Part 5

Dividing a Space into Large and Small Spaces.

Plaids are most attractive when seen in color. Before the color is added, however, definite spaces must be divided by lines into other spaces, making an interesting variety. In drawing from flowers, you found that a spray showing large and small shapes made a more interesting sketch than one in which leaves and flowers were of uniform shapes and sizes.

Sketches 1 and 2 show how vertical and horizontal lines may divide a square into a variety of spaces. Either arrangement is more beautiful than sketch 3, where the spaces are more nearly alike. Look at the still-life group in sketch 4, where the three objects are so nearly of the same size. Do you think this group as pleasing as the group shown in sketch 5? Our designs, as well as our pictures, must show variety and good arrangement of shapes and spaces, in order to be interesting.

Too much variety in a picture or design is as bad as not enough variety. Look at the number of lines and spaces in sketch 6. The design is crowded and "fussy," like an overtrimmed bonnet, or a room in which there is too much furniture. The still-life group in sketch 7 shows the same effect of too much variety.

Draw four squares, each four inches on a side. Divide each into large and small spaces of pleasing variety by using vertical and horizontal lines, four inches in length.

Large and Small Spaces in Two Values.

One way of adding to the interest and beauty of large and small spaces is to show them in values. Compare Sketches 1 and 2 on this page with Sketches 1 and 2 on page 81. You will find the plaids which are shown in values more interesting than those which are made with lines only. The two values in each sketch on this page are chosen from the neutral value scale on page 80. In Sketch 1, High Light (HL) and Black (B) are used, and in Sketch 2, we find Middle (M) and Black (B). You see how different in effect the two plaids are. The same difference can be shown in landscape, flowers, or in any other picture or design, by changing the values. Sketches 3 and 4 show simple groups of still life, first drawn in outline from the objects, and then painted in values chosen from the value scale. Sketch 3 is painted in the same values as the plaid in Sketch 1, and Sketches 2 and 4 are alike in values.

Choose two of your best plaid designs, done in the lesson on page 81, and paint the spaces in one, HL and B; in the other M and B.

Pictures in Different Keys.

In your study of music you have learned to sing in different keys. Some songs are pitched in high keys, and others in low. Or, the same song may be sung in several different keys. The tune or melody remains the same, but there is a difference in the sound.

Pictures are sometimes spoken of as being painted in keys. If the darker values of the scale are used, the picture is said to be in low key. If the picture is full of light color, it is said to be in a high key.

Sketches 1 and 2 show you how different the same design appears, when painted in different keys. Sketch 3 is a landscape in the same values used in Sketch 1. Sketch 4 shows the same scene in a lower key. The soft, silvery light of early morning has given place to the deeper tones of dusk.

Draw two four-inch squares and divide them alike into large and small spaces. Using two values, paint one in a high key, and the other in a low key. Make a little scale under each sketch, naming the values you have used.

Scotch Plaids.

Long, long years ago, before the days of kings and queens, people lived together in great families or tribes. In Scotland these tribes were called clans, and the sign or badge of a clan was shown in the tartan plaid. This was a heavy piece of woolen cloth worn over the shoulders, as a protection from the weather. A sort of skirt, called a kilt, was made from the same plaid, and this costume was worn by both men and women of the clans in the Highlands of Scotland. The tartans were woven in bright colors, forming designs like those at the top of this page. They were often very beautiful in their arrangement of spaces and colors. Each different design received a name from the clan that wore it. Those at the top of this page are the Gordon and the Logan or MacLennan tartans.

Copy in colors some good plaid design, that you can find in ginghams, in silk, or in woolen cloth.

A Stained Glass Window.

Some stained glass windows are as beautiful to look at as fine paintings. Their rich colors glow with light, and they show an interesting variety and arrangement of shapes. They are usually made of colored glass, held together by lead grooves. These are represented in the design on this page by the heavy black lines.

You can make with water-colors an effect very much like stained glass. With pencil, draw an oblong ten inches long and about seven inches wide. Within this, draw another oblong, for the central piece of glass. The size of this inner oblong you must determine for yourself. Remember that its size fixes the width of the border. In the border space, draw some simple straight line design. Paint the smaller oblong, by wetting its surface evenly, and dropping in red, yellow, and blue. Let the colors blend as they will, and use the brush to carry color to the edges of the oblong. When this is dry, paint the shapes in the border in flat washes of any two colors. Last of all, paint strong, black lead lines.

