The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — CompleteLeonardo, da Vinci
Science
The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete
Leonardo, da Vinci
Leonardo, da Vinci, 1452-1519 -- Notebooks, sketchbooks, etc.
The density of a body of smoke looks white below the horizon while
above the horizon it is dark, even if the smoke is in itself of a
uniform colour, this uniformity will vary according to the variety
in the ground on which it is seen.
IV.
OF PORTRAIT AND FIGURE PAINTING.
Of sketching figures and portraits (571-572).
571.
OF THE WAY TO LEARN TO COMPOSE FIGURES [IN GROUPS] IN HISTORICAL
PICTURES.
When you have well learnt perspective and have by heart the parts
and forms of objects, you must go about, and constantly, as you go,
observe, note and consider the circumstances and behaviour of men in
talking, quarrelling or laughing or fighting together: the action of
the men themselves and the actions of the bystanders, who separate
them or who look on. And take a note of them with slight strokes
thus, in a little book which you should always carry with you. And
it should be of tinted paper, that it may not be rubbed out, but
change the old [when full] for a new one; since these things should
not be rubbed out but preserved with great care; for the forms, and
positions of objects are so infinite that the memory is incapable of
retaining them, wherefore keep these [sketches] as your guides and
masters.
[Footnote: Among Leonardo's numerous note books of pocket size not
one has coloured paper, so no sketches answering to this description
can be pointed out. The fact that most of the notes are written in
ink, militates against the supposition that they were made in the
open air.]
572.
OF A METHOD OF KEEPING IN MIND THE FORM OF A FACE.
If you want to acquire facility for bearing in mind the expression
of a face, first make yourself familiar with a variety of [forms of]
several heads, eyes, noses, mouths, chins and cheeks and necks and
shoulders: And to put a case: Noses are of 10 types: straight,
bulbous, hollow, prominent above or below the middle, aquiline,
regular, flat, round or pointed. These hold good as to profile. In
full face they are of 11 types; these are equal thick in the middle,
thin in the middle, with the tip thick and the root narrow, or
narrow at the tip and wide at the root; with the nostrils wide or
narrow, high or low, and the openings wide or hidden by the point;
and you will find an equal variety in the other details; which
things you must draw from nature and fix them in your mind. Or else,
when you have to draw a face by heart, carry with you a little book
in which you have noted such features; and when you have cast a
glance at the face of the person you wish to draw, you can look, in
private, which nose or mouth is most like, or there make a little
mark to recognise it again at home. Of grotesque faces I need say
nothing, because they are kept in mind without difficulty.
The position of the head.
573.
HOW YOU SHOULD SET TO WORK TO DRAW A HEAD OF WHICH ALL THE PARTS
SHALL AGREE WITH THE POSITION GIVEN TO IT.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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