Harold Speed's Book on Drawing, FREE (1 Viewer)

I'm going to put this on my thread too, so it doesn't get lost, for the next time you have any drawing questions of your own or others ask you.

One of the great classics of all time, and better than 4 years in art school Harold Speed's great classic FREE download at Project Gutenberg

The Practical Science of Drawing published in 1903 with all the amazing illustrations intact.

the entire download took less than 40 seconds....amazon sells it if you want a copy instead.

nearly any question you might have about drawing is in it, for instance the whole controversy of mass drawing compared to line drawing taken care
in 2 short paragraphs

To sum up this somewhat rambling chapter, I have endeavoured to show that there are two aspects from which the objective world can be apprehended. There is the purely mental perception founded chiefly on knowledge derived from our sense of touch associated with vision, whose primitive instinct is to put an outline round objects as representing their boundaries in space. And secondly, there is the visual perception, which is concerned with the visual aspects of objects as they appear on the retina; an arrangement of colour shapes, a sort of mosaic of colour. And these two aspects give us two different points of view from which the representation of visible things can be approached.

When the representation from either point of view is carried far enough, the result is very similar. Work built up on outline drawing to which has been added light and shade, colour, aerial perspective, &c., may eventually approximate to the perfect visual appearance. And inversely, representations approached from the point of view of pure vision, the mosaic of colour on the retina, if pushed far enough, may satisfy the mental perception of form with its touch associations. And of course the two points of view are intimately connected. You cannot put an accurate outline round an object without observing the shape it occupies in the field of vision. And it is difficult to consider the "mosaic of colour forms" without being very conscious of the objective significance of the colour masses portrayed. But they present two entirely different and opposite points of view from which the representation of objects can be approached. In considering the subject of drawing I think it necessary to make this division of the subject, and both methods of form expression should be studied by the student. Let us call the first method Line Drawing and the second Mass Drawing. Most modern drawing is a mixture of both these points of view, but they should be studied separately if confusion is to be avoided. If the student neglects line drawing, his work will lack the expressive significance of form that only a feeling for lines seems to have the secret of conveying; while, if he neglects mass drawing, he will be poorly equipped when he comes to express form with a brush full of paint to work with.

Click to expand...

colleenc said:

I'm going to put this on my thread too, so it doesn't get lost, for the next time you have any drawing questions of your own or others ask you.

One of the great classics of all time, and better than 4 years in art school Harold Speed's great classic FREE download at Project Gutenberg

The Practical Science of Drawing published in 1903 with all the amazing illustrations intact.

the entire download took less than 40 seconds....amazon sells it if you want a copy instead.

nearly any question you might have about drawing is in it, for instance the whole controversy of mass drawing compared to line drawing taken care
in 2 short paragraphs

Click to expand...

I've heard it recommended for years but have never actually looked at it. I remember one of my favorite books on drawing, from way back when, was 'Drawing - The Appreciation of the Arst' by Philip Rawson from Oxford University Press. I just went and found it in my collection of old books and see that I've underlined just about every other line. Here's an interesting taste of it:

"The tenor is the notional subject or bare skeleton of the visual idea which can provoke us if we are artists to project on to it, or if we are spectators to accept the projection of, the imagery and visual ideas into which is condensed our experience of what it is to BE. There is in it a total revelation of reality."

I haven't read it in years, and as I look at it now I see that it really is pretty theoretical. But I am tempted to take another look at it, as well as the Speed book. I know I loved the Rawson book when I read and reread it many years ago.

wow that's a bit complicated for me, not sure exactly what he's saying.....Speed is a little more elegant in saying directly and clearly what he means...at least I find it so...

I just started rereading the Dawson book Colleen and it's more dense than I remembered. But I'm on the theory chapter and that's where the quote is from. I think it may be less dense as it goes on to practice. I think he's saying in this quote that both artist and viewer project their entire life experience on to drawings and that thus drawings are much more than just their 'subject', what he calls tenor.

One of the things I liked most about it I realized when I picked it up again the other day is that the author really knows Eastern art and so considers drawing as a worldwide art. I think that gives him a perspective that I like. But I also ran across a small bit about how Conte crayons were developed when flipping through it. So there are items os historical interest as well. I'll eventually get back to my rereading of it and report back as to whether it was worth it.

I took a brief look at the Speed book but the illustrations scared me off a bit. That was just a quick, gut reaction. But they seemed very academic to me. But that was a 10 second reaction. I do know I've always heard enough about the Speed book to make me think I really ought to take a good look at it. Soon maybe...........

exactly what he was saying, but you made it much more clear!


yes old fashioned art skills is what these guys had at the turn of the century, and in the face of all the new isims coming along from 1900 on...There is something to them that we lost when all that training was thrown out the window until finally artists actually championed "deskilling art" and now its rare for art schools to even "why bother with drawing who needs it," as one prof said I think illustrators are the hold outs, and they get rigorous training, and maybe thats why some many great bird artists come from an illustration background.

At any rate I love reading the texts written by these great old teachers....it seems to me that in those times, the artists could "see" more, times were slower and more contemplation was possible, now we are innundated all the time with so much visual information, we cannot see as deeply, there's too much to process and too little time. An example of this to me was clear when a new bill board law took effect and they had to be taken down off the roads...the drive was so different being able to see with out my sight and head being assaulted every half mile with adverts...When I look at the Tonalists, or the Luminist painters there paintings seem more deeply felt and seen than most modern landscape....it would have been something to see the Am landscape at that time, so new, and they were the first painters of it....

We are each of our own times, but I do think some of the baby got tossed out with the bathwater in fundamental skills they had and mostly we don't, esp those of us trained in the colleges and universities of the 60's and 70's. Now all over there are ateliers started up teaching the old ways even using casts and the traditional ways...Tho I would have not tolerated waiting 2 years to draw from the figure and all that mindless perfect copying

It might be fun to have a thread where we share snippets of reading these old books, if you care to..... I'm deep in Carlson right now, trying to get up to speed on landscape...I've underlined half the book, he's so clear and knows how to explain with simple analogies, probably because he was a great teacher as well as a successful painter in his time...he's not dogmatic or how to so much as pointing out principals you can use to figure out for yourself.