The Practice and Science of Drawing
1913
Most drawing books teach you to copy. This one teaches you to see. Harold Speed's enduring 1913 classic introduces "dither" : that vital freedom between cold accuracy and artistic expression, the quality that separates the scientifically precise from the artistically true. Rather than formulas or shortcuts, Speed offers a way of looking at line, mass, proportion, and balance that transforms how you perceive drawing itself. He traces the techniques of the old masters not as formulas to mimic but as solutions to visual problems, encouraging the student to develop intellectual engagement alongside manual skill. Through ninety-three plates and carefully structured exercises, Speed builds not just technical ability but genuine artistic perception : the ability to see a work as its creator intended it to be seen. A century of artists have returned to this book because it does what few instruction manuals achieve: it makes you think like an artist, not merely act like a copyist.
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“The search for this inner truth is the search for beauty. People whose vision does not penetrate beyond the narrow limits of the commonplace, and to whom a cabbage is but a vulgar vegetable, are surprised if they see a beautiful picture painted of one, and say that the artist has idealised it, meaning that he has consciously altered its appearance on some idealistic formula; whereas he has probably only honestly given expression to a truer, deeper vision than they had been aware of. The commonplace is not the true, but only the shallow, view of things. [...]Our moments of peace are, I think, always associated with some form of beauty, of this spark of harmony within corresponding with some infinite source without. [...]. In moments of beauty (for beauty is, strictly speaking, a state of mind rather than an attribute of certain objects [...]) we seem to get a glimpse of this deeper truth behind the things of sense. And who can say but that this sense, dull enough in most of us, is not an echo of a greater harmony existing somewhere the other side of things, that we dimly feel through them, evasive though it is””
— Harold Speed
“It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the earlier period.””
— Harold Speed
“THEPRACTICE & SCIENCEOFDRAWING BY HAROLD SPEED Associé de la Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, Paris; Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters, &c. With 93 Illustrations & Diagrams LONDONSEELEY, SERVICE & CO. LIMITED38 GREAT RUSSELL STREET1913 Superior Formatting Publishing If you want more well formatted, classic books which have been formatted specifically for the Kindle platform then just search Amazon for "Superior Formatting Publishing". You can also browse and purchase our entire inventory at our website: SuperiorFormatting.com All of our books are priced as low as possible, feature a linked table of contents, cover art, and superior formatting. Our formatting techniques insures that all page breaks, indents, spacing and quotes are properly displayed on your Kindle device. Plate I. FOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF SAME MONOCHROME PAINTING IN DIFFERENT STAGES ILLUSTRATING A METHOD OF STUDYING MASS DRAWING WITH THE BRUSH PREFACE Permit me in the first place to anticipate the disappointment of any student who opens this book with the idea of finding "wrinkles" on how to draw faces, trees, clouds, or what not, short cuts to excellence in drawing, or any of the tricks so popular with the drawing masters of our grandmothers and still dearly loved by a large number of people. No good can come of such methods, for there are no short cuts to excellence. But help of a very practical kind it is the aim of the following pages to give; although it may be necessary to make a greater call upon the intelligence of the student than these Victorian methods attempted.””
— Harold Speed
“But while speaking against fretting after eccentricity, don't let it be assumed that any discouragement is being given to genuine new points of view. In art, when a thing has once been well done and has found embodiment in some complete work of art, it has been done once for all. The circumstances that produced it are never likely to occur again. That is why those painters who continue to reproduce a picture of theirs (we do not mean literally) that had been a success in the first instance, never afterwards obtain the success of the original performance. Every beautiful work of art is a new creation, the result of particular circumstances in the life of the artist and the time of its production, that have never existed before and will never recur again.””
— Harold Speed
“But every age differs in its temperament, and the artistic conventions of one age seldom fit another. The artist has to discover a convention for himself, one that fits his particular individuality. But this is done simply and naturally”
— Harold Speed
“Every face has expression of a far more interesting and enduring kind than these momentary disturbances of its form occasioned by laughter or some passing thought, &c. And it must never be forgotten that a portrait is a panel painted to remain for centuries without movement. So that a large amount of the quality of repose must enter into its composition.””
— Harold Speed
“The study, therefore, of the representation of visible nature and of the powers of expression possessed by form and colour is the object of the painter’s training.””
— Harold Speed
“Art is the expression of the invisible by means of the visible””
— Harold Speed
