Drawing for Printers. - A practical treatise on the art of designing and - illustrating in connection with typography. Containing - complete instruction, fully illustrated, concerning the - art of drawing, for the beginner as well as the more

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Title: Drawing for Printers. - A practical treatise on the art of designing and - illustrating in connection with typography. Containing - complete instruction, fully illustrated, concerning the - art of drawing, for the beginner as well as the more - advanced student.
Author: Knaufft, Ernest
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Drawing for Printers. - A practical treatise on the art of designing and - illustrating in connection with typography. Containing - complete instruction, fully illustrated, concerning the - art of drawing, for the beginner as well as the more - advanced student." ***

DRAWING FOR PRINTERS.

A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE ART OF
DESIGNING AND ILLUSTRATING
IN CONNECTION WITH
TYPOGRAPHY.

CONTAINING COMPLETE INSTRUCTION, FULLY
ILLUSTRATED, CONCERNING THE ART OF DRAWING,
FOR THE BEGINNER AS WELL AS THE
MORE ADVANCED STUDENT.

BY ERNEST KNAUFFT,

_Editor of The Art Student, and Director of the
Chautauqua Society of Fine Arts_.

CHICAGO:
THE INLAND PRINTER COMPANY.
1899.

BY ERNEST KNAUFFT.

PREFACE.

The author has no doubt but that many captious readers, upon opening
this book, will find it puzzling. They will think that it does not
present the subject in an orderly fashion. They would much prefer to
have us suggest one month’s study of outlines, and then finish with the
subject; then two months’ study of shading, which we would maintain
covered the whole ground; and they would wish us to separate with equal
positiveness the whole study of drawing into distinct portions. To
these criticisms I reply with the following parable:

Mrs. Smith, the mother of a large family, distressed by the bigness
of the physician’s bill (or rather by her husband’s complaints of the
same), procured at the druggist’s a case of homœopathic medicine, with
a booklet directing its dispensation, which would enable her to act as
her family physician, and bringing it home perused it with delight, as
she found every ailment which her children were heir to extensively
described therein—chicken-pox, croup, diphtheria and scarlet fever
were alphabetically set down, and their proper remedy clearly named.
When she retired she staid awake, almost hoping to hear little Johnny
cough or Mary toss in her crib, that she might prove her knowledge of
symptomatology, and the efficacy of the drugs.

Alas, a month’s experience brought with it a source of embarrassment
which she had not anticipated on procuring her book. True, she had
learned it by heart with ease, and knew that for a slight attack of
fever one drop of aconite and two of belladonna should be given on
alternate days, and that for an incipient attack of croup she should
give one drop of aconite every half hour, “which might be administered
more frequently if the case showed symptoms of rapid development.”
Alas, the difficulty did not arise from any omission in the book
directions for applying remedies, but the puzzling point was to
distinguish in nature between the symptoms of croup, for instance,
and those of an ordinary cold. Was Johnny’s sonorous barking due to
a real croupy throat, or was it the natural formation of his vocal
organs which gave so ominous a tone to a cough that might be only the
result of his wading in the rain barrel the morning before? Was Tommy’s
calling for “a wink of water” no less than six times in a night due
to a prospective fever, or was it the result of loneliness because he
had for the first time been put in the spare room, and wanted his
mother’s company? Was little Mary’s restlessness indicative of a coming
attack of measles, or the result of her cousin’s having read her, that
afternoon, “The Goblins ’ll Get You if You Don’t Watch Out.” These were
the puzzling questions; if the physician could only diagnose the case
for her, she herself could have administered the proper quota of drops
of aconite or belladonna.

The moral is plain. Those books on drawing which say, “Having made
correct outlines, begin to shade with an F pencil as follows,” are very
easy reading; but an attempt at application soon convinces one that
such instruction presupposes an amount of previous eye-training on the
part of the student which is not often the endowment of the ordinary
man.

CONTENTS.

PART I.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY — A KNOWLEDGE OF DESIGNING OF VALUE TO
PRINTERS . . . 17

CHAPTER II.
SEEING PROPERLY . . . 26

CHAPTER III.
SILHOUETTES — PERSPECTIVE . . . 32

CHAPTER IV.
POWER OF OUTLINE — SHADED DRAWING . . . 41

CHAPTER V.
GENERAL PRACTICE . . . 49

CHAPTER VI.
CHARACTERISTICS OF OBJECTS . . . 57

CHAPTER VII.
LIGHT AND SHADE . . . 63

CHAPTER VIII.
METHODS — OUTLINE AND SHADED DRAWING — RÉSUMÉ . . . 73

CHAPTER IX.
LINES OF THE FACE . . . 82

CHAPTER X.
BROAD OUTLINE ADAPTED TO PRINTING — LIGHT AND DARK MASSES — FRENCH
NAMES — ART SCHOOL METHODS . . . 86

CHAPTER XI.
LINES INTRODUCED BECAUSE THEIR COUNTERPART IS SEEN IN NATURE —
FACIAL EXPRESSION . . . 101

CHAPTER XII.
PEN DRAWING FOR MAGAZINE AND NEWSPAPER . . . 111

CHAPTER XIII.
PEN TECHNIC: ITS USE AND ABUSE — CRITICISM OF VARIOUS
STYLES . . . 121

CHAPTER XIV.
ILLUSTRATIONS REVIEWED — THE PLANES OF THE FACE . . . 132

PART II.

CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTION . . . 153

CHAPTER II.
TASTE . . . 163

CHAPTER III.
MISCELLANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS — ECONOMY IN PRINTING . . . 175

CHAPTER IV.
LETTERING: THEORY AND PRACTICE . . . 181

CHAPTER V.
SOME STANDARD HISTORIC ALPHABETS STUDIED . . . 191

CHAPTER VI.
EARLY AND MODERN TYPE: ITS APPROPRIATENESS, ITS
ORNAMENTATION . . . 197

CHAPTER VII.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT OF LETTERS . . . 207

CHAPTER VIII.
SUMMARY OF METHOD OF INSTRUCTION — ANALYSIS OF STYLES OF BOOK
DECORATION . . . 211

CHAPTER IX.
WOOD ENGRAVING — DIRECTIONS FOR PRACTICE . . . 223

CHAPTER X.
DIRECTIONS FOR EXPERIMENTS WITH ZINC PLATES — COPPERPLATE
ENGRAVING—LITHOGRAPHY—CHALK PLATE . . . 234

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

Aldine Horace:
Title-page from . . . 199

Auriol, Georg:
Heading design . . . 175
Designs . . . 205, 216
_Theatre du Chat Noir_ . . . 217

Bauernfeind, Michael:
Alphabet . . . 189

Beggarstaff Brothers:
Poster . . . 219

Bergomensis, J. P. F.:
Title-page . . . 193

Bonnard, Pierre:
Head of Pierre Réné Choudieu . . . 87
Tailpiece . . . 95

Bonnat, Léon:
Studies for figures in a painting . . . 54
Portrait of Léon Cogniet . . . 91

Brun, A.:
At the Café Aphrodite . . . 97

Caspari:
Title-page to Volume II of _Jugend_ . . . 169

_Chap-Book_:
Illustration, Genuine . . . 227

Chaume, Geoffrey de:
Mask of Béranger . . . 141

Crawhall, Joseph:
Illustration, imitation of _Chap-Book_ . . . 229

Dagnan-Bouveret:
Study of a head . . . 72

David d’Angers:
Medallion . . . 137

d’Illzach, Ringel:
Medallion portrait . . . 138

Diagrams:
Of Herkomer pine trees—
No. 1 . . . 60
No. 2 . . . 61
Of Grasset ornament—
Nos. 3 and 4 . . . 64
Practice blocks for wood-engraving, Nos. 1 and 2 . . . 232
No. 3 . . . 233

Dollman, J. C., R. I.:
“Hawks Dinna Pike Out Hawks’ Een” . . . 139

Donatello:
Bust of young girl, after . . . 104

_Don Chisciotte_, Caricature from:
Crispi as Cæsar . . . 37

Eaton, Wyatt:
Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson . . . 116

Engström, Albert:
Caricature of the artist himself . . . 21
Hedin—a caricature . . . 28
Jörgen—a caricature . . . 29
Daniel Fallström—a caricature . . . 44

_Figaro_, Illustration from . . . 156

Forain:
Newspaper caricatures . . . 127, 142

French Art Schools Studies, published under the direction
of Bargue and Gérôme:
Figure, . . . 56
Hand, Fig. A . . . 66
Hand, Fig. B . . . 67
Foot . . . 98
Foot . . . 99

French Periodical:
Headpiece from . . . 211
Caricature of French actor, Dailly, from . . . 213
Battle of the Sphinx, from . . . 216

French Periodical:
Headpiece from . . . 222
Wood cut portrait from . . . 231
Tailpiece, Silhouette . . . 233

Gaillard, C. F.:
Study for the portrait of Mme. R. . . . 77

Gerbault, H.:
Pen drawing with mechanically stippled background . . . 24

_Gil Blas_—front page from . . . 164

Girardet, Jules:
Pen drawing . . . 36

Grasset, Eugene:
Typographical ornaments . . . 32, 39, 41, 48
Cover of a dictionary . . . 166
Department headings . . . 172, 203
Typographical design repeated from page 39 . . . 234

Grellet, F.:
Study from bust of Young Girl, by Donatello . . . 104
Study from bust of Brontolone, by Luca della Robbia . . . 109

Guillaume:
Caricature of Eugène Carrière . . . 125
Pen drawing from French daily paper . . . 143

Herkomer, Hubert:
Study of pine trees . . . 51

Holbein:
Book-cover . . . 222

_Jugend_:
Title-page from . . . 169

Knaus, Ludwig:
Head of Old Man . . . 83

Lansyer, E.:
The Courtyard of the Sorbonne . . . 20

Larousse’s New Dictionary:
First page from . . . 201

_L’Artist_:
Initial L’s from . . . 217, 218
Initial L and paragraph heading, from . . . 220

La-Tour, Fantin:
Portraits . . . 68

Lautrec, H. de T.:
“Zimmerman and his machine” . . . 212

Lefebvre, J.:
Crayon study of a child . . . 106

Leloir, Maurice:
Pen drawing . . . 147

Le Roux, E.:
On the Banks of the Isole . . . 140

Lœwe-Marchand:
Portrait of M. X. . . . 75

Lormier, E.:
Crayon drawing from Medallion of Alf. Leroux . . . 138

Luca della Robbia:
Bust of Brontolone, after . . . 109

Lucas, F. H.:
Book illustration . . . 144

_Lucidario_:
Title-page from . . . 186

Luque, M.:
Crispi, a caricature . . . 40
Pen drawing . . . 146

Mantelet, Albert:
Initial letter . . . 214
Same enlarged . . . 215

Marchetti:
Initial letter . . . 121
Chapter heading . . . 123

Matlay, P.:
Portrait of Félicien Rops . . . 237

Millais, John Everett:
Pencil sketch . . . 45

_Minnesinger’s Song Book_:
Page from . . . 183

Moloch, B.:
“Crispi under Hostile Lightning,” a caricature . . . 31

Monet, Claude:
Marine . . . 148

Munkacsy, Michael:
Study for a figure in a painting . . . 53

Moullier, Marc:
Pen drawing for _La Plume_ . . . 130

Novel Heading:
See _Pall Mall Budget_.

_Pall Mall Budget_:
Heading for novel from . . . 168

_Pall Mall Gazette_:
Portraits from . . . 108

_Paris Illustré_:
Illustration from . . . 145

Paul, Herman:
_Des Gueules_ . . . 132

Penlick:
Nos Soldats . . . 221

Pomeroy, F. W.:
Burns’ statue . . . 178

Renard, E.:
The Grandmother . . . 114

Ricketts, Charles:
Page from Nimphidia . . . 185

Rivoire:
Cover design . . . 176

Robert, Carl:
Portrait of Hahnemann from medallion by David
d’Angers . . . 137

Rogel, Hans:
Alphabet . . . 189

Sickert, Walter:
Portrait of C. Rivers Wilson . . . 119
Same reduced . . . 150

Silhouette, an old-fashioned:
Goethe’s Mother . . . 153

St. Elme:
Pen drawing from a French journal . . . 124

Stimmer, Chr.:
Alphabet . . . 189

Strange’s Book on Lettering:
Examples of Seventh Century Lettering, from . . . 195

Stuck, Franz:
Cover design for _Pan_ . . . 171
Lettering of same repeated . . . 236

T., E. G.:
Portrait of Fred Walker . . . 102
Same reduced . . . 149

_Tid-Bits_:
Newspaper cut from, portrait of George Frederick
Watts, R. A. (artist unknown) . . . 79
Same reduced . . . 112

Toussaint, T.:
The late Duc d’Aumale . . . 89

Vallet, L.:
News drawing from French periodical . . . 128

Vallotton, F.:
Three portraits of Frederick Nietzsche . . . 134
Portrait of the artist, portrait of Malthus, portrait of
Paul Robin . . . 135

Verdyen:
A fête at Brussels . . . 93

Vierge, Daniel:
Illustration to _Pablo de Segovie_ . . . 122

_Westminster Budget_:
Cover design, from . . . 157

Wood cut:
The Standard-bearer of Schafhausen . . . 226

{17} DRAWING FOR PRINTERS.

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY — DESIGNING OF VALUE TO THE PRINTER — NATURAL ABILITY
VERSUS INSTRUCTION — SMALL DESIGNS AS DIFFICULT AS LARGE — READER NOT
TO BE DISCOURAGED BECAUSE HE CANNOT BE A FULL-FLEDGED ARTIST — “HOW
SHOULD I BEGIN TO LEARN TO DRAW?” — LEARNING TO SEE — INSTRUCTION DOES
NOT CONSIST OF NAMING MATERIALS — THE STUDY OF A HAT SEEN IN DIFFERENT
POSITIONS — THE VALUE OF OBSERVATION.

There has been in recent years a marked change in the character of the
printing done in this country; plain printing has been superseded by
decorative printing; the typographer of a few years back was only a
compositor and pressman, today he should be a designer as well. In view
of that requirement this little treatise is written, in the hope that,
though its advice may not make an illustrator out of its reader, it
will at least acquaint him with some principles of design that he may
apply in his daily practice.

The reader will not be deceived, the writer not misunderstood, if at
the outset it is put on record that great success in art is dependent
much more upon natural ability, aye, genius, than upon study, and that
these chapters can only tell you how to study—they cannot guarantee
you success. A man of fifty, a master printer, may study our advice
thoroughly and then attempt to {18} draw an elephant chasing an
African, and the result may be conspicuously inferior to the treatment
of the same subject by little eight-year-old Johnny Green who is yet
in the primary school; but Johnny Green may have “an eye for drawing”
and our master printer be as devoid of it as is a cow of melody in her
voice.

Not only is it true that without talent you must not expect to succeed
in producing important pictures, such as full-page illustrations,
double-column portraits, poster designs and large work in general,
but it is almost more unlikely that you will succeed in designing the
most simple tailpiece or initial letter. It is quite natural that you
should suppose it a very easy task to design an initial letter or a
tiny silhouette of a leaf or flower, a branch or wreath or two forming
a “printer’s mark”; every artist in Christendom thinks the same—until
he tries it; but you would be surprised if I filled this chapter with
the history of certain initial letters and devices, and tracing them to
their fountain head, we found that in nine cases out of ten they were
designed by the very greatest artists of the time.

You can take it as an undisputed fact that should some publishing house
wish an ordinary full-page illustration for a book, and at the same
time a simple “publisher’s mark,” a device about an inch square for the
title-page of that book, they would find ten artists who could execute
the former to one who could design the latter so that it would be up to
the standard of the best “marks” in history.

Is it then, you ask, our intention at the very start to discourage you,
and advise you to attempt nothing because you cannot excel in anything?
Not at all. A {19} country editor need not refrain from studying
rhetoric so as to improve the style of his editorials, just because he
knows that without genius he may not expect to equal the diction of
Macaulay. The rhetoric may not give him wit to put in his editorials,
but it at least may teach him to cast his sentences properly. So this
treatise may not supply you with “art feeling,” but it will, we hope,
show you how to make a design in a more workmanlike way than you would
without our advice; and we most sincerely advise you to try.

Everyone in asking the question, “How should I begin to learn to draw?”
expects that the answer will direct him to use certain materials in a
certain way, and that by the manipulation of these materials in this
certain way, he will get the desired result. So far as this treatise
is concerned, the reader will be disappointed in this regard; it is
true that the writer is particularly interested in the technic of the
different graphic arts, and later on will have something to say about
the best methods for pen drawing, for chalk-plate, for wood engraving;
but in these first chapters on drawing it must be distinctly understood
that our advice is that the student should not worry about what pencil
or what paper he should use, or about how his lines should look, but
should realize from the outset that his principal study should be the
education of his eye. The reason that we do not draw well in infancy
is because we have not learned to see. You may take it as a positive
fact that the untrained eye of every man sees things in an absolutely
incorrect manner—or rather he does not know how he sees things. Let
us take, for example, an immense factory-building with over a hundred
windows■

{20} [Illustration: THE COURTYARD OF THE SORBONNE IN 1886.

Pen drawing by E. Lansyer.

Looking at these buildings as in this picture, an artist knows that a
doorway or a window in the building with the dome would appear as a
perfect rectangle, as we see in the case of the main doorway, because
seen “in front view”; but the windows in the buildings at the sides
are not perfect rectangles because, being seen “in perspective,” or at
an angle, their sills and lintels seem to tip downward. The uneducated
eye, however, knowing them to be rectangles, sees them as such, not
realizing that each receding window is narrower than its predecessor;
and that, moreover, the lintels and sills of a window in a higher story
have a greater tip than those of one below, and that every lintel has
greater tip than its corresponding sill. This knowledge, however,
should be known to all artists through the study of perspective.]

{21} [Illustration: CARICATURE OF THE ARTIST HIMSELF.

By Albert Engström.]

■{22} on its front and on its sides. Let us presume that a man is
standing directly in front of the building; the chances are that he
sees every window in a tolerably correct manner. He sees that all the
windows are alike, etc.; that each is a certain distance from the
other, etc. Good! But now let him walk to the end of the building and
look at it diagonally; he still sees the building as he saw it in the
front view; depend upon it, that he sees each window as a perfect
rectangle, and each window the same distance from the other; he would
be incapable of going home and showing you on a piece of paper the
“direction” of every window line. Let an artist step in his place and
he sees every window _different_ from the other! You probably do not
realize the full truth of this statement at present, but you will after
we have our chapter on perspective. For the present please take my word
for it, and bear in mind that you must first learn to see.

Let us take the caricature by Albert Engström for our first lesson. We
have selected it for two reasons: first, because it is a caricature,
and we wish our readers to realize that this treatise is going to
be of use to printers from the beginning, and that we are going to
study drawing in an interesting manner. Many a printer is as well the
publisher of a newspaper and feels that from time to time he would
like to publish a caricature to enliven his pages, or at any rate he
is interested in the cartoons in the illustrated press, and would
like to know how they are done, and the best way to acquire this
knowledge is to practice a little one’s self. Besides, the practice of
caricaturing is most beneficial to every draftsman; there have been
but few great painters who {23} have not indulged in it. Another
reason for using this cut is that it is drawn in a very simple manner
in a few strong lines. While the students at the art schools usually
begin to get effects with light and shade, the printer will do well
to master outline sooner than light and shade, for it is the most
quickly executed and the most easily engraved, and, I need not add,
last but not least, most easily printed. I should advise you then to
take commonplace objects that are about the house and make innumerable
sketches of them in the manner of this drawing. Take a derby hat for
example, place it a little above the eye and endeavor to draw it as
Engström did his. Do not worry much about your style of drawing, do
not complain that your pen will not work and that you cannot get a
line varying in thickness like this one; or if you do succeed, do not
ask your friends to admire your handsome pen line; do not think about
your drawing at all, but solely about learning to see. Place the hat
above you, notice that you see the under part of the brim nearer you,
and the inside of the brim on the far side; if there is not a head
under the hat endeavor with a single curved line to indicate as much
of the lining as you see; if you see anything else that is _not_ given
in Engström’s drawing and you try to express it as he expresses things
you employ an excellent method of study. Next place the hat in the same
position but below the eye, on the seat of a chair, and notice that
you no longer see under the brims but inside of them; then place the
hat on its crown upon the chair so that you see the oval of the inside
of its crown, and endeavor to express that oval with two semi-circles,
as simple as the one which Engström uses in drawing the {24} crown of
the hat. Again, put the hat on the mantelpiece and draw a side view of
it; this will be more simple than any of the other views. I think that
an hour’s practice of this kind will soon convince you that the casual
glance of the uneducated eye does not take in a complete or perfect
view of an object, but that after you have studied an object with a
view to drawing it, you begin to see with more thoroughness. You will,
I think, notice, as you walk home in the evening, the contours of the
different hats that you see in the hatter’s■

[Illustration: PEN DRAWING WITH MECHANICALLY STIPPLED BACKGROUND.

By H. Gerbault.

Showing different kinds of hats in various positions.]

■window, and upon the pedestrians; you will begin to guess how you
would draw such a hat or cap, and from time to time you will see
headgear that “lends itself to drawing,” as it were; you will say,
“When I go home I will try to draw that hat.” We print on this page
an interesting drawing by Gerbault. To the casual observer a drawing
of this kind simply represents some men with their hats on, and he
enjoys looking at the hats collectively, while he may enjoy the
individual {25} faces; but the illustrator, with his practiced eye,
finds enjoyment in examining the way each individual hat is drawn. You
will find the same enjoyment if you practice drawing hats as we have
recommended, and it is needless to say that your enjoyment will be
profitable, and, moreover, that your practice need not be limited to
the drawing of hats, but may embrace coats, gloves, and shoes as well.

If such is the influence upon your mind made by this chapter, we feel
sure that you will never regret having read it and given the time to
the practice we recommend, and we think that the first step in the
study of drawing will have been made, and that you will feel it has
been a successful one.

{26} CHAPTER II.

MORE ABOUT HATS — PERSPECTIVE MAY BE LEARNED FROM THEM — DRAWING MORE
A MATTER OF SEEING PROPERLY THAN USE OF PEN — TEXTURE — SILHOUETTE
DRAWINGS USED BY EGYPTIANS.

We trust that you followed the advice of our former chapter, that you
tried to draw a hat in several positions, and that you then found, as
we prophesied, that you were led to observe the hats that you saw in
the street with a new sense of discernment; if that is true, you will
appreciate this chapter, we think, though it be very short.

We select two more caricatures for you, in which we find hats that are
very similar. Now we can tell you quite positively whether you have
an eye for drawing or not. Stop a moment, and before reading the next
paragraph, look at these hats, pages 28, 29, and argue out the reason
why they are drawn as they are; if your reasons are somewhat like the
following, your chances for learning to draw are good; if not, you have
much study ahead of you, even before you can make a start.

