Paper by Thomas Robert Ablett at the International Conference on Education, held in London, in 1884.
"The great majority of children delight in pictures, and seek, some time or other, a means of pictorial expression which will satisfy their wants. Why do we give them practice in outline only? Nature does not display her charms by means of outlines so much as the masses of light and shade, tone and colour. Can we not find means for enabling the young to easily reproduce those beauties which attract them, instead of insisting on the exclusive practice of drawing form in outline for which they do not care? If it be true that nothing is of the least use to young children but what interests them, should we not leave the development of technical skill to arise naturally from a delight in the practice of painting?" (p. 227)
"In spontaneous attempts in outline drawing, the very young use the method of making a line employed in writing. Each separate idea or perception of form is represented by one effort of the hand. In drawing a man, for instance, a circle is swept in for the head, an ellipse for the body, and a straight line for each arm and leg. The finished artist sketches on a similar plan, for each stroke is the record of one observation.
May we not discard the use of a broken or painted line, // seeing that the drawing, which we term writing, is executed with the continuous line natural to the child and the finished artist?" (pp. 227,228)
"Very young children have keen perceptions. Their difficulty in representing form is chiefly that of finding a medium which will obey the hand with readiness and ease in its attempts to give expression to the perceptions of it, in themselves tolerably correct.
If we supplied the readiest means of recording these perceptions, children would display much greater skill than is now thought possible. Perhaps the finger swept over loose sand, supplies the easiest method of delineating very simple shapes, and the brush follows the movements of the hand more readily than any other of the artists' tools. Should we err in allowing early efforts in writing and drawing to be made first on sand and then with the brush?
It appears that in Japan a boy begins to learn to write at six years of age, using for the purpose a brush as large as the little finger.In the Government elementary schools, about three thousand different characters are taught. The Japanese artist learns to draw as he learned to write. This connection between writing and drawing is supposed to have greatly conduced to the artistic power of the people, and to have brought about their surpassing skill in handling the brush.
If a system of teaching elementary drawing can be established which will keep up and develop zealous practice in pictorial expression, for which so many young people show a strong inclination, it will be worthy of support on that account alone, for it will have succeeded where our present system failed." (p. 228)
"Little pleasure is to be found in copying the dazzling combination formed by tracing only the outlines of brush markings compared with the joy of using the brush in marshalling in pleasing array the forms it readily lends itself to depict. The use of the brush stirs the intellect and calls out the inventive faculty at the onset of a student's career. Freehand!" (p. 229)