Excerpt from Teacher's Guide: Companion to Bartholomew's Drawing-Book No. 2; For Teachers and Students Using Bartholomew's Drawing-Books

Drawing is a language. In teaching the child to speak, the first thing is to discipline the ear to hear, the mind to recognize, and the tongue to utter, certain sounds and their combinations. In teaching drawing, a course analogous to this should be pursued. The eye should first be disciplined to see, the mind to recognize, and the hand to draw, lines of any given length, in any required position, and bearing any given relation to each other. This is the first step: and, until this is accomplished, it is unwise to take the next one it can only result in failure.

My object in preparing this book, which is intended to be used in connection with the drawing-book, has been to present, to those who may be called upon to take charge of a class, a system of teaching based on the idea that drawing is a. Study, and that it can be taught. I.have thought that the book would be more generally useful if I assumed that those who may use it have never given their attention to the study. I have, therefore, even in the drawing of sim ple lines, been careful to state the exact thing to be done. To explain fully just how it is to be done, and to give a reason for the course pursued.

Many suppose, that, in order to be successful as a teacher of drawing, one must be skilful in the use of the pencil.

This is an error. Good teaching does not depend upon this qualification. The important thing is, that the teacher should know exactly what is to be done in any given case, and be able to state just how it should be done, with all the why's and wherefore's connected with it. If the teacher is well qualified in this particular, he can teach well, whether he can draw well, or not. To gain this knowledge, there is no better way than to take the drawing-book used by the pupils, and, guided by the instruction given in the Manual, draw the examples in advance of the pupils from day to day. By adopting this course, the inexperienced teacher will not only become better acquainted with the examples to be drawn than he can be if he were to spend the same amount of. Time in any other way, but he will improve him self in the art. The difficulties which he will meet with in producing a correct drawing will enable him to direct others much better than he possibly could had he not, in his own experience, met the very difficulties which they must eu counter. No one, whatever his qualifications, should at tempt to conduct an exercise without making some prepara tion for the work. This is just as important for those who can draw well as it is for those who never handled a pencil. It is not possible for one, who has not made the example to be drawn a study, to teach his pupils as they ought to be taught.

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