Your observation is good if you realize that in drawing almost anything
you may represent it as a silhouette. The Egyptians did much of their
writing in hieroglyphs, using silhouette pictures of thousands of
different objects; helmets and crowns, hands and feet, men and animals,
tools and utensils were employed as characters in their alphabet; and
if you see plainly how a silhouette is made by outlining an object as
it is seen from one point {27} of view, usually a perfect side view,
the object on a level with the eye, and that the outline is filled in
with black, you may be sure that you have been observing correctly. You
will notice then that these two hats are (1) on a level with the eye,
for if (2) below the eye, you would see the top of the crown and into
the brim; if (3) above the eye, you would see underneath the brim. You
notice also that the “Hedin” is the true silhouette, which is made by
leaving out the lights on the side, the suggestion of the band, and the
upper edge of the brim. You will also notice (4), particularly in the
“Jörgen,” that the feet are as though the gentleman were walking on a
chalk-line on a table and the spectator sitting on a low chair, so that
the feet were on a level with his eye; this is a characteristic feature
of Egyptian hieroglyphs. If the feet were drawn realistically they
would not only not be on a line one with the other, but we would seem
to look down upon the shoes, as ordinarily a man’s feet are below the
spectator’s eye.

We think that this is enough for one lesson, and if you find that
the propositions that we have numbered are not clear to you, you
would better work out the problems on a sheet of paper. We take it
for granted that Nos. 1 and 2 are clear to anyone who drew the hats
according to our last chapter; but Nos. 3 and 4 may not be so evident;
if not, get a pair of shoes and put them on the mantel on a level with
your eye; next place them upon the floor in the position in which one
ordinarily walks or stands, and our propositions will be clear to you.

It is most important that you should understand all these matters of
optics, though it makes little difference■

{28} [Illustration: “HEDIN”—A CARICATURE.

By Albert Engström.

The hat and coat are pure silhouette, the face “suggestive outline.”]

{29} [Illustration: “JÖRGEN”—A CARICATURE.

By Albert Engström.

The hat and shoes are partially silhouette; but the high lights upon
them are connected with finished work.]

■{30} with what kind of a pen you may make your drawing. Having
mastered these principles, you would then understand such a criticism
on Engström’s work as the following: Mr. Engström sometimes employs
the pure silhouette, as in the “Hedin,” and sometimes silhouette in
a modified form, as in the “Jörgen”; in the former case an artist
sacrifices rotundity, detail and texture (the white streaks on the
“Jörgen” hat suggest the surface of the beaver; this we call texture;
a felt hat has no such white streaks upon it, and might be adequately
represented by a set of lines such as are used on Jörgen’s coat, but
no silhouette can suggest texture); in his caricatures Engström unites
with the silhouette effect the single-plane effect of the Egyptian
hieroglyphs. (The hieroglyphs were mostly painted on walls and the
feet represented as though flush with the wall, and not one farther
from us than the other, hence we say that they are on one plane.)
Many caricaturists have effectually burlesqued the Egyptian method of
drawing and the placing of their figures. The trousers and the cane
in the “Jörgen” drawing are the only objects in one plane; the coat
collar is distinctly rounded. In the Moloch illustration we see also
silhouette treatment. You can easily imagine how Hedin’s hat, if the
proper size, would fittingly rest on Crispi’s head.

{31} [Illustration: CRISPI UNDER HOSTILE LIGHTNING.

Caricature by B. Moloch.

An example of silhouette drawing.]

{32} [Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENT.

CHAPTER III.

HIEROGLYPHIC DESIGNS OR SILHOUETTES — THEIR USE AS TYPOGRAPHICAL
ORNAMENTS — OBJECTS SEEN AS ON ONE PLANE — PLACING YOUR
OBJECT — HORIZONTAL LINES PARALLEL TO THE EYE — HORIZONTAL LINES NOT
PARALLEL TO THE EYE.

We publish two kinds of drawings with this chapter, which many be
classified as follows: The Grassets are hieroglyphic-like designs or
silhouettes; the Crispi, in his _robe de chambre_, which for want
of the artist’s name we shall call the _Don Chisciotte_ cut—“Don
Chisciotte” you no doubt suspect is the Italian for Don Quixote, and it
is the name of a cartoon paper—is a pure outline drawing.

Now let us take them in turn. Every printer will recognize that the
Grasset designs are excellent, for they may be printed with greater
ease than shaded drawings, and their simplicity is in perfect harmony
with the solid black of type. Now, not only would it {33} be pleasant
for you as a printer to begin making some such silhouettes, but it is
very good practice in drawing for you to search the house for objects
that you can put up against the window pane and draw their contours,
filling them in with black. A whisk broom, a pair of scissors, a pair
of eyeglasses, a leaf, a feather may be put up against the glass and
its silhouette copied, and you then realize how many objects may be
represented by their contours. Later you learn how to silhouette
objects less flat; you may try the ink bottle with a pen in it, the
glue pot with the brush in it; this leads you to such a thorough
understanding of Grasset’s flowers as pages of writing would never
give. In walking in the streets after such an exercise you will notice
not only the “block” of a man’s hat (which we spoke of in Chapter I),
but you will notice what kind of a silhouette it makes against the sky;
then the shape of the birds, the weather vanes, the church steeples as
they are “etched against the sky,” as the poets say, will have a new
interest for you.

In this practice of silhouetting objects you learn something that is
most important in more advanced work. You learn _to see objects as on
one plane_. We fancy your knowledge of geometry is sufficient for you
to understand what we mean, but let us go over the ground slowly so
that it may facilitate our future explanations of perspective problems.

By a plane we mean a plain, a flat surface. A table top is a plane.
But the plane the artist draws upon—say a sheet of paper—though he may
let it lie horizontal on a table, is always considered a _vertical
plane_, corresponding to a pane of glass in a window. Now, if {34} we
are looking across the street, through the window, we know that each
receding cobblestone in the street (though in one horizontal plane)
is in a different _vertical_ plane from the others. If we wished to
make the plane a tangible one we could set up a pane of glass in front
of the nearest cobblestone, and then another pane in front of the
cobblestone across the street, then it would be evident to anyone that
these stones were in two planes, would it not? Good! Now, if you should
go to the window and trace with a paint brush a picture of these two
cobblestones on the glass, you would draw your picture on one plane,
and that a _vertical_ plane. Well, that is just what the artist does
when he draws a picture by the eye. He may lay his paper horizontally
on a common table, or obliquely on a tipping drawing table, or on
an easel, but he does not draw the objects as though seen through a
horizontal or oblique plane (except sometimes when he sketches from a
church-steeple or a hilltop), but on the contrary, the ordinary drawing
always represents objects as seen through a vertical pane of glass and
as they would be traced on that pane, hence _reduced to one plane_.

Having read the foregoing two or three times we will ask you to turn
to the _Don Chisciotte_ caricature. Has it not a new interest to you?
Do you not see immediately that the legs of the bureau, though in
reality some few feet apart and so in different planes, are drawn on
a sheet of paper on one plane? Well, the second step after you have
learned to draw a simple form in outline is to learn to “place” your
objects and their receding parts—as the legs of the bureau. It would
be impossible for me to overestimate the trouble this gives the {35}
beginner—such as the man who sees the factory viewed at an angle as
though it were seen from the front (see Chapter I). But if perchance
you can get it into your mind that you must draw as though tracing on a
window pane, nay, better still, if you will dip a brush in the ink and
actually draw on the pane for several days, you will soon have little
need of puzzling over perspective, and when you look diagonally at a
rectangular object—as the windows in a factory—you will see at a glance
that they are no longer rectangles, as in a front view, but the lintels
and sills actually seem to _tip_ (in an upward direction if below the
eye, in a downward direction if above the eye). Then you suddenly
realize that certain laws of optics come into play in making the very
simplest of views. You look at such a simple interior as in the _Don
Chisciotte_ room and you recognize at once that the lines in it which
were horizontal in nature are governed by three laws; the portière
rod and the side boards of the couch are drawn horizontal because the
artist sees them in a front view—they are parallel to his eye—but the
lines of the front of the bureau and the floor line behind it run up
because they are lines seen not in front view, but seen diagonally, and
they are below the artist’s eye; but the top line of the mirror runs
down because it is above the artist’s eye.

From this chapter any reader with a mathematical mind will have already
deduced the facts of the following rules of perspective, even if he has
not formulated them in precise language; but you might as well learn
them by heart, as they are applied every time you draw a box, a table,
a room, a railroad track, a street, etc.

1. All horizontal lines in nature that are parallel to■

{36} [Illustration: PEN DRAWING.

By Jules Girardet.

Showing a mantel a little below the eye.

The student should practice drawing interiors with the purpose of
learning the theory of perspective from every object drawn. The
horizontal lines of the picture frame, for example, tip in the opposite
direction to the mantel, because they are above the eye. Had the mantel
been a few inches higher it would have been drawn as a perfectly
horizontal line.]

{37} [Illustration: CRISPI AS CÆSAR IN HIS ROBE DE CHAMBRE.

A political caricature from _Don Chisciotte_.]

■{38} the eyes of the spectator (like the portière rod and the bed
part of the couch in the _Don Chisciotte_ caricature, like the lintels
and sills of the Sorbonne doorway), that is when one is standing
directly in front of them, appear as horizontal lines and are to be so
drawn, they do not tip either up or down whether below or above the eye.

2. But when a horizontal line is no longer parallel to the axis of
the eyes, that is when it is seen diagonally, as the floor line, the
front of the bureau and the top of the mirror, then it follows this
law; if it happens to be just on a level with the eyes, that is on the
horizon line, then it _is_ horizontal to the sight and is so drawn; if
the mirror were hanging where it is in the _Don Chisciotte_, but were
cut off just on a level with Crispi’s eyes, and the draftsman of the
picture were just Crispi’s height, then the base of the mirror would be
drawn horizontal. But when the lines are below the eye, as the floor
line and the bureau lines, then they seem to run up to the horizon and
are drawn slanting upward; while if they are above the eye, as the top
of the mirror, they tip down to the horizon and are drawn slanting
downward—the end farther away from the artist lower in the picture than
the end nearer him. (See the side buildings in the Sorbonne courtyard.)

It is advisable for the student of perspective to cut a rectangular
opening, not too large, say the size of this page, in a piece of
pasteboard, which he may hold at arm’s length in front of him and look
through as he would through a small window. This will not only frame
his picture for him, but it gives him two horizontal lines and two
perpendicular lines, and he can hold his pencil or his ruler against
the face of the frame {39} so that it just covers any straight line
he wishes to draw; and he will readily see that all vertical lines in
nature make his pencil run parallel to the sides of his frame, while
horizontal lines if in nature parallel to the axis of his eyes, or if
on a level with his eyes, make it run parallel to the base and top. And
then, best of all, he can hold his pencil parallel to oblique lines
which run away from him, and they will appear parallel to the face of
his frame, or in one plane, as they would be in a drawing. This is very
helpful, as there is nothing so confusing to the beginner as the lines
which run away from him. (In looking up a railroad track the rails seem
to run away. You know they are actually parallel, but to your eye they
converge. Not only that, but you know they are flat on the ground,
whereas, in a picture, you draw them standing up. All this is at first
very confusing.)

[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENT.

{40} [Illustration: MEN OF THE DAY—CRISPI.

By Luque.

From _La Caricature_.]

{41} [Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENT.

CHAPTER IV.

POWER OF OUTLINE — SHADED DRAWINGS — TEXTURE — LOCAL COLOR AND
VALUES — THROWN SHADOW AND MODELING SHADOW — MANNERISMS OF A
CARICATURIST — BEGINNER ADVISED TO USE OUTLINE ONLY, BUT HE MAY
PRACTICE IN SHADING.

If I have been successful in making every point clear in my foregoing
chapters the reader now has such a knowledge of the art of drawing as
will enable him to understand, (1) the power of an outline, and (2)
to realize that one may become a tolerable draftsman if he will train
his eye to see the outline of an object as if marked upon a pane of
glass—that is, reduced to one plane; and to realize, moreover, that
(3) this learning to see things in one plane involves some knowledge
of perspective, of which more anon; but for the present let us leave
outline and take up another branch of the subject. In the Luque cartoon
the helmet is represented {42} in a new form. The careful observer
will see instantly that it differs materially from the helmet in the
_Don Chisciotte_ cartoon, shown upon page 37.

Let us make an analysis of this difference. I contemplated no pun
when I wrote of a _material_ difference. Yet that is the main point
of contrast. We guess that the helmet of the major domo in the _Don
Chisciotte_ is metal, but we only guess it. We argue that the Romans
wore metal helmets, hence we fancy this is one; but outline rarely
indicates texture (we mean by texture the material of an object—wood,
wool, stone, linen, etc.) or color. But in the Luque we are very sure
that the helmet is of black leather. True, we surmise this only,
because we know that modern helmets are apt to be either metal or black
patent leather, and this one is too dark for metal, and the high light
upon it is just like the white light on a black patent leather helmet.
(When the light falls on a rounded object there is nearly always one
place upon it where the light strikes, creating a white light—no matter
what the color of the object—which artists call the high light. This
is always more apparent upon highly polished objects than upon rough
objects.)

Now, you see in the Luque we have a very different kind of drawing
from a pure outline like the _Don Chisciotte_, or a silhouette like
the Grasset. In such drawing the outline is only the framework; after
it is put in, the labor is by no means over; to the contrary, every
bit of surface has to be covered with an appropriate tint, and two
different considerations decide how light or how heavy this tint shall
be: first, the consideration of light and shade; secondly, local color.
When the artist put a {43} dark mass under Crispi’s mustache he did
not mean to suggest that Crispi had been eating blackberry jam, or
that he had a negro’s lower lip, but he meant to represent the strong
shadow that a thick mustache throws upon a lower lip when the light
comes from above; in doing this he noted a “thrown shadow.” When,
however, he made the dark line on the lower part of the chin he did not
mean to suggest that the upper part of the chin threw a shadow on the
lower part, but he represented the part of the chin that rounds under
the jaw; this is called a “modeling shadow.” (A circle may represent
a ring, or a disk—as in the medal inscribed _Literis et Artibus_ in
the Fallström (page 44)—or a sphere; but without shading it is said
not to have modeling; and if it is intended for a sphere, it can only
suggest a sphere; to make it fully represent one, we shade it; then it
is positively not a ring, nor a disk, if the shading is properly done.
This shading gives it rotundity, or bulk, and this effect we designate
as modeling.) When Luque makes the part of the visor of the helmet to
our right darker than the part to our left and leaves a light between,
he also models—that is, represents modeling or rotundity; but when he
makes both the shaded side and the lighter side dark, and also makes
Crispi’s coat black, then he is said to represent local color.

Here you see we have a very advanced form of drawing, and a form
I should not advise you to employ in your early efforts to do
professional work; if you essay to make a cartoon for your paper, I
should advise you to confine yourself to outline or silhouette. But in
order that you may fully understand a drawing which at first appears to
be outline, but which upon examination turns■

{44} [Illustration: DANIEL FALLSTRÖM.

A caricature by Albert Engström.]

{45} [Illustration: PENCIL SKETCH.

By John Everett Millais.

This is not a careful study, but shows an artist’s method of “placing”
objects. The right-hand figure is evidently that of a minister, and the
artist at first intended to have his coat fall over his left thigh but
afterwards changed it. The gray lines which thus place the skirt of the
coat are those referred to in Chapter V. In the left-hand figure the
head was drawn first and the hat added. It is interesting to note how
low upon the head the hat rests. The mistake of the beginner is usually
to put a hat too high on the skull. (Or perhaps the artist’s first
intention was to draw a derby hat, which was afterwards changed to a
high hat.)]

■{46} out to be partly shaded, we have introduced in these first
chapters this question of modeling and local color. We have pointed
out (Chapter II) that Engström sometimes uses pure outline, sometimes
outline and silhouette, and sometimes outline, silhouette and shading.
His “Fallström,” given with this chapter, is without silhouette effect,
but is in outline, shading and local color. The medal referred to is
a piece of pure outline. Ordinarily, when an artist draws a thing of
this kind—a button, a policeman’s badge, etc.—he makes the lower line
a little heavier than the rest so as to suggest the shadow the object
throws upon the coat; but Engström has omitted this. In the nose,
however, we have not pure outline, but a distinct broadening of the
line under the nose giving the same suggestion of its protruding and of
its throwing a shadow as does Crispi’s mustache in Luque’s drawing. In
the hat, moreover, we have both modeling—very good modeling, too,—and
local color.

You should be reminded that Engström is a caricaturist, and takes
liberties with the art of drawing as well as with his subjects. The
example we gave in Chapter I, his own portrait, was a perfectly
consistent drawing, all pure outline; so was the “Hedin” (Chapter II),
because silhouette goes perfectly well with outline. But to model a
hat as fully as in this “Fallström” drawing, so that under its rim is
a shadow, and yet not have it throw a suggestion of a shadow upon the
man’s head, is most inconsistent drawing—permitted the caricaturist
only. If you were making such a study from nature you would surely see
a _thrown_ shadow on the head and you should put it in. {47}

While I say you should not employ shading and local color to any great
extent in your early work, yet you may study the theory of it so as to
use it sparingly, and that study is best pursued by putting on a table
a group of objects of different colors and textures; put a white box
beside a brown book, an ink bottle beside a glass, a teacup beside a
brown stone jug, and draw each object in relation to the others. Make
your ink bottle blacker than your brown jug, but note that both have
distinct high-lights upon them. The white box will probably not have
a high-light upon it, but one side of it may be all light, while the
corresponding side of the brown book will be darkish, though lighter
than its side in shadow. (We suppose that you place your table near
a window so that the light from it falls on one side of the objects,
the other side being in shadow; this is the best arrangement for
objects studied for their light and shade. Do not have light come
from other windows.) You, therefore, in your drawing, have white
paper to represent the light side of the box, but you put on a slight
tint to represent the light side of the brown book. The ink bottle
you will treat very much like Luque’s helmet; black as it is there
will be streaks of white upon it—sometimes high-lights, and sometimes
reflection of the window as seen in a mirror. If the cover of the box,
because it projects a little, throws a line of shadow upon the side
of the box, you will instantly recognize that this is the same kind
of a thrown shadow as that which Luque put under Crispi’s mustache
and Engström put under Fallström’s nose. Some study of this sort will
soon train your eye to see the reason of _spots of light and dark_ in
artists’ drawings. {48}

One of the points we admire in an expert’s drawing is the use he makes
of black spots. The Japanese have rules of composition, governing this
distribution of spots, which they follow, balancing a black here with
another there in an admirable manner. In our chapter on wood engraving
we shall give some specimens of well distributed blacks. In our
tailpiece by Grasset you will notice how on the right-hand side five
petals and two buds balance a tri-parted leaf on the opposite side. One
of the problems for the designer of printers’ devices is to balance
them properly. It is much easier to copy a spray from nature and fill
it in with black ink than it is to make that spray balance so that when
placed at the end of a chapter or used to divide paragraphs it will
balance as perfectly as the letter V or A. It is needless to note that
every printer realizes that paragraphs might be separated by the letter
I or A or V, but not properly by the letter B or D or E.

[Illustration: TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENT.

{49} CHAPTER V.

HOW TO BEGIN A DRAWING — EDUCATION OF THE EYE THE FIRST
THING — MANTELSHELF SEEN FRONT VIEW — SIDE VIEW BUT EXACTLY ON A LEVEL
WITH THE EYE — TIPPING DOWNWARD IF ABOVE THE EYE — UPWARD IF BELOW
THE EYE — PLACE THE BIG PROPORTIONS OF OBJECTS BEFORE ATTEMPTING
DETAIL — THIS SHOULD SHOW PROPORTION AND DIRECTION — SEPARATE
COMPLEX SUBJECTS INTO ELEMENTS — MEANING OF ELEMENTS — EVERY OBJECT
HAS ITS AXIS — BEGINNING OF EVERY FIGURE SHOULD ALWAYS SHOW ITS
ACTION — GENERAL PRACTICE TO PLACE ALL THE OBJECTS IN A PICTURE WITH
PENCIL LINES FIRST — SOME EXAMPLES FROM MUNKACSY.

I hear some of my readers ask, “Is there not something a teacher should
tell us that will help us whether we are drawing in outline or whether
we are shading—something that will teach us _how to begin_ any kind of
a drawing?” The reply is “Yes,” and I propose to give such help in this
chapter; but it has purposely been delayed till now, because I wished
to emphasize the fact that the principal thing is not for me to tell
you how to draw, but for me to help you to learn to see so as to know
what to draw. For example, I will ask the printer to insert a rule here
in a horizontal position, thus:■

[Illustration]

■This represents a mantelshelf seen in front view, or one seen in side
view exactly on a level with your eyes. Now, it stands to reason, does
it not, that anybody can {50} draw such a line? What you need to be
taught, is that the mantel is to be drawn that way only under the two
circumstances mentioned. The moment you have a side view of it when it
is below or above the eyes, you must draw it tipping. Tipping downward
(away from you) if above the eye; upward, if below. Thus, if above the
eye:

[Illustration: (A, the end nearer spectator.) Thus, if below:]

This difference in the direction of line according to the position
of the spectator is something the novice does not see, and it is the
business of the teacher to point it out. Hence the many references to
seeing and the few to drawing which are found in our foregoing chapters.

But there is a suggestion about drawing which I will give you that
will help you at the first stage of your study. It is this: Accustom
yourself to place something on your paper—some form having a height and
a breadth—that resembles the big proportions of your subject, before
you attempt to finish any single part of it.

Our illustrations clearly show the working of this method. In the
Herkomer study the lower parts of the tree trunks are not finished,
they are merely placed. The outlines of the trunks show (1) the
relation of the two trunks to one another, (2) their size, and (3)
their direction. With the same simple means the artist could have shown
contrary facts; for example, that (1) the trees were nearer together,
(2) that the left one was■

{51} [Illustration: STUDY OF PINE TREES BY HUBERT HERKOMER.

The form above the lowest branch, which looks something like a cloud,
shows us the artist’s method of “placing” a branch before finishing
it; also the lower parts of the trunks show their placing. All objects
should be thus outlined before they are shaded.]

■{52} wider than the right, (3) that they tipped at an angle of
fifteen degrees to our left.

Again, the mass that at first glance looks like a cloud, is really the
“placing” of a branch. Now, before the artist put any of the black in
his picture, which suggests the dark colors of a pine, he placed all
the principal branches, limbs, and the trunks of the two trees, just as
you see them in the unfinished places we have pointed out. The reader
should need very little more help than this to fit him to go out to
nature and begin a landscape.

Almost any element you may see can be begun in this manner. (I use
the word element to cover either one object or a group of objects; we
say of some picture that it has four elements: a foreground, a pine
tree, a clump of trees and distant hills.) For example, without the
line representing the limb below Herkomer’s outline for the unfinished
branch might almost stand for a cloud—its outline would then simply
be a little less toothed. Its upper part might also stand for a group
of distant trees. Now, this branch, no less than the trunks, has its
big proportions; it is almost twice as long as it is high, and no
amount of pretty drawing of details would ever represent _that_ branch
if you should start out with a form twice as high as it is wide.
Always look out for these dimensions at first. The branch also has a
_direction_—the direction of its axis—which is downward to our left,
and no amount of pretty drawing of its details would ever represent
_this_ branch if it were represented with a horizontal axis. (The axis
of the lowest branch is at a still greater angle; this downward tip is
characteristic of the lower branches of the pine, larch, elm, beech,
willow, etc.) Now, a cloud has its■

{53} [Illustration: STUDY FOR A FIGURE IN A PAINTING.

