Today is Friday, the first gathering of GJ Book Club. Each week, we will examine a new chapter Harold Speed traditional practice and science of drawing (Dover Art Instruction) 
, starting with the Preface and Introduction. The following numbered paragraphs combine quotes from key points in italics, followed by a few remarks of my own. Your thoughts are welcome in the comments section of this blog. If you want to reply to a specific point, please precede your comment with the corresponding number.
Preface
1. "The practice and science of drawing"
Baked in the title is the classic dilemma of teaching art. Do you teach or practice the science? The technique or theory? The methods or principles? The skills of the hand or the thought behind them? Harold Speed aims to meet both. Note: first editions of the book and reverse the order ". The science and practice of drawing"
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| Pages JD Harding "lessons on the art |
2." ... Drawing masters of our grandmothers and still loved by many people. No good can come of these methods, as there is no shortcut to excellence. "
The speed is probably referring to the drawing manuals JD Harding (1798-1863), such as" drawing trees and nature
. " how-to-draw of Harding's books were hugely popular throughout the 19th century. Typically his books present the student with a series of drawing lessons, starting with the geometric solids, and move on to mundane forms such as buckets or stairs or rocks. it is a kind of recipe for drawing, but not bad for beginners, in my opinion. I think the speed wants his students to dig beyond the design formulas. he proposes to do this by examining more fundamental principles. he is also interested in the student with the "artistic" sensibilities of rhythm and unity, whatever forms it draws. 3 ". .... who placed throughout the training in two of our schools of art chefs ..."
both schools he refers are the Royal College of Art (where he started in the architecture) and the Royal Academy schools. He also won a traveling scholarship in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain. Source:. Burlington
4. "The long uphill road that separates the precise mechanical drawing and fine art drawing."
Academic training would be found in the 180s in England and continental Europe have seemed superficially similar. Students worked from the model and the distribution in both traditions, but there were differences. Depending on the speed, the English school was more concerned with observationally accurate drawings while French schools were more "interpretive" or "artistic".
Does anyone know where workshops in France or Europe Mr Speed studied, and that the current sensitivities were in these schools? Also, do not know anyone whose teachers he would have had at the Royal College of Art and the Royal Academy? Perhaps one of our workshop experts can explain more about the specific differences between the French and English schools in the 180s
5. To many in this country the modern art is still a closed book.
the onslaught of modernity on the ramparts of-the-art thinking was far along in 1917, when the book was published rate. Europe was torn apart by the Great War. Russia was in the midst of a revolution. The Edwardian world, with all its assumptions about the nature and purpose of art was the collapse as an ornate marble building. Speed, it seems, is trying to examine its assumptions about art and to remain open-minded.
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| 1936 Book Contents speed What good art? |
later books of speed were more philosophical, as if trying to work out an understanding of modernism he could reconcile with his academic training. The 20th century illustrator and author Andrew Loomis experienced a similar evolution in his books as he went from "Fun With A Pencil
" to "The Eye of the Painter." first books of Loomis are basic and practical, and as time passed, his books were struggling increasingly with serious and philosophical subjects. 6. Where formerly the artistic food available to students has been limited to a few images in its neighborhood and some other prints, no there is not an image Note in the world that does not know the average student .... It is not surprising that artistic indigestion period is upon us. "
Wow, what would it do to the widespread availability of the Internet art?
7. The position of the art today is like a river ...
I understand all his metaphor, it is said that we can not ignore history and start over, nor can we pretend to be naive and see like a child again.
introduction
8. the real question of art is above and beyond the scope of education.
speed is aware of the effect of blood-draining too cold analysis. It recognizes the mystery of intuition, and the idea that, a good painting, a higher power seems to flow through an artist. With a nod to the infinite, he wants to spend the practical issues of the book. But he gives us this introduction to provide aesthetic context to the following matters. Encompassed in this section of the book is his search for a definition of art.
