other, and leave nothing but the delicate lines of their edges to tell their character.

We feel the beauty and simplicity of such effects in nature. We feel that the mind, through the eye resting upon these quiet planes and delicate lines, receives a sense of repose and poetic suggestion which is lost in the bright noontide, with all its wealth of glittering detail, sharp cut in light and shade. There is no doubt that this typical power of outline and the value of simplicity of ma.s.s were perceived by the ancients, notably the Ancient Egyptians and the Greeks, who both, in their own ways, in their art show a wonderful power of characterization by means of line and ma.s.s, and a delicate sense of the ornamental value and quality of line.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f004): Coast and Mountain Lines--Gulf of Nauplia]

[Formation of Letters]

Regarding line--the use of outline from the point of view of its value as a means of definition of form and fact--its power is really only limited by the power of draughtsmanship at the command of the artist.

From the archaic potters' primitive figures or the rudimentary attempts of children at human or animal forms up to the most refined outlines of a Greek vase-painter, or say the artist of the Dream of Poliphilus, the difference is one of degree. The tyro with the pen, learning to write, splotches and scratches, and painfully forms trembling, limping O's and A's, till with practice and habitude, almost unconsciously, the power to form firm letters is acquired.

Writing, after all, is but a simpler form of drawing, and we know that the letters of our alphabet were originally pictures or symbols. The main difference is that writing stops short with the acquisition of the purely useful power of forming letters and words, and is seldom pursued for the sake of its beauty or artistic qualities as formerly; while drawing continually leads on to new difficulties to be conquered, to new subtleties of line, and fresh fascinations in the pursuit of distinction and style.

[Ill.u.s.tration (f005a): Proportions of Roman Capital Letters and Method of Drawing Them (From Albert Durer's "Geometrica").]

[Ill.u.s.tration (f005b): Proportions of Lower-Case German Text and Method of Drawing the Letters (From Albert Durer's "Geometrica").]

The practice of forming letters with the pen or brush, from good types, Roman and Gothic, however, would afford very good preliminary practice to a student of line and form. The hand would acquire directness of stroke and touch, while the eye would grow accustomed to good lines of composition and simple constructive forms. The progressive nature of writing--the gradual building up of the forms of the letters--and the necessity of dealing with recurring forms and lines, also, would bear usefully upon after work in actual design. Albert Durer in his "Geometrica" gives methods on which to draw the Roman capitals, and also the black letters, building the former upon the square and its proportions, the thickness of the down strokes being one-eighth of square, the thin strokes being one-sixteenth, and the serifs being turned by circles of one-fourth and one-eighth diameter. The capital O, it will be noted, is formed of two circles struck diagonally.

[Methods of Drawing in Line]

Letters may be taken as the simplest form of definition by means of line. They have been reduced through centuries of use from their primitive hieroglyphic forms to their present arbitrary and fixed types, though even these fixed types are subject to the variation produced by changes of taste and fancy.

But when we come to unformulated nature--to the vast world of complex forms, ever changing their aspect, full of life and movement, trees, flowers, woods and waters, birds, beasts, fishes, the human form--the problem how to represent any of these forms, to express and characterize them by means of so abstract a method as line-drawing, seems at first difficult enough.

But since the growth of perception, like the power of graphic representation, is gradual and partial, though progressive, the eye and the mind are generally first impressed with the salient features and leading characteristics of natural forms, just as the child's first idea of a human form is that of a body with four straight limbs, with a preponderating head. That is the first impression, and it is unhesitatingly recorded in infantine outline.

The first aim, then, in drawing anything in line is to grasp the general truths of form, character, and expression.

[The Progressive Method]

There are various methods of proceeding in getting an outline of any object or figure. To begin with, the student might begin progressively defining the form by a series of stages in this way. Take the profile of a bird, for instance; the form might be gradually built up by the combination of a series of lines:

[Ill.u.s.tration (f006a): (bird forms)]

or take the simpler form of a flask bottle:

[Ill.u.s.tration (f006b): (bottle forms)]

or a jar on the same principle:

[Ill.u.s.tration (f006c): (jar forms)]

or, simpler still, a leaf form, putting in the stem first with one stroke (1):

[Ill.u.s.tration (f006d): (leaf forms)]

and building the form around it (2, 3).

[The Calligraphic Method]

[Ill.u.s.tration (f007a): (calligraphic forms)]

This might be termed the calligraphic method of drawing; and in this method facility of hand might be further practised by attempting the definition of forms by continuous strokes, or building it up by as few strokes as possible. The simpler types of ornament consisting of meandering and flowing lines can all be produced in this way, i.e., by continuous line, as well as natural forms treated in a certain abstract or conventional way, which adapts them to decoration.

[The Tentative Method]

[Ill.u.s.tration (f007b): (jar forms)]

Another method is to sketch in lightly guide lines for main ma.s.ses, building a sort of scaffolding of light lines to a.s.sist the eye in getting the correct outline in its place, using vertical centre lines for symmetrical forms to get the poise right. This is the method very generally in use, but I think it very desirable to practise direct drawing as well, to acquire certainty of eye and facility of hand; and one must not mind failure at first, as this kind of power and facility is so much a matter of practice.