Handicraft for boys

A picture made by the hand and eye and without the aid of a rule and compass is called free-hand drawing.

To be able to do free-hand drawing is one of the nicest accomplishments you can have for then you can sketch the things you see and want to remember; and, further, sketches made with a pencil or pen and ink are, to my way of thinking, just as interesting as photographs provided they are well done.

Talent versus Practice.

—Some fellows have a natural bent for sketching and are what you might call born artists, while others seem to be entirely minus this talent and the only way they can ever learn to sketch is by following certain rules and then practicing.

Now the chances are you have a little talent but whether you have or not if you will follow the simple instructions I have written down in this chapter you will be surprised to find what really clever pictures you can draw.

Pictures for You to Draw.

—There are two kinds of free-hand sketches for you to do and these are (1) of life models and (2) of still life, that is, fruit, flowers, furniture and inanimate objects of all kinds.

I shall tell you first how to make simple drawings of living figures including man and beast and by beginning where your savage ancestor left off you will be able to at least represent anything your fancy dictates.

Simple Line Sketches.

—As you will see by looking at A and B in Fig. 42, the sketches of the man and horse consist of merely straight lines but you will also observe that A looks like a boxer because the action is there.

This is because when I sketched it I was careful to note the exact position of the boxer’s head, arms, legs and body as they appeared at that given moment. The keynote in sketching a figure in action is always to draw it, not as you wish or believe it to look but as it actually is.

The line sketches A and B only look as like a man landing a right, and a horse coming down the home stretch as they do because (a) all the lines are properly proportioned, that is, of the right length when compared with each other, and (b) they are set in the correct positions. The way to become a good judge of proportion is always to notice the relative sizes of the things you draw.

Sketching Simple Outline Figures.

—When you can sketch straight line figures to show men and animals in action you can then draw outlines around them and so make them much more realistic as shown at A and B in Fig. 43.

To do this draw a straight line sketch first and then draw the outline around it, when you can rub out the straight lines if you want to. In these outline sketches you will see that only the lines that are actually needed to give the picture the contour, that is, the shape of the figure, or body, are used.

The Proportions of the Human Figure.

—If you will remember when you are drawing a picture of the human form that the whole figure from neck to toe should be 7 times as long as the head; that the body proper, or torso as it is called, is 4 times as long as the head; that the arms are as long as the body, and that the legs should be 4 times the length of the head measured to the inside of the crotch, as you will see if you will look at A in Fig. 44, you will have it in proportion.

How to Draw Faces.

—You can easily draw fairly natural looking faces if you will rule off a number of squares on a sheet of paper as shown at B and C in Fig. 44.

The full view of the head of a human being is shaped like an egg standing on its small end, and the profile (pronounced pro´-feel) view, that is the side view of the head, is more nearly square; if in the latter case the square is divided into two triangles, the face will be found to nearly fill one of them and the hair the other.

Both of these figures show the right sizes to make the eyes, ears, nose and mouth, that the eyes are on a line with the helix, or upper border of the ears and that the top of the nose is on a line with the lobe, or lower edge of the ear. It is mighty good practice to sketch the faces of your friends in this fashion.

Sketching Still Life Objects.

—It is always more or less hard to sketch inanimate objects with anything like a true portrayal of them from memory but it is quite easy to do so if you have the object itself set up before you to pattern after and then draw it as you see it.

If you can do a creditable drawing in this manner with your eye and hand alone it is art, but if you use a rule or a pair of dividers to measure off the proportions and then mark them on your paper, it degenerates into a purely mechanical process; but you can take your choice and do it whichever way you want to.

Drawing in Perspective.

—The first thing to know about drawing in perspective is what perspective means. To do a drawing of an object or a view on a sheet of paper as it appears to the eye you must draw it in perspective.

As an illustration, when you look down a railroad track you will see that the rails look very far apart at your feet, but in the distance they seem to come to a point and then vanish; this is quite natural for nearby objects always look larger than when they are at a distance.

