A drawing is usually divided into three parts or planes, which are known as distance (or background), middle distance, and foreground. The foreground is the part nearest to the eye, and the middle distance is the portion between the foreground and the distance. If you are looking at anything in Nature, such as across a field or up a street, the distance is straight before your eyes, so many

yards or hundreds of yards. But if you have to draw this distance on a flat piece of paper, you will have to draw it from the bottom of the paper upwards, either to the top or the sides. Ex. 12 shows a road; the most distant part is represented by lines drawn upwards from the base of the paper. The whole space behind a figure or object, or groups

of figures or objects, is the background. In some backgrounds space is represented by tint, by lines, or is left open (Exs. 5, 13, 15 and 20); this has the advantage of making the objects in the foreground prominent without distracting the attention. Sometimes a black mass is made a background with the same object. In a silhouette you have a black figure on a white space or background. You may also have figures or objects on a black background. (Ex. 11, 16 and 19.) According as you vary the size and importance of these three planes, you can get an endless variety in a composition.

Supposing a beginner makes a rough sketch with chalk on a window-pane of the objects without as they appear on the glass, he will be drawing in perspective. This is one useful way of learning how to fit your subject to the shape and size of your paper. Or if you take a sheet of glass and place it upright between you and an object. Then take a piece of cardboard and make a hole in it, so that you can use it as a sort of single eyeglass. Look through this cardboard arrangement, and you will be enabled to draw on the glass in chalk, Chinese white, or Indian ink any objects in front of it. This glass exactly answers to what is called in perspective the plane of the picture. The nearer the eye is placed to the glass the larger the range of subject, and vice versa. The eye should never be nearer the glass than about two feet. The distance of the eye from the glass corresponds with the focal length of the lens in a camera; and the shorter the focal length, the larger is the range of subject.

Some artists carry a light frame. They look through it at the subject they wish to draw, and move it about until they select the best point of view. With this for a guide they make a rough sketch of the position of the objects, and the frame settles for them the limits or borders of their

picture. Others carry a small pocket-mirror. By turning your back on the object in front of you-a room or a landscape, for instance-and looking in the mirror, you can obtain a reflection of the scene. This is a good way of correcting a drawing made independently. Another method is to turn the head on one side till it becomes horizontal. This has nearly the same effect that you get in stooping and looking at an object through your legs. It confines and concentrates the objects, and you can see them in their true proportions to the foreground, because the distance shrinks.

Ex. 11.

Or you may half close the eyes, so that the objects are seen through the lashes, which is somewhat analogous to looking at them through the wrong end of a pair of opera-glasses. Again the distance will shrink, the important features in the front or foreground will come out strongly, and the light and shade will mass itself undisturbed by details.

There are other ways of assisting the attainment of an approximately correct result. You can put the arm in front of the face, holding the part from the elbow to the wrist horizontally, and move it up and down until you see where the subject had better be cut off for the bottom and top of the sketch. Then the other arm may be moved along vertically to see where the sides had better be determined. Many artists habitually use a Camera lucida, which is really an application of the Camera obscura. This instrument enables them to copy and trace. In many matters, such as

moving clouds, water, etc., it is of no value, and the use of it, as a rule, minimises the artist's power to sketch independently.

When the limits or boundaries have been decided on, the student may take it for granted that he will on most occasions have to guess his perspective by the eye. In making his rough preliminary sketch, he should avoid dealing with details. Looking at his subject he should fix a point of sight-a point or pivot round which he can arrange the items of his drawing. Through this either draw or imagine a horizontal or eye line; this is usually about one-third the height of the paper from the base or foreground. "Block in " or lightly outline with your pencil the general features. Then roughly sketch in the upper surface over the horizontal line, and work your way to the foreground, watching in the meantime that you do not exaggerate the size of the distance and make the foreground too small, blunder which the best draughtsmen cannot always avoid. Then, glancing over the general scheme and effect of the sketch, it is for the artist to decide what items he will put in and those he intends to omit.

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Perspective-Technical.

PERSPECTIVE in its technical sense is the science which enables us by fixed mathematical rules to represent on a plane surface anything which appears to the sight in every variety of distance and form. It has really no counterpart in Nature, because it supposes the earth to be flat. Imaginary lines are drawn along the flat surface (Ex. 12), and these arrange the shape and position of every object determined on. The laws of perspective are to a great extent merely arbitrary, and most artists fall back on the eye. Observation of the actual appearances of buildings, streets, horizons, etc., is a better instructor for the artistic draughtsman than any other. There are many subjects that perspective by technical rule cannot deal with. Thus, in drawing the human figure or animals, though their forms are regular and symmetrical, they do not admit, like geometrical or architectural designs and figures, of delineation by perspective rule. Such objects consist of undulating surfaces and contours, whose outline and appearance can be determined by the eye alone. You cannot draw them by a plan, as you might a building.

Perspective is a special study in itself, and those who desire to pursue it will find excellent opportunity in the "South Kensington Drawing Book," or from such a work as Runciman's "Rules of Perspective."

Scientifically it is divided into Linear and Aerial. Linear perspective depends upon mechanical and optical principles, and chiefly concerns the black-and-white artist. It con