The Elements of Drawing In Three Letters to Beginners, John Ruskin

Image via WikipediaThe Elements of Drawing in Three Letters to Beginners was an onerous book to read. John Ruskin is definitely an accomplished figure in multiple fields of academia. However, he is not one to whom I have ever been drawn. The real reasons I read this book were 1) it was free, and 2) it's about art, which is a big source of interest for me these days. It can be found from Gutenberg.org.

Overall, I found the reading of this book to be particularly onerous. Although an accomplished painter, certainly competent, much of his advice seemed to try to shove the aspiring artist into a particular box which he thought to be the best style. That said, there were some things that were worth learning about.

In particular, he emphasises the need to concentrate on details and getting pictures done right, and taking the time to do them to meet his criteria of good. There is something to be said about taking the time to do something very well. While I cannot find myself wanting this as the dominant exercise as I work to improve (wherein there is a tremendous amount of room for improvement), I believe that a proper study of nature, whether in line, shade, tone, or shape, is likely one that will improve the eye and the hand. So that, after some time, the hand and eye will move more quickly and accurately.

I am not a particular fan of the realists. This was his domain and the passion of the book. However, I am a big fan of the likes of Picasso. Much of what Ruskin declared might be considered a basic cornerstone to even Picasso's childlike and primitive style that I love so much. That the details of such might not exist, but things such as contrast and colour coordination might. And, I suppose also, being aware of these rules may not only make one a better naturalist, but also be better aware of how to break those rules to a desired effect. A lot of what he says throughout about what not to do I found myself thinking, "Maybe I ought to do that when I want the effect he is describing."


The best quote I found out of the book was, "If any young person, after being taught what is, in polite circles, called "drawing," will try to copy the commonest piece of real work—suppose a lithograph on the titlepage of a new opera air, or a wood-cut in the cheapest illustrated newspaper of the day,—they will find themselves entirely beaten. And yet that common lithograph was drawn with coarse chalk, much more difficult to manage than the pencil of which an accomplished young lady is supposed to have command; and that wood-cut was drawn in urgent haste, and half spoiled in the cutting afterwards; and both were done by people whom nobody thinks of as artists, or praises for their power; both were done for daily bread, with no more artist's pride than any simple handicraftsmen feel in the work they live by." I liked it because it really does state the way things are: how easy even a common artist may make common things look, when in fact they are neither all that common nor that easy, nor all that profitable for their efforts.

He does list a number of exercises to improve one's art. However, I felt for the most part that this book was much inferior to the one I had read previously, Harold Speed's The Practice and Science of Drawing. Where Ruskin tried to corner me into a box, even if it is a good box, Speed more tried to explain the laws of art as they stand for all art, rather than just the art he loved.