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Drawing and Painting Trees PDF

222 Pages·2012·19.62 MB·English
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Frontispiece STUDY OF AN ELM From the oil painting by the Author [This plate appears in color in the color insert between pages 76 and 77.] Planet Friendly Publishing Made in the United States Printed on Recycled Paper Leam mor al www.greenedition.org At Dover Publications we’re committed to producing books in an earth-friendly manner and to helping our customers make greener choices. Manufacturing books in the United States ensures compliance with strict environmental laws and eliminates the need for international freight shipping, a major contributor to global air pollution. And printing on recycled paper helps minimize our consumption of trees, water and fossil fuels. The text of Drawing and Painting Trees was printed on paper made with 30% post-consumer waste, and the cover was printed on paper made with 10% post- consumer waste. According to Environmental Defense’s Paper Calculator, by using these innovative papers instead of conventional papers, we achieved the following environmental benefits: Trees Saved: 25 • Air Emissions Eliminated: 2,116 pounds Water Saved: 8,754 gallons • Solid Waste Eliminated: 1,129 pounds For more information on our environmental practices, please visit us online at www.doverpublications.com/green Bibliographical Note This Dover edition, first published in 2008, is an unabridged republication of the work originally published as On Drawing and Painting Trees by Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London, in 1936. The seven color plates from that edition have been gathered into an 8-page insert, which appears between pages 76 and 77; these plates also appear in black and white in their original positions within the text. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hill. Adrian Keith Graham, 1895— [On drawing and painting trees] Drawing and painting trees / Adrian Hill. p. cm. Originally published under title: New York: On drawing and painting trees. London: Oxford University Press, 1936. 9780486135854 1. Trees in art. 2. Drawing—Technique. 3. Painting—Technique. 1. Title. NC810.H55 2008 743’.76—dc22 2008021258 Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y 11501 TO MY SMALL SON ANTHONY WHOSE DRAWING OF TREES IS STILL FAR FROM PERFECT! FOREWORD IT has been suggested that I should write a little foreword to Mr. Adrian Hill’s book “On Drawing and Painting Trees”: and I have great pleasure in doing so, as I have read it and find it practical and very well done; indeed my only doubt is that as Mr. Hill probably knows more about trees than I do, there is little or nothing that he has not already touched on. But I can perhaps suggest to the student an attitude of mind in regarding them which may help him to pass on to others the emotion that the trees themselves have aroused in him: it is not so much the degree of skill which he may have at his command, as his judgment in selecting, from the wonderful panorama before him, those elements which speak to him—to get behind himself, as it were, and lose himself in the mood of his subject: and, with the limited means at his command, to suggest the power, the infinity of Nature, and the limitless beauty made manifest, in which he participates. He must lose himself in the mood of his subject. Although the limited range of the artist’s palette is utterly inadequate to express the range of Nature, it is possible with it to express every colour that we can see, and we can make up our minds on looking at a scene, what part it takes in the visible scale: we can register, mentally, the depth of our deepest dark, the brightness of a cloud, or the blue of the sky; and keep, as it were, within the boundaries we have found, as giving us the mood of the picture. I think Whistler painted his nocturnes on some such plan. A fellow-student of mine, who had known Corot and used to go sketching with him, told me that he used to take a square of white linen and one of black velvet, which he would throw on the ground some yards in front of him, so as to give him the key-note of his subject as between white and black: this perhaps explains the general impression of truth which we see in his pictures; and it seems to me that this truth to the mood of Nature is the thing to get hold of. The sky undoubtedly governs all: trees, rivers, hills and fields all take their places in relation to the illumination they receive. And these are all living and moving things, subject to the endless variations of the light. It seems to me that we must approach the study of landscape in some such way. It is well that one should draw the tree and try to understand its structure way. It is well that one should draw the tree and try to understand its structure and complexity, but the student should remember that he is not so much concerned with the representation of timber, as that for a time he has been permitted to take part in the great moving forces of Nature, and to share in the emotion so conveyed to him. If he can succeed in doing this he will profit by Mr. Hill’s clearly thought-out and expressed views; and he will have done well. GEORGE CLAUSEN LONDON June, 1936 PREFACE IN submitting to the public this book about the drawing and painting of trees, 1 wish to warn the reader that I do not present myself either as an authority on forestry, or as one learned in sylvan lore, but only as a painter and lover of trees. It is my wish to share with my fellow students such knowledge as I have acquired of a fascinating subject, because knowledge is almost the whole of the secret of success, and because it can only be fully exploited in alliance with that understanding love of Nature which is at once the inspiration of the artist and the rewarding joy that the job is powerful to bestow. In writing about trees, may I be regarded as a host who, in introducing the reader to his valued friends, has the hope that the contact thus effected will ripen with intimacy and develop into a lasting friendship. If there is a “hither and thithering” tendency in the way in which the matter is set out, it is because I have found in my experience that textbook tuition is largely pedantic and frequently inimical to enterprise and originality; and that the teaching of tree drawing and painting does not lend itself to any rigid system, but can be imparted only in the form of suggestions, hints, warnings, and encouraging asides. Should I be charged in the face of this admission with the laying down of strong views and the uttering of statements which appear dogmatic, I offer such apology as may be extracted from the explanation that, if I did not feel strongly on some matters, I would not have undertaken the compilation of this book. The profusion of pictorial “references” with which the text is furnished is attributable to the generosity of my publishers and, in a measure, to the fact that I find it easier to demonstrate than to expound! The illustrations are, as it were, the exhibits put in in support of the evidence. Concerning those which are my own work, I would add that, apart from any artistic or educational merit they may possess, the doing of them kept me happily employed, and what can the artist ask more? ADRIAN HILL

Description:
This classic of art instruction by noted British painter Adrian Hill presents a well-rounded guide to portraying beeches, elms, pines, and many other varieties of trees. The three-part treatment begins with a brief but informative history of tree painting through the ages, highlighted with images by
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