Light and Shade: A Classic Approach to Three-Dimensional Drawing

By Mrs. Mary P. Merrifield

“Form,” writes the author, “is developed by means of light and shade; without these every object would appear flat.” Originally published in the mid-nineteenth century, this classic approach to three-dimensional drawing was the first book to provide art students with instructions for correctly illustrating perspective outlines of various objects.
An art historian noted for her authoritative reference works, Merrifield clearly demonstrates the principles of light and shade by revealing the effects of common daylight, sunshine, and candle or artificial light on geometrical solids. Her simple explanations are accompanied by illustrations of cubes, prisms, pyramids, cylinders, spheres, ovals, and cones.
As useful and practical today as it was when first published well over a century ago, Light and Shade provides beginning and advanced art students with valuable insights into effective drawing and sketching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: Apr 17, 2012
• ISBN: 9780486139883

Book preview

LIGHT AND SHADE

A CLASSIC APPROACH TO THREE-DIMENSIONAL DRAWING

Mrs. Mary P. Merrifield

DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

Mineola, New York

Bibliographical Note

This Dover edition, first published in 2005, is an unabridged republication of the sixteenth edition of the work originally published c. 1908 by George Rowney and Company, Artists’ Colourmen and Pencil Makers, London, under the title Handbook of Light and Shade, with Especial Reference to Model Drawing. (Since the fifth edition of the work was published c. 1854, the first was published some time earlier.) The running heads reflect the book’s original title.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Merrifield, Mary P. (Mary Philadelphia), 1804 or 5-1889.

[Handbook of light and shade]

Light and shade : a classic approach to three-dimensional drawing / Mrs. Mary P. Merrifield.

p. cm.

Unabridged republication of the sixteenth edition of the work originally published c. 1908 by George Rowney and Company, London, under the title: Handbook of light and shade.

eISBN 13: 978-0-486-13988-3

1. Shades and shadows in art—Technique. 2. Drawing—Technique. I. Title.

NC755.M4 2005

741.2—dc22

2004065744

Manufactured in the United States of America

Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

CONTENTS.

The Preface

Introductory Remarks

Lesson 1. General Principles

Lesson 2. Of the Light under which objects are viewed, and of their Shadows

Lesson 3. The Cube

Lesson 4. The Cube

Lesson 5. The Cube

Lesson 6. The Cube

Lesson 7. The Cube

Lesson 8. Aerial Perspective

Lesson 9. The Prism and Inclined Planes

Lesson 10. The Pyramid

Lesson 11. The Cylinder

Lesson 12. The Sphere

Lesson 13. The Oval, or Egg Shape

Lesson 14. The Cone

Lesson 15. The Perspective of Shadows

Conclusion

PREFACE.

STIMULATED by the impulse given to art education by the establishment of the Department of Practical Art, and of Schools for Elementary and Model Drawing in connection with it, thousands of persons are now learning to draw systematically, where one formerly learnt. But there are thousands who, though desirous of learning, are unable to avail themselves either of private tuition or of the facilities offered by the State of attending the Government Schools. These persons have recourse to books for the art-education they would otherwise fail in obtaining. Manuals of linear-drawing, technical works on landscape and figure-painting, in oil and in water-colours, attest, by the numerous editions through which they have passed, the demand which exists for this description of literary labour, and the number of persons who are eager to take advantage of the facilities thus offered of cultivating the imitative arts.

Among the numerous works of the class referred to, it is believed that, though many give instructions for drawing correct perspective outlines of different objects, there is no work extant which expressly treats of the Light and Shade incidental to these objects, and the method of giving them proper relief by this means.

The present little work is intended, in some measure, to supply this want,