The artist's vade mecum : being the whole art of drawing taught in a new work, elegantly engraved on one hundred folio copper plates : containing great variety of examples in every branch of that noble art, as parts of the face, heads, hands, feet, academy, antiques, and groups of figures, beasts, birds, insects, flowers, fruit, shells, ornaments, buildings, landscapes, &c. &c. &c. collected from the works of the greatest masters : to which is prefixed an essay on drawing, with introductory rules for the use of learners, in which the first principles of that useful and noble art are explained in such manner that it may be attained in a short time without a master
A drawing instruction manual compiled by the London print publisher Robert Sayer and issued in 1762 for self-taught learners, with plates of hands, heads, figures, animals and landscapes copied from older masters. The engraved plates show sheets of studies in pen and wash: clusters of hands in different positions, a group of heads in loose contour, and rows of rotated scenes with ruins, trees, dogs, cattle and a monkey. A designer could take from them the compact way each sheet groups several small studies on one page, and the economical linework used to suggest form and shadow.