So too, when you look at the top of a box the edge a will seem longer than the edge b, which is farther away from the eye, and the lines c and d which form the other edges would meet if they were projected as shown by the dotted lines at A in Fig. 45, and the same thing is true for the front and the side of the box.

The Vanishing Point.

—So when you draw a box or any other object in perspective the lines will meet if you draw them out far enough and then vanish, and hence this is called the vanishing point.

To find the vanishing point of the surface of an object, such as the top of a box, hold a pencil out in front of yourself at arm’s length and shut one eye, as shown at B; then tilt the pencil until it follows the side line that you are going to draw; now open your eye and you will see that the line of the box that seemed at first to be straight is really slanting.

Draw a line on your paper at this slant, or angle as it is called, and do the same with the other line and draw it, when the two lines will meet and this is the vanishing point. You can draw in now the front and back lines of the top.

Houses and all other objects should be drawn with vanishing points if they are to conform to the first principles of art, but for certain kinds of mechanical drawing art is sacrificed for the sake of showing the sizes of the object and an abnormal picture results which is called an isometric perspective.

But houses and all other large objects should be drawn with vanishing points or they will not look real. A barn drawn in this way is shown at C, and you will see that the roof looks perfectly natural since the lines forming it run to vanishing points.

How to Shade a Drawing.

—When you do a drawing from an object you will see that the light falling on certain parts of it seems white, or high lights, as they are called, and on other parts where it does not fall it is dark.

To shade your drawing so that it will show the lights and shadows exactly as the object does, you should study the latter, and put the shading, as it is called, on the former just as nearly like it as you can. But in shading a drawing there must be no sharp lines to show where the light leaves off and the shadow begins, but you must make them merge gradually one into the other, as shown at A in Fig. 45.

Working Drawings

And now we come to drawings of another kind and these are not intended to please the eye but to work from, hence they are called working drawings.

When most boys, and many men, want to make anything of wood or metal they get busy with their tools forthwith and whack it out willy-nilly and of course a punk job results.

Now the right way to make an article—unless you are going to crochet a sweater—is to (1) see it in your mind’s eye, (2) then draw it out on paper to scale, and (3) build it up from the plan as the picture is called. By working this way you will be able to figure out just how much material you will need for it; see exactly how the various parts fit together, and know that it will look just right when it is done.

Drawing Tools You Should Have.

—Drawing instruments, or drawing tools as they are commonly called, consist for the most part of (1) one or more pairs of dividers; (2) one or more pairs of compasses with pen and pencil points, and (3) one or more ruling pens. One of each of the above tools will be enough for you to begin with. A cheap set is shown in Fig. 46.

Then you will need (4) a rule, or scale as it is called; (5) a protractor; (6) a T square 20 inches long; (7) a 30 degree triangle 5 inches long; (8) some drawing paper[36] not less than 10 × 12 inches; (9) a couple of medium hard (HHH) lead pencils,[37] (10) a good rubber eraser;[38] (11) a bottle of Higgins’ India ink,[39] (12) a few thumb tacks, and (13) a drawing board about 12 × 17 inches. And now let’s see what these tools and other things are for and how they are used.

A pair of dividers is a tool having hinged legs, the free ends of which are pointed; they are used to take, mark off and subdivide distances.

The compasses are made like the dividers, but one end has a needle point and the other is hollow so that either a pencil or a drawing pen point can be slipped into it; this tool is used to draw curves and circles, either with a pencil or in ink.

A ruling pen is formed of two bowed steel blades having a screw adjustment so that they can be forced together or drawn apart and so make lines of varying widths. Not only is a ruling pen different from a writing pen but the ink that is used with it is thicker than an ordinary writing ink. This pen is used to make straight lines by running it along the edge of a rule or T square.

A protractor is a semi-circle of brass or of German silver and it is divided into 180 degrees—since it is half of a circle and there are 360 degrees in a circle. You can buy one for a quarter.

By placing the edge of your rule in the center of the straight edge of the protractor and laying it on any one of the lines—they are numbered from 0 to 180—you will find the number of degrees the edge of the rule is from the horizontal.

