BY THE SAME AUTHOR. Familiar Wild Flowers. First and Second Series. 12s. 6d. each. Each series contains FORTY ILLUSTRATIONS, with accompanying Descriptions of the Common Suggestions in Floral Design. Price 52s. 6d. Giving over Two HUNDRED Ornamental applications in Gold and Colours of the use of Familiar Garden Flowers. First Series. Cloth gilt, 12s. 6d. With Descriptive Text by SHIRLEY HIBBERD, and FORTY full-page Coloured Plates from [All the above are published by Messrs. CASSELL, PETTER, GALPIN & Co.] Mathematical Drawing Instruments, and How to Use Them. Price 3s. 6d. A Practical Treatise on the nature of the commoner Instruments, giving full instructions as to their Use, and other Hints for the Young Mechanic, Art Student, or Draughtsman. [Published by Messrs. TRUENER. The Marlborough Freehand Drawing Course. Price 2s. A Series of Examples for the Use of Schools, and for Private Practice. [Messrs. SEELEY, JACKSON, & HALLIDAY. The Town, College, and Neighbourhood of Marlborough. Illustrated. Price 6s. Giving accounts of the Roman and Ancient British Remains; the great Druid Temple of Avebury; Camps and Burial Mounds; Medieval and Modern Marlborough; the History of the College from its Foundation; the Forest of Savernake, &c. &c. [Published by STANFORD. OWERS are in themselves so attractive, and may often be so readily obtained, FLOWE even by dwellers in cities, that it is not surprising to find them so frequently made the subject of the amateur's endeavours. The study of the human figure must be prolonged and arduous before success may be even hoped for; the beauties of landscape, the glorious blue of the summer sky, flecked with the snowy clouds of noon. or the ing sun, st all be the way The Coloured Plates of Flowers are interleaved with Drawing Pages for the convenience of those who may like to make their copies opposite the originals. valk, no ay strive We have e on the → objects student s to an over, he cacy for individual himself to paper. While it is always painful to point out to the young amateurs that come before one how imperfect their work often is, we may render good service if we here indicate that the delineation of plant form requires practice, knowledge, and study as much as anything else, and that a four-petalled mallow, for example, is as much a monstrosity as a four-toed foot. Those who would reach the goal of their endeavours must be content to follow the track of which it is the termination, and be willing to begin at the beginning instead of at the end; hence the brush should not be touched until full power of drawing is acquired. Many a beginner flatters himself that all will come right in the colouring, and that a sufficient superadding of pink will make the doubtful form before him amply recognisable as a rose; but, unfortunately for the careless and indifferent, this is not so, as the faults, visible enough before, only become intensified. Without insisting upon any great amount of botanical knowledge, the salient features of plant structure can be so readily acquired, that no one attempting to delineate vegetable forms should be ignorant of them. "Our artists always think it necessary to show any difference between the foliage of an elm or an oak; and the gift-books of Christmas have every page surrounded with laboriouslyengraved garlands of rose, shamrock, thistle, and forget-me-not, without its being thought proper by the draughtsman or desirable by the public, even in the case of these uncommon flowers, to observe the real shape of the petals of any one of them." Matters have considerably mended since the greatest of modern art critics penned these scornful words, but there is yet sufficient truth in the passage to fully justify its quotation here. The foreshortening of leaves is a point that often presents considerable difficulty to beginners, and to avoid it they frequently endeavour to draw everything as if directly facing them; this gives a flattened and pressed-out look that is altogether at variance with natural truth and beauty. The foliage of the rose of Sharon, one of our illustrations, is peculiarly flat and diagrammatic-looking in character, owing to all the leaves taking one general direction, but in almost all other plants, as in the fuchsia, snapdragon, musk-mallow, or borage, all herein figured, it will be seen that the leaves leave the stems in various directions, some directly facing us, and others making various angles as they more or less recede from us. Great cleanliness of working is another essential point. When the student has attained a sufficient power of drawing to render the almost constant use of the indiarubber unnecessary, and thus avoids the disturbance of the surface of the paper, a roughening that is fatal to good work, he must also remember the more subtle mischief arising from unnecessary pressure of the hand upon the paper. A piece of hand-paper should always be employed, as it is very annoying on attempting to colour to find that the paper refuses to take it owing to its greasy condition. A