The Stained Glass Window in Values.

The greater part of the illustrations which appear in books and magazines is done in neutral grays. All sorts of color effects are represented by grays in these different pictures, and this is done by people who understand just what neutral value is needed to represent a certain color, its tints, or its shades. You have often represented flowers, landscapes, figures, and still life in gray washes, or with pencil or charcoal. In Chart D you see that certain colors like yellow, yellow-orange, orange, yellow-green and green are represented in their full intensity by grays chosen from the upper end of the neutral value scale, and that the darker colors like red, red-violet, blue, blue-violet, and violet are represented in their full intensity by the grays below middle gray.

Compare the colors you used in making your stained glass window design with Chart D on page 77. Draw the same plan that you used for your colored design. Cover the smaller oblong with a water wash and drop in charcoal-gray, in values to suit the light and dark colors in your stained glass window design. Fill the small oblongs in the border with flat washes of gray. Try to determine just what grays would represent the colors you used. Your lead lines should be of even thickness throughout. Draw them when the rest of the work is thoroughly dry.

Several Ways of Decorating a Square Space.

On pages 69, 70, and 71 you learned how to draw and divide certain shapes. You saw that by slightly changing the direction of construction lines, decorative designs could be made. Construction lines are lines used in drawing and dividing a shape. They may or may not be retained, after the design is finished. In Sketch A on this page the four sides of the square and the horizontal diameter may be taken as construction lines. By following these lines with a narrow pathway and slightly changing the direction of parts of them, designs can be made in great variety.

In Sketch B diameters are drawn and in the center is a small square on its diagonals. Little pathways lead from the sides of the square to the center, resulting in a four-sided decoration. In Sketch C diagonals are drawn and pathways sent along them to the center. Sketches D, E, and F are like A, B, and C, except that curved lines have been used instead of straight lines.

Draw six four-inch squares. Copy the construction lines and their modifications as shown in the six sketches on this page. Finish each design and strengthen the lines which will bring out the decoration.

Decorating an Oblong Shape.

The oblong is a favorite shape for book-covers, envelopes, card-cases, portfolios, and other articles that can be made in the school-room. Hundreds of objects about you in school and at home are also based, in their proportions, on the oblong. Think of the books, boxes, rugs, doors, and windows, that you constantly see. They are nearly always shaped like an oblong. You will be interested to know some of the ways in which decorations for these objects are planned. In a rug or a book-cover, for instance, we often wish a design similar to that shown in Sketch A. In planning for this, a smaller oblong was drawn within the larger one. The lines of the smaller one were used as construction lines, and these were modified in the same way as were the construction lines of the square on page 87.

In Sketch D, the diameters of the oblong were drawn and the semi-diameters bisected. Then these points were connected. In both Sketch A and Sketch D, all construction lines not used in the design were erased.

Draw two oblongs not less than eight inches high, and wide enough to make a panel of pleasing proportions. Plan and draw designs similar to, but not exactly like, those shown in Sketches A and D.

How to Use Shapes from Nature in Design.

If all our designs were like those which can be made by following the construction lines of certain definite shapes, we would very likely grow tired of seeing so much decoration of that kind. We may get many ideas of beautiful lines and shapes from a plant or a flower, and we may use these ideas in making designs, as the drawings on this page and the next will show.

Look at the sketch of the marsh-marigold, and then at the small drawings at the right. A is a petal, B is a stamen, C is a side view of the flower, showing three petals and a stem, D is a leaf, and E a bud and stem. In these sketches the lines are even, the shapes are regular, and all "accidents of growth" are omitted. Sometimes the shapes were drawn larger than their true size, and sometimes the parts were separated, as in C and E. We need not copy just what we see, but we may modify shapes or change their size and arrangement to suit the spaces which they are to fill.

Study a wild flower in this way. See how many design ideas you can get from one plant.

Shapes from Nature in Borders and Other Decorations.

Nature has suggested some of the most beautiful decorations we have. In the baptismal font on page 65, the carved decoration was evidently from the growth of a vine. The vine is not represented exactly as it grew. A decoration that showed the actual appearance of the plant would not have been adapted to the space.

In the three oblongs on this page, the marsh-marigold shapes have been used in three ways. In Sketch A, the petals of the flower were used in a border design, and the size of the unit, or shape repeated, was carefully planned. If the petal shapes had been drawn larger, the border would have been too heavy for the size of the oblong.