By Michael Munkacsy.

This shows the placing of the parts of the figure so that it shows
_action_, though there is no finish.]

{54} [Illustration: STUDIES FROM A MODEL FOR FIGURES IN A PAINTING.

By Léon Bonnat.

These studies show the placing of the parts of the figures so that they
express _action_, though there is no finish.]

■{55} axis, a group of trees, and you must not draw a stratus cloud
which lies horizontal as though it were a cirrus or a cumulus cloud
blown upward by a contrary wind. In the placing of an element, then,
it is not the margin of the outline we think of, but the positions of
objects, their general bulk, and the direction of their axes.

In the figure studies we reproduce by Bonnat and Munkacsy, you can
plainly see that the action of the figures is graphically portrayed
without any attempt at detail, simply by “placing” the parts of the
figure in the right place. A good beginning in the case of figure
drawing should always show the action; that is to say, show that the
man is stooping over, leaning back, standing upright or sitting down,
long before the drawing shows that his coat is black or has four
buttons on it, or that he has finger nails on his fingers.

It is nearly always the practice with artists to place objects in this
way with a pencil line, even if the subsequent drawing is to be in pen
or wash. Let your lines be light, and then you can erase them after
your ink lines are put over them. Do not be afraid of feeling your way
with lines; put down several until you get the right one. Do not expect
to get your work right at first. If you get in a branch of a tree and
think it is correct, leave it till the tree is complete; but if in the
end you see it is too large for the rest of the tree, rub it out and
make it smaller. Every artist has to do this many times if his subject
is at all complicated.

{56} [Illustration: Example of French Art School studies from plates
published under the direction of Bargue and Gérôme, showing the method
of placing a figure before drawing the final outline or shading; also
showing lines on the jaw, in the trunk and leg that are not contour
lines.]

{57} CHAPTER VI.

VALUE OF A LINE — WHAT THE ARTIST SEES — LINES, NOT CONTOUR LINES,
USED TO REPRESENT ORGANIC PARTS — “PLACING” ELEMENTS A MENTAL
TRAINING — MORE IMPORTANT TO THE PRINTER-DRAFTSMAN THAN INTRICATE
DETAIL — PLACING-LINES TO BE MADE CAREFULLY — SYNTHESIS OF THE HUMAN
ARM REPRESENTED WITH A FEW LINES — THE DELIGHT OF AN ARTIST IN
SYNTHETIC STUDIES — JAPANESE MASTERS OF SYNTHETIC DRAWING — GRASSET’S
SILHOUETTE — THINK OF YOUR OBJECTS, WHEN PLACING THEM, AS
SILHOUETTES — REDUCING CONTOUR LINES TO GEOMETRIC FIGURES — HERKOMER’S
PINE TREES MAPPED OUT INTO POLYGONS — THIS METHOD NOT TO BE CARRIED TO
EXCESS — CHARACTERISTICS OF OBJECTS TO BE LOOKED FOR — NATURE’S FORMS
SOON RECOGNIZED IN SIMPLE POLYGONS.

It is difficult for the amateur to realize the value of a line as
fully as the art student realizes it. We give an illustration of the
first laying in or placing of a figure, as done in the Parisian art
schools. The student who works for months and months in this manner
sees a meaning in an artist’s lines that the casual observer misses.
Here, for example, all the lines on the arm represent swellings which
are not merely temporary but are organic, belonging to every arm. So
also with the cross lines on the abdomen; they are not as one might
expect, chance lines, but divide the trunk into organic parts. Any
model taking this pose would show some such lines, or rather the body
would divide itself into {58} some such parts which would produce the
wrinkles which these lines represent; no matter whether he were older
or younger, stouter or thinner, the markings would be in about the same
place. When we come to the analyzation of the human face this fact
of representing parts of the body by lines that are not outlines—i.
e., not contour lines—will be still clearer to you. Now, the point
we want to make is that the method of “placing” objects, recommended
in the last chapter, is not a mere process of procedure in drawing,
but is quite as important a mental training as the making of the
most intricate outline—in fact, for the printer-draftsman it is more
important than the latter. If you wish to make a poster design, it is
better that you should know how to place “the elements” of a branch
of oak or ivy than that you should draw the venation of the leaves or
the delicate modeling of the stems, because if printed in flat tones
it is the big characteristics—showing the difference between an ivy
leaf and an oak leaf—that you need to secure. Therefore, in all your
preliminary sketching do not work carelessly just because you are
finally going to rub out your placing lines; but rather try to see how
much likeness to the object you can get by the most economical means,
in your very placing of the object. In the man’s arm, for example, even
the inexperienced draftsman, who might not see the correctness of the
drawing in the man’s trunk, can realize that we have here the swelling
of the deltoid, the curve of the biceps, the extreme width at the
elbow, and the inside lines which mark bones and muscles at the elbow;
all of which represent the synthesis of _the_ human arm, though perhaps
not the similitude {59} of any _one_ arm. Were you, with an artist
companion, looking over a collection of drawings by the masters you
would be surprised at his delight in many drawings that were carried
little further than this study of an arm. The Japanese are celebrated
for their synthetic drawing; they have the ability to make a spot of
green that is not a lily leaf in all its intricate detail, but which
has all the characteristics of a lily leaf which distinguish it from
every other kind of leaf, stand for a perfect lily leaf.

If you will turn to the Grasset design on page 39 you will realize
that his wisteria is by no means a complete floral drawing, but simply
gives the characteristics of the wisteria in its silhouette. Here you
see we revert to the subject of our second chapter, and recommend
that in placing your objects you think of them as silhouettes. This
wisteria design suggests another help for the beginner. The flower
itself in its entirety takes the form in nature of a cone, which in
silhouette is a triangle; the entire branch of the ornament on page
48 takes the form of a triangle; and since geometrical forms are more
easily analyzed than natural forms, it might be well for you to train
yourself to notice if an object takes the general form of a quadrangle
or a rectangle, a triangle or a polygon. The branches of trees can
frequently be mapped out into triangles or polygons with not more than
five or six sides, that are very easy to recognize.

We have made a tracing of the pine trees by Mr. Herkomer, in which we
have mapped out the branches into polygons, A, B and C (page 60). The
lines D E and F G are added to suggest how the tree trunks are■

{60} [Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 1.]

{61} [Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 2.

NO. 4—Study of Pine Tree, by Hubert Herkomer, with lines added showing
rectangles _w x y z_, containing the whole group; polygons 1 to 14,
containing branches, lines going through axes of trunk _e d_, and
_f g_, and _p_, plumb-line to which _f g_ is compared—that is, its
angle obtained—as shown in diagram NO. 1.]

■{62} first put in as axes, F G being compared with the plumb-line P.
W, X, Y and Z suggest a quadrangle, into which the whole tree could
first be placed.

We wish to say, however, that we do not consider it advisable to reduce
freehand drawings to geometrical forms to too great an extent. The art
student in Paris does not think of his model as a combination of cubes
and cylinders, but as a human figure; nor when he leaves the atelier
does he consider a tree as a combination of cylinders and cones, but
as an oak tree, or a maple or a pine; and whether his drawing is a
moment’s jotting in a sketch-book, or a week’s study on canvas, he
tries to get as much of the characteristics of the pine tree or the
oak, in the moment or in the week, as his perception will allow.

You would be surprised, if you practiced this method for a few months,
to see how much meaning these first polygons will have to you. If you
will map out an elm tree, for example, and then turn to our diagram No.
2, you will instantly recognize that the forms A, B, C, could never be
intended for an elm. This negative recognition would be followed by
positive recognition, and you would guess at least, if you were not
sure, that, in a sketch of a sea coast, certain polygons put more on
one side of a line than on the other, which represented a tree trunk,
were meant for the branches of a pine!

{63} CHAPTER VII.

ORIGINAL “PLACING” AND FINISHED DRAWING COMPARED — SIZE OF THE
FRAME DOES NOT AFFECT THE PROPORTIONS IF THE SAME DIMENSIONS ARE
RETAINED — BLOCKING IN SHADOWS BY OUTLINE BEFORE SHADING — ALL PRACTICE
IN DRAWING LINES WILL BE HELPFUL — LINES USED FOR CONTOUR BOTH OF
OBJECTS AND OF SHADOWS — FINDING THE DIRECTION OF SHADOWS — WHY
PLASTER CASTS ARE USED AS STUDIES — JAPANESE ART ENTIRELY WITHOUT
LIGHT AND SHADE OF THE SORT MOST USUAL IN OCCIDENTAL MODELING — NOTING
VALUES — MERE SHADING NOT THE END OF DRAWING.

In order that there may be no doubt about the method of placing
elements, as suggested in the last chapter, we have made skeletons (2
and 4) of the Grasset and the Herkomer cuts, on which we have marked,
so that there can be no misunderstanding, the lines given in our
diagrams 2 and 3. In the Grasset diagram, No. 3, A B C D correspond to
_a b c d_ in skeleton diagram No. 4, while the dotted forms, E and F,
No. 3, correspond to _e_ and _f_, No. 4.

In the Herkomer, No. 2, _w x y z_ is the rectangle W X Y Z of diagram
No. 1; 1 2 3 4 5 correspond to A, 6 7 8 9 10 to B, 11 12 13 14 to C;
while the _d e_ and _f g_ equal D E, F G; _p_ is our plumb-line, P.

It must be distinctly understood that any number of objects may
be contained in a rectangle; let a child scribble upon this page,
anywhere, a dozen or more■

{64} [Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 3.]

[Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 4.]

■{65} forms, no matter how irregular, and a perpendicular through the
extreme right-hand form, one through the left, and a horizontal through
the top and the bottom form, and we have a rectangle which has given
dimensions. It may be twice as high as wide, or three times as wide as
high, no matter, let either of those _proportions_ be preserved, and
a rectangle _of the same proportions_, drawn upon a visiting card or
covering the wall of a barn twenty feet high, will give you the right
proportions for your group. And then, if you will find inside of the
rectangle, one or a dozen polygons, like A, B, C, No. 1, and _f_, No.
4, you will be able to “place” the most irregular objects.

We give with this chapter also, two illustrations showing the manner
in which shading is done in the art schools, but the main thing I wish
you to note about the illustrations is, not the shaded drawing, but the
drawing where the shadow is blocked in, Fig. A. Now, this is important
to bear in mind: A line is used, not only for drawing the outside
outline or _contour_ of objects, but for drawing the outline of shadows
_upon_ and within them; therefore, every bit of practice you may have
in drawing lines of any kind will be helpful to you when blocking in
the shapes of shadows that bring out the form of an object. It is just
as imperative, for example, that you compare the inside _margin of the
shadows_ upon the wrist (as indicated in Fig. A) with the plumb-line,
so as to see their direction, as it is that you compare the trunk of
the Herkomer tree with the plumb-line, that you may get its direction.
(In obtaining the direction of small shadows the artist very frequently
uses his pencil, held vertical, as a plumb-line.)

{66} [Illustration: FIG. A.]

Examples of French Art School studies, from plates published under the
direction of Bargue and Gérôme, showing method of blocking in a cast,
both its outline and its shading.

{67} [Illustration: FIG. B.

Method of shading in simple tones, with very little reflected light or
half-tones. (See Fig. A.)]

{68} [Illustration: Portraits, drawn in crayon, by Fantin-La-Tour, from
his painting in the Salon of 1879. An example of the rendering of
“values” in black and white.]

{69}

We give another illustration that we trust will interest you, the very
beautiful drawing by Fantin-La-Tour. Our object in giving this is
twofold: first, to show you the drawing of the cast. We have said that
the Bargue-Gérôme studies show how students learn to work in Paris. The
truth is that nearly all over the world art students learn to draw from
white plaster casts on which the shadows are very distinct. The eye is
thus trained to see _form_, as we call it. And it will not be difficult
for you to look from the cast drawing in the La-Tour to the head of
the standing girl, and see how the form of her face is brought out by
shading in the same manner as in the cast.

In publishing a drawing of this kind in a book for printers we do not
recommend it as an example of drawing for the press (though it would
be an excellent guide for lithography), but it is full of interest in
that it exemplifies what artists consider artistic draftsmanship. It is
evident that the author of it has studied in an art school and that he
gets his effects, not by chance, but by deliberation. He is sensitive
to the different degrees of darks upon the several objects. No matter
how plainly he may see the shadow upon the cast, he knows that, in
order to represent it as a light object, such shadows must _not_ be
black. So there is a vast difference between its dark tones and the
dark tones of the block on which it stands. Also in drawing the human
face he concentrates his darks about the eyes, nose and mouth; the
rest of the face is shaded with great delicacy, for he knows that if
he puts darks elsewhere he will get the undesirable effect of an old
face. The printer is not expected to carry his art as far as this, but
we must say {70} frankly that his degree of success depends entirely
upon the extent of his knowledge of the truths herein stated. One need
not go to an art school to see that a cast is white, and that its
shadows are not as black as the shadows upon a bronze; but unless he
trains his eye by observation to see this difference in other things,
no tricks of pen-technic will help him when he comes to draw a white
horse, or a white collar. He does not have to study portraiture in an
art school in order to make a drawing in pen and ink, for his paper,
from a photograph; but unless he will train himself to observe so that
he realizes that in a young face the greatest darks are limited to the
eyes, nose, and mouth, he will be likely to make his pen-portrait look
more like an old person than a young person, even though in executing
the same he imitates the most perfect pen-technic.

Now, as the placing of the shadows in the seated girl’s face is not the
same, it is a little difficult for you to realize that it contains the
same kind of drawing as the blocked-in cast hand and head.

But the eye becomes trained from drawing casts to see the most delicate
modeling of shadows, and the seated girl’s face is really a complex
style of drawing, of which the cast head and hand are simple specimens.
I mean by “complex style of drawing” a method of getting effects by
imitating the light and shade upon objects, as opposed to mere outline
style or silhouette style.

Now, therefore, this illustration should indicate to you that it is
well to draw from casts, as art students do, if you wish to make
finished pictures in black and white.

In the foregoing statements I have been careful in {71} my language.
I do not say students _all_ over the world learn to draw in light and
shade, for there is a great deal of wonderful Japanese art that is done
entirely without knowledge of light and shade of the sort most usual in
Occidental modeling. Nor do I say that you _must_ draw from casts to
learn to see light and shade, because during the middle ages many great
artists learned to draw from life and not from casts. The cast is a
comparatively modern art-school accessory.

Another reason for giving this La-Tour drawing is that it brings us a
step farther into the consideration of values; we notice that in it
the cast appears to be white, the girls’ faces and hands lighter than
their gowns, and one girl’s hair lighter than the other’s. Now, when an
artist makes a difference between the degrees of the color of objects,
we say he notes their values.

Bear this in mind, then, that mere shading is not the end of drawing.
You can go a step farther and indicate the color value of a shadow, of
which more hereafter.

{72} [Illustration: STUDY OF A HEAD, IN CRAYON OR PENCIL, BY
DAGNAN-BOUVERET.

Showing method of sketching the outline of a hat.]

{73} CHAPTER VIII.

STUDY BY DAGNAN-BOUVERET — A HAT IN OUTLINE NOT MEANT FOR AN OUTLINE
DRAWING — CONNECTING LINK BETWEEN OUTLINE AND SHADED DRAWING — MORE
ABOUT ART-SCHOOL METHODS — METHOD OF DRAWING BASED UPON CAST
DRAWING — THE BIG SHADOWS VERSUS MINOR SHADOWS — DO NOT DRAW INDIVIDUAL
HAIRS — HAIR AND MUSTACHE TO BE CONSIDERED AS A MASS, NOT AS SEPARATE
HAIRS — EFFECT TO BE OBTAINED BY MASSES OF SHADOWS — TRAIN THE EYE
TO BECOME SENSITIVE TO GRADUATIONS OF LIGHT AND SHADE — LIGHT AND
DARK IN THE HEAD INTENDED TO SHOW SHAPE OF THE SKULL, NOT TO INDICATE
PARTI-COLORED HAIR — DRAWING FROM PASTEBOARD BOXES GOOD TRAINING IN
LEARNING TO SEE LIGHT AND SHADE — CONTRASTING A FINISHED DRAWING
(GAILLARD) WITH A ROUGH SKETCH — EQUAL ART IN EACH WHEN BOTH ARE
WELL DONE — A NEWSPAPER CUT IN WHICH LIGHT AND SHADE ARE INDICATED
BY VARIATION OF THICKNESS IN LINE — BROAD DRAWING RECOMMENDED TO
PRINTERS — THE NASO-LABIAL LINE — RÉSUMÉ.

In our illustration by Dagnan-Bouveret we find most interesting
indications of how an artist works; and this head may serve as a
connecting link between the chapter on outline and the one on shading.
The hat is a beautiful piece of outline drawing, which, however, was
not meant for an outline drawing. It is simply to serve as the placing
of the hat, which would afterward be shaded as are the face and
mustache. The eyes, {74} nose and mustache were first outlined in this
way, and you will recognize, I think, that this is the same kind of
drawing as that of which we treated in our first chapters, though, of
course, the hat is not all in one plane.

But before you can thoroughly appreciate the drawing of the face it is
necessary that I should explain a little further the study of drawing
as it is taught in the art schools. This I will do with the help of the
Lœwe-Marchand cut. In this, we see the method pursued in almost all art
schools the world over: a method based upon cast drawing. It is found
from experience that students learn to see form more prominently from
a plaster cast, which is white, than from natural objects; and it is
found that the best results are got if the students are taught to see
the big shadows of an object rather than the multitude of minor shadows
which may be seen upon close scrutiny. So the student is told not to
look for these minor shadows, but to half close his eyes, and stand a
good distance away from the object—say three times its height—and look
for the form that he sees when the object becomes to his half-closed
eyes nothing more than a mass with a light and a dark side. You can
imagine that after a person has learned to get the effect of a hand and
a foot, as in the illustration in Chapters VII and X, by merely noting
the shape of the one big shadow, that it is not difficult for him to go
farther and put in the minor shadows by opening his eyes and examining
the object more closely; and that when he has learned to do this for
several months, or perchance several years, in the antique class, and
then for as long, or longer, in the life class, that he has become■

{75} [Illustration: CHARCOAL DRAWING.

Portrait of M. X., by Lœwe-Marchand.

This drawing was doubtless made on a sheet of charcoal paper, possibly
gray in color, and was then photographed for the direct process; and
then, in order to indicate the gray paper, the photo-engraver tinted
the zinc plate with a Ben Day film, which gives the stipple result. The
cross lines in the corner indicate that after the artist made his study
he wished to enlarge it upon a canvas preliminary to painting, which
was done by covering the drawing with squares and adding a diagonal
to the same. These squares and diagonals were repeated on a larger
scale on the canvas and the drawing enlarged freehand by placing the
different points of the original in the corresponding triangles on
the canvas. This method of enlarging drawings has been used for five
thousand years.]

■{76} so sensitive to seeing shadows that it is not difficult for
him to discern them upon anything and everything. Now, that is the
secret of the beautiful drawing of the mustache in the Dagnan-Bouveret
drawing. The beginner draws the hairs of the mustache, and tries to get
his effect in that way; but you cannot by drawing the pelt of a fox
on a barn door get the effect of one with a real live body underneath
it. The result in this drawing is due entirely to Dagnan-Bouveret’s
sensitiveness to light and shade. The lines, which the casual observer
would take to be the hairs of the mustache, are really the shadows
thrown by the groups of hairs as they part here and there. It is true
that if he were etching this head or drawing it with a fine pen, he
might in finishing it put in a few hairs, and even Albrecht Dürer would
sometimes get a good effect by drawing the hairs of the mustache or
the curls on a head. But in nearly all modern work, the hair, mustache
or beard is considered as a mass receiving light and shade, and is so
treated, there being no great difference between the golden hair of a
child and the white hair of an old woman.

In the beautiful study by Gaillard we see the shape of the skull under
the woman’s hair, and there is a very great difference between the part
that is in shadow around her ears and the part that is light on the
top of her head. This does not mean that the hair was gray on top, and
black around the ears, but it means that the light struck the hair on
top, while it did not strike it on the sides.

Now, if you can give yourself the time to study from the cast, or even
from simple pasteboard boxes, so that your eye will become sensitive to
these graduations from■

{77} [Illustration: STUDY FOR THE PORTRAIT OF MME. R.

By C. F. Gaillard.]

■{78} light to dark, you will soon realize that, while in your drawing
for printing you may never in a hundred years’ practice draw anything
so delicate as the Gaillard, yet in your simplest drawings you may put
in practice the theory upon which it is made. For example, if you are
drawing an old woman’s head, even if you only use four or five lines
to represent her hair, you will not press upon your pen when you are
doing her hair on the top, but you will press upon it when you come
within the region of the ears; and that pressure, though it will not
represent hairs, nor the actual value of the shadow, will yet give
_the difference_ between the light on the top of the head and the
shadow behind the ears, and this will suggest to the educated eye the
roundness of the cranium.

Now we reproduce also the rough Watts drawing. Let us contrast these
two drawings. The one is almost as finished as it can be, the other
slight; yet I want you to realize why I recommend this slight drawing
to printers and tell you that it is artistic. It is so because in the
very heavy lines that you see in the ear, beard and coat there is
knowledge of modeling. The artist knew his business just as Gaillard
did, and every time he put down a blotty line it was meant to represent
the presence of a shadow. This face is from a photograph; hundreds of
delicate tones have been left out; and the white hair of the beard
is modeled with nothing but thin and heavy lines while the shadows
of the photograph were delicate gray tints! A clever penman drawing
from a photograph uses darks which the uneducated eye will take to be
arbitrary blackening of the drawing, but which an artist knows are the
result of intelligent observation.

{79} [Illustration: GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R. A.

An English newspaper cut from _Tid-Bits_, artist unknown. An excellent
example of newspaper work. Note that the skull-cap is not represented
partly gray and partly black because the artist meant to indicate a cap
that was one color in front and another in the back, but he meant to
show the rounding of the cranium, just as Gaillard did in varying the
tones in the hair of the old woman.]

{80}

Now, in the Gaillard drawing you see a very delicate line running
diagonally from the wing of the nose almost to the corner of the lips.
This is called the naso-labial line, and is found in every old face. I
say again, that though you work for one hundred years as a printer you
would probably never draw a delicate line like this. But if you should
make studies in pencil and realize that this line is typical of old
age, you would be able to put it in such a drawing as the Watts (the
artist has used two lines to represent it), where, you will notice, it
comes down about as far on the lower lip as in the Gaillard, and you
would realize why it was left out in the Dagnan-Bouveret and Marchand
younger subjects.