The T square is laid with the head, that is the short thick piece, against the left hand edge of the drawing board which brings the blade, that is the long thin piece flat on and across the board. The triangle is placed against the straight edge. The triangle is laid on the board with one of its edges against the blade of the T square as shown in Fig. 47.

Simple Working Drawings.

—There are two kinds of working drawings that will be of use to you and these are, (1) plan drawings, and (2) isometric (pronounced i-so-met´-ric) drawings and you will find both of these quite easy to do.

Making Plan Drawings.

—Suppose now you want to draw the plans of a box which, let’s imagine, is to be 5 inches high, 6 inches wide and 8 inches long. The first thing to do is to draw out a view of the bottom, which also serves as the top since they are alike, and you will have a rectangle like that shown at A in Fig. 48, and mark the dimensions on it, that is, the width and the length of the box. This you do by running a couple of arrows in each direction and marking in the size.

Next draw one of the sides as shown at B and this will give you the height and the length of the box and mark in the sizes, that is 5 and 8 inches accordingly. Finally draw the end and you will have the height and width of the box as shown at C and again you mark in the dimensions.

It is easy to see now that if you have all three dimensions, namely length, breadth and thickness, and that if you make a box in wood or metal it will look like the picture shown at D which is in isometric perspective.

Isometric Perspective Drawings.

—The kind of perspective drawings I told you how to do under the caption of Drawing in Perspective is true perspective but engineers do drawings which they call isometric perspective, that is, while the object seems to stand out in relief there are no vanishing points.

This kind of perspective is purely mechanical and not in the least artistic but it is a great aid when you intend to make anything, for you can still draw the lines to scale and see exactly how the finished object will look.

To make a drawing of this kind draw a line on a sheet of paper near the bottom and two 30 degree lines from the ends and a vertical line through them where they meet as shown at A in Fig. 49.

Now there are four ways by which you can get the 30 degree lines on paper and these are (1) to buy isometric ruled paper, that is paper on which the lines are already ruled; you can buy this paper for 15 cents a quire of any dealer in drawing materials or of Keuffel and Esser, 127 Fulton Street, New York City. This is the easiest and best way.

(2) Take a sheet of white paper exactly 5¹⁄₈ inches wide and 10 inches long and draw two diagonal lines from corner to corner so that they will cross each other, then draw a vertical line through the middle and a horizontal line near the bottom. The diagonal and horizontal lines will be 30 degrees apart.

(3) By laying a 30 degree triangle on your T square and drawing a line along the 30 degree side of it as shown in Fig. 47; and (4) by laying off 30 degree lines with a protractor.

To do this tack a sheet of paper on your drawing board and draw a horizontal line near the bottom of the paper with your T square; put your protractor on the horizontal line near one end, lay the edge of the rule on the center of the protractor and exactly on the 30 degree scale mark and then draw a line.

Slide the protractor on the opposite side of the board, draw another 30 degree diagonal line so that it will cross the first one and draw a vertical line down through the middle of the paper.

Having, now, your sheet of isometric ruled paper you are ready to do the drawing. Whatever the picture is to be, all you need to do is to follow the 30 degree lines and the vertical lines and you simply can’t help getting it in perspective.

In drawing isometric perspective circles, such as wheels, disks and the like, they are always shown as ellipses, that is, closed oblong curves. To draw an isometric ellipse,[40] make it in the proportion of ⁵⁄₈ to 1, that is, if it is ⁵⁄₈ inch wide, as we will call its minor axis, then make it 1 inch long, as we will call its major axis, as shown at C in Fig. 49, and you will have one that is near enough the right shape for your purpose; thus if you want to show a tube or a pipe, draw it as pictured at C. Now with these few principles well in mind you can make a working drawing of nearly anything you please.

Some Simple Aids to Drawing

How to Draw a Circle.

—Should you ever want to draw a circle and have no compasses at hand or should you want to draw a larger circle than you can with your compasses tie a bit of strong thread to a pin, make a loop in the string at whatever length you want the radius—that is half of the diameter of the circle—to be.