In Sketch B, two leaves and an arrangement of petal shapes suggesting the flower were used, and in Sketch C, the side view of the flower and a part of the stem form a unit which is used to "spot" the oblong. These spots are not crowded, but are placed with careful thought as to the best appearance of the oblong. No matter how beautiful a unit, a border, or a central group may be in itself, we must think of its effect upon the object to be decorated.

Draw three oblongs four times the size of those on this page. Decorate these with a border, a central group, and by spotting. Use the design ideas you found in the lesson on page 89.

A Simple Design for a Portfolio.

Good proportion and the right arrangement of light and dark values will often make an object beautiful, without the addition of ornament. In the chapter on still life, the objects you studied were not decorated, but they were well designed in their beauty of proportions, their color, and their contrast in values.

Many familiar objects such as envelopes, boxes, and book-covers, depend for beauty on these simple elements. The sketch of the portfolio on this page is beautiful because it has a fine proportion of parts, and because the gray values of these parts are harmonious. If the dark band of the back had been wider or narrower, if the space for the name had been placed differently, or if the size of the corner-pieces had been changed, the harmony of parts would have been disturbed, and the portfolio would not have been beautiful. Or, if the dark gray trimming had been black, there would have been too great a difference between the values used, and that again would disturb the harmonious effect of the whole. You can tell how large to make the parts, where to put them, and what arrangement of values to use, only by trying several ways, and then selecting the most beautiful.

This portfolio may be made by pasting tinted paper or book linen over cardboards. The boards should be covered first with the material chosen for the outside. Then the corners and back should be added, and a lining of paper pasted across both boards on the inside. The space for a name on the outside should be carefully planned. Within this space should be drawn very carefully, the letters of any name you may wish to place on the portfolio.

Color Schemes from Nature.

In the world about you, every object that you see has color. From the bright colors you can so easily see in flowers, leaves, grasses, and the sunset sky, to the grayed colors of tree trunks, clouds, the ground, and buildings, there is the greatest variety and range. Even in the moonlight, objects though greatly changed in effect, still have color. If it were not for this, we could not see them. It is only in the darkest night, when we can see but a few feet ahead of us, that objects seem to lose their color.

In our houses, too, everything has color--not the bright hues that we find in flowers and landscapes, but softer, grayed color. We would not like carpets and wall-paper of the bright color we find in poppies, for instance. The colors we use in our furnishings should not be glaring and intense, but quiet and restful. To find these color relations, and to train the eye to know and enjoy fine color harmonies, we study what artists have done, in paintings and other works of art. In nature, too, we find color suggestions in endless variety. In autumn the world is flooded with rich color. Even the common weed that is shown you on this page shows a combination of colors that would be safe to use in any work of our own. See how the colors in the plant have been arranged in a little scale. Such an arrangement is called a color scheme.

Make a sketch in color from some plant or seedhead. Under the sketch, arrange in little oblongs the colors you found in the plant.

Using one of Nature's Color Schemes.

Nature's color schemes become most interesting to us when we use them in some work of our own. The brush-broom holder on this page shows in its coloring the scheme found in the plant growth on page 92.

In making a holder of this kind, choose materials that will be strong, and that will look well together. Pasteboards should be cut in good proportions, of a size and shape to fit a particular broom. These should be covered on both sides in the same way that you covered the sides of your portfolio on page 91. The material for this covering may be stout paper, linen, plain gingham, or leather, colored to suit one of the colors in the scheme you have chosen. A simple design may be placed on the holder in another color chosen from your scheme. Then holes for lacing are to be punched in the sides. The cord for lacing should harmonize in quality and color with the rest of your design. The color of the broom itself may be brought into harmony with the holder by painting it with water-color, or by dipping it in a mixture of water-color that matches one of the colors in your scheme. A few Indian beads of bright color strung on the lacing strings will add greatly to the effect.

A Raffia Basket.

Many of the baskets made by the American Indians are so beautiful that they deserve to be classed as works of art. We wonder that a race of people so savage in their tastes and so wandering in their habits could have produced articles of so much beauty from the materials they found in the wilderness of nature. Many of these materials it is impossible for us to find or to use, but we can make with raffia and rattan, baskets that are something like those made by the Indians.