little ox-gall mixed with the colours will overcome this difficulty, but the beginner will do well to remember that in this, as in all other cases, prevention is better than cure. Were it not that we have often seen students take hold of an old bit of newspaper or soiled envelope that has been carried in their pockets for a week or more, it would appear superfluous to remind our readers that the paper they employ to keep their work clean should itself be above suspicion. Many persons get into a way of trying their colours on their hand-paper before applying them to their work, but this habit is by no means to be defended, as the hand may be placed on such trial colourings before they are dry, and then the risk of getting some of the colour on the drawing follows. Everything, in fact, must be kept scrupulously clean; the brushes must be thoroughly washed whenever a change of tint is necessary, and they must never be put away in a dirty state at the close of the sitting. Colour that can easily be removed from the brush while damp, is much more difficult to get rid of when it has dried. The brushes, too, should be carefully brought to a good point on being put aside at the end of the day. The water also should be changed as soon as fouled; it will be an economy of time, therefore, to have it in a somewhat large vessel, for an egg-cupful soils at the first dip, while a basinful may last out a sitting. It is no economy to work with inferior materials, and a judicious outlay at the beginning will be advantageously felt in all the subsequent work. Camel-hair brushes are cheap in their first cost, but the sable-hair tools are far preferable, as they have not the harshness in working that the others have, and with reasonable care they are very lasting. Water-colours are either prepared as moist colours or dry cakes. The former are much to be preferred, the increased strength and brilliancy of colour obtainable, and the ease with which the tints can be got, being a marked improvement on the irksome and time-consuming rubbing of the old-fashioned dry colours. Such colours are ordinarily supplied in little earthenware pans, or in tin tubes, the first being to our thinking much to be preferred, as it is at once seen what colour is contained in them, while the tube colours require us first to read their labels, secondly, to unscrew the caps, and thirdly, to replace them after we have squeezed out the required quantity of colour. As it is almost impossible to tell how much of any given colour we may require during a sitting, this squeezing out is often a rather wasteful process, and contrasts disadvantageously with the ease with which more or less of colour can be taken with the brush from the pan-colours. It is sometimes objected that while the colour squeezed from the tubes is absolutely pure in tint, that on the surface of the pan colours is often dirty; but as this defilement can only have arisen from the carelessness of the operator, the objection has no great value. It is scarcely fair to dip a brush that has a quantity of blue in it into the cake of yellow, and then object to the green tint that results. All moist colours are supplied either in whole or half-cakes, while one manufacturer even makes quarter-cakes, the cost being in harmony with the sub-division. If the colours are kept in a tin sketching-box, the flaps of the box form the necessary space for mixing the tints, but in any case it will be found advisable to have some three or four earthenware tiles, those having slanting divisions being the best. It is a great disadvantage to be hampered for want of space for mixing, as the temptation is then often strong to make a tint do more work than legitimately falls to its share. As many little details will naturally suggest themselves as we pass the illustrations in review before us, we will pass from our more general remarks to their particular applications, and see how far we may be able, by a few hints on each illustration, to assist our readers in its reproduction. CROCUS.-After firmly and clearly, but very lightly, outlining all the forms, it will be advisable to commence with the purple flowers. The general groundwork of colour of the left-hand blossom may be produced by the admixture of crimson lake and cobalt, the former predominating, as the purple has a decidedly reddish hue. The streakings and shadings may be added by a stronger tint of the same colour, care being taken not to make them too heavy-looking, as even the shaded portions of a flower have great purity and richness of colour, a suggestion of delicacy of texture and translucence that must not be lost. The central yellow portion must be at first left white, for if painted over with the strong and rich purple of the rest of the flower, such a groundwork would destroy all the brilliancy of the yellow. The streaking of the bud may be given with the same purple, and the shades afterwards these markings by means of a little Payne's grey. washed in, where necessary, over The reflected lights on the upper |