Drawing is the art of representing upon a flat surface the forms of objects, and their positions and relations to each other. The idea of nearness or distance is given by the aid of perspective, foreshortening, and gradation. The term drawing, in its strict sense, is only applicable to the representing of the forms of objects in outline, with the shading necessary to develop roundness or modelling. In art, however, the term has a wider significance. Highly-finished painting's in water-colour are called drawings, as are also sketches or studies in oils.
Drawing, in its restricted sense, may be divided into these kinds: (1) pen drawing; (2) chalk drawing, which may include lead-pencil drawing; (3) crayon drawing; (4) drawing shaded with the brush or hair-pencil; (5) architectural or mechanical drawing (technical drawing).
Pen drawings are often confined to pure outlines; an appearance of relief or projection being given by thickening or doubling the lines on the shadow side. Finished pen drawings have all the shading produced by combinations of lines. Chalk drawings (including lead-pencil drawings) are most suited for beginners, as errors can be easily corrected. Black, red, and white chalks are used. When the chalk is powdered and rubbed in with a stump, large masses and broad effects can be produced with much rapidity. A combination of hatching and stumping is generally preferable to adhering exclusively to either mode. Crayon drawings are those in which the true colours of the objects represented are more or less completely wrought out with different coloured crayons. Drawings shaded with the brush are outlined with the pencil or pen, the shading being laid on or washed in with the brush in tints of Indian ink, sepia, or colour. Architectural and mechanical drawings are those in which the proportions of a building, machine, etc, are accurately set out for the guidance of the constructor: objects are in general delineated by geometric or orthographic projection.
The great schools of painting differ from one another as much in their drawing as in their painting. In Italy the Roman school, through Raphael's fine sense for the beautiful and expressive in form, and through his study of the antique, became the true teacher of beautiful drawing. The Florentine school tried to surpass the Roman precisely in this particular, but it lost by exaggeration what it had gained by learning and a close study of anatomy. In the Lombard school a tender style of drawing is seen through harmonious colouring, and, in the Venetian school the drawing is often veiled in the richness of the colour. The Dutch school excels in a careful and minute style of naturalistic drawing, combined with great excellence in colouring. The French school in the time of Poussin was very accurate in its drawing; at a later period its style betrayed a great amount of mannerism. David introduced again a purer taste in drawing and a close study of the antique, and these are qualities which distinguish his school (the so-called classical school) from the romantic and eclectic schools of a later period. The drawing of the British school is naturalistic rather than academic. During the 19th century it improved greatly in accuracy and expressiveness. Research Drawing
Hepburn vs Griswold was one of the 'legal-tender cases' in the US Supreme Court, decided 1864. In 1860 Mrs. Hepburn promised to pay Griswold on February 20th, 1862, $11,250, legal tender at that time (1860) being gold and silver only. In 1862, during the American Civil War, the United States issued $150,000,000 of its own notes to be received as lawful money in payment of public and private debts within the United States. Mrs. Hepburn's note being overdue, suit was brought by Griswold in the Court of Chancery of Kentucky in 1864. Mrs. Hepburn tendered United States notes in payment, which were refused, though the court declared the debt absolved. The Court of Appeals reversed this judgment, and, it being brought to the US Supreme Court, that body confirmed the judgment of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky, on the ground that the Act of 1862 was not intended to impair contracts made prior to its passage. This decision was reversed in Knox vs Lee and Julliard vs Greenman. Research Hepburn Vs. Griswold
The banana is a perennialherb cultivated in tropical and sub tropical climates. Bananas are fast-growing, arising from underground rhizomes. The fleshy stalks or pseudostems formed by upright concentric layers of leaf sheaths constitute the functional trunks. The true stem begins as an underground corm which grows upwards, pushing its way out through the centre of the stalk 10 to 15 months after planting, eventually producing the terminal inflorescence which will later bear the fruit. Each stalk produces one huge flowercluster and then dies. New stalks then grow from the rhizome. The large rectangular or elliptic leaf blades are extensions of the sheaths of the pseudostem and are joined to them by fleshy, deeply grooved, short petioles. The leaves unfurl, as the plant grows, at the rate of one per week in warm weather, and extend upward and outward , becoming as much as 2.5 metres long and 0.75 metres wide. They may be entirely green, green with maroon patches, or green on the upper side and red-purple beneath. The leaf veins run from the mid-rib straight to the outer edge of the leaf. Even when the wind shreds the leaf, the veins are still able to function. Approximately 44 leaves will appear before the inflorescence. The banana inflorescence shooting out from the heart in the tip of the stem, is at first a large, long-oval, tapering, purple-clad bud. As it opens, the slim, nectar-rich, tubular, toothed, white flowers appear. They are clustered in whorled double rows along the floral stalk, each cluster covered by a thick, waxy, hood like bract, purple outside and deep red within.