This chapter should be exceedingly interesting to you as indicating two
things—one discouraging and the other encouraging. First, that when
students of art have the opportunity to work so beautifully, as in the
Bargue-Gérôme studies, and afterward from life, as in the Gaillard,
they needs must see more than you do, and you must not expect to equal
them if you, a busy printer, can only practice a few evenings a week.
Therefore you should not attempt subtile renderings like the Gaillard,
but should confine yourself to simple means. On the other hand, when I
tell you that this is about all the study there is gone through with
in an art school (I say about all, for besides blocking-in, students
learn a good deal about values; this we shall treat of in a succeeding
chapter), it should be interesting to you to realize that if you will
simply train yourself to see light and shade like the plinth in the
foot studies given in Chapter XII by drawing a pasteboard box, and
then afterward draw from life, so as to see that hair is darker {81}
in shaded portions than in light ones, and that in an old person
the naso-labial line is marked and shows darker than the cheeks,
you will, when copying a photograph for your paper, no matter how
roughly you work, be able to indicate the shadows in the hair and the
dark naso-labial line, as in the Watts portrait. This, I say, should
encourage you, and it is the only way for you to learn to draw.

{82} CHAPTER IX.

HEAD BY KNAUS ANALYZED — DRAWN IN THE MANNER OF THE DAGNAN-BOUVERET
AND CONTAINING LINES LIKE THE WATTS — THE NASO-LABIAL LINE USED TO
DELINEATE OLD AGE — THE SHADOW OF THE NOSTRIL — THE WING OF THE
NOSE — THE NOSTRIL USUALLY THE DARKEST SHADOW LINE IN A FACE.

Let us resume the subject of Chapter VIII. We give a fine drawing of
an old man’s head by Knaus, and we will ask you to look at it and see
if you cannot realize two things about it—first, that no matter how
many lines there may be upon the hat, which make it look battered and
different in texture from a new silk hat, it was first drawn as was
the Dagnan-Bouveret given in the last chapter; secondly, do you notice
the oblique naso-labial line, which we spoke of in connection with the
Gaillard and Watts? and do you realize one of two things from this
also, that, either this line in the original drawing ran up to the wing
of the nose but was lost in the several engravings, or else the artist
wished to indicate that his model was not a very old man, and he did
not make the line very strong in that place? If so, you have learned
some important principles that will help you in drawing, for you will
be able to sketch any hat you wish to draw by the same process that the
best artists employ. Again, you will be able to use proper judgment in
introducing the lines into a face. If, for example, you were copying,
in pen-and-ink, chalk-plate or wood engraving,■

{83} [Illustration: OLD MAN’S HEAD.

Crayon Drawing by Ludwig Knaus.]

■{84} from some half-obliterated etching or from some faded
daguerreotype, an old man’s head like the Knaus, you would have the
knowledge back of you that would permit you to draw in the naso-labial
with proper accentuation. If you knew the original was a centenarian
you would most certainly continue the line up to the wing of the
nose and draw it continuously without a break; or if he were but a
sexagenarian of whom the biographical dictionaries said “he carried his
years lightly,” you might purposely break this line as in the Knaus.

So far, so good. And now for some other lines in the face. At the
base of the nose we have the shadow of the nostril, and the curved
portion of the nose around it called the wing of the nose; these
are nearly always introduced into drawings. In the Knaus they are
very happily drawn. Revert to the illustrations of the last chapter,
and see if you can find them. In the Marchand and Gaillard they are
represented by modeling rather than lines, but they are outlined in the
Dagnan-Bouveret and the Watts, the former being in pencil. We notice
that one of these objects is grayer than the other; which is it? It
is the naso-labial line, and the shadow of the nostril is much the
darker. The same effect is got in the Watts by using a fine line for
the naso-labial line and a thicker line, or a blot, for the nostril.
If, therefore, you were drawing the Gaillard in line, can you not
realize that you would approximate the effect of our half-tone by
making the outline of the wing of the nose the lightest of your lines,
the naso-labial line darker, and the shadow of the nostril the darkest
of the three? This order can {85} usually be followed in drawing
an old person, and in almost every case (young or old) the nostril
shadow is the darker of the three lines mentioned. In regard to the
nostril being sometimes a line and sometimes a blot, the difference
lies in the character of the original; with some persons the nostril
is very straight and little of the inside of the nose shows. This was
evidently the case in the Knaus original, so the artist uses a line
and nothing more for the nostril (you will, however, not fail to note
the subtlety of the artist’s touch, which gives us a strongly marked
line for the nostril, but a more delicate line for the wing of the
nose). In the Dagnan-Bouveret, however, the nostril goes up at quite an
angle, exposing much more of the inside of the nose than in the Knaus;
therefore, were you rendering this drawing in pen-and-ink, you could
use a blot in the nostril similar in heaviness to that in the Watts
portrait on page 79.

We should advise you, by the way, in following these chapters, to make
tracings of all our half-tone cuts and render them in pen-line like the
Watts; this will help you immensely to understand an analyzation of
them.

{86} CHAPTER X.

THE ANALYZATION OF THE NASO-LABIAL LINE INDICATES THE FOUNDATION
OF ART STUDY — WHEN THE LINE IS PROPERLY SEEN IT MAY BE DRAWN
WITH ANY MEDIUM — CHOUDIEU HEAD BY BONNARD — ITS SIMILARITY TO
THE WATTS — STRONG MARKING OF THE NASO-LABIAL LINE IN IT — A
SIMILAR ANALYZATION TO THAT GIVEN THE WATTS DRAWING — PORTRAIT
BY TOUSSAINT — HOW IT MIGHT BE RENDERED IN SIMPLE PEN LINES LIKE
THE WATTS — DRAWING BY BONNARD — ITS HEAVY OUTLINE APPROPRIATE
TO PRINTING — THE MEANING OF BLACKS IN A DRAWING — DRAWING BY
BONNAT — EXAMPLE OF DRAWING BY LIGHT AND DARK MASSES — THE EMPLOYMENT
OF WHITES IN SCRATCH-BOARD AND IN WOOD ENGRAVING — BONNARD’S DRAWING OF
CURTAIN — BRUN DRAWING CORRECT IN COLOR VALUES — DIGRESSION IN REGARD
TO FRENCH NAMES — DRAWING OF A FOOT SHOWING ART SCHOOL METHODS.

Some of the most valuable hints we have given our readers are those
of Chapters VIII and IX, in connection with the naso-labial line. In
these you will find the foundation of our teaching—that is, we do not
say that a human face must be made by putting in a black line running
obliquely from the nose to the lip, made with such or such a pen,
such or such a crayon, ink, or charcoal, but we point out the line in
_nature_, and say that because it is found in nature, artists put it in
their drawings. When not found in a face, as that of a young person,
then it is left out in a good artist’s drawing of a young face. Whether
he uses pen, wash, {87} or crayon, has very little to do with the
case. There are some methods of using the pen, wash, or crayon, that
are better than others; but, if you are taught to see the naso-labial
line in nature, it is very easy to learn to draw it in one of those
mediums, and having drawn it in one, it is easier to learn to draw it
in other mediums.

We give, with this chapter, the head of Choudieu, in which this line is
marked as conspicuously as in the■

[Illustration: HEAD OF PIERRE RENE CHOUDIEU.

Drawn by Pierre Bonnard (probably from a medallion, and possibly with a
quill pen), for _La Revue Blanche_.]

■Watts. This drawing might have been made with an ordinary pen,
somewhat worn, or (as was probably the case) with a quill pen, or with
a camel’s-hair brush, or with a Japanese brush (which, like the quill
pen, is a delightful instrument with which to draw heavy lines); but
are we not right in surmising that you are better prepared to draw
such a head because we pointed out in {88} the last chapter that the
naso-labial line was a characteristic mark of an old man’s face than
if we had given you directions for using the quill pen or the brush
and said nothing about this line? Of course, we do not mean to suggest
that, were you making a copy from _this_ line drawing, you would be so
careless as to leave out the naso-labial line, but if you were drawing
an old man’s face from a photograph, might you not easily overlook this
line if it had never been pointed out to you? If you agree with this
proposition you will be in thorough sympathy with the spirit in which
this work is written, and when our chapter on expression comes you will
not at all regret that it is not a technical chapter on the use of a
drawing instrument.

Now, let us consider the Choudieu drawing a little more fully, and
in doing so we shall ask you to notice that the words follow almost
verbatim the part of Chapter VIII referring to the Watts head. This
does not mean that we are at a loss for a vocabulary, but it is done
purposely so that we may thus call attention to it, and that you may
realize that we have called your attention to a vital principle;
moreover, that principle may be referred to again and again in almost
every case where an old person’s head is under consideration. We
publish also the Duc d’Aumale drawing, in which you will see the line
is again marked. Now, we publish this drawing mainly in connection
with the highly finished drawings illustrating Chapter VIII, by
Dagnan-Bouveret, Lœwe-Marchand and Gaillard, but you may profitably
note also that were you tracing it, intending to make a line drawing of
it in pen and ink, you would■

{89} [Illustration: THE LATE DUC D’AUMALE.

Drawn in crayon, by T. Toussaint, and engraved by half-tone.]

■{90} represent this muscular indentation with a strong line, as in
the Watts portrait. You will not fail to notice also the line in the
throat corresponding to the one in Bonnard’s Choudieu, now presented
for consideration.

This Bonnard is a slight drawing, but it is recommended to printers
because it is both artistic in treatment and easily printed. It is
artistic because in the heavy lines that you see in the ear and hair
there is a knowledge of modeling. The artist knew his business just as
Gaillard did, and every time he put down a blotty line it was meant to
represent the presence of a shadow. We have no means of determining
whether this was from an actual plaster or bronze medallion, or whether
the artist worked from a photograph and from his imagination rendered
the effect of a modeled relief; but in either case, in the photograph
or in nature, there were thousands of little tones that have been left
out. A clever pen draftsman works in the same manner, using darks which
the uneducated eye will take to be arbitrary blackening of the drawing,
but which an artist knows is the result of the intelligent observation
of the shapes of shadows, and of the most important shadows of a face.
Now, one of the most conspicuous lines in this drawing is the one
running diagonally from the wing of the nose almost to the corner of
the lips. This is called the naso-labial line, and is found in every
old face. I say again, that though you work for one hundred years as
a printer, you would probably never draw as correct a line as this.
But if you should make studies in pencil and realize that this line is
typical of old age, you would be able to put it in such a drawing■

{91} [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF LEON COGNIET.

After the painting by L. Bonnat, drawn, probably, by the painter
himself, upon grained scratch-board with lithographic crayon (?), the
lights scratched out with a penknife.]

■{92} as the Bonnard where, you will notice, it comes down about as
far as the lower lip, as in the Gaillard, and you would realize why it
was left out in the Dagnan-Bouveret and Marchand drawings.

The Bonnat portrait of Cogniet becomes particularly interesting from
this view point, e. g., practice for the sake of observation. It
is executed by a process of no value to the printer of the country
newspaper, but there is food for thought in the way the form is brought
out by the juxtaposition of masses of light and dark that are not
lines. Ordinarily we do not recommend to the printer to experiment with
such effects, but rather to confine himself to outline or silhouette,
but the value of the white-line will be considered in connection with
wood engraving, and any practice in drawing from nature in light masses
will help you appreciate the judicious use of white-line in wood
engraving, or strong contrasts of white and black in any medium. We
publish, for example, two very different kinds of drawing as companions
to the Bonnat. One in which Verdyen has obtained an effect of the
brilliancy of fireworks by scratching out whites from a very black
drawing. Similar effects may be got with great ease in wood engraving.

A still more clear effect of light is got in the Bonnard tailpiece,
where, by simply breaking the window sash with the light fold of a
curtain, he makes us feel the color of the curtain from the top to the
bottom of the picture. We should advise you to practice in any medium,
endeavoring to get similar effects, as they are most valuable in saving
a drawing from monotony. In the Brun drawing, for example, no casual
observer■

{93} [Illustration: A FETE AT BRUSSELS.

Drawn by Verdyen, probably on ruled scratch-board (see tones in the
sky), with crayon, in sky, and with brush, in figures; the plate very
much retouched by hand.]

■{94} would appreciate the white pillars, and an untrained draftsman
would be likely to cover them with tones, but as a matter of fact they
help immensely to give variety to the drawing. In an architectural
exhibition we are frequently tired by the monotony of similar drawings
where the draftsmen, in their desire to render texture and local color,
cover such surfaces with lines meant to represent stone, brick or
mortar.

We would remark also that just as our own repetition of the Watts
analysis apropos of the Bonnard’s Choudieu portrait was intentional,
so the apparent conglomeration of portrait studies, landscapes and
buildings is not the result of careless arrangement on our part, but
is intentional, that it may be shown that a certain principle in
drawing, studied from one object, may be applied to any other. If you
draw a friend’s face by lamplight and pick out the lights upon it and
his cuff, as in the Bonnat Cogniet, you will be prepared to pick out
similar lights on portions of buildings as in the pillars in the Brun
drawing; or on window curtain folds as in Bonnard’s tailpiece.

It may be interesting to printers for us to narrate the difficulty of
preparing a proper legend for the Choudieu. It was a tailpiece to an
article in a French magazine, and bore no legend. To all appearances it
was the portrait of one Mr. Dangers, but knowing how liberal the French
are in their use of cognomens, we took the precaution to investigate. A
Frenchman may be born Smith, but in manhood is known to the public by
one or a dozen other names. He may marry Miss Brown, and, therefore,
parade as Mr. Brown; his Uncle Jones■

{95} [Illustration: TAILPIECE, BY PIERRE BONNARD.]

■{96} may leave him money, so he publishes his articles under the
name of Jones; he was born in the city of Boston, so he signs himself
_de_ Boston, meaning _of_, or _from_, Boston. Under this name he
paints his first picture, but the town council does not buy his works
as he hoped it would, and the council of Albany does, so he discards
“de Boston” and, in his gratitude, he afterward signs his canvases
d’Albany (abbreviation of _de_ Albany). But now as to Christian names.
Our friend Smith was, perhaps, named by his father Henry, but at
his baptism there were added the names of Lewis and Charles and his
mother’s name, Black. Then, when at the age of fifteen he comes to be
confirmed, he takes the name of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, plus Mary.
And with any of his surnyms he may at any time combine any two or half
a dozen of these pronyms. So that a French biographical dictionary is
one-half biography and one-half cross-reference. Thus—_Brown_, see
_Jones_; _Black_, see _White_.

Knowing this, we referred to the periodical from which this was cut,
and found it was a tailpiece to an article signed Pierre Réné Choudieu.
Ah! this gave us a clue; but, who then was Dangers? Was Choudieu a
sculptor as well as a writer, and was this a medallion portrait by
him of Dangers? Or was it a portrait of Choudieu by a draftsman named
Dangers? The artists were not mentioned in the index nor on any page
in the body of the magazine, but on the title-page we found “Dessins
de Pierre Bonnard,” meaning that the drawings in the magazine were by
one artist—Pierre Bonnard. Therefore, D’Angers could not have been the
artist, so■

{97} [Illustration: AT THE CAFÉ APHRODITE.

Pen Drawing by A. Brun.]

{98} [Illustration: Example of French Art School studies, from plates
published under the direction of Bargue and Gérôme, showing method of
blocking in a cast, both outline and shadows.]

{99} [Illustration: Example of French Art School studies, from plates
published under the direction of Bargue and Gérôme, showing method of
shading in simple tones without much reflected light or half-tones.]

■{100} we must search further; this we did, and luckily, in the back
of the magazine, found the advertisement of a series of articles
by Pierre Choudieu, and one of the paragraphs in it read, “Pierre
Réné Choudieu, naquit a Angers,” etc. This translated meant that he,
Choudieu, was _born at_ Angers, so that we fathomed our problem at
last, and give the result under the cut.

The foot plates are identical in treatment with the plates of hands
given on pages 66 and 67. The reader should compare these plates, that
he may understand that a method may be learned from the drawing of one
object and applied to the drawing of a thousand other objects. You must
not expect that in a brief treatise of this kind we can give specimens
of every object that the printer may have occasion to draw—we should
have to publish an encyclopædia for that—but we do purpose to give
_methods_ which will enable him to draw every kind of tangible object
with light and shade upon it. These hands and feet studies may be used
as guides to show how any such object may be “modeled,” i. e., shaded
so that the object seems to be solid.

{101} CHAPTER XI.

MORE ABOUT THE NASO-LABIAL LINE — IT SUGGESTS OLD AGE — ABSENT IN
YOUTH — DRAWING NOT ARBITRARY — LINES INTRODUCED BECAUSE THEY ARE IN
NATURE — LINES MADE BY THE ORBICULAR MUSCLE AND THE CROW’S FEET (THESE
SUGGESTIVE OF OLD AGE) — LINE AT THE CORNER OF THE MOUTH — LINES MADE
BY THE FRONTAL MUSCLE — SUGGESTIVE OF OLD AGE OR OF PASSION — MUCH USED
BY THE ACTOR.

Let us harp a little longer upon the naso-labial line. We reproduce
two very beautiful drawings by Grellet, the one of a young girl, the
other of an old man. How suggestive is the old man’s head because of
the strong marking of the naso-labial line. Do you not realize how
easily you could draw this line, and the whole head for that matter, in
the manner of the Bonnard Choudieu? But valuable as it is by itself,
how much more suggestive in connection with the young girl’s head,
where the naso-labial line is hardly perceptible. This is a lesson in
negation, at the value of which we have hinted so often. It is your
business to learn when to put in a line, but equally your business to
learn when to leave it out. Therefore we give with this chapter some
heads of younger persons, that you may learn this very lesson. Take the
Fred Walker head. How like the Watts drawing, so far as its treatment
goes; but the naso-labial line is missing. What is the result?■

{102} [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF FRED WALKER.

Pen drawing by E. G. T.

Note entire absence of naso-labial line, and of line about orbicular
muscles. Absence of these lines indicate youth. Contrast with the Watts
and Choudieu heads, where strong markings are prominent because of
advanced age of the subjects.]

■{103} Why, we have the characteristics of a younger man. In this
little comparison you have the foundation of all art study. Drawing is
not arbitrary; we do not introduce lines into a face simply because
this artist or that artist did so; we introduce them because their
counterpart is found in nature. It is not in the province of these
papers, as we have said, to tell the printer how he should draw every
object he may attempt to delineate—a waste-paper basket, the head of a
cow, a printing press, or a hat. But we can give him hints which will
help him to observe for himself the characteristics of any object under
the sun which he may wish to draw. If he finds around the mouth of a
cow more pronounced lines than in a calf, he must put them in. If in
one trash basket the wickerwork runs upward with each line parallel,
he must draw it by perpendicular parallel lines, while in another one
the wickerwork is interwoven diagonally and he must represent it by
diagonal lines. In a coat sleeve, the arm hanging down, there are but
few cross-folds, so he introduces few cross-lines into a sketch of such
a sleeve, but when the arm is bent many more folds occur at the elbow
and he therefore introduces more cross-lines in his drawing of the
sleeve. This is about all there is to the science of drawing.

Now let us proceed a little further. In the Watts we notice two or
three lines below the lower eyelid; these we find also in the Gaillard,
but they are absent in the Donatello Young Girl’s Head by Grellet; they
are very perceptible in the Brontolone. Here we have to do with another
muscle. In the human head the eye is■

{104} [Illustration: LITHOGRAPH CRAYON DRAWING.

From bust of a young girl by Donatello, by F. Grellet.

Note absence of strong marking of naso-labial line, the absence of
line at the angle of the lips, and of orbicular muscles. The absence
of these markings indicates youth. To be compared with the Lefebvre
drawing.]

■{105} set in a cavity in the skull called the orbital orifice,
and in a very old person the lower edge of this cavity is sometimes
perceptible under the flesh, and occasions a line in an artist’s
drawing. But the main cause for the lines around the edge of an eye
is that the eye is surrounded by a soft muscle, which is called the
orbicular muscle. The part of this muscle which forms the eyelid is
called the palpebral part; the part above the eyelid, the superior
orbital orbicular; and the part below the lower eyelid, the inferior
orbital orbicular. At the outer corner of the eye, as the two parts
come together, they show in an old person’s face habitually, and in a
child’s face laughter creates radiating lines called crow’s-feet. These
lines called the crow’s-feet, and still more the folds in the muscles
below the eye between the lower eyelid and the base of the orbital
orifice are, like the naso-labial line, very conspicuous in old age and
almost entirely absent in childhood. If you understand this you will
turn to the beautiful drawing by Lefebvre, and realize why, although
there is a great deal of shading on the hair, ear and jaw, and quite
a perceptible piece of shading on the wing of the nose, there are no
lines down the cheek between the eye and the lips. Indeed, in the
original drawing, the white paper was there left entirely uncovered.
Of course, the artist might have filled the entire space with shading,
but in that case it would have been a graduated tint suggesting the
roundness of the cheek, as in the Grellet Young Girl, but there would
have been no suggestion of lines; the moment lines are introduced
the characteristics of old age are {106} suggested. At the corner
of the mouth is a line which runs in about the same direction as the
naso-labial line. In youth the cheek is slightly rounded out from the
lip, and in a side view it is usually the outline of the cheek■

[Illustration: CRAYON STUDY OF A CHILD.

By J. Lefebvre.

Half-tone from a lithographic reproduction by F. Grellet.]

■which makes the little line at the corner of the lips in the Lefebvre
and the Grellet Young Girl, and always in the side view of a baby’s
head; but as the head becomes less babyish it is the muscles of the
lips which cause this line. The muscles of the lips are exactly like
those of the eye; they run entirely around the lips, but at the
corner of the mouth, instead of having the radiating line like the
crow’s-feet, the threads of the muscle have a more perpendicular trend
and create a line running in the same direction as the naso-labial
line; while below this, but attached to it, is the triangular muscle of
the lips, or the {107} depressor of the angle of the lips; this, in the
ordinary old person, creates a long line, starting at the corner of the
lip, running down considerably. This line is very conspicuous in the
Brontolone, but absent in the Young Girl and the Lefebvre. It is seen
plainly in the Choudieu, and we do not see how you can ask for a better
lesson in drawing than the comparing of the highly finished Brontolone
with the very simple Choudieu!

Once more, above the eyes the forehead is covered with the frontal
muscle. The fibers run perpendicularly, but when they contract, as
when a person frowns, the folds in the flesh run horizontally; these
folds are particularly perceptible in old age. Though every mother will
remember their alarming occurence in babyhood, we do not associate them
with youth; and so in the Grellet Young Girl we find no lines in the
forehead, nor are they in the Lœwe-Marchand, hence a placid temperament
is suggested in that portrait. Many men no older than Monsieur X. have
constant lines in their forehead, and the actor uses these muscles
continually for expression. We write the plural because the muscle
is frequently divided into right and left portions which follow the
direction of the eyebrows, so that when the muscle is contracted the
eyebrow’s are no longer horizontal but have an M shape across the
forehead. In the Watts there is a very perceptible line which curves
over the right eye, taking the direction of the eyebrow; this is part
of the frontalis muscle. If the line on the other side were completed
it would take a similar direction over the left eye.

{108} [Illustration: MR. COLQUHOUN. SIR JOHN WILLOUGHBY. MR. H. H.
CHAMPION.

ENGLISH NEWSPAPER PORTRAITS.

Sir John Willoughby, Mr. Colquhoun, and Mr. H. H. Champion, from the
_Pall Mall Gazette_. Undoubtedly traced from photographs. Executed
in a simple manner, suitable for quick printing on a cylinder press.
Note absence of naso-labial line, except perhaps in the case of the
right-hand side of Mr. Colquhoun’s head. This is either a slip of the
pen, meant to come lower down to represent the mustache, or it is the
naso-labial line, and its companion was lost in the engraving process.
(This line could very well have remained in Mr. Colquhoun’s face, as
he is evidently much older than Mr. Champion and Sir John Willoughby.)
Also note absence of strong marking about the orbicular muscles, and
absence of lines in the frontalis. The absence of these lines indicates
youth. Compare with the Choudieu and Watts, where the introduction of
these lines represents old age.]

