VOL. VI.

NUMBER 5.

Before reading this article examine carefully the accompanying page of illustrations from the correlation of manual training and drawing point of view.

At the international congress for the teaching of drawing held at Berne last summer, exhibits were made of public school drawing from different countries. Our cousins across the sea, after they had examined the work of the American schools, expressed the judgment that what our art system needs is the better teaching of drawing.

It must be apparent to any unbiased mind that the first obligation of the art department of any public school is to supply mechanical drawings, design drawings, and decorative drawings for models or articles to be made in the manual training laboratory, and in the school rooms of every grade. To do otherwise is a breach of correlation and a flagrant violation of sound pedagogy. Further, the drawing or art department, in supplying these crying needs, will eliminate any of its impractical theories and come in touch with the needs of everyday life. It will tend to cure a general ailment, that is not local, affecting our public school art work. Some symptoms of this ailment are here presented. It is equally obligatory upon the manual. training department to make some concession to the other department. It is always willing. But it is my observation that the elder child (drawing) is jealous of her sturdy and popular brother (manual training). She is inclined to isolate herself.

The arguments for the first introduction of drawing were that it was valuable

in producing skilled hands, quick and sure judgment of the eye. It was argued that it would be useful in any one of a hundred different arts and trades in which the learner might find himself.

But the lessons that once were devoted to model and object drawing are now devoted to copying pictures, composition and picture making, given to the pupil when he is unable to represent accurately a simple model in manual training. Further, he is unable to read the simple mechanical drawings put into his hands to be used in making manual training articles or models. Too much effort is made and time spent in attempting to teach the pupil subtleties of color and space arrangement that he can not appreciate. There is no demand in his nature that they should be presented to him at every age in all the grades. There is no present demand for this almost exclusive kind of art work in his other school subjects.

The child must now work with the brush and all inclination toward outline (almost mechanical) drawing must be stamped out as vice.. He must work in mass. "Mass drawing" involves two things closely allied to each other: (1) sketchiness, a touch-and-go-manner distinguished from the tracing of contours; and the representation of the third dimension-modeled surfaces-light and shade. These characteristics are not dominant and should not be unconditionally encouraged. We hear it said today that mass comes before outline. If that means that modeling comes before drawing, that it comes more naturally to the beginner, we agree.

2 Wall Pocket, a study and interpretation recorded in lan guage, a composition(narrations)

"The wall pocket takes an 8 "square of 120# Cover paper. Say out the Square. Find the middle of each sideand place a dot. Draw three di agonal lines connecting these dots They form three sides of a small "square. Place dols for thcholes at the corners of the big square 1/4 from each edge. Bruise the paper on the pencil lines. Cut out the square.

Fold three corners to the centre. Punch the holes, and tie them with 10 of cord or ribbon.

Decorate with paint.

Vaife School. 4a. Harry Karns.
Richmond, Ind. Ageroyrs.
адето

It is a more direct process to represent form by actual form than by lines and tints and shades. It is direct copying in the one case and in the other case translation from the terms of three dimensions.

This is explained by the difficulty of representation upon a flat surface. This balked the continued efforts of man for thousands of years. Nor did any artist succeed in grappling with the third dimension in painting till late in Greek times. Upon the fall of the ancient world the new acquirement was lost again for 1,500 years. The whole primitive, ancient and medieval world knew nothing of "mass" drawing. Outline filled in with flat, bright color was the full extent of their scope.

Drawing is always to some extent abstract. For this reason sculpture outruns painting in the earlier stages of art history. It reaches a high stage of development, while the painting yet remains crude. This is true of Egyptian art; also of Greek art.

"The study of appearances and the effort to render them, come late in the history of art," says Hamerton. "The complete knowledge of appearance is the sign of a very late state of civilization, implying most advanced artistic culture, both in the artist and the public to whom he addresses himself."

We can not expect the pupil to do what the artist could not do half a century ago-namely, distinguish his visual from his tactual perceptions. We must be content to let him lag a little behind the artists of the time and begin somewhat farther back, learning how to represent the shape of things (mechanical drawings) and not worrying overmuch about their appearance (design and decorative drawing).

That the teaching of what goes to make for beauty in color and design is a good thing, no one will deny, but because it is a good thing is no reason that it should constitute the drawing course to the exclusion of the immediate practical needs of the pupil in his manual training work in paper and string goods, wood and iron. If we attempt to force

the student to render appearances, effects, textures, and qualities, before he has got a good grasp of structure, his natural growth is arrested. He is lost. in the complexities of seeming, and has no clue to the mysteries of form. His work is blotchy and vain. This is the error that has crept into the schools.

The individual student must recapitulate the art history of the race. He comes into this technical tradition of the past, but he must make it his own in a definite order and sequence, it seems to

In supplying the mechanical drawings, artistic design drawing and the decorative drawings demanded by the needs in manual training models, the art history of the race will be recapitulated in sequence indirectly (the most effective way) naturally and easily.

The three kinds of drawing demanded in manual training are properly correlated as to the amount and quality of each. Mechanical and design drawing will predominate here, as they do in all the products made by man. Pupils enjoy these kinds of drawing now because they will use them in making something. It was dry when it was drawing geometric forms and solids from the box of drawing models that were formerly put in schools with drawing courses. In an art course where the drawing is made simply for drawing sake these two most important kinds of drawing are woefully neglected.

The young pupil can make a thing more easily than he can draw it. This is the case with many adults. For this reason much of the early art work in the school should come to the pupil in concrete form-by his making things in which the art he is to experience is involved.

Drawing supervisors and manual training supervisors must plan their work together that each line of work works directly for the other. The needs of one must be directly and promptly supplied by the other. Whether a drawing will come out right, whether a design is fit for the kind of material to be used; whether the artistic or simple decoration suits the kind of model and its size can be known only by working it out in ma