The sketch on this page is from a "soft coil" basket, made entirely of raffia. The amount of raffia used depends entirely on the size of the basket. Before beginning the basket, make a sketch showing its height, the width of the top and bottom, the shape of its sides, and a simple decoration in color. The bottom of the basket is to be made first, beginning the coil at the center. The coil should measure about a quarter of an inch in diameter, and is to be made of a number of strands of raffia, placed with the large ends together, forming a blunt point. Wind the strands tightly together with a strand of raffia, one end of which is threaded through a large needle. Work back from the end until you have a firm coil about half an inch in length. Start the spiral with this end, doubling it back, and sewing it firmly in place. Wind the raffia strands with the strand carrying the needle, sewing the coil thus made to the center. After the first time around, the stitches should be made about a quarter of an inch apart, and should be fastened through the upper part of the last coil. Strands of raffia must be added to the coil, to keep it of uniform size.

When a new needleful is taken, the end of the winding and sewing strand must be hidden in the coil. The stitch is the same throughout the basket. The bottom is kept perfectly flat, and the sides shaped to suit the design. Any decoration in color, such as is shown in the sketch, is wound in with colored raffia. When finishing the basket, the coil is to be cut, and the end tapered, wound, and sewed firmly down to the coil below.

A Woven Cushion-Cover.

Raffia is an artistic material which lends itself to many uses. The covers for the porch-pillow shown in the sketch on this page are woven with raffia, on a strong loom. The size of the loom determines the size of the woven cover. The cushion from which this sketch was made measured eighteen inches square without the fringe, and about two and a half pounds of raffia were used in the covers, the fringe, and the filling of the cushion. Sketch C shows the wooden needle used in carrying the strands of raffia over and under the warp.

Raffia is used both for the warp and the woof of the weaving. In "stringing" the loom, fourteen to sixteen pieces of raffia should be used as one strand or thread of the warp, and these strands should be tied firmly to the ends of the loom. As many of these strands must be used as can be tied on the loom without crowding. They may touch, but not overlap. In weaving, the large needle is threaded with raffia to make a strand equal in size to the strands of the warp, and this strand is woven under and over the strands of the warp, making the familiar "basket weave." The ends of the strands used in this way form the fringe, which is trimmed to the desired length when the weaving is done.

Stripes, plaids, or simple figures may be woven in with colored raffia. The two sides of the cushion may show different designs.

Color Schemes from Man's Handiwork.

Leaves, plants, flowers, insects, butterflies, shells, feathers, clouds, and countless other objects in nature can furnish us with many delightful color schemes. We can also learn much from the artistic work of people. In Indian pottery and weaving we often see fine combinations of color. The Indians understood how to make beautiful dyes from roots, berries, and other vegetable growths, and the colors obtained in this way have a peculiar quality and beauty, not found in many of the dyes in common use today. The picture on this page is from a fine specimen of Sikyatki pottery. Sikyatki was an Indian village in New Mexico, and was the home of a tribe of Pueblo Indians.

When the Indians wished to send a written message they made use of picture-writing; that is, they made pictures so simple that they are called signs or symbols. Their symbol of a tree, for instance, would look much like the tree pictures made by very little children; three short vertical marks sometimes meant three warriors; a zigzag line stood sometimes for the lightning, sometimes for a serpent; and a wavy line extending in a horizontal direction was the symbol of a brook, a river, or the great ocean.

From a good Indian bowl or basket make an exact copy, and place underneath it the scale of colors found in the object.

Using Color Schemes in Pottery.

In planning a bowl or vase like the one shown you on this page, a sketch of the front view should be made showing the diameter of the top and bottom of the bowl, its height, its shape, the color scheme, and the decoration. Such a drawing might be called a design for a bowl.

After drawing such a design, the next step is to make the bowl of clay. For the bowl represented here, a lump of clay was rolled and patted into a low, roughly shaped cylinder. The thumbs were then thrust into the middle of the cylinder, and they, together with the fingers, pushed the clay outward to form the bottom and part of the sides of the bowl. The sides were finished by adding flat pieces of clay, their edges being carefully worked until the pieces added seemed a part of the form. The sides and bottom of the bowl were kept of uniform thickness. Then the bowl was allowed to stand about a day, or until it became what is called "leather hard." The border was then painted on with potter's colors, the lower part of the bowl was colored, and the inside glazed. The bowl was again allowed to dry, this time very thoroughly. It was then fired in a potter's kiln.

Make a flower holder of clay. Use the color scheme you found in your Indian bowl or basket. If possible, fire the bowl in a kiln.