{109} [Illustration: LITHOGRAPH CRAYON DRAWING.

From Bust of Brontolone by Luca della Robbia, by F. Grellet.

Reproduced by half-tone. The original was 12 by 9 inches. Strong
marking of the naso-labial line, line at the corner of the lips,
crow’s-feet, and orbicular muscle, typical of old age. To be compared
with the Bonnard Choudieu.]

We have thus covered the muscles of the face which have most to do
with expression, and so you see that, besides drawing the eyebrows,
eyelashes, eyeballs, the bridge of the nose, the nostril, the lips,
and the chin, the artist has to do with a great many muscles, and the
novice must not only be warned about them, that he may know when to
introduce them, but he must remember that they have principally to do
with old age or {110} abnormal expression (laughter, grief, hate,
etc.), and they must be used to express such attributes only. Hence
the three English drawings represent very admirably the normal, placid
expression of middle-aged men. If with the foregoing hints you attempt
to draw a portrait for your newspaper, we fancy that, if you follow our
advice faithfully, you will meet with more success than you imagine.

{111} CHAPTER XII.

THE SCIENCE OF PEN DRAWING — PEN DRAWING MAY BE ANY SIZE — THE WATTS
IN TWO SIZES — DRAWING MAY BE ENLARGED OR REDUCED — FROM THE PRINTER’S
VIEWPOINT PEN TECHNIC LESS IMPORTANT AS REGARDS ITS ADAPTABILITY
TO REDUCTION THAN AS REGARDS THE PRINTABILITY OF THE CUT MADE FROM
IT — THE PRINTER’S OWN EXPERIENCE A GUIDE IN THIS MATTER — THREE KINDS
OF PRINTING CONSIDERED, FOR CONVENIENCE CHARACTERIZED AS I. “MAGAZINE,”
II. “CITY NEWSPAPER,” III. “COUNTRY NEWSPAPER” PRINTING — CROSS-HATCHED
LINES SUPPOSED TO FILL UP MORE RAPIDLY THAN SINGLE LINES — PORTRAIT
OF STEVENSON BY WYATT EATON THE NE PLUS ULTRA OF NEWSPAPER
PORTRAITURE — THE NASO-LABIAL LINE IN THIS DRAWING SUGGESTED BY
SHADING, NOT BY A SINGLE LINE — A DRAWING BY SICKERT — ANY PEN MAY
BE USED FOR THESE DRAWINGS, BUT THE LINES MAINLY TO BE CONSIDERED AS
THICK OR THIN, SINCE THEY MAY BE PUT UPON CHALK PLATE, AND NOT DRAWN IN
PEN-AND-INK AT ALL.

In our last chapter we said that we believed that if you would attempt
to draw a portrait for your newspaper, following our advice faithfully,
you would meet with more success than you would imagine. But you say,
perhaps, that you are not prepared to attempt a portrait because we
have given you no directions for pen drawing. Well, here you are partly
right and partly wrong. There _is_ a science of pen drawing that■

{112} [Illustration: GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS, R.A.

An English newspaper cut—from _Tit-Bits_, artist unknown. An excellent
example of newspaper work. Note that the skull-cap is not represented
partly gray and partly black because the artist meant to indicate a cap
that was one color in front and another in the back, but he meant to
show the rounding of the cranium, just as Gaillard did in varying the
tones in the hair of the old woman.

An enlargement of this cut was given in Chapter VIII. If a drawing is
made the size of that enlargement, it can satisfactorily be reduced
to the size of the cut above. Of course it may reduce to smaller
dimensions; the greater the reduction the nearer the lines come
together, and their closeness makes them more difficult to print.]

■{113} you may study with profit, but in order to draw a simple
portrait for your newspaper it is not necessary for you to have any
further instruction than we have given you. If it is going to pay you
to follow drawing at all, you should be able at this stage of progress
to make a tolerably good drawing for a newspaper portrait. But, you
say, “What size should I make the drawing?” We reply, “Almost any size,
though usually not smaller than the cut is to appear.” But that it
may be smaller is seen by our two Watts cuts. Here is a cut the exact
size of the original Watts, as it went to the engraver, who by mistake
enlarged it to the size it appeared in Chapter VIII. I accepted this
enlargement gladly, so as to show you that a drawing may be enlarged
or reduced, but more especially with the idea of showing you the usual
size that a drawing is made for reduction; for you will always be safe
in making your portrait the size of the Watts in Chapter VIII if you
wish it to appear the size of the present cut. I cannot over-emphasize
the importance of your realizing that you have been told sufficient
about pen drawing for you to go ahead and make drawings for your paper.
If there is anything more to be learned I am candid in saying that you
are better able to find out what it is than I am, for it is almost
entirely a matter of printing, and not of engraving. Photo-engravers
can nowadays reproduce almost any kind of a drawing, but a cut which
might print well in a magazine might not print at all in your country
newspaper. You know better than I do the trouble of “bringing up” a
fine cut on poor■

{114} [Illustration: THE GRANDMOTHER.

Pen Drawing, by E. Renard, from a French Catalogue.

The parallel lines in the background represent a tint, and herein is
the foundation of pen drawing, as distinguished from wash drawing:
parallel lines are used to represent a tint; if they are farther apart
they represent a lighter tint, if nearer together a darker tint; or
again, if the artist presses on his pen more heavily on one set of
lines than another, he can also get a darker tone without putting
the lines any closer together. For newspaper work such a method is
preferable to placing the lines near together; the Wyatt Eaton shows
the pressing on the pen method perfectly.]

■{115} paper, on a cylinder press, and when you are making your
drawing it is for you to keep in mind the kind of paper it is to be
printed on, and to keep your lines sufficiently open accordingly.
Ordinary intelligence should be your guide. Let us take the Renard
Grandmother for an example; in the background is a series of the
simplest lines imaginable. If you should make your drawing the same
size as our cut, and the lines the same distance apart, it could
be easily reduced to an inch wide, and print in a magazine, but it
would not then print in a country newspaper; the lines would be so
near together that they would fill up. The cut might print in a city
newspaper, but it is not likely. The truth is that a printer can tell
better about this than I can. All I can say is that as a general thing
a set of parallel lines print better than cross-hatched lines.

(In using the expressions, “a magazine,” “a city newspaper” and
“a country newspaper,” to represent first, second and third class
printing, I am well aware that the distinction is an arbitrary and
not a real one; that sometimes by using good ink, good stock and by
printing _slowly_, the country printer can run a cut in his newspaper
with better results than can a city paper using poorer stock and ink
for the sake of economy, and printing at lightning speed. But the
reader will kindly let the expressions stand for (1) perfect press,
good stock and ink, and expert overlaying; (2) perfect press, ordinary
“news” stock, poor ink, and little overlaying; (3) poorest stock, ink,
cheap press, and not expert overlaying.)

{116} [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON.

Drawn, probably with a quill pen, by Wyatt Eaton, in 1888, the original
8 by 10 inches. The drawing was made in an open manner so that it would
print on the poorest kind of paper, as it was used as a placard to
announce a story by Stevenson, in the New York _Sun_. Reproduced by
kind permission of the S. S. McClure Co., by whom it is copyrighted. A
reduction of this drawing, greater than the above, adorned the cover of
the March, 1897, _McClure’s Magazine_.]

{117}

Next to the preference of one set of lines to cross-hatched lines, it
is to be said that a dark is better obtained by pressing on the pen
than by putting the lines near together. We publish a superb example
of pen drawing for newspaper work—the Stevenson, by Wyatt Eaton. We
believe that this is the _ne plus ultra_ of newspaper portraiture,
for the lines are strong and vigorous, there being no possibility of
their running together in printing. I should advise you to look at this
portrait under a magnifying glass that you may realize how very simple
the treatment is.

McClure’s “Human Documents” contains a baker’s dozen of half-tones of
Stevenson, from photographs. You might procure this pamphlet and copy
the half-tones in pen, using the Wyatt Eaton as a guide.

(And in parentheses I would say you will notice that the naso-labial
lines on both sides of the face are strongly marked, and yet instead
of there being one line going in the direction of the muscle, as in
Bonnard’s “Choudieu,” we have on the light side of the face eight
perpendicular lines, and on the shaded side six blots with almost
horizonal, but slightly oblique, direction! Do you not, therefore, see
that it is not the kind of line you use, not a matter of “what way
the lines go,” but where you put your tones, that counts in drawing?
If Wyatt Eaton had not seen the strongly marked naso-labial line on
Stevenson’s face, he would not have put these two triangular forms
radiating from the nostril. Moreover, Eaton could have represented
these lines in another way just as well. Also, it would {118} take too
long to explain other subtle features of this drawing, but we would add
that you will rarely see so much tone on the light cheek as in this
drawing. Stevenson was an invalid, and this tone represents the sunken
cheek of ill-health.)

Now, if you will examine the Sickert portrait of Wilson, you will
find an equally artistic drawing, but one not quite so adaptable to
newspaper printing; for the darks are partly obtained by putting
the lines near together rather than by great pressure, and in our
reproduction they have frequently run together where in the original
print, which was 6 by 9 inches, they were separated. And so also in
printing on poor paper; there is a chance that the interstices will
fill up, while they would not in the Eaton.

As, however, this drawing was made for printing on a thin manila paper,
not on coated paper, and there is great deal of pressure on the pen
(note especially the side of the nose), which was put on knowingly by
the artist, it contains much that should be imitated in newspaper work.

In regard to the way to make such heavy lines, we would say that it is
a mere matter of practice; the selection of pen has little to do with
it. Excellent results may be got by using a brush instead of the pen,
and we dare say that Mr. Eaton used a quill pen. But as a matter of
fact, the artist usually prefers to use a very fine pen such as a crow
quill, or mapping pen, which is flexible, it thus being that a dark
line is got, not by a blunt-pointed pen, but by allowing the nibs of■

{119} [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF C. RIVERS WILSON.

Pen drawing by Walter Sickert. From the London _Whirlwind_, 1890. An
example of artistic portrait-drawing suitable for newspapers, showing
darks obtained both by placing fine lines near together (see just above
mustache on shaded side), and darks obtained by pressing on the pen
(see heavy lines on shaded side of nose).]

■{120} a flexible pen to spread so that the ink flows very freely
from it. For ordinary purposes a Gillot 303 or 170 is frequently used
by the artists. But it is a matter of practice mainly, and the pen you
usually write with is apt to be the best medium for practice at first.
In fact, we are particularly anxious to have our reader not worry about
pen technic. Let him realize that he might wish to put his drawing upon
the chalk plate, in which case he would make a tracing of a photograph,
and, placing it upon the chalk, press upon it with a hard-pointed
pencil, and thus transfer his outline into an indentation on the chalk.
He would then take the scraping tool and clear away the chalk wherever
he wishes a line. The fact being that he would introduce lines only
where he knew there should be lines in nature, as in the case of the
naso-labial line, the eyelids, etc.; and he would broaden his lines
only where he knew the tones should be darker in nature than where he
had used a set of fine lines. There would be no use of pen at all!

So you see we have come right to the milk in the cocoanut—right to the
matter this series was to teach. Many readers no doubt were disgusted
when they did not find in our first chapters directions for the use
of the pen and a list of materials for pen drawing, but those who may
have occasion to do their portraits in chalk plate will thank us for
our hints on the study of nature and the study of lines, no matter how
made.

{121} CHAPTER XIII.

STUDY OF PEN TECHNIC CONTINUED — THE PRINTER MUST NOT EXPECT
THE KNOWLEDGE OF PEN TECHNIC TO TAKE THE PLACE OF KNOWLEDGE OF
DRAWING — EXAMPLES CONSIDERED — THE GRANDMOTHER BY RENARD — THE
MARCHETTI, THE VIERGE, THE ST. ELME, ARE GOOD EXAMPLES OF PEN
DRAWING — THE GUILLAUME AN AMUSING EXAMPLE OF USE OF PARALLEL
LINES — THE FORAIN A GOOD EXAMPLE OF NEWSPAPER CARTOON STYLE; THE
VALLET, OF NEWSPAPER NEWS STYLE — THE MOULLIER AN EXAMPLE OF ECCENTRIC
USE OF DOTS — METHOD OF PEN PRACTICE SUGGESTED.

[Illustration: INITIAL LETTER BY MARCHETTI.

Pen drawing from _Paris Illustré_.]

Judicious study of pen technic is helpful to the printer-designer. I
use the adjective “judicious” because I need a word beginning with J
for our initial letter. What I mean is, that just so far as the printer
studies drawing, he may study pen technic, but he must not expect to
progress further in the latter than he has progressed in the former; so
while this chapter will be exceedingly helpful to the reader who has
followed the previous ones, it will only lead to failure■

{122} [Illustration: ILLUSTRATION TO PABLO DE SEGOVIE.

Pen drawing by Daniel Vierge, one of the most celebrated of modern
pen-draftsmen. If you will scrutinize this drawing under a magnifying
glass you can examine this technic with more ease than with the naked
eye.]

■{123} if the reader does not follow our advice in regard to training
the eyes to see as well as in regard to pen technic.

We said in our last chapter that the parallel lines in the background
of “The Grandmother,” by Renard, showed the foundation of pen drawing.
The same is■

[Illustration: Illustration (pen drawing); chapter heading, but without
initial letter, by Marchetti. From _Paris Illustré_.]

■true of our initial letter, in which we find a set of parallel lines
which, contrasted with the white of the illumination thrown by the
lantern, gives us an effect of gray. This is found again in the other
drawing by Marchetti; and if you will study these two drawings, and
then turn to the Vierge, you will find that nine-tenths of it is drawn
in the same way. Here and there to get a certain vibration of tone,
Vierge uses crosshatch, but you will notice that the lightest gray and
the intensest dark are got without crosshatching.

In the St. Elme you may also distinguish very clever use of parallel
lines, without much crosshatching. We have purposely reproduced this,
together with the page it decorated, so that you may see the artist had
a good reason for not crosshatching; he wished his drawing to form a
decoration about the page, and he did not want it to be too heavy, so
he abstained from crosshatching.■

{124} [Illustration: Pen drawing by St. Elme, decorating a page of a
French journal, 9 1/2 by 13, showing a clever use of parallel lines,
and a method of decorating a printed page, which will be considered
later on.]

■{125} The best practice for you is to make drawings for your
publication in any manner you see fit, and after you have had
experience in printing the same, you can tell very well how much
crosshatching is advisable, and how much clogs up in the printing.
There are■

[Illustration: Caricature of the French painter (whose works are
somewhat dark and misty in effect) Eugène Carrière at work. By
Guillaume. From the French daily, _Gil Blas_.]

■several caricaturists in this country whose work is printed in daily
papers in a thoroughly satisfactory manner, and yet they use a great
deal of crosshatching, but of course they know just how open to keep
the lines, for they know just what results their printer can {126} get
and what not. But we would say it is a good principle, to begin with,
that the less crosshatching in your work the better it will print.
Hence the Marchetti and St. Elme drawings are given as examples.

In the portrait of the painter Carrière, we have an amusing example
of the effective use of parallel lines. Instead of giving us a black
silhouette, the artist—Guillaume—has given us a gray one, which
suggests the subject seen through a fog. Had the artist wished to
represent the palette as being of dark wood he could have pressed on
his pen lines and thus given us that effect. Had he wished to show that
the canvas was lighter than the figure, he could have refrained from
pressing so heavily on his pen lines, or, better still, distributed his
lines farther apart and thus obtained the effect of a lighter tone.
Bear in mind, however, that I used the term pen lines in speaking of
this drawing because the original was made in that medium, but the same
graduation or contrast of lines is applicable to nearly all methods of
line drawing; to etching and chalk plate as well. You will, perhaps,
have a better grasp of the subject by thinking of it as—the theory of
tone imitation by lines.

When you have grasped the theory of this pen technic, _alias_ the
representing of tone by lines, you will be prepared to make your own
deductions from various specimens of illustration.

Some of our friends, for example, who might have been interested in
our first chapters and the specimens of caricature given therein, may
have been disappointed {127} that we have given so much attention to
portraiture recently, so we have made an effort in this chapter to give
a _mélange_ that will cover many fields of newspaper illustration. In
the Forain we have a splendid example of such work. It was printed on
very poor paper stock, but it came out admirably, harmonizing with the
type, which is larger than that used in this country, long■

[Illustration: NEWSPAPER CARICATURE.

By Forain, from _Figaro_. This composition evidently makes fun of Mr.
Berthelot, who has had, or expects to have, some dealings with England,
for the visitor says, “May I see my honorable master?” and the maid
responds, “Mr. Berthelot is not receiving; he is taking an English
lesson.” The cut in _Figaro_ was 8 by 8, and it represents an excellent
method of newspaper drawing, and one that could be easily imitated in
chalk plate. We would also call attention to the drawing of the broom.
Our readers who followed the directions of our first chapters will see
that the silhouette of the broom is indicated in a masterly manner.]

{128} [Illustration: Example of news drawing, by L. Vallet, from a
French periodical.]

■{129} primer predominating. The drawing of the still-life objects
is particularly interesting. Look at the duster the woman holds: is
not its form exactly what you would see if it were held up against the
window and viewed in silhouette?

A good example of a news illustration is given in the Vallet page,
which could easily be imitated in chalk plate. The artist viewed a
collection of English army costumes, or witnessed a drill, and he shows
us in very simple lines the style of accouterment. Any newspaper editor
who could sketch tolerably well could do the same thing for his county
fair.

In the Moullier we have a specimen that is well-nigh as amusing as the
artist in the fog, for here we have a pen drawing that is not made by
lines, but by a series of stipples. While the newspaper tyro should not
employ this technic too frequently in his practice, still, realizing
that the tone effect is graphically gained without the use of the
conventional line, it must quickly dawn upon him that there are many
technics, and, having practiced drawing mantelshelves according to the
instructions in our early chapters, he will also appreciate the fact
that the artist was in front of this mantelshelf, as the horizontal
lines do not tip, and that the shelf was higher than his eye, as the
top of the mantel is not shown. This knowledge gathered allows the
student to see that various technics may represent the same truth in
nature.

A good method of practice for pen work is as follows: Take a wood
engraving or half-tone from some■

{130} [Illustration: Pen drawing by Marc Moullier, for _La Plume_,
showing a clever and eccentric use of dots. It may be remarked that
since the mantelpiece is above the eye we cannot see the top of it. It
is parallel to the artist’s eyes, and so is represented as a horizontal
line. So far as correct drawing is concerned, it makes no difference
how that line is made. One artist makes it a thick line with a blunt
pen, another a thin line with a fine pen, and another, like Moullier,
makes it with a series of dots, but each of these methods is a matter
of technic, and the rules of technic are arbitrary, not fixed as are
the rules for drawing. You may invent your own technic, but you cannot
invent perspective.]

■{131} periodical, the larger the better, go over the back of it with a
blue pencil, lay it on a sheet of bristol board or paper, face upward,
and go over the outline with a hard pencil, using such a pressure
as will transfer to the bristol board a blue outline. The object in
using blue is, that you do not have to erase it, but may work over
it with a pen, as the blue does not photograph. Besides transferring
the outline it is also advisable to outline the shape of any of the
shadows you intend to introduce. You then endeavor with the pen lines
to imitate the delicate shadows of the half-tone or wood cut. Perhaps
instead of saying imitate, we would better say approximate, for you
must not expect to be able to imitate with pen the extreme delicacy of
a half-tone.

{132} [Illustration: DES GUEULES (STUDIES OF MOUTHS, JAWS) BY HERMAN
PAUL.]

CHAPTER XIV.

A CHAPTER OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND A RÉSUMÉ — VALLOTTON HEADS
ONLY UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE WHO CAN SEE LIGHT AND SHADE UPON
OBJECTS — MEDALLIONS BY DAVID D’ANGERS SHOWING THE PLANES OF THE
FACE — THESE PLANES BROUGHT OUT IN SOME OF THE VALLOTTON HEADS,
AND IN MEDALLIONS BY LORMIER AND D’ILLZACH, AND IN DRAWING BY
CHAUME — LANDSCAPE BY LE ROUX, CARICATURE BY FORAIN — THE LE ROUX AND
THE PAUL DRAWINGS INDICATE THE FORCE OF OUTLINE — EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT
KINDS OF TECHNIC.

The definite character of our illustrations to the last two chapters
should have made so strong an impression upon the reader (_if_ he
practices drawing) that there ought to be little necessity of further
letterpress explaining the different technics of pen drawing. {133}
So please permit us to introduce a large number of illustrations in
this chapter, with slight comment; it being surmised that the reader
will, however, give a fuller consideration to the drawings themselves
than we do. Each one should be studied again and again, the reader not
copying it, but making a drawing in the same style of some similar
object. This chapter, moreover, must serve as a general résumé of our
instruction in freehand drawing and pen drawing; it virtually ends the
first part of our text-book; the succeeding matter will be confined to
the consideration of different methods of decorating title-pages, and
of designing chapter headings, tailpieces, etc.; and the third part
will consist of the consideration of different methods of engraving,
chalk-plate, wood engraving and color printing.

Now for our résumé.

In order to learn to draw you must first learn to discern the outline
of objects, which you may do by seeing them in silhouette.

To draw the hair in outline, as in Vallotton’s third Nietzsche, you
must first see the hair as in the first Nietzsche; that is, see it in
mass or in silhouette in nature. Before Vallotton took a brush in hand
to put on the solid black of the hair in number one you may be sure he
drew a pencil outline like the outline in number three; but before he
drew that outline he saw the mass as in number one.

The Vallotton drawings may be further studied from two very different
view-points. The third Friedrich Nietzsche is pure outline, like the
examples of Engström■

{134} [Illustration: FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE. FRIEDRICH
NIETZSCHE.

{135} FELIX VALLOTTON. MALTHUS. PAUL ROBIN.

HEADS DESIGNED BY F. VALLOTTON.

Vallotton has made it a practice to engrave a great many of his own
designs. We do not know whether these heads were engraved by him, or
merely drawn by him and photo-engraved, but the manner in which they
are designed—that is, with great economy of line, and a few simple,
telling spots—is one which is the outgrowth of his practice in wood
engraving; he would work exactly like this if drawing on wood. (We
shall treat of wood engraving for printers in a future chapter.)]

■{136} given in our early chapters, and is very simple and easy to
understand, though not by any means easy to draw. The drawing of
Malthus, on the other hand, is not easy to understand, for in addition
to the outlines it is modeled—that is, it contains masses of shadow
which bring out the different planes of the face. And it is necessary
to study light and shade, as indicated in Chapter VII, before we can
fully understand a drawing of this kind.

In order to model, you must learn _to see the light and shade upon
objects_. When your eye is trained to see light and shade, you can draw
the hair as in the second Nietzsche, and you can see planes in the
face, as in the Malthus.

