The text advises artists, especially young ones, to carefully finish features like heads, hands, and feet in their drawings, emphasizing the importance of attention to detail. It warns against settling for superficial sketches, which often allure with a false brilliance but lack depth. The author suggests a profound understanding and observation of natural beauty to avoid mediocrity and ignorance in artistic endeavors.
DRAWING.
Copy and finish with all the care and cleanliness they are capable of. The same should be done with regard to the feet and hands, making them feel the necessity of this process, and how important it is to finish, as much as possible, these extremities of the human body, so that the care of rendering them well remains with them for the rest of their life.
Young people who draw (says an anonymous Author (a), should focus on carefully finishing the heads, feet, and hands, and in general not neglecting even those things which seem to them the least interesting. It happens only too often that those who seem to have the most disposition, and who could have become the foremost in their Art, nevertheless remain mediocre because they did not apply themselves enough in their youth to finish their drawings. Flattered by a kind of spirit and a certain fire noticeable in their works, they devote themselves to a manner of sketching that is rough and superficial, and seizing with vividness the first idea that the imagination presents to them, they no longer seek to delve into the solid beauties of nature. Hence, one should look at their works as superficially as they were made; otherwise, reflection comes to lift the mask that initially struck us, and we perceive nothing but profound ignorance instead of the false brilliance by which we were dazzled before.
Therefore, one cannot, adds this Author, recommend enough to those who perceive this lightness of hand (which, although good in itself, could nevertheless be
(a) Nouvelle méthode pour apprendre à dessiner sans Maître. In quarto Paris, 1740.
Translation Notes: "croquée & superficielle" translates to "rough and superficial," indicating a lack of depth in art. "Esprit & feu" roughly means "spirit and fire," referring to raw talent.