54 
RERAMIC STUDIO 
REETINGS to you who live with 
flowers and wild things — you who 
long for the "advantages" of the 
city — you who feel shut away 
from the world — rather, indeed, 
extend to us your sympathy, we, 
who have no gardens — we who 
send miles for a buttercup and then 
keep it on ice till we may steal 
time in which to draw it and pet 
it and paint it. So few realize the value of making careful 
drawings from the flowers and trees growing with them — 
the wild flowers and grasses — wild fruits and berries and 
nuts. Aside from the material value of these drawings, 
how many know the keen joy to be had in the mere doing 
of them. 
greens or browns for leaves and stems, keeping the 
flower as simple in its treatment as may be satisfying 
to one, personally. In making these first drawings one 
must be true to one's self. No one has the right to insist 
that another "follow a light which he does not see." As 
the mind and eye become trained and the hand acquires 
an easier grace of technique, the sketches will become 
simpler and freeer and more artistic; but never sacrifice 
the truth to an artistic effect in any of these first studies. 
The pencil outlines and shadings are particularly 
valuable keeping one, as it does, within bounds. It is a 
temptation to become flighty with color, and one should 
not trifle with the flower that will never be in one's life 
again. Accept it as a help-mate and treat it fairly. 
These color wash and pencil drawings on the tinted 
papers, make for the most interesting and valuable ma- 
""--■* 
MOTIF TAKEN FROM BUTTERCUP 
Do not try to make a pretty picture, do not think 
of a picture at all — but take a nice clean page and on it 
register a truth about some bud or leaf, some fruit or 
flower that appeals to you. If the eye and hand are not 
yet quite trained to express gracefully what the mind 
really sees, what matters it? If you have made an honest 
drawing the grace and charm of expression will 
follow. 
One is helped greatly by working with pencil and 
"color wash" on tinted papers — these papers may be 
had in tints of gray, gray green, gray yellow and soft browns 
and blues. 
First make a careful pencil outline drawing, with 
shading in leaf and stem, and where wished, suggest the 
shadow in the flower with pencil as well. This will make 
a foundation for the color wash. Use flat washes of soft 
terial in my possession. No attempt at composition has 
been made (that comes when the flowers are gone and 
one's winter garden not so rich.) The hollyhocks and 
poppy reproduced in this number are done as described 
and the cowslip and clover and buttercup (the one that 
was "iced") are from drawings made in the same way. 
And from the buttercup grew the bowl. It isn't 
always that one finds a composition so near at hand, but 
it will be seen that very little change has been made from 
the original growth, in the spacing as applied to the bowl. 
It had to become simpler — more abstract, in order to be 
harmonious with the whole and to enhance the beauty of 
the bowl. Its mission was to enrich it ; it could no longer 
remain an independent little buttercup. It was needed 
to make another thing more beautiful 
Sara Wood Safford 