The flowers occupying the first five to fifteen rows are female. As the rachis of the inflorescence continues to elongate, sterile flowers with abortive male and female parts appear, followed by normal staminate ones with abortive ovaries. The two latter flower types eventually drop in most edible bananas. The ovaries contained in the first (female) flowers grow rapidly, developing parthenocarpically into clusters of fruits, called hands. The number of hands varies with the species and variety.
The fruit (technically a berry) turns from deep green to yellow or red, and may range from ten centimetres to thirty centimetres in length and two centimetres to five centimetres in diameter. The flesh, ivory-white to yellow or salmon-yellow, may be firm, astringent, even gummy with latex when unripe, turning tender and slippery, or soft and mellow or rather dry and mealy or starchy when ripe. The flavour may be mild and sweet or slightly acid with a distinct appletone. The common cultivated types are generally seedless with just vestiges of ovules visible as brown specks. Occasionally, cross-pollination with wild types will result in a number of seeds in a normally seedless variety. Research Banana
Beet (Beta) is a genus of plants of the family Chenopodiaceae distinguished by its fruit being inclosed in a tough woody or spongy five-lobed enlarged calyx. Two species only are known in general cultivation, namely, the sea-beet Beta maritima) and the garden beet (Beta vulgaris). The former is a tough-rooted perennial, common on many parts of the British coast and sometimes formerly cultivated for its leaves, which are an excellent substitute for spinach.
Of the garden beet, which differs from the last in being of only biennial duration and in forming a tender fleshy root, two principal forms are known to cultivators, the chard beet and the common beet. In the chard beet the roots are small, white, and rather tough, and the leaves are furnished with a broad, fleshy midrib (chard), employed as a vegetable by the French, who dress the ribs like sea-kale under the name of poiree. Some writers regard this as a peculiar species, and call it Beta cicia or hortensis.
The common beet includes all the fleshy-rooted varieties, such as red beet (with a fleshy large carrot-shaped root), yellow beet, sugar-beet, mangel-wurzel, etc. For garden purposes the best is the red beet of Castelnaudary, so called from a town in the south-west of France. The beet requires a rich light soil, and being a native of the Mediterranean region is impatient of severe cold, requiring to be taken up in the beginning of winter and packed in dry sand, or in pits like potatoes, the succulent leaves having been first removed.
Red beet is principally used at table, but if eaten in great quantity is said to be injurious. The beet may be taken out of the ground for use about the end of August, but it does not attain its full size and perfection until the month of October. A good beer was formerly brewed from the beet, which yielded a spirit of good quality.
From the white beet the French, during the wars with Napoleon I, succeeded in preparing sugar, that article, as British colonial produce, having been prohibited in France. Since that time, with the increase of chemical and technical knowledge, the making of beet-sugar has become an important industry in France, Germany, Austria, Russia, Belgium, and Holland and in England, though the early failure of attempts to produce beet-sugar on a large scale seem to have been mainly due to artificial conditions of trade competition. Research Beet
Capsicum is a genus of tender annual South American plants of the family Solanaceae. They have straight, woody stems and single, star-shaped, white flowers in the axils of the leaves, a wheel-shaped corolla, and a many-seeded berry. The flowers are followed by juiceless berries or pods, which vary in shape and size. They are green at first and change to red, yellow or purple. They contain many flat, kidney-shaped, white seeds, which are very hot tasting. Kinds that are commonly grown are varieties of Capsicum frutescens, which are the Peppers grown in the vegetable garden and include those from which red pepper, cayennepepper, Tabasco and paprika are made.