Although the David d’Angers diagrams were drawn to show the general
masses of the head as they are brought out in successive stages by a
sculptor, yet they become very interesting to the printer who has not
had the benefit of an art school education, for they show him at a
glance how much of the character of the human head is dependent upon
the different planes of the face, and it explains better than words
what is meant by planes. Chapter VIII should be read in connection
with it, and the Vallotton portraits, especially that of Malthus, may
be examined critically with this in mind, for you will then see that
Vallotton has introduced masses of black with the idea of suggesting
planes in the face.

We introduce the de Chaume to accompany the David d’Angers, Lormier
and d’Illzach medallions, to emphasize the matter of the planes of the
human face.■

{137} [Illustration: Medallion portrait of Hahnemann, after David
d’Angers. Drawing by Carl Robert. Showing successive stages in
modeling, from the flat to the relief.]

■We do not want our readers to think that the shadows we have
pointed out in our text are the only ones to be noticed in the human
face. Under certain circumstances, notably when an actor’s face
is illuminated by the footlights, there are shadows upon it quite
different from those we have analyzed in previous chapters. But the
shadows we have pointed out are those most prominent in a photograph,
and those most frequently employed by the artist, but if your drawing
is to be very extensive you must learn to look for new shadows in new
aspects; and the de Chaume shows some such shadows, yet in the case of
the naso-labial line it is easy to see that■

{138} [Illustration: Crayon drawing, from a medallion of Alf. Leroux, by
E. Lormier. Drawn on stipple tinted board; or else on plain paper, and
the mechanical stipple added to the same after the drawing was made.]

[Illustration: Medallion portrait of M. A. Soisson, by Ringel
d’Illzach. Drawn by the sculptor on scratchboard with horizontal line
tint, the blacks drawn with crayon, the whites scratched out with a
penknife. As in the Monet, our engraver, instead of reducing the cut
by the direct process, reduced it by half-tone, through a screen with
diagonal lines, hence the horizontal lines have disappeared. (See page
148)]

■{139} it is not far different from other naso-labial lines which we
have considered.

Again, much of our instruction has been given using the human face as
a basis of study; but it is not for a moment to be surmised that the
study of drawing should be limited to the human face. We have intended
only to suggest a process of study; this process may be■

[Illustration: “HAWKS DINNA PIKE OUT HAWKS’ EEN.”

J. C. DOLLMAN, R.I.

Pen drawing from the artist’s water color, made for an exhibition
catalogue. This cut shows an excellent style of newspaper drawing,
consisting of outline, and a gray got by parallel lines, without
crosshatching.]

■applied to anything under the sun. Hence we give the Forain and the Le
Roux outline to portray still life and landscape. And it is worthy of
note that still life need not be circumscribed to mere drill; on the
contrary, it is very frequently introduced into drawing—much to the
perfecting of the composition. The dishpans, pots■

{140} [Illustration: ON THE BANKS OF THE ISOLE. BY E. LE ROUX.

Pen drawing by the artist from his painting.]

{141} [Illustration: Mask of Béranger. Drawing by Geoffroy de Chaume.
Drawn by the sculptor from his model, with (lithographic) crayon, on
grained paper with a specially prepared tooth.]

{142} [Illustration: Newspaper caricature, by Forain, from _Figaro_.
The butler says: “I have heard him say that you spice your dishes too
much.” The chef says: “Yes, he misses his Blanchette du Havre.” (Some
local hit, blanchette in cookery being a wrapper of pastry, bacon,
etc.) “If he is not satisfied why doesn’t he leave?” There are few
draughtsmen in the world more expert in the use of line than Forain.
He is most wonderful in his construction of forms; every line means
something. The French do not mind a free line—one that runs a little
too far out—if it has meaning to it; hence we see a line through the
butler’s nose, and his mouth extends to the right of the naso-labial
line in quite an unnatural fashion, but since the line of the cheek is
beautifully attached to the eyesocket and upper eyelid, it does not
annoy the French at all.]

{143} [Illustration: Pen drawing by Guillaume, from the French daily
paper _Gil Blas_. This is given as a good example of newspaper work of
a kind that could be easily imitated on chalk plate. It is reproduced
with adjacent head-line and type that you may get an idea of the
typographical appearance of the French newspaper. The legend says:
“Today _Gil Blas_ publishes its twelfth supplement, which should be
delivered gratuitously (by the news agents) to all the purchasers of
the paper.” The cut, then, is merely a little joke to call attention to
the more important supplement inside, which supplement in itself is a
pictorial one; French readers are fonder of illustrations than American
readers.]

{144} [Illustration: An example of pen drawing. Book illustration, by F.
H. Lucas. This shows splendid modeling with very delicate pen work, and
a certain amount of variety in the background. It is less adaptable to
newspaper work than our other illustrations. It is given as a specimen
of eccentric line work as regards the background, which is not unlike
the Moullier.]

■and coal shovel, in the Forain, are particularly suggestive from
this view-point. The Le Roux is given in order that our text-book may
include an example of landscape, and also that the pupil may realize
that drawing is frequently a matter of the right line in the right
place. As we said in Chapter XIII, just as we studied the matter of
the naso-labial line, and the orbicular muscle, one should study the
direction of the wickers of a trash basket, so the artist has studied
here the characteristic lines of tree trunk, foliage, hillside, and
grasses. If you will study a city street or a shipyard in the same
spirit—that is, search for the characteristic lines—you will be able to
make a drawing which, even though it lacks■

{145} [Illustration: Illustration from the _Paris Illustré_. An example
of combined use of outline, parallel lines and solid black, with very
little crosshatch. Mainly interesting because of the introduction of
still-life objects, which hint at subjects suitable for practice. The
novice would do well to select a group of similar objects and endeavor
to render them in a similar manner.]

■artistic finish, will have a certain graphic value; and for this very
reason (we mean, to show that outline may be graphic) we purposely
introduce into this chapter the Paul caricatures, consisting mainly of
outlines, like those we gave in our first chapters, and we bid you harp
upon them with the fact ever in your mind that they are not arbitrary,
but each line stands for some prototype in nature; and that we may go a
little farther in the analyzation of the face, we publish some models
in relief in which the planes of the face are brought out. These planes
were considered in Chapter VII, and you must■

{146} [Illustration: Illustration from _Paris Illustré_. Pen drawing, by
M. Luque, evidently from an instantaneous photograph, containing all
the elements of pen drawing without crosshatch. This has been reduced
too much; the shadows in the building seem black because the lines have
run together. In the original illustration the lines on the building
were separated, and the effect was one of gray, which is the right tone
for shadows seen at a distance on a clear day. The outlines of the
clouds were probably drawn with an unbroken line, and after they were
engraved were rouletted on the plate, and hence print as a series of
dots.]

{147} [Illustration: Pen drawing, by Maurice Leloir, showing admirable
effect gained by use of parallel lines without crosshatch; a splendid
example for the novice to study.]

■{148} look at Fantin-La-Tour’s cast head in order to understand them.
Do so, and then let your eye jump to the Vallotton heads, and we think
you will grasp their characteristics immediately, for you will see
wherein they differ from the Engström drawings. They differ in this:
that in addition to pure outline, they mass the constructive shadows
found in the David d’Angers. In other■

[Illustration: Marine, by Claude Monet. Drawn with lithographic
crayon on scratchboard, the lines running perpendicularly, instead of
horizontally as in the d’Illzach, the lights scratched out with the
penknife.

This cut has a peculiar interest technically. The foregoing was
dictated with the original in hand, which was a direct process
cut in which one set of lines ran perpendicularly. Our engraver,
however, instead of reducing the cut by the direct process, reduced
it by half-tone, through a screen with diagonal lines, hence the
perpendicular lines have disappeared.]

■words, the black under Vallotton’s eyebrows does not mean that his
eyebrows are abnormally thick, but it means that he has deep sunken
eyes, and that there is■

{149} [Illustration: Portrait of Fred Walker, by E. G. T., from an
English periodical. Reduced to a smaller area than when given in
Chapter XI. By comparing this with the cut on page 102 we notice that
the drawing is so simple that there is very little difference in the
general aspect of the two, but here and there, as under the jaw, the
lines have run together a little more in the smaller cut, giving a
darker effect than in the larger one; the lesson is obvious.]

■_a shadow under_ the eyebrows and in the plane of the superior
orbicular muscle, which recedes, and Vallotton wishes to emphasize
this. And in the Malthus he does not mean that Malthus had a triangular
birth-mark on his right cheek, but he means that he had a prominent
cheekbone, and a sunken cheek beneath it; hence the shadow, which is
what we call “a modeling shadow.”

{150} [Illustration: Portrait of C. Rivers Wilson. Pen drawing by Walter
Sickert. From _The London Whirlwind_, 1890. Reduced to a smaller
area than when given in Chapter XII. By comparing this with the cut
on page 119 you will see that many of the lines, especially in the
shadow of the nose, have run together, and we do not find as strong a
contrast between the black accents on the nose and the gray half-tones
produced by the open lines in the larger cut. It is often the case
when a drawing is too greatly reduced that it loses snap, because the
_graduation_ from the grays to the blacks is not so perceptible as in
the original. Still the lines were so open in this drawing that the
present cut is a very fair one. The result is much better than could
have been got from so fine a drawing as the Renard. (See page 114.)]

We cannot complete our chapter without mentioning that the styles of
drawing we have suggested by no means exhaust the different methods
at your disposal. While it is well to confine yourself to outline, or
outline and solid black, or outline and slight shading, yet you may
experiment in many more complicated methods, as seen in the Monet, and
the Ringel d’Illzach, for even if you do not use these methods for
illustrations they help you to observe the capital lights and darks in
nature.

{151} PART II.

{153} [Illustration: GOETHE’S MOTHER.

Old-fashioned silhouette. See chapter on wood engraving.]

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTION TO PART II.

INSTRUCTION IN DRAWING ABANDONED AND DESIGN CONSIDERED — THIS
INSTRUCTION LESS ABSOLUTE THAN INSTRUCTION IN DRAWING — THE PRINTER TO
USE AS MUCH OF THE SUBSEQUENT MATTER AS SERVES HIS PURPOSE — IN THE
STUDY OF LETTERING ALL STYLES HAVE TO BE COVERED, THOUGH ONLY ONE OR
TWO MAY BE OF VALUE TO THE PRINTER — WOOD ENGRAVING VALUABLE BECAUSE IT
TEACHES CONCENTRATION AND ECONOMY OF LINE — THE PRINTER IN AMERICA NOT
ABLE TO BE ALWAYS ARTISTIC, BUT MUST INTRODUCE ART FROM TIME TO TIME AS
OPPORTUNITY ARISES.

The reader is asked to view this second part of “Drawing for Printers”
differently from the first part. In the first part the writer aimed at
establishing {154} recognized rules for drawing rather than giving his
individual opinions.

He thinks that very little of the first part of the book can be
questioned. For example, it is not a matter of personal opinion that
the horizon line is on a level with the spectator’s eyes, or that a
mantelshelf on such a level should be drawn with a straight line; it
is a matter of fact, which he merely reiterates as the writer of a
grammar reiterates the indisputable facts of a language, that a noun is
a name word, a verb an action word, an adverb a word which qualifies
a verb. But when the writer of a literary text-book has exhausted
his rules of grammar and takes up the subject of rhetoric, although
he endeavors to give only such examples of writing as are excellent,
still his own personal taste is apt to guide him in his selections, and
he may claim as admirable that which is to be criticised. A rhetoric
of the eighteenth century would necessarily contain much artificial,
sentimental and Latinized English which a teacher of today would not
put before his students.

So it is that in the following chapters I may advocate,

(1) That which may not meet with the approval of my readers.

(2) That which may not suit my readers’ customers, and even

(3) That which is wrong.

You therefore may use as much of my advice as you find practical in
your daily work, and discard that which is impractical. {155}

But do not forget that that which may be impractical today may come in
handy some time next year!

That there will be much that you will find impractical goes without
saying. It is absolutely necessary that the student of the arts (as the
writer of these papers) acquaint himself with that which is classical;
he then becomes fascinated with it and recommends it. But the classical
covers an immense field, embracing that which is best in many ages
and in many different lands, and it is utterly impossible that the
practical worker in the arts should utilize all the classical styles at
one time. Hence only a fragment of any text-book built upon the study
of the classic can be practical at any given time.

Let us be more specific. Let us take the department of lettering alone.
If an author publishes a work on lettering, and he is a cultivated
man, he must examine the many styles of the past. He examines the
monumental letter of classic Rome and the monumental letter of the
Renaissance; the Caroline letter of 700 A. D., as well as the Gothic
and the Visigothic. It is not his business to place one above the
other, but to explain the beauty of all. If, however, you are a printer
of today, and the Morris style of type is most in vogue, and you have
stocked your cases with it, it is the Gothic letter you are most
interested in, because it is what you are using and what your customer
has just been trained to like; so the most practical part of a book on
lettering would be that which would treat of the Gothic letter, and its
offspring, the Old English; while the chapter on Visigothic, with its
twisted letters, would seem quite■

{156} [Illustration: NEWSPAPER ILLUSTRATION.

From the Paris _Figaro_, showing harmony of drawing, type, and rules—a
method of drawing that could easily be imitated on chalk plate.]

{157} [Illustration: COVER DESIGN OF THE WESTMINSTER BUDGET.

This mortised portion was used for advertisements.

Printed on light weight yellow paper, 10 by 13. An excellent example of
the use of silhouette in design.]

■{158} impractical to you as you could not use the examples given. Yet
it would be the business of the writer on alphabets to analyze them
thoroughly, otherwise his work would be incomplete.

Now then, I shall try to be practical, and in the chapter on lettering
bear in mind that the modern fonts are the Morris, Caxton, Jenson,
Erhard Ratdolt, Old English and Touraine. I shall try to give a little
more attention to the letters after which these are patterned than I
shall to the Phœnician or Etruscan, the Visigothic, the Aldine, and the
Irish text letter. But, on the other hand, no printer can be educated
without knowing something about these latter alphabets. And so you must
bear with me while I analyze them, though they may not be practical.

Once more, suppose you do agree that a style of lettering not now
in vogue is a pleasing style, and one worth imitating, the question
arises, How much time can you give to the study of it in order to use
it? Nearly all artistic work requires hand labor, and hand labor is
slow.

In our chapter on wood engraving, we shall recommend the study of
that art, both because it can be used and because it trains you to
appreciate good designing; but how many printers can neglect their
business in order to spend hours and hours in practicing an eminently
slow art, when rapid and cheap photo-engraving will serve the purpose
almost as well? Very few, I fear.

So, also, when we come to the matter of taste, we come to the question
of what should artistic printing {159} look like? Even if you are
convinced that coated paper and the half-tone do not belong to ideal
printing, how many can afford to attempt a piece of rough printing
with heavy type, coarse paper and an outline device, and expect to
retain his customers, when his rival, Smith, is using coated paper
and half-tones that almost equal photographs? Very few printers, I
fear, would be able to pay expenses by such a course. There are very
few merchants but would have their catalogues printed by Smith with
half-tone illustrations of photographs of their wares. Or even if the
printer does not apply his art methods to job printing, but to his
own publications, he will probably find few buyers who are cultured
enough to appreciate his rough printing, so between the amount of
time necessary for preparing artistic productions and the poor chance
they have of receiving patronage, it is very difficult for a cultured
printer to attain his ideal.

The writer has followed our art periodicals for years and knows too
well that nearly all of them have failed. If artistic periodicals
advertised for years to art-loving people have failed, how little is
the chance of art methods succeeding with the people! We must, then,
bear in mind that I may recommend methods because I know them to be
artistic without expecting them to be accepted or put in practice.

The practical printer’s course must be a compromise. He introduces
an artistic principle here, another there, without ever reaching his
ideal. Sometimes it is his own circular, sometimes a literary pamphlet,
or {160} sometimes a poster that allows him to experiment, while his
average printing is commercial, nothing more.

But, let us say in parenthesis, that while we deprecate the lack of
artistic culture that prevents our printers from turning out artistic
work, we do not for a moment claim that that which is not artistic
is poor, or that all printing that is not rough is not artistic. The
half-tone and coated paper have their use. If, as a matter of news or
information, exactness is required, any sensible printer will turn to
the half-tone for assistance. Even Mr. Walter Crane, in publishing his
book on “Decorative Illustration,” though he uses 303 pages of rough
paper to exemplify the superiority of the simple wood cut of the past,
employs eleven sheets of highly calendered paper to reproduce delicate
facsimiles of old manuscripts! He felt that the purpose of these
supplementary pages was to illustrate and not to embellish the book; so
he sacrificed artistic harmony for science. So, also, a printer does
well, when getting up a catalogue of houses, horses or chickens for
sale, to insert a frontispiece of coated paper and print on the same a
half-tone which gives an adequate idea of the house, horse or chicken
to be sold. That is a scientific piece of work. The point is, that a
catalogue printed on cheap paper with an insert of a half-tone printed
on coated paper can never be an artistic unit, can never be exhibited
as a piece of artistic printing. The French, who are extremely artistic
people, have carried delicate printing as far as it will go, and the
French printer will get you up a catalogue with a half-tone {161}
frontispiece, but everything will be in harmony with it; the paper of
the body of the book is coated paper, the type is delicate, the initial
letters are equally fine, and the printing of the entire brochure is
so delicate that it is in keeping with the frontispiece. That is the
right principle for bookmaking, that the work be harmonious. There is
no objection to fine type (so long as it is not so fine as to tire the
eyes) if it is printed properly. The main reason for recommending such
heavy type as Morris’ is, that it is pretty sure always to print well.
When a French printer turns out a cheap newspaper he uses large type
and heavy headlines, accompanied by illustrations that harmonize with
such type and headlines.

Our examples of Forain’s work (see previous chapters) show the style
of the French drawing made for the daily newspaper in harmony with the
typography and in a suitable manner for printing on poor stock. The
clipping from the French newspaper we give with this chapter, showing
different styles of watch chains, is an excellent example of good taste
in this direction. The type, the drawing, and the rules all harmonize.
With a chalk-plate outfit a clever printer could supply such diagrams
for his paper each week without feeling that he was transgressing the
canons of the highest form of art.

From this example it will be seen that one of the requirements for a
good newspaper drawing is that it harmonizes with the type page. You
may feel then that it is not required of you to make a finished drawing
for {162} a newspaper—in fact, the more finished it is the less likely
it is to be a good newspaper design.

Another example of good newspaper designing is the _Westminster Budget_
cover. The original covered a folio 10 by 13 inches. The paper being a
cheap stock (yellow) and the design being bold and effective, serves as
an admirable example of what we choose to call a poor-paper design.

This design will in future be again considered in connection with wood
engraving and lettering; and in the next chapter we shall consider
similar headings and covers.

{163} CHAPTER II.

THE MATTER OF TASTE AGAIN UNDER REVIEW — “MAGAZINE,” “CITY NEWSPAPER”
AND “COUNTRY NEWSPAPER PRINTING,” ARBITRARY TERMS — A STYLE OF DESIGN
APPROPRIATE FOR CERTAIN KINDS OF PERIODICALS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR
OTHER KINDS — SOME GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF DESIGNING — A BROAD, BLACK
LINE DESIRABLE FOR LETTERING, “DEVICES” AND DESIGNS IN GENERAL; A FINE
LINE MAY BE USED FOR ILLUSTRATIVE CUTS — BOLD MASSES OF LIGHT AND DARK
APPROPRIATE FOR ROUGH PRINTING — THE APPROPRIATENESS OF THE DESIGNS FOR
JUGEND, PAN, LA REVUE ENCYCLOPÉDIQUE, ETC., CONSIDERED.

I suppose a very orderly writer would have finished his introduction in
the last chapter, beginning in this with definite instruction. But I
feel so overwhelmingly the importance of the subject treated of in the
last chapter—that is, the matter of taste—that I must before proceeding
add a few more words to the subject. Besides, further review will
strengthen the reader’s understanding of my principle of instruction,
which is that the fitness of things, the taste which you display in
following a certain kind of design, is as much a matter of study as is
the drawing of an object.

For example, I used the words in the last chapter, “printing on rough
paper.” Now, of course, that {164} term is indefinite, and, like our
terms “magazine,” “city newspaper” and “country newspaper” printing,
can stand only for some style of printing agreed upon■

[Illustration: Front page of the French weekly, _Gil Blas_. Originally
10 3/4 inches by 15 3/4. This shows an excellent arrangement of
type for the heading and subtitles. Also, the front page cartoon, done
in excellent style, shows the use of outline and solid blacks on the
main objects, with a little parallel lining behind the objects. The
title means, “The Week in Pall Mall,” i. e., in London. “The Grand Prix
[that is, the Spring race, the Derby] has been run; brothers, we must
depart.”]

■by the writer and reader. Therefore, if you will allow, the term
“rough printing” will stand for printing corresponding to all that done
prior to the introduction of {165} coated paper, and where the type
used was long primer or larger. And I choose, as a matter of taste, to
insist upon it that all printing is bad that is not done in this way.
Now, do not set me down as a faddist. I am not thoroughly converted to
Morris’ printing, because in his matter the words are so closely run
together that they are not read with ease, and, above all things, I
do not consider the so-called “deckle-edge, handmade paper”—which in
all probability is never handmade—such an “artistic” cloak to cover a
multitude of sins as many printers consider it. The very fact that it
is artificial and imitative makes it as objectionable as coated paper,
which also is artificial and insincere.

The matter can be explained in this way: We may have no objection to a
dress suit and high silk hat. We recognize in it as legitimate a style
of dress as the workingman’s overalls; but we do not like to see a man
working in a ditch clothed in a dress suit and silk hat. With this
objection almost everyone will agree. But there are those who, wishing
to follow the dictates of society, do not like to see a man, even if he
is a lecturer or a bridegroom, disporting himself in a dress suit and
silk hat at any hour of the day earlier than six o’clock.

Now, there are two distinct lines of judgment. The first is drawn so
broadly that nearly all will agree. The second line is drawn so finely
that but few may agree. But it is a fact that in either case the
question is a matter of taste. So, then, when I claim that the title of
a newspaper should be in heavy type, and not in such script as would be
appropriate for a lady’s visiting■

{166} [Illustration: DESIGN FOR THE COVER OF A DICTIONARY, PUBLISHED IN
PAPER-COVERED PARTS.

By Eugene Grasset.

Admirable lettering (more closely following the Caroline manuscript
than the design for _La Revue Encyclopédique_), united with harmonious
design, the artist not being contented merely to introduce a girl
with poster-like hair, but bringing out an idea—that of the expansive
distribution of knowledge, signified by the dandelion seed, which is
freely distributed by the wind; see motto “_Je seme a tout vent_.” I
sow (or spread) seed with every wind.]

■{167} card, most of you will agree with me. But when I claim that
the title should be in very heavy block type, and not in French Old
Style, I shall not have so many followers. Of course, it is true that
circumstances alter cases, and while I think it quite necessary that a
“Daily News,” “Journal” or “Press” should have the heaviest of type,
I will acknowledge that a dainty little weekly in 8vo, called “The
Needlewoman,” or “Embroidery Notes,” might be properly printed with a
pica italic heading.

