darker, and against a light background your subject has an appearance with dark edges that is easily expressed by a line drawing.  Strong light and shade effects should be left for mass drawing.  You seldom see any shadows in Holbein’s drawings; he seems to have put his sitters near a wide window, close against which he worked.  Select also a background as near the tone of the highest light on the object to be drawn as possible.  This will show up clearly the contour.  In the case of a portrait drawing, a newspaper hung behind the head answers very well and is always easily obtained.  The tone of it can be varied by the distance at which it is placed from the head, and by the angle at which it is turned away from or towards the light.

Don’t burden a line drawing with heavy half tones and shadows; keep them light.  The beauty that is the particular province of line drawing is the beauty of contours, and this is marred by heavy light and shade.  Great draughtsmen use only just enough to express the form, but never to attempt the expression of tone.  Think of the half tones as part of the lights and not as part of the shadows.

There are many different methods of drawing in line, and a student of any originality will find one that suits his temperament.  But I will try and illustrate one that is at any rate logical, and that may serve as a fair type of line drawing generally.

The appearance of an object is first considered as a series of contours, some forming the boundaries of the form against the background, and others the boundaries of the subordinate forms within these bounding lines.  The light and shade and differences of local colour (like the lips, eyebrows, and eyes in a head) are considered together as tones of varying degrees of lightness and darkness, and suggested by means of lines drawn parallel across the drawing from left to right, and from below upwards, or vice versa, darker and closer together when depth is wanted, and fainter and further apart where delicacy is demanded, and varying in thickness when gradation is needed.  This rule of parallel shading is broken only when strongly marked forms, such as the swing lines of hair, a prominent bone or straining muscles, &c., demand it.  This parallel shading gives a great beauty of surface and fleshiness to a drawing.  The lines following, as it were, the direction of the light across the object rather than the form, give a unity that has a great charm.  It is more suited to drawings where extreme delicacy of form is desired, and is usually used in silver point work, a medium capable of the utmost refinement.

[Illustration:  Plate XX.

STUDY FOR THE FIGURE OF LOVE IN THE PICTURE “LOVE LEAVING PSYCHE”
ILLUSTRATING A METHOD OF DRAWING

The lines of shading following a convenient parallel direction unless prominent forms demand otherwise.]

In this method the lines of shading not being much varied in direction or curved at all, a minimum amount of that “form stimulus” is conveyed.  The curving of the lines in shading adds considerably to the force of the relief, and suggests much stronger modelling.  In the case of foreshortened effects, where the forms are seen at their fullest, arching one over the other, some curvature in the lines of shading is of considerable advantage in adding to the foreshortened look.