closed eye does not, in itself, suggest sleepiness, and this eye does not suggest it any more than does No. 7. Glare is implied by a half-closed eye (see pi. 37), and nothing will so much enhance a scene which is supposed to represent the South of France or the snow-fields as the half-shut eyes of the figures you have placed there. No. 5 also shows an effective exception to the rule that it is wrong to differentiate between the tone of the face and the tone of the eyeball. In a very formalised rendering of a sunburned face it may occasionally be a good plan to leave the eyes white. But having done so, it is wrong to put the pupil and iris in, as this leaves a little white triangle on either side which never fails to suggest a nigger. If your figures are very sunburned, make them blonde. In making them dark you suggest, at best, that they are Spanish or Italian, and the piquancy that results from the bronzing of a Nordic is lost.
No. 6 is a child's eye. It would be as fatal in a fashion drawing as in real life for a child to lose its innocence, and this must be sedulously preserved, as it is here, by the slope of the eye upward towards the nose and by the absence of lower lashes. To make a child sly and puckish you have only to make its eye slant up, as they do in No. 9 (though this is not a child). A child's eyebrow should not be too thin, and should be free from any suggestion of a double curve, as in Nos. 1 and 8.
No. 7 is the eye of an English sportswoman, set between a jutting nose and a high cheekbone. It is half closed, either in amusement at a friend who has been thrown from her horse or in an endeavour to detect a lost golf-ball or a concealed fox. This kind of eye goes with a large thin mouth, wind-blown hair and sports clothes, and, in fact, with anything that is not French. The antithesis of No. 3, it is admirable for plain good clothes, useless for anything frilly or fantastic. It is also, by the way, a good treatment for a man's eye, though the brow would have to be much thicker.
As a matter of fact very recently this style (and the mouth that goes with it) (pi. 9, No. 7) has attracted the army of sedulous imitators, who are glad to give up the impossible task of aping Erickson, and are now producing, both in U.S.A. and England (France knows better), these versions of the work of X, whom it is wiser not to mention by name, who originated this type. X is not represented in this book.
If No. 2 has the realism of the finished photograph, Nos. 8, 11 and 12 have some of the qualities of the snapshot. No store would employ an artist who produced an eye like No. 8, any more than they would employ Velasquez if he were to offer himself ; but many weeklies and dailies like this vivid kind of work. It is admirably suited to a rather rough sketch suggesting, as well as a new hat, the kind of woman for whom it is intended. The extreme droop of the brow and the downward elongation of the lower lid imply extreme concentration and suggest, moreover, that this is an individual and not merely a type. You must, however,
be quite certain of the quality of your model before reproducing her features so starkly. So vivid a representation of many an eye would be fatal. It has become increasingly the fashion, and I think wisely, to show, as here and in Nos. 7, 9 and 11, the relation between the eye and the nose.
No. 9 indicates, so far as the eye alone may do, a kind of piquancy, playfulness, wit, slyness or whatever qualities form the exact antithesis of the heartiness of No. 7. The whole slant suggests this, and the contrast between the pale natural tint of the iris and the artificial blackness of the lashes. The upper lid fairly glistens with vaseline, while the whole thing represents the maximum of make-up that can be achieved without bad form.
No. 10 is the side view of No. 1, but the brow is different, the look of concentration giving place to one of calmness, as a result of the simplification of its curve. Eyes in profile are sometimes shown, as here, without any indication of the pupil or iris, or even the limit of the eyeball. This may seem unreasonable, but to put the iris in just as it appears, looking forward in the side view of an eye, always makes it look angry and menacing ; while to show rather more of the iris is to suggest looking out of the corner of the eye. It is apt to look thick and clumsy if you put in all the eyelashes in profile. One is often enough ; and see that the upper lash extends beyond the lower.
No. 11, though drawn from a different model, is in the same style as No. 8. The raised brow, the heavy lid, the narrow opening, give an impression of sleepiness and, still more, of extreme detachment, both these qualities always depending to some extent on a heavy lid. Here are no lashes. The suggestion of maturity, as of a woman of quite forty, comes from the bony quality of the brow on which the thin eyebrow, full of character, grows, the deep setting of the eye and the shadow under the lower lid.
No. 12 is the naturalistic eye in profile. The eye is looking down, in a head that is slightly raised. Always set an eye well back in a head, if it is in profile. This is as essential (and the same thing) as making the eyes in a front view wide apart. Eyes close together denote deceit ; and, indeed, the eye in No. 12 might have been set even farther back. The stroke parallel to the eyebrow, but below it, indicates the indentation between the bone over the eye and the eyeball. In some degree this indentation occurs on everyone at whatever age, but in a fashion drawing it had better be left out on anyone who is supposed to be under twenty-five, simply because it is such an infallible way of denoting someone over thirty-five.
In fashion drawing, where emotions flit but lightly across the face, the mouth is the most expressive feature and can completely negative, by smiling, the most malignant pair of eyes.
A mouth is hardly capable of so much transformation by the pencil of the artist as it is by the lipstick of its owner. Only a full stage make-up or a facial surgeon
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