Simplified Mechanical Perspective: For Use of High Schools, Technical and Manual Training High Schools, Evening Industrial Schools and Art Schools

From the INTRODUCTION. THE sense of color and the sense of proportion are carefully developed by art teachers, but the perspective sense is largely allowed to take care of itself. By the perspective sense is meant a perception of the relation existing between straight lines-their apparent convergence, direction, length and position; a realization of what is meant by systems of lines (lines that have the same direction); and the ability to think of systems instead of individual lines. The lack of the perspective sense, on the part of a draftsman, is as apparent in his work, to one who has it, as the lack of the color sense is apparent to one who sees and appreciates color. Students are prone, in drawing, to draw a line here and another there-one line of a system, then a line of another system-trusting to their sense of proportion alone to bring the drawing out correct in the end. Asked to draw the interior of a room, or a street scene, the student sees only a maze of lines because his ability to grasp the perspective of the view as a whole (his perspective sense) has not been developed. A glance at the illustrations in the magazines shows how lacking is the perspective sense even among many of the professional artists whose ability to draw the figure seems almost perfect. We see figures standing upon a floor that is not level, or upon a rug one edge of which only rests upon the floor, or dining from a table upon which a cup could hardly be made to stand. These illustrators, in their school days, probably found the perspective class uninteresting, as do most art students. Is this the fault of the students, or does the fault lie in the manner in which the subject is presented? All art schools offer courses in mechanical perspective, and in many schools that make a specialty of educating art teachers the students are required to take the course. VVhen they leave school they either forget all about the theory of perspective, or regard it as too difficult to apply to every-day problems, or as taking too much time to be taught to their own pupils, because to them perspective had'been a matter of tee-square and triangle only-its application to practical problems and freehand drawing having either never been pointed out, or, if it had, so obscured with rules and methods that the spirit of the thing was entirely missed. The architect and the designer of interior decoration must be masters of perspective: it is a part of their stock in trade. The sculptor, the painter and the illustrator have equal need of this knowledge, and everyone who draws should have worked perspective mechanically long enough to have the perspective sense so developed as to make the application of the rules a sort of second nature, even if the theory on which they are based be afterward forgotten. Time was when drawing masters believed that a course in mechanical perspective should be followed before attempting to draw objects freehand. There is something in this old idea. If a student could draw a cube, for example, in mechanical perspective-carrying all lines out to their proper vanishing points-they believed (and very properly) that his freehand drawing of the same cube would be more likely to be correct. The better plan is to carry on freehand and mechanical perspective together; for each helps the other, especially if the student is taught to apply in his freehand work the principles illustrated by his course in mechanical drawing....