I think the reader now understands the object of the second part of
“Drawing for Printers,” and will see that nearly all the illustrations
in it are selected with a view to their appropriateness for rough
printing, simply because it is therein that you need to study the
subject of designing for printing. It is self-evident that to print a
half-tone cut you need calendered or coated paper, and that with this a
little half-tone initial letter could be used, but as we study printing
on poor stock, familiarity with the styles of the past is necessary
to acquaint you with what is best in pictorial, or rather decorative,
effect.

This much said, let us fall to considering some principles of
designing. Other things being equal, a broad black line is best if
there is any shadow or detail in the drawing. But if there is no shadow
the outline need not be very heavy, but the drawing may partake of a
diagram effect, as in the watch-chain illustration from the _Figaro_,
given in a preceding chapter (page 165). Such a thin line harmonizes
with the type and does not {168} attract too much attention. It is
also well suited for the unimportant elements in a heading design. But
if you wish to introduce in a heading an important element like the
American eagle, the coat-of-arms of a state, or an emblematic design
for a class paper, then a strong line or a solid black is preferable.
Strong lines and blacks are also preferable for an initial letter that
is to form part of the decoration of a page.

Therefore, if we consider the front page of a paper or catalogue
consisting of a heading, an initial letter and an illustration, we
may treat each design according to the following principles. If the
illustration is to be the main thing, the heading and initial letter
would best■

[Illustration: Heading to a novel in _The Pall Mall Budget_, an example
of free-hand lettering and device, showing elements suggestive of the
subject matter. The lettering is not heavy enough for the title-page of
a periodical, nor is it so heavy as to interfere with the effect of the
illustration on the same page.]

■be mostly in outline, as in the _Figaro_ watch chains. But if there
is no illustration, and we wish the heading and initial letter to be
decorative, a heavy outline and solid black may be used. As an example
of heavy outline and solid black we have selected the dictionary cover
by Grasset. This is strong enough to serve as a heading for a newspaper
or periodical, but in the case of a {169} chapter heading such heavy
lettering might not be desirable, and the lighter _Pall Mall Budget_
design might be preferable. So, too, as in the _Jugend_, since■

[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE TO VOLUME II OF JUGEND.

Showing harmonious uniting of free-hand designed letter, type, and
device. The device, however, is a little too pictorial; it would be
better if its background were simpler.]

■the illustration is not the most important thing, heavy blacks may be
used; it is an excellent example of the {170} proper heaviness of the
heading contrasted with an unimportant illustration. Here, however, the
black is around, not upon, the letter.

Perhaps one of the most enjoyable features of the printer-designer’s
work is that of designing covers for booklets and pamphlets. If he
does not have to confine himself to a definite idea, he may choose
a motive from a thousand and one different elements. Of course, he
must be more or less logical in his choice of motive, and not put a
Pierrot upon a church fair programme, nor a bunch of violets upon a
stove manufacturer’s catalogue, though we frequently run across such
designing. One of the enemies to good designing is the prevalent
taste for photographic half-tone covers, where the stove manufacturer
requires the reproduction of his stoves on the cover. Now, we are
utterly opposed to this; not on the ground that the picture of a
stove is not a fit emblem for a stove manufacturer’s catalogue—for it
certainly is quite proper—but we object on the ground that the printing
of it requires coated paper, which often is not tenacious enough for a
cover; and, secondly, on the ground that the delicacy of the half-tone,
which has no strong outlines or masses of light or dark, does not make
a picture that can be seen at a sufficient distance to warrant its
being a cover. The brevier that you use in the body of a book is not
the proper type for its cover, and so a delicate half-tone that is
appropriate for the reading pages of your catalogue is not appropriate
for its cover. The specimens we give in this chapter, therefore, are
nearly all of them■

{171} [Illustration: Cover design for a German periodical entitled
_Pan_, by Franz Stuck. Original, 8 by 12. Printed in black on heavy
green cover paper.]

{172} [Illustration: Department heading designed by Eugene Grasset for
_La Revue Encyclopédique_, showing an excellent style of lettering
(founded on the Caroline), also an admirable decorative outline made to
give a finished effect, or an effect of delicacy.]

■adapted to rough, heavy paper, which will make a durable cover.

The design for _Pan_, by Franz Stuck, is a particularly good example.
Possibly the shadow thrown by the head is a disturbing element in the
composition; it makes the right-hand side heavy and is not in itself
decorative.

The spacing also between the P and the A is greater than between the A
and the N, without, so far as we can see, having a valid reason for so
being. But the design was for the cover of a publication of artist’s
sketches, and it was consequently more permissible for the artist
to draw with freedom than had he been designing a more conventional
cover. Stuck is one of the best letterers in Europe; and, in his more
serious moments, is most exact in his spacing. The two most interesting
characteristics of the design are the elegance of the letters and the
boldness of the drawing of the head; {173} substitute more commonplace
lettering as in the “Roebuck” heading (page 168) and such delicate
drawing as in the Grasset “Encyclopédie,” and the design would lose
force as a pamphlet cover.

The _Westminster_ design, given on page 157, recommends itself because
of the silhouette steeple, which could be easily engraved on wood,
and also because of the lettering, which is as good an example of
“pen-hand” as is the _Pan_ of “monumental” lettering. It also suggests
effects to be got by white on black, as does the _Jugend_.

The “Roebuck” (page 168) lacks the elegance of the _Pan_ and the
robustness of the _Westminster_, but it shows a good style for such
newspaper lettering as has to be made quickly; as, for example,
drawn on the chalk-plate in half an hour, when perfect spacing and
proportioning is out of the question. There are times also when a
letter is needed that is not truly elegant. It seems sacrilegious, as
it were, to design a heading for “On the Diamond and Gridiron” with
letters from a Lucca Della Robbia monument, or the Mazarin Bible.
Therefore, some such lettering as the “Roebuck” comes in appropriate
for the light departments of a paper.

Akin to the _Pan_ design is the _Jugend_ (page 169), though it is not
nearly so good. It would be better with a border about it, and still
better if the _Jugend_ letters were not quite so narrow, and if the
background behind the girl were more simply drawn; but the letter is
good and strong, and the figure, being in outline, {174} might be
printed upon the roughest paper. The whole page is interesting also as
showing recent movement in type design in Germany. This is the result
of the William Morris movement in England. It will be noticed that
the type letters are broad and well proportioned; they are virtually
modernized Jenson.

{175} [Illustration: HEADING DESIGN BY GEORG AURIOL.

From _La Revue Encyclopédique_.]

CHAPTER III.

SOME MISCELLANEOUS ILLUSTRATIONS APPROPRIATE FOR DIFFERENT
PURPOSES — THE RIVOIRE APPROPRIATE WHERE EXPENDITURE IS
UNLIMITED — HALF-TONES USED FOR NEWS-GIVING OR INFORMATION-GIVING
PURPOSES — THE HASSALL OUTLINE APPROPRIATE FOR POSTERS AND DECORATIVE
PRINTING.

Let us resume the consideration of some miscellaneous illustrations
for the sake of investigating the different styles of design and the
principles which underlie them. As we said in Chapter II, the French,
who are the most ready to use simple designs printed on rough paper,
also are experts in preparing with most exquisite workmanship most
delicate designs. Let us cite the cover of the _Paris Illustré_—you
will see that here a half-tone and a wood engraving have been used, and
that each is virtually a picture. The type of the title is very fine
French Old Style (by fine we mean thin), and while, of course, the hair
lines in the a and e are due to our great reduction of the cut, yet in
the original these lines were very fine, and therefore by no■

{176} [Illustration: Cover design, by Rivoire, for a summer number of
_Paris Illustré_, the flowers printed in slate color, in half-tone; the
portrait, of Mlle. Weber, a wood engraving, and the title, printed in
black. The original 11 1/2 by 15 inches.]

■{177} means as well adapted to ordinary printing as the Grasset,
Caspari (_Jugend_), and Stuck designs given in Chapter II. Yet I
consider the present design an admirable one. But what are the facts
in the case? The art editor, in getting up this design, had plenty of
money at his disposal. The cover was of heavy calendered paper, the
flowers were printed in half-tone in color, and the woman’s portrait,
printed in black, was beautifully engraved on wood, a very costly
process. This single cover may have cost as much as the entire sixteen
pages of the body of the weekly.

The Auriol heading of this chapter is French also, and is no less
artistic than the realistic flowers on the _Paris Illustré_ cover; but
on account of its simplicity it is far superior to the _Paris Illustré_
as a floral design for ordinary printing, simply because it can be
printed on cheap stock and can be cheaply and quickly reproduced. There
ought to be no mistake, then, about my attitude in recommending one
style of designing above another. I do so from a practical point of
view.

A third example is found in the two Burns cuts. Surely, when I found
the half-tone among the news columns of an English art periodical I
did not object to its realism; on the contrary, it gave me a very good
idea of what the original statue was like. But think of the expense of
having a half-tone made large enough for a poster! Also, how vague it
would appear from across the street if the poster were in half-tone.

But, turning to the Hassall, see how admirably the artist has given us
the impression of Burns, how■

{178} [Illustration: BURNS STATUE.

By F. W. Pomeroy. Recently unveiled at Paisley. Half-tone from a
half-tone from a photograph, published in the _Magazine of Art_.]

{179} [Illustration: POSTER DESIGN FOR THE BURNS EXHIBITION, GLASGOW.

By J. Hassall.]

■{180} well his design would appear from across the street, and how
cheaply it could be reproduced. Therefore, what an excellent style his
is as a guide for my printer readers.

Hence, if the printer readers wish to make a cover design containing
a portrait and flowers, I advise them not to follow the Rivoire—not
for the reason that it is inartistic, but because it is too expensive
for ordinary printing, and for cheap printing a poor imitation is
abominable; while a design like the Caspari (_Jugend_, see page 169),
where the portrait would be an outline and the lettering broad so it
could be quickly read like the word “Jugend,” and in which the floral
form should be decoratively treated like the dandelion design in the
Grasset “Larousse,” or like the Auriol, page 175, would be just as
pleasing to the eye, would print on the cheapest kind of stock, and
would, therefore, appear to the critical as an artistic design.

{181} CHAPTER IV.

AN IMPORTANT CHAPTER ON LETTERING — LETTERING CAN NEVER BE WHOLLY
ORIGINAL, IT MUST FOLLOW HISTORICAL MODELS; MUST BE BLACKLETTER
OR ITALIAN — THE STUDENT ADVISED TO MASTER THREE OR FOUR STANDARD
ALPHABETS — STRANGE’S BOOK ON ALPHABETS RECOMMENDED — MONUMENTAL
LETTERS CONSTRUCTED UPON A GEOMETRICAL BASIS — MR. GLEASON WHITE ON
CHARLES RICKETTS AND THE VALE PRESS QUOTED — IT IS RECOMMENDED TO
COPY A MONUMENTAL ALPHABET, AND TO GIVE SOME STUDY TO THE COMPLEX
GOTHIC ALPHABETS, THAT THE STUDENT MAY UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLES OF
THE THICKENING OF DIFFERENT PARTS OF A LETTER BY PEN PRESSURE — IT IS
RECOMMENDED TO PRACTICE THE CAROLINE HAND FIRST, AND THEN THE GOTHIC.

This and the following chapters devoted to lettering give much
practical information to the printer which may be enhanced in value
if, before reading them, he will proceed as follows: Let him turn to
the advertising pages of some printers’ magazine and copy, _as best
he can_, three or four lines of ornamental lettering of three or four
different fonts. After he has done this, then read this chapter and the
next, and _follow the suggestions therein_. We think he will then get
a fuller benefit from them than if he reads our suggestions first and
then proceeds to letter according to our directions.

A great deal of time is wasted by the beginner who attempts to letter
because of his impression that he can originate new styles of letters.
Now, a critic sometimes speaks of “original lettering,” meaning that
the lettering shows individuality in treatment, and is not the mere
slavish copying of some conventional form. {182} But in comparison
to the other branches of art there is no such thing as originality in
lettering. Your letter must be, broadly speaking, either Gothic (or
blackletter, thus «A») or Italian (or roman letter, thus A); that is,
it must be built upon Gothic or Italian principles. The best thing
for the beginner to do is to obtain some examples of good lettering
and master two or three alphabets of Gothic or Italian style. After
he has done this, he will see how all other alphabets he may come
across in printed books will conform to the same general principles of
the alphabets he has mastered. He will see how certain minor changes
may be made, and if, in the end, he is anxious to be original he
will, by broadening a letter where it may be broadened, or bringing
its cross-bar down a little lower than usual, give a suggestion of
originality to his work. (The chances are, however, that he will prefer
to prove himself a good workman, and be content to combine, place and
execute traditional letters.)

Strange’s “Alphabets,” published a few years ago, is an excellent
book to study, and we shall give several alphabets from it. The old
books on the subject are apt to be too ornamental for the printer,
and the example we give from Niedling’s “Book Ornaments” is of far
less practical use than the Strange examples we shall give. But the
Bauernfeind alphabet is valuable for study. It shows the construction
of the capitals on a geometrical basis, giving an idea of how
monumental letters are made. It is easy to see that with such a guide
as this, made by an architect, the commonest workman, with the aid of
the■

{183} [Illustration: Page from a Minnesingers’ song-book in the
University library at Heidelberg. Example of Gothic letter. The initial
letters were in black and terra cotta. The letter W was half black and
half terra cotta; the U, H, and I were terracotta; the ornamentation
was black. In all probability the letters were half an inch or an inch
high. If you examine them under a magnifying glass you can understand
their construction better than as they now appear. The first verse
reads as follows:

“Winter, dine trüben stunde
und din kelte magnivalt,
ob ich das erwenden kunde,
daz siu wurden has gestalt,
das liesse ich dur die lange naht,
und durh die vil minneklichen
diu mir froeiden vil hat braht.”

]

■{184} square and compass, could cut in marble an immense dedication of
a building or archway, though the letters might be two or three feet
high. A little study of this alphabet will give you the ability to
understand anything written upon the subject of roman letters, so that
the following quotation from an article by Gleason White, taken from
the _Magazine of Art_, will immediately become intelligible to you. Mr.
White was writing of Charles Ricketts and the productions of the Vale
Press. He said the Vale Press had its own type, its own paper with its
own watermark, but the printing was done by Messrs. Ballantyne. The
type designed by Mr. Ricketts was “based on the precedents of the best
Italian alphabets.”

Mr. Ricketts believes that the plan on which all letters should be
based is that of the perfect circle or the perfect square; it matters
not which geometrical form you choose, since a certain number of
letters—M, L, H, and the like—demand a parallelogram, and others—C, G,
Q, O—an ovate or circular plan. If to draw this distinction between
types based on the oval or the circle appear a mere quibble, we must
remember that the difference between the Byzantine and the Pointed
styles, which divide architecture into two great sections, is one
of similar limit. There is all the difference in the world, to a
specialist in types, between a small “b,” “g” or “o” that follows
the circle (○), and one that is planned upon an oval (⬯)—I wish to
emphasize this point, because I know that the designer regards it
as vital; and I, for one, agree entirely with his estimate of its
importance. The question of “ceriphs” and the angles of certain
strokes; whether a W consists of interlaced V’s, or of two connected
only by the ceriph; whether the ceriphs of a capital T are vertical, or
slant divers■

{185} [Illustration: Reduced page from “Nimphidia,” by Michael Drayton;
design and lettering by Charles Ricketts. Lettering to be compared with
the Italian “Lucidario.”]

{186} [Illustration: Facsimile of the title-page of the “Lucidario” (A.
Mischomini: Florence, 1494). Original size of rule, giving proportion
of page, 4 7/8 by 7 7/8 inches. Showing early Italian type letter
and wood-cut design in harmony with same.]

■{187} ways, or parallel—all these are secondary matters, but the plan
of the letter is not secondary.

In the beautiful Kelmscott type, as in the famous Foulis fonts and
other notable instances, the O is ovate, and all other letters
agree with it. In Mr. Ricketts’ “Vale” type, the square and the
circle dominate every letter. If this distinction be passed over
as unimportant, further contention is useless. But on this point
no compromise can be entertained. If it be unimportant whether the
arch is a semicircle, or planned, like Euclid’s first problem, upon
the intersection of circles, then it matters little. But so long as
architecture is separated by such structural difference, it follows
that an O based on a circle, or an H based on a perfect square, must
be entirely unrelated to the ovate O or the oblong H. When taste is in
question, one allows the adversary equal vantage; but when geometry
comes in, axioms must be observed. Therefore, the ill-founded assertion
that Mr. Rickett’s type copies any modern font cannot be allowed. You
may dislike his symbol for the ordinary “&,” or dispute over the beauty
of his ceriphs and the oblique strokes of certain letters; but if you
maintain that a circle and an oval are practically alike, the question
of these nicer points need not be raised.

We give a reproduction of a page from the Vale Press, and for
comparison the Lucidario printed in Florence in 1494. The similarity in
the style of lettering is evident.

An evening or two spent in copying the Bauernfeind alphabet, and then
making up one upon the principle that most of the letters should be
contained in a square will lead you to understand the monumental
letter, or what you recognize as upper-case Roman. You might then begin
to collect pictures of mediæval and classical monuments, and you would
at a glance be able to see {188} the principles upon which their
inscriptions are constructed, and you would see that though the letters
of certain monuments differed in proportion from others, yet the
letters themselves of all the classical monuments would be virtually
the same, and most of the Italian mediæval inscriptions the same in
character. An Albrecht Durer alphabet given by Strange (on page 174) is
particularly interesting, being constructed in the same manner as the
Bauernfeind.

The Stimmer and Rogel Gothic alphabets are almost worthless for
printers’ designing, but it will not be without profit for you to
realize that they are built upon the principle of the swell made with
a quill pen, and this will lead you to the study of what you recognize
as Gothic letters which grew out of the pen hand of the middle ages.
Whether in solid black or white, any Gothic letter must have more or
less the principles of the Stimmer and Rogel alphabets. Space will not
permit of a full analyzation of the matter, so let us take the letter
L only. In its simplest form it consists of two lines (or “limbs”) at
right angles—one perpendicular, the other horizontal. Both lines may
be the same length; but conventionality has ordered that if either
be the shorter, the horizontal should be. The irregularity of the
ends of the letter, as in the monumental letters, is not a necessary
characteristic of an L (which may consist of two simple lines); but it
is the most frequent form in the monuments and is associated with our
idea of a capital letter. When made with a pen in the middle ages it
was sometimes customary to give the two lines■

{189} [Illustration: Examples of seventeenth century alphabets. From
“Bücher Ornamentik,” by A. Niedling, Weimar, 1895. B. F. Voigt. The
first alphabet, after Michael Bauernfeind, is a monumental letter
based upon the square, the margins of the letters being obtained by
segments of circles. With such a diagram a letter ten feet high could
be made as easily as one an inch high, and by an ordinary workman. The
printer would not advisedly map out his letter with such exactitude,
but it would be well to copy several of the letters, if not the whole
alphabet, that he may study the character of the monumental letter. The
second alphabet is after Chr. Stimmer; the third after type, the dies
of which were cut by Hans Rogel.]

■{190} an undulatory character, and there is hardly any kind of twist
or curve that has not been given to them. In making initial letters, in
order to fill up the space it became the practice to make two lines of
the upright shaft, and sometimes three lines were used. Cross-bars were
also introduced, so that in Caxton’s initial letters the L looks like
the monogram P. E. L. Almost nothing restrained the caligrapher; and if
he chose to make a dozen or two upright shafts, each getting smaller
than the other on either side of the letter, the whole ending in some
such Celtic interlacing as the base of the Niedling plate, he could do
so. But none of this is an organic form of the letter L; and additional
curve is pure ornament. The distinction between the superficial
ornament and the organic lines of a letter is easily understood by
first practicing the Caroline hand and then the Gothic. In the next
chapter we shall be more explicit as regards details.

{191} CHAPTER V.

THE DISTINCTION IN LETTERING BETWEEN SUPERFLUOUS ORNAMENTS AND ORGANIC
LINES — A SOLID FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF LETTERING — STUDIES, WITH
THE QUILL PEN, OF THE CAROLINE ALPHABET AND ITS MODERN REVIVAL IN
FRANCE BY GRASSET AND AURIOL — THE MINNESINGER LETTER NOT VERY ORNATE
BUT MORE COMPLEX THAN THE CAROLINE — THE MINNESINGER CORRESPONDS TO THE
STIMMEL AND ROGEL ALPHABETS — THE BERGOMENSIS LETTER MORE COMPLICATED
AND MORE REGULAR THAN THE MINNESINGER — THE ITALIC LETTER MORE SIMPLE
AND ROUNDER THAN THE MINNESINGER.

In the last chapter we said, “The distinction between the superficial
ornament and the organic lines of a letter is easily understood by
first practicing the Caroline letter and then the Gothic.” Let us
explain the benefit of this practicing; the keynote to the matter is
found in our Caroline example. Draw the second I and you will find that
it is virtually a simple shaft with a little spreading at the top and
bottom. If you draw with a quill or reed pen it is very easy to get
this swell by a little extra pressure as you begin to draw and as you
finish; and in almost all Caroline writing the I is made freehand and
the shape depends upon pen pressure and varies a little each time the
letter is made. It is not mapped out beforehand. The thin curved line
on top of the first I is superfluous ornament; that line is made by a
second stroke. We find several such ornaments in the first two lines
which form the head of a chapter, just as we find much ornamentation
of the initial letter; but we {192} do not find any ornamentation of
the I’s in the eight lines of text. There the I’s are all made with a
single stroke of the pen, so that the top and bottom of each one is a
trifle different from that of the others. In the first line of text
there is superfluous ornamenting of the T’s, and of the H. Otherwise
this is a true pen hand; the I made with one stroke, the C, D, L, O, P,
Q, U, X, etc., with two strokes, the A, B, E, M, N, R, S, with three.
The reader is advised to copy this alphabet with as large a quill pen
as procurable, making the letters from half an inch to an inch high,
and then, turning to the Grasset “Nouveau Larousse Illustré,” it will
dawn upon him that he knows exactly how the letters there were made;
and he will have little trouble in imitating almost to perfection
the three words, “En Six Volumes.” When he tries the words, “Nouveau
Larousse Illustré,” he may have some trouble with the A, the S and with
the O, which does not show its separate halves as in the Caroline: the
horizontal line of the L also is more difficult to make than if it were
the same width throughout. The I, R, N and V he will find quite simple.
As he familiarizes himself with the Caroline M, D, V and I; with the
H in the second line of the text under the ornamental H; and with the
P, S, C, he will begin to realize that upper and lower case letters
were originally the same. He will also be surprised, if he next falls
to studying the Minnesinger letters (last chapter) under a magnifying
glass, to find how like they are to the Caroline. Is not the capital I
somewhat clumsier than the first I in the Caroline top line? Are not
the c, d, h, i, o, p, s, u, v and y clumsier, more angular drawings of
the same letters as in the■

{193} [Illustration: TITLE-PAGE BY JACOBUS PHILLIPPAS FORESTI
BERGOMENSIS.

(Ferrara, 1497.)

A splendid example of Gothic lettering. It is to be remembered that
this was originally designed with a reed or quill pen, and the
ornamentations are such as may be easily made with that instrument. But
its regularity is also due, in a small measure perhaps, to its having
been engraved on white metal. In an entire book written in this style
the letters would be less regular—a little more like the Minnesinger
letters.]

