=Neglect of Drawing.=--Great artists have sometimes not been perfect draughtsmen. They have been careless of exactness of form. But they have always been strong in the great essentials of drawing, and they have made up for such deficiencies as they showed, by their greatness in other directions. Delacroix, for instance, sometimes let his temperament run him into carelessness of form in his hurry to express his temperamental richness of color. These things are superficial to the greater ends he had in view, but we have to distinctly forgive it in accepting the picture. And a great colorist may be so forgiven; he makes up for his fault by other things. But there is no forgiveness for the student or the painter who is simply a poor draughtsman.
The effect of neglect of drawing is to make a weak picture. A painter, who was also an exceptionally fine draughtsman, once spoke of work weak in drawing as resembling "boned turkey." Lack of firmness, indecision, characterize the painter who cannot draw. Those firm, simple, but effective touches which are evident somewhere in the work of all good painters, are impossible without draughtsmanship. They mean precision. Precision means position. Position means drawing.
=Proportions.=--All good work is from the general to the particular, from the mass to the detail. Keep that in mind as a fundamental principle in good work, whatever the kind. You should never place a detail till you have placed your larger masses. The relative importance of things depends on the consideration of those most important first. Let this be your first rule in drawing.
Proportions next. Largest proportions, then exactness of relative proportions. Study first in masses. See nothing at first but the large planes. As Hunt said, "Hang the nose on to the head, not the head on to the nose." In getting proportions of the great masses, let no small variations of line or form break into your study of the whole. Therefore, see outlines first in straight lines and angles. If you cannot see them at first, study to find them; look at the long lines of movement; mass several curves into one line representing the general direction of them. Train yourself to look at things in this way. There is nothing which will not fall into position so. This will not be easy at first. The training of a quick perception of these things is a part of your training in drawing--the first essential. It is not that the straight lines are to be sought for themselves, but that they simplify the first breaking up of the whole into its parts, and so makes more easy the study of proportion. The accuracy of the general masses makes possible a greater accuracy of the lesser proportions which come within them.