In tropical countries it is a perennial and will form a shrub as high as two meters, but when it is grown in gardens it is treated as an annual and is raised from seeds every year. Capsicum frutescens grossum, the Sweet or Bell Pepper, is a popular vegetable. When the fruit is ripe it is red or yellow, but it's used as a vegetable in the green stage. Research Capsicum
The Deleb' palm (Borassus Aethiopum) is a palm tree a native of the interior and west of Africa, allied to the Palmyra palm. Its leaves and fruits are used by the Africans for the same purposes as those of the Palmyra by the Asiatics, and the tender roots produced by the young plant are extensively used as an article of food. Research Deleb' Palm
The dugong or fork-tailed sea cow (Halicore dugong) is a herbivorous marine mammal of the order Sirenia closely related to the manatee, found in the Indian Ocean from east Africa to west Australia, discovered by Muller in 1776. It never come on land, and subsists on seaweed and sea grasses. The dugong possesses a tapering body ending in a crescent-shaped fin, and is said sometimes to attain a length of 20 feet, though generally it is about 7 or 8 feet in length. The skin is thick and smooth, with a few scattered bristles; the colour bluish above and white beneath and may be recognised from the manatee by the front of the snout strongly curved downwards, the upper lip less deeply cleft and a two-lobed tail fin. The dugong was traditionally hunted by the Malays for its flesh, which resembles young beef, and is tender and palatable. A variety was discovered in the Red Sea by Ruppell, and called Halicore tabernaculi. Research Dugong
A gall (also known as a gall-nut or nut-gall) is a growth caused on plants of various kinds by parasitic mites (Phytoptidae). The galls of commerce are produced by a species of Cynips (Gall-fly) in the tender shoots of the Quercus infectoria, a species of oak abundant in Asia Minor, Syria, Iraq, etc. They are spherical and tubercular, and vary in magnitude from the size of a pea to that of a hazel-nut. White, green, and blue varieties are recognized, the latter kinds being the best. They are inodorous, but are strongly astringent from the tannin and gallic acid which they contain, and which are their chief products. Gall-nuts were extensively used in dyeing and in the manufacture of ink, and they were also frequently used in medicine. They were chiefly imported from Aleppo, Tripoli, and Smyrna. The Chinese galls, or woo-pei-tsze, differ from the foregoing in that they are really an unusually massive kind of crust or cocoon, such as the aphides form on the surface of a plant; the tissues of the plant are not affected. After the opening of the Japanese ports these were imported in considerable quantities to Britain. Research Gall
The common iguana (Iguana iguana) grows to about two metres long, is green in colour and has dark bands forming rings on its tail. Primarily a herbivore, the Iguana will eat invertebrates, small birds and mammals in addition to its main diet of leaves, buds flowers and fruit.
The head is large, the mouth wide. Along the whole length of the back to the tip of the tail there is a crest of elevated, compressed, pointed acales; the lower part of the head and neck is furnished with a dew-lap or throat-pouch. The toes are furnished with sharp claws, which enable the Iguana to climb trees with ease, while a rapid serpentine movement of its tail propels it swiftly through the water.
Iguanas communicate using non-verbal movements and postures - body language to convey crude concepts such as agression, courtship and submission, and also with an intricate system of head bobbing movements which appears to be much more than a crude display of aggression, submission or courtship, but a sophisticated system of communication.
The flesh of the iguana is considered a delicacy, being tender and delicately-flavoured, resembling that of a chicken. The eggs, of which the female lays from four to six dozen, are also eaten, having an excellent flavour. They are about the size of those of a pigeon, are laid in the sand, and hatched by the heat of the sun. Research Iguana
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Drawing