9. Variety of definitions of art
Speed summarizes several conventional definitions of art, and eventually promote the Leo Tolstoy. I also like the definition of Tolstoy, based on the artist intentionally transmitting an emotion felt at the viewer. The great thing about this definition is the way it includes virtually all forms of art, including music, painting, dance, and storytelling, but excludes things like wallpaper or plans architect.
If you wish to read the full text of the famous essay Tolstoy, it is available on Archive.org, and it is a good read, despite its denigration of the opera early.
10. Each art has certain emotions belonging to particular sensory impressions related to it.
Speed introduced his concept of "rhythm" for lack of a better word, to encapsulate the abstract visual power of painting and drawing. He talks about the effect of the design of the image outside the object of representation. Speed was influenced by the English art critic Walter Pater (1839-1898), who said, "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music." Speed stressed that the abstract power of painting contains qualities that are unique to our visual life, and perhaps distinct from other art forms that appeal to other senses.
11. There seems to be a common center of our life.
Speed speaks to universal human emotions and experiences expressed in art.
12. The visible world of the artist, as it were, a wonderful garment, when revealing the Hereafter, the inner truth there is in all things.
This concept goes all the way back to Plato, and can be found in the writings of the American transcendentalists. I recommend, for example, the essay "Letters on Landscape Painting", which has similar ideas about the Asher B. Durand landscape painting.
13. Beauty is a state of mind.
Speed concerns not so much beauty as a particular arrangement of proportions or a particular type of object, but rather a state of mind in the observer that allows him to find the rhythm in anything. He criticizes the artists "whose vision does not penetrate beyond the limits narrow banality. "
Thus, finding beauty in the subject is not the same as changing to meet an ideal formula. Instead, the artist must cultivate the feeling in the heart, and use the tools of the trade to put that feeling on canvas -. While painting the subject with precision
14. Art for art or art for the sake of the subject?
The first is the main idea of Aesthetics, which was booming in the early years of the 20th century. Speed hits a reasonably balanced between the two theories of classical art. He faults paintings that draws attention to the area of technology, and it also removes the other extreme: artists so caught up in their object they only create
[1945008"paintedsymbols"] 15. It also serves to disrupt the "theory of the copy.
Speed ends his introductory essay with a warning to his readers not to fall into the trap common among university students of his time, and perhaps now, for copy the outer surface of things, while missing the most elusive qualities of life and rhythm.
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I invite you to add your comments, wherever possible fixed on the numbers.
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| ["Drawing" Harold Speed |
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practice and science of design is available in a paperback edition of Dover cheap, you can also get the book fully illustrated and formatted for the Kindle. Or you can read it online in a free edition Archive.org. Finally, there is a version of Project Gutenberg
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Articles Harold Speed in Studio The Studio Magazine, Volume 15, "The work of Harold Speed" by A. L. Baldry. (XV No. 69.. - December, 1898) page 151.
and The Windsor Magazine, Volume 25, "The Art of Harold Speed" by Austin Chester, at page 335. (thank you, अर्जुन )
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There will be discussions and additional assignments related to GJ club Book on:
GJ Book club Facebook page hosted by Keita Hopkinson
Pinterest page in Carolyn Kasper . . Thank you for moderating
original blog announcing the GJ Book Club
Overview of the series of blog
Chapter 1: Preface and Introduction
Chapter 2: Drawing
Chapter 3 Vision
Chapter 4: Line drawing
Chapter 5: Mass drawing
Chapter 6: academic and conventional
Chapter 7: the design study
Chapter 8: Line drawing, [Pratique1945003] chapter 9: mass Drawing
chapter 10: Rhythm
chapter 11: Variety lines
chapter 12: curved lines
chapter 13: mass Variety
chapter 14: the unit of mass
Chapter 15: Balance
Chapter 16: Proportion
Chapter 17: drawing Portrait
Chapter 18: visual memory
Chapter 19: procedure
Chapter 20: Materials