■{194} Caroline alphabet? You find the s more decidedly four strokes,
while in the Caroline it may be considered three. You find the m
slightly different: turn to our last chapter and note the Hans Rogel
m, which is upper case, and see how it corresponds to the Minnesinger
lower-case m.

The Caroline e you think, differs from the Minnesinger e, but if you
will look at the e in _erat_, third line of text, you will see how
decidedly the e there is a lower-case e.

Now turn to the Bergomensis letters and recognize that they have
certain characteristics. One characteristic is that the final letters
and several others are ornamented with the same kind of curved lines
as in the first Caroline I. Then that the letters are made with a
pen stroke, but that three strokes are frequently used where one is
satisfactory in the Caroline. This is plainly seen in the letter I.
And of these three strokes, one is the shaft of the letter, which is
long, the other two are the top of the shaft, which extends a little to
the left, and the bottom which extends to the right. And these three
strokes become the basis of the letter i, of u which is a double-i, of
n which is a double-i, and of m which is a triple-i. The o is made of
the main shaft and the right-hand base, and the left-hand top and the
main shaft. So you will then see that the Bergomensis is nothing less
than a more complicated and more regular letter than the Minnesinger,
which in turn is nothing less than a more irregular letter than the
Caroline! In order to make the Bergomensis letter you must have your
pen cut to a comparatively blunt point the exact width of the letter—a
letterer uses such a pen almost always. {195} When you study the
Italic specimen (see last chapter, “Lucidario” page), however, you find
that the lower-case letter is very much like the Minnesinger, except
that it is more simple and a trifle more rounded, but note that it is
evidently written with a comparatively sharp-pointed quill pen. But it
is not to be overlooked■

[Illustration: Example of seventh century lettering from a Latin
manuscript, reproduced from Strange’s book on lettering. In this
letter, freed of the curves in the capitals I, T, L, V, C, etc., we
find the principles of a very simple and graceful style of lettering,
virtually the Caroline, which is being revived by Grasset and Auriol in
France today.]

■that the variety in the letters is still due to the pressure of the
pen. The Italic letter is best practiced with a new quill; and then
when it gets a little out of order it may be cut a trifle and be used
for a Gothic letter, like the Minnesinger; and then when it spreads
again it may be cut a second time and then used for a broader Gothic
letter like the Bergomensis. {196}

Now, I do not claim that this chapter will be intelligible to a mere
reader—I feel sure that it will not be—but to anyone who will put in
practice all the exercises I have suggested, I feel sure that it will
be intelligible, and that it will give him the foundation for the whole
study of lettering so that he may pick up any alphabet and master its
principles after a few days’ practice.

{197} CHAPTER VI.

USE OF QUILL FEN NECESSARY IN THE STUDY OF LETTERING — THE
ORNAMENTATION IN LETTERING OF NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN SCRIBES COMPARED:
THE ITALIAN, GOTHIC, VISIGOTHIC, LOMBARDIC, ROMAN, VENETIAN,
ARABIC — THE FIRST PRINTED LETTERS: TYPE OF CAXTON, GUTENBERG,
ALDUS — THE ITALIC (LUCIDARIO PAGE), MODERNIZED, BECOMES THE JENSON AND
MORRIS TYPE, THE FRENCH OLD STYLE, ENGLISH OLD STYLE, AND OUR MODERN
ROMAN LOWER CASE: THE ALDUS TYPE BECOMES OUR ITALIC — THE PRINTER MUST
HAVE EDUCATED TASTE IF HE WOULD DESIGN CORRECTLY — APPROPRIATENESS
OF CERTAIN LETTERS BECAUSE OF THEIR HISTORIC ASSOCIATIONS — THE BAD
TASTE OF ORNAMENT AT THE EXPENSE OF CLEARNESS — AIMLESS, UNBALANCED
ORNAMENTATION — OVERORNAMENTATION — GRASSET’S LETTERING STUDIED — IN
AURIOL’S LETTERING THE SPIRIT OF PLANT FORM IS EXTENDED BY LETTERING,
AS IN GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE PLANT FORM IS BUILT UPON.

It is to be hoped that upon our advice the printer, after reading
Chapter I, attempted to copy some font, and that, not following any
special method, he found it pretty tedious work: that he then read
Chapters II, III and IV, and found, with the help of our information
about the Latin capitals in a square, and about the Gothic letter
being dependent upon the spreading of a quill pen, that things seemed
clearer, more intelligible. But we think that, with the help of the
present chapter, he will make still more progress. If he, fully
appreciating our reference to the quill pen, procured one, and set
to work studying the Grasset letters {198} he must have made rapid
progress; for it is only by using the quill pen that the Grasset
and Auriol letters can be understood. So we say that if a printer
will procure one and practice the Caroline alphabet given in the
last chapter, next the Burgomensis, next the Minnesinger, and then
the Stimmel and Rogel alphabets, he will find that he has a solid
foundation on which to study lettering, and a clear idea of the genius
of letters. He will begin to realize that the Caroline is the simplest,
the Burgomensis and Minnesinger the more complex, but not very
ornamental, though in them the caligrapher had begun to assert himself,
using a flourish from time to time to ornament the letters. And he will
notice that these flourishes are such as are made naturally with a
quill or reed pen, and that upon these curves and swellings are based
not only the Gothic capitals, but also what are known as lower-case
letters.

It so happened that most of the southern scribes (Italians and Spanish)
confined themselves to a very simple letter, while the northern ones
took pleasure in variety. The southern style is called the Italian, or
italic; the northern, the Gothic. There are many historical instances,
however, where northern manuscripts are simple; and on the other hand,
the letters of Visigothic and Lombardic writers, though southern,
were more ornamental than those of their Roman and Venetian brethren;
and our Burgomensis specimen we call Gothic, though it was originated
in Italy. The true southern ornamentation was originated under the
Arabic influence in Spain (at the time of the Saracenic conquest), and
traveled up to France, where it is found in the elongated d, s and f in
the French diplomatic hand.

{199} [Illustration: Facsimile of the title-page of an Aldine Horace,
1519. Showing Latin monumental letter now known as upper-case roman;
and Italian cursive hand, now known as italic.]

{200}

You, of course, know that when the art of printing was invented the
types had to be cast, and the dies were naturally cut in the form of
the letters of the manuscript of the country in which the printing
was done. Caxton imitated the manuscript of the Low Countries and not
that of England, when he printed the first book printed in English
movable type. So, too, Gutenberg’s type imitated the German manuscript,
while that of Aldus, tradition says, was cast after the manuscript of
Petrarch, and that form has been called Italian or italic ever since.
We give a specimen of Aldus’ “Horace”: copy with a quill the lower
case in it till you can write with ease, and you will be able to write
as Petrarch did. It is harder to associate it with quill pen writing
than to associate the Gothic with the pen letter. Nevertheless, if you
will write for a little while with an old quill, lettering like the
Minnesinger, and then with a new quill imitate the Aldus italic, you
will soon see that the italic character depends upon the pressure of
the quill pen, just as the Gothic does, though not to such a degree.
Make lower-case _a_, _d_ and _s_, or an _m_ several times, and you
will see what I mean. The other Italian form, which printers do not
call italic, is like the Lucidario, which is less cursive than the
Petrarchian form. When modernized, the Lucidario becomes the “Jenson”
and Morris type (while the Aldus is our italic); it only needs a little
investigation to realize how easily it became the French Old Style and
English Old Style, and then our modern, roman lower case.

It will not be difficult for you, if you will really obtain the quill
pen and practice as I propose, to realize the truth of the following
suggestions:

A printer should show an educated taste in his {201} designs. Few
people know this, and your fight will be continually against this
ignorance, both in yourself■

[Illustration: First page of Larousse’s New Dictionary, showing a
scholarly style of decoration. This can be best studied under a
magnifying glass.]

■and your customers. You will think that anything you like is artistic
and appropriate and you will be tempted {202} to undertake it.
Your customers will say that they “know nothing about art” but they
“know what they like”; so they will pick out some ill-executed and
inappropriate job and insist upon your following it. But my business is
simply with that which is established as standard, and not with what
people like or dislike. Now, historic association plays an important
part in designing for printers. The first page of the Larousse
dictionary is a superb example of historic association introduced
into a design. Here, to illustrate the letter A we have letters from
many different periods, but they are all harmonious because of their
ornament and their execution. And they are appropriate because they
are historical. So if you are designing an announcement of the Ancient
Order of Hibernians, a prospectus of a genealogical society, a book of
early English poetry (earlier than the tenth century) you could use
the sixth or seventh century A because that belongs to the very best
Irish-English lettering used between the sixth and tenth centuries.
The other letters that go with the Larousse sixth century ornamented A
specimen you will find in an example from the “Book of Kells,” given in
Strange’s “Alphabets,” and perhaps in the “Durham Book.” This identical
A is probably from “The Rule of St. Benedict.” Now, if you should
obtain an Anglo-Saxon alphabet and master its style and apply it as we
have suggested, it would be properly associated with these historic
subjects; so you, as an educated printer, would know that you were
right, and any criticism would not deter you from using it.

I take it for granted, however, that you use such letters as this A
only as initials, or in designing a title {203} of a line or two; and
that you would not let it occupy too much of the page: for it is not
only necessary that a letter should be associated historically with a
subject and that it be well designed, but it must also be associated
with printing or bookmaking. It is true that some introductory pages in
the sixth and seventh century Irish-English manuscripts were sometimes
very ornamental, but the reading pages were, as a rule, quite■

[Illustration: This is a design by Eugene Grasset for the heading of a
department in “La Revue Encyclopédique.” It represents French designing
art at its best. It is free from conventionality, and yet orderly and
well balanced. The Auriol design for “La Revue Encyclopédique” is bold
and striking, but not as perfect as this.]

■simple. The good bookmaker never forgets his pages are for reading.
So, a Gothic ornamental letter that might be appropriate in a stained
glass window or on a hand-painted testimonial might be offensive
throughout a printed book. I know of nothing more inartistic, more
nauseating to critics, than the millions of lithographed mottoes,
Christmas cards, etc., that the English lithographic publishers have
put out for the last decade—overburdened with ornament that should be
painted and not printed. And so the whites in this sixth century A, and
the dotted outline around it, make {204} it in a way less appropriate
for general printing than the solid black, twelfth century A.

The middle A is in the style of the wood-cut Venetian letter of the
sixteenth century; and while on general principles a gray background
like this is not so satisfactory as a black one, yet this is not a bad
specimen of designing, for the stipple could be punched into the wood
very deeply, and is so near together that if one hole did fill up it
would not be missed. However, it, too, must not be used for general
printing, but only as rich ornament. It is well balanced, mind you, and
therefore the detail is not so worrying as would be as much detail put
in freehand, aimlessly and unbalanced.

If you will now turn to the cover design of the Larousse given in the
August number, you will find it a beautiful production by Grasset,
wherein we see also some decorative elements that may be studied in
conjunction with what we have written in this and preceding chapters
about letters. For example, the use of line with silhouette—we find a
dandelion leaf reduced to silhouette, and another laurel wreath like
the one pictured on the head of Goethe’s mother. But the lettering of
the title is the most interesting part of it. Grasset has studied the
Caroline letter, and reproduces it with very scholarly fidelity. Only
when you have studied an example like the Caroline alphabet we give
from Strange’s book can you appreciate the workmanship and good taste
in the Grasset. A companion piece to this is the heading by Auriol
where we see a modification of the monumental letter and the uncial as
in the d and the r. Here the initials J J and the initial L are Gothic
in principle, and you will not fail to see how■

{205} [Illustration: Design for an article in “La Revue Encyclopédique”
on “Le Théatre Moderne et L’Influence Étrangère, par Jean Jullien,”
with an initial letter and design embracing a half-tone portrait of
the author. A harmonious design, showing the use of silhouette; and
Caroline lettering not so well understood as in the work of Grasset.
Designed by George Auriol.]

■{206} harmoniously the L below the leaves extends the spirit of the
plant design, so that if you have ever read essays upon Gothic art,
like the writings of Ruskin, you will readily see the plant form is
here built upon, as in Gothic architecture. What we have said so far
ought to have prepared you for a historic survey of the topic of
lettering. Our space is much too limited to make such a survey very
extensive, but what we shall give in the next chapter will serve as a
foundation on which you can build, by reading, a much more exhaustive
study of the subject.

{207} CHAPTER VII.

THE GROWTH OF WRITTEN LANGUAGE — SIGNS AND SYMBOLS BECOME
HIEROGLYPHS — EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPHS BECOME HIERATIC OR CURSIVE — THE
HIERATIC BECOMES ANGULAR IN THE PHŒNICIAN — PHŒNICIAN ALPHABET A
MONUMENTAL ONE AND THE LETTERS LIKE OURS — FROM THE PHŒNICIAN COME THE
GREEK AND LATIN ALPHABETS, WHICH ARE USED THROUGHOUT EUROPE TODAY.

The growth of written language is briefly recorded as follows.
Primitive man used signs and symbols, as does the North American
Indian. Noah understood the symbol of the dove with the olive branch.
Had he wished to record the event of the flood he would probably have
drawn several waved lines to represent water, and a mountain peak
underneath, to show that the water rose above the mountains. A second
picture of a dove with an olive branch would have indicated that the
waters had subsided. This method of writing was used by the Assyrians
and Egyptians 5000 B. C. With the Assyrians the symbols developed into
“cuneiform,” or wedge-shaped signs, stamped on clay. With this form we
have nothing to do, as it never influenced our writing; but with the
Egyptians (as with the Chinese) the symbols soon took a written form
called hieratic (used by the priests), which is the direct parent of
our own handwriting. In hieroglyphs on monuments in Egypt, the sign
for water was a horizontal zigzag, and for a mountain a silhouette of
hill-like form. These {208} were painted, and sometimes partly incised
on soft stone or stucco, and had a pictorial character. But when the
priests had to write voluminous rituals, they used a reed pen on
papyrus, and reduced the silhouette pictures to shorthand-like marks.
The first example in the Larousse Dictionary (page 201), represents the
hieratic shorthand of the hieroglyph of a bird. But not only did the
Egyptians use their signs as hieroglyphic word symbols, but they also
used them as phonetic signs, so that the sign for water stood for both
water (_mu_) and the sound _n_. The Phœnicians and Hebrews are supposed
to have borrowed their alphabet from the Egyptian hieratic writing; and
in the transition the irregular character of the markings of the reed
pen on papyrus disappeared and monumental regularity took its place, as
nearly all of the early Phœnician and Hebrew writing was in the form of
inscriptions on stone and metal. But in this transition the letters did
not revert to the Egyptian hieroglyphic symbol, but simply became an
angular, simplified form of the hieratic, so that the A became a V or
caret-like form with a line crossing it.

With the Phœnicians and Hebrews the signs were never used for word
signs, but for syllabic (or letter) forms, so that with them N was
simply a phonetic sign (plus variable vowel accompaniments).

This alphabet was used by the Phœnicians, Hebrews, Moabites and other
Semitic inhabitants of Palestine. It is supposed to have been carried
by the Phœnicians to Greece, and possibly to countries farther west,
but until investigation throws further light upon the subject it is
well to suppose that all the other countries of Europe {209} received
their alphabets from Greece, so that, virtually, all the alphabets of
Europe—Latin, English, German and Russian-are simply modifications of
the Greek (see the succeeding specimens in the Larousse Dictionary
page). The Greek alphabet was modified in two ways: first, in the
monumental form it became more regular—more right-angled—than
the Phœnician; secondly, in the manuscript it became much more
irregular—cursive in general, with angles not at right angles (see
cursive examples, third row of Larousse Dictionary page)—so that in
some third century manuscripts there is as much irregularity as in the
Egyptian. This character, however, is more apt to be found in the late
Greek manuscripts—that is, those written during the Christian era—than
in classic Greek manuscripts where simplicity and regularity prevail.
It is particularly interesting to the printer to realize this fact: for
when he sees a difference in European lettering—as, for instance, the
difference between Russian and German text on the one hand, and English
on the other—he must remember that Russian and German are outgrowths
of the late Greek or ornamental lettering; while English, Italian,
Spanish and French are the outgrowths of the simpler classical Greek
forms. To distinguish the two we have called the first (most of which
is irregular) Gothic, the second (which is generally regular) Latin.
But many an irregular manuscript was written by other than Gothic
scribes, and there are some Latin manuscripts that are as irregular as
the Gothic.

No matter how a letter may vary in ornamentation in a German, Russian,
or English book, it is an outcome {210} of a Greek original. In
the Russian, in one or two cases, a sign is a compound of two Greek
letters, but in English each letter has its Greek prototype. Now
anyone who stops to think will notice that monumental letters on
stone are about the same in all countries. (The letters on Gothic
brasses, however, are dissimilar to the usual monumental letters.) For
the monumental letter is usually made by measuring, as in the first
Bauernfeind alphabet, and is cut by an ordinary workman who follows
a pattern, which should be simple. Therefore, an A is nearly always
two oblique uprights and one horizontal crosspiece, like the sixth
Larousse example. The two uprights are not always at the same angle,
but they are nearly always oblique, though one may be very near the
perpendicular. The crosspiece is sometimes oblique, but rarely at an
angle greater than fifteen degrees. So a monument erected in Greece 600
B. C., one in Rome 60 B. C., one in Italy in 1400 A. D., and one in
Paris today, have virtually the same letter A upon them as one written
in Paris today, and a child who had just learned its letters could
recognize it in each.

It must not be expected that in a short treatise of this kind we can
cover the whole field of paleography, but our few notes on the subject
may indicate to some readers a line of study that will repay anyone who
undertakes it. The easiest method is to examine manuscripts of Bible
text, where the subject matter is pretty well known, and, following
the different styles of writing, acquaint oneself with the development
of writing in different centuries and in different countries. A
valuable handbook giving facsimiles of many Bible pages is “Bible
Illustrations,” published by Henry Frowde, New York—it costs but $1.

{211} [Illustration: SOMMAIRE

Headpiece for a French periodical.]

CHAPTER VIII.

SUMMARY OF METHOD OF INSTRUCTION GIVEN — PRELIMINARY “PLACING” OF LINES
IN A SKETCH — THE RELATION OF A SILHOUETTE TO AN OUTLINE — DRAWING
IN OUTLINE, IN SILHOUETTE, WITH PARTIAL SHADING AND WITH FULL
SHADING — CUTS GIVEN OF VARIOUS STYLES OF BOOK DECORATIONS — ANALYSIS
OF THESE STYLES.

Now for our summary. My method of teaching in this series has been one
of suggestion, and very often I have seemingly gone off at a tangent,
to hint at an application of some rule; in so doing perhaps the
chapters seem to lack continuity, but I think several readings of them
will show that there has been a logical development throughout. Perhaps
the following summary will bring various parts together and fix all in
the memory.

First, the student is advised to practice drawing from objects, and
to learn to get something on the paper as soon as possible, and then
by further labor to develop this something. There should be at first,
lines and markings showing _about_ where the different parts of an
object should come. In the Lautrec drawing the lines are not meant for
a bicycle or the calves of a man’s legs, but the lines represent about
where the bicycle and the man’s calves should come. Anything that can
be seen may be “placed” in this way—a tree, a house, a cloud. After the
student has learned to “place”■

{212} [Illustration: ZIMMERMAN AND HIS MACHINE.

After a lithograph by H. de T. Lautrec, from the _Revue
Franco-Americaine_.

This is given as an example of rapid manner in placing a figure. In
sketching a figure it is advisable always to draw the whole figure at
once, and never finish the head first and then go to the hand. In a few
lines, a correct draftsman may indicate a great deal. It is also given
as an example of a reproduction from a crayon drawing. This is actually
reproduced from a print, but the artist originally drew on a stone with
crayon, and crayon on paper will reproduce by photo-engraving as well
as this. Lithograph crayon may be used, or an ordinary hard crayon (the
softer the better), or Hardtmuth’s crayon pencils. Charcoal paper may
be used, or any of the special crayon papers. The more grain on the
paper, the better.]

■{213} objects fairly well, he finds that by going over his sketch
lines, and improving them a little, he can make outline drawings.
Outlines are frequently used for finished effect as seen in the
Beggarstaff poster.

Of course, this preliminary “placing” of the lines is difficult until
the eye is trained to see correctly. I have■

[Illustration: Portrait caricature of the French actor Dailly, from a
French periodical. Half-tone from a wash drawing.]

■known beginners who could hardly grasp the idea of what an outline
is, so I suggest the excellent method of trying to see objects as
silhouettes. It is not a bad plan to put a whisk broom, a screw-driver
and a hammer against a window pane and draw them in silhouette. {214}
The Beggarstaff is very interesting from this point of view—if you
will think of the cocked hat as a mass, like the Quaker hat, you will
find it easier to draw its outline than as if you see it in all its
component parts, as in the Penlick drawing. We have given previously
many silhouette illustrations to emphasize this method of seeing things
in mass. We also make this point: that the ability to see objects in
silhouette is helpful, not only for the purpose of representing an
entire object in silhouette, but also because details can frequently
be thus represented with excellent effect. For example, the hair and
mustache in the Penlick, and the hair in the Dailly are in silhouette.

Besides outline and silhouette, shading may be employed by the
draftsman to bring out form. The Dailly differs considerably from the
Beggarstaff—it is fully shaded, and shading brings out the forms of the
planes and muscles of the face.

[Illustration: Pen drawing by Albert Mantelet. [drop-cap]]

Mantelet’s initial gives us a third kind of drawing. It is partly
shaded. The Sphinx design is an excellent example of shading contrasted
with silhouette. In order to learn to shade, it is well to draw from
white objects, such as plaster casts or pasteboard boxes, placed in
a good light, which should come from one direction only. It makes
little difference what material is used to draw with; your aim should
be to accustom yourself to distinguish light and shade. If you can
distinguish it upon the object it is not difficult to draw it on paper.

Lettering and the adaptability or application of■

{215} [Illustration: Initial letter, with character portrait. Drawn by
Mantelet, enlarged from a cut in a French periodical. A drawing might
be made this size if intended to be reduced to the size of the cut
opposite.]

■{216} the pictorial to printing are matters which we have allowed to
force their way into almost every page, so a■

[Illustration: Design by Georg Auriol.]

■summary of our method of teaching in this series would not be complete
without a further word about the decoration of a page.

Let us next, therefore, consider the matter of periods or styles in
illustrating. The initial letter designed by Auriol represents a modern
style of design.■

[Illustration: THE BATTLE OF THE SPHINX.

Illustration from a French periodical. Crayon and silhouette effect.]

■{217} Twenty years ago the half-tone, as in this portrait, was
unknown, and while the white and black goes back to the fifteenth
century, the free distribution of the leaves is due to the French
artists having studied Japanese designing.

The “Théatre du Chat Noir,” designed by the same artist, is also
Japanesque in treatment. It may be profitably compared with the Grasset
page. Auriol’s initial■

[Illustration: Théatre du Chat Noir]

■“L” you will at once recognize as Gothic, and that also, you see, goes
back farther than the fifteenth century. Now, does not that suggest
to you that in modern designing there may be much recourse to antique
styles? