Plate from Merrifield's handbook: a strip of five tones labeled Light, Half Light, Middle Tint, Half Dark and Dark, beside a lit cube, a cylinder and a small house shape with their cast shadows.

History · Foundations

The Drawing Manual

In the 1800s, drawing manuals taught light and shade with plain white models: cubes, cylinders, spheres and plaster casts.

White models show light and shade without color getting in the way. Mary Merrifield's handbook, published by the London colormen George Rowney & Co., was in its twelfth edition by about 1880; Anson Cross published his in Boston in 1897.

  • Cross's book prints photographs of one white group under six kinds of light. This course uses them and Merrifield's plates.
  • Both books build up from a single object under a single light.

Image: Internet Archive · Public domain (published before 1931)

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