This done, drive the pin in at the point where you want the center of the circle, put the point of a lead pencil in the loop and move it around the pin, as shown at A in Fig. 50, keeping the thread taut and a perfect circle, nearly, will result.

How to Draw a Spiral.

—Make a loop in one end of a thread as before and tie the other end tightly to a large pin; wind the thread around the pin until all of it is on except the loop; push the pin through the paper on which you want to draw the spiral and into the drawing board as shown at B.

Next put the point of the pencil in the loop and move it around the pin just as you did in making the circle and you will find that you have drawn a very pretty geometrical spiral which is known as the spiral of Archimedes. It is so called because Archimedes was the first to explain that it was caused by a point moving with uniform angular speed and receding from the center at a constant rate.

How to Draw an Ellipse.

—An ellipse can be drawn in the same way as a circle, that is, by means of a string; but instead of one pin you will need two and each pin is driven in at the foci of the ellipse you are to draw as shown at C. Simply make a loop of the string, slip it over the pins, put the pencil point in the loop and move it around the pins when an ellipse will be formed.

How to Make and Use a Pantagraph.

—A pantagraph is a simple mechanical linkage for enlarging, copying or reducing the size of a picture. It is shown in Fig. 51.

To make one of these instruments get four strips of wood about ¹⁄₈ inch thick, ¹⁄₂ an inch wide, and 18 or 20 inches long. Now drill ¹⁄₁₆ inch holes ¹⁄₄ inch apart in each stick the whole length of it. In the ends of three of the sticks make a hole the size of a lead pencil.

Make two tin tubes each ¹⁄₂ an inch long and fit them into the holes in the ends of the sticks and push a bit of pencil through each tube; screw a block of wood ¹⁄₂ an inch thick to your drawing board and screw one end of another stick to the block and the sticks together with screw eyes.

Now tack a sheet of paper under the pencil in the free end of the stick and a picture under the pencil in the jointed ends of the sticks, then trace the picture with the latter, and the other pencil will make an enlargement of the picture. By changing the position of the sticks a picture can be copied or reduced in the same way. A pantagraph can be bought for as little as 25 cents or for as much as $125.00.[41]

How to Make a Reflecting Drawing Board.

—This is a very simple and easily made optical apparatus for copying pictures and making drawings of flat objects. Get a smooth board, or your drawing board will do; make a wood frame and fit an 8 × 10 sheet of clear glass in it and screw the frame to the middle of the board as shown in Fig. 52.

Now all you have to do is to lay a picture or a flat object, such as a leaf or a butterfly, on one side of the glass and a sheet of paper on the other side and look into the glass at a sharp slant, or acute angle would be the better term, and you will see the picture projected plainly on the paper so that you can easily draw it in with a pencil.

How to Make Tracings.

—A very easy and effective way to copy any picture already drawn, or even a photograph, in line, is to use tracing paper.

This kind of paper, which you can buy of any dealer in drawing materials, is quite transparent and very tough. To make a tracing lay the drawing you want to copy on your drawing board, then lay the tracing paper on top of it, rough side up, and push a thumb tack into each corner to hold them together.

Now trace the outline of the picture with a pencil and then draw in the lines with India ink. If the paper does not take the ink readily rub the surface of it with a little powdered chalk on a soft rag. You can make as many duplicate copies as you want by using a printing frame and blue paper according to the directions given in the next chapter.

To Make Lasting Impressions.

—Here is an easy way to make lasting impressions of your own and your friends’ finger prints and hands.

Take a sheet of heavy glazed white paper, say 5 × 7 inches, and hold it over a kerosene lamp with the chimney removed and the top of the burner thrown back so that the flame will smoke like a locomotive. Keep moving the paper about to make the soot, which is simply particles of nearly pure carbon, cover the surface of the paper as evenly as possible.

Lay the smoked paper on a table and then press the palm of your hand flat down on it; you must be careful not to press your fingers down too hard or the sharpness of the fine lines will be destroyed. To get a clear impression of the lines in the hollow of your hand press down on the back of it with the fingers of your other hand.

