ness of utterance, so to speak, and to remind you that it is light
you are dealing with, and upon which you must depend for all effects;
also that the power of vision is limited. Acting upon them is quite
another matter, and one, I am afraid, in which no one can help you
much. You may be counseled as to the best and most practical mode of
expressing your ideas, but those thoughts and inventions must come from
yourself if they are to be worth having.

In my next lecture I shall have something to say with regard to
originality of design, but now we must take up our tools again and begin
work upon another exercise.

CHAPTER XI

CONTOURS OF SURFACE

Adaptation of Old Designs to Modern Purposes--"Throwing
About"--Critical Inspection of Work from a Distance as it Proceeds.

[Illustration: FIG. 22.]

Here are two fragments of a kind of running ornament. Fig. 22 is a part
of the jamb molding of a church in Vicenza. If you observe carefully,
you will find that it has a decidedly classical appearance. The truth is
that it was carved by a Gothic artist late in the fourteenth century,
just after the Renaissance influence began to make itself felt. It is an
adaptation by him of what he remembered having seen in his travels of
the new style, grafted upon the traditional treatment ready to his hand.
It suits our purpose all the better on that account, for the reason that
we are going to re-adapt his design into an exercise, and shall attempt
to make it suitable to our limited ability in handling the tools, to the
change in material from stone to wood, and lastly, to our different
aims and motives in the treatment of architectural ornament. Please do
all this for yourself in another design, and look upon this suggestion
merely in the light of helping a lame dog over a stile.

[Illustration: FIG. 23.]

In this exercise (Fig. 23) you will repeat all you have already done
with the others, until you come to the shaping of the leaves, in which
an undulating or up and down motion has been attempted. This involves a
kind of double drawing in the curves, one for the flat and one for the
projections; so that they may appear to glide evenly from one point to
the other, sweeping up and down, right and left, without losing their
true contours. Carvers call this process "throwing about," i.e., making
the leaves, etc., appear to rise from the background and again fall
toward it in all directions. The phrase is a very mea