X.—AMUSING TRICKS WITH VARIOUS ARTICLES.
“The mind of man, like a bow, if always bent would in the end lose its elasticity, and become useless; by giving it occasional freedom you preserve its tone, and it will serve your purpose.”—Æsop.
TO TAKE A PORTRAIT IN THREE MINUTES.
Draw on coloured paper with another coloured crayon the likeness of a confederate, and dust the lines with a powder of the same hue as the paper.
Fig. 52.
In your pencil-case have a hard brush, and when you appear to draw, remove the coloured powder.
This trick is used in connection with disappearing feats, where you undertake to make the drawing of a card, a flower, or any vanished article, which you are not supposed to have seen.
A REMBRANDT ETCHING IN FIVE MINUTES.
Smoke a glazed card over a tallow candle till the surface is completely blackened. With a needle scratch out a landscape with a moonlight effect, or a figure in shadow, except on one side, where a strong light falls, after the fashion of the photographs by Solomon, Kliemeck, &c. The weird aspect will be quite like a Doré or Van Schendel.
THE ONE-EARED HARES.
Draw three hares, so that each shall appear to have two ears, while they really have only three ears between them.
Fig. 53.
Fig. 54.
THE SHADE OF NAPOLEON VISITING HIS TOMB.
A full-length Portrait of Napoleon I. may be traced in the above Engraving
DOING A GOOSE IN THE TURN OF A HAND.
(Story and Drawing Lesson.)
There was once upon a time a farmer who built a house with one window and two doors. A path led to a pool adorned with sedge. But up to the pool, by two crooked paths, came a gang of robbers, who caught a goose.
Fig. 55.
VAPOURGRAPHIC PICTURES.
Write on glass with a quill full of hydrofluoric acid. After two minutes’ action of the mordant, wash in clean water, and polish with silk or soft dry cloth. The bitten away lines are invisible, but will appear on the plate being exposed to the breath or steam from a kettle.
CHANGEABLE PICTURES.
Paint any subject on thin paper slightly with light colours, so arranged that by painting the paper stronger on the other side, it may be disguised. Then cover the last side with a piece of white paper to conceal the second subject, and frame the whole. It may even be put between two pieces of clear glass.
On holding up this picture to the light, a different scene is presented to what is usually beheld.
MAGIC DRAWING.
Take a box about 18 inches long by six deep, and remove the lid and one side. In the centre set a square of glass at right angles to the bottom, and parallel with the plane of the ends.
Place a picture which you wish to copy on the left of this upright glass, and a sheet of paper on the right.
On holding the head on the left of the glass, and looking into it downwards, the reflection or spectre of the picture will be seen on the paper, where the lines may be traced.
TRANSPARENCIES.
Put a chafing-dish or gas-stove under a wooden frame on which you strain, that is, stretch, a piece of strong linen or silk, while you do it over with a solution of wax in oil of turpentine. It will then be equally diffused.
Paint with oil colours mixed with spirits of turpentine.
MOVABLE TRANSPARENCIES.
Mount the transparency on a light circular frame, on an axis easily turned. Close the upper end of the hollow cylinder with a disc of tin, cut into inclined planes like the ventilator let into window panes (fanlight).
A lamp placed inside the cylinder will illuminate the transparency at the same time that it makes it turn round by the current of heated air striking the tin plate.
Vary the subject of the pictures as you please. Mr. Panky’s represent hideous serpents twisting round a column, and other delicious spectacles.
Fig. 56.
To make the above magical figure without taking the hand off, begin at A, thence to B, to C, to D, to E, and so on.
TO WRITE ON WOOD.
Rub the wood with powdered resin, and ink will not spread or run when you write upon it.
THE PIG’S-EYE GAME.
Shut the eyes and draw the figure of an animal without taking the hand off. Still not seeing it, remove the hand and try to put the eye in its proper place.
The ludicrous outline made, and the absurd position of the eye in most attempts, are remarkable.
EVERLASTING WRITING ON GLASS.
After covering a sheet of glass with visible colour or colours, write or scratch the inscription so as to remove the pigment in those places where the pen touches. Put the glass in the furnace for the colours to set with running so as to obliterate the marks, and after the proper cooling, the writing will be unalterably fixed. Designs of transparency for a tinted ground can be thus made.
MOSS PICTURES.
Take a board with a smooth face, and stripe it lengthwise with three bands of colour sky-blue and grass green, with a pale blue or pale yellow between, which will be the sky, the middle distance and horizon, and foreground of a picture. With coloured moss, varying in tint from yellow to deep brown, form trees, bushes, hedges, foliage, &c., by glueing the sprigs. The effect is often charming.
THE PUNCTUATION PUZZLE.
Whoever writes this on the wall has ten fingers on each hand; five and twenty on hands and feet; guess who this may be.
OIL PICTURES.
If you drop oil or fat on water it spreads and breaks into variegated patterns as beautiful as snow-flake figures.
Have a vessel of pure cold water, still as possible. Let one drop of oil fall on the surface from about four inches height.
Lay a piece of glazed surface paper on the oil pattern, take it instantly off, place it on the surface of a plate of ink for a moment, remove and wash off the excess of ink, and you will have a black picture closely resembling a photograph. For red use cochineal or the aniline reds.
Pure sperm oil takes a minute to form a pattern; green rape oil is slower; Lucca oil three minutes; green olive one minute, &c. Oils can be mixed and tried.
The formation can be shown by the magic lantern, from which is removed its nozzle pipe for a shorter one, so as to form the oleographs properly, and yet leave room enough for a small pipe to be thrust between the nozzle and the trough containing the water on which swims the oil.
The lantern is turned back so that the chimney is horizontal; the hole is then perpendicular; on it is set a trough made of two plates of glass joined together, the upper, which has a hole in it, to be filled with water. On the nozzle is placed a prism, which reflects the picture on the screen.