After you have made the print, as the impression is called, pour on some flint varnish, which is the kind that photographers use to cover the films of glass negatives. You can buy it at any photo supply house.

Pour a teaspoonful on one corner of the paper and let it flow down and across until the whole surface is evenly covered. As this is a genuine carbon process the prints cannot fade and they will last as long as the paper lasts. A print of this kind made by the author 18 years ago is shown in Fig. 53.

The Ancient and Honored Art of Cutting Silhouettes.

—Since you are of the younger generation let me tell you just what a silhouette is, and why.

It is a profile, or side view, of the head of a person cut out of black paper and mounted on a white card, or else cut out of white paper with a piece of black silk back of it so that it looks like a shadow in miniature of the sitter.

It was so called after M. de Silhouette, a French Minister of Finance in 1759; his rigid economy in the conduct of his office caused his name to be tacked on to everything cheap and as photography had not yet been discovered and painted portraits were costly, the paper outlines filled in with black were the cheapest substitute known and hence the name.

But as the years rolled by silhouettes became a dignified and honored art and so when our great grandfather and grandmother wanted to have their pictures made—not taken—they went to a shears and paste artist who cut out their silhouettes.

While the art of cutting silhouettes is all but a lost one because photography is so easy and shows all the details, still you can make them with some black glazed paper and a pair of sharp shears with a little practice.

Take a sheet of black glazed paper[42] about 2 inches wide and 3 inches long and seat your sitter with the side of his or her face turned toward you. Now with a pair of sharp shears begin to cut the paper, starting at the chin and going on up the face to the hair, then around to the back of the head and finally cutting out the collar and bust.

All the time you are cutting you must keep your artistic eye on the profile of your sitter and your mechanical eye on your shears and paper and you will be truly surprised to find how little knack it takes to get a reasonably faithful likeness. A pair of silhouettes are shown in Fig. 54.

Transfer Pictures, or Decalcomania.

—Of course you know what transfer pictures are. There are very few boys indeed who have not bought and used little 5 cent packages of jim-crow transfer pictures and you will remember that usually only about half of the picture transferred came off. But this was because they were made for fun and not for real work.

Now transfer pictures, or decalcomania (pronounced de-cal´-co-ma´-ni-a) or decalcomanie as the French call it, from the Latin de which means down, plus calquer, which is Latin for trace, plus mania which is Greek for madness, are used by hundreds of thousands by painters and decorators in every line of work. These pictures are made with skill and care and when used properly will not break or come off.

These transfer pictures can be bought in 10,000 different subjects and cost from 1¹⁄₂ cents to a couple of dollars each. The pictures include every subject imaginable from simple little flowers to birds with wonderful plumage and from cupids in groups to world’s fair buildings; then there are letters and monograms and beautiful crests and coats-of-arms in gold and brilliant colors.

When you get ready to do decalcomanie write to Palm, Fechteler and Company, 67 Fifth Avenue, New York, or to their western branch at 54 West Lake Street, Chicago, Ills., for a price-list and this will give you a description, the height and length of each picture, the number of pictures on a sheet and the price per sheet.

How to Transfer the Pictures.

—The regular pictures can be transferred to wood, metal, painted surfaces, etc., but instead of soaking them in water alone as you used to with the toy pictures you give the face of them a very thin coat of a good, quick drying, rubbing varnish which you can get at a paint store, or better, use a transfer varnish which you can buy of the above company for 35 cents for a ¹⁄₂ pint can.

After you have applied the varnish to the face of the picture let it dry until it is very tacky; now put the face of the transfer down on the surface, wet it with water on a sponge and roll it down hard with a felt roller.

In a couple of minutes wet the paper again thoroughly with water and peel it off; roll it down at once with a wet felt roller and tap it off with a piece of chamois skin. After the design or picture has dried for 20 minutes or so, the varnish around it can be removed by dampening it with dilute turpentine, ammonia or, better, with a detergent made of equal parts of turpentine and crude oil and immediately rubbing it away lightly and quickly with a dry, soft rag.

After the picture has been transferred as above, it should be given one or more protecting coats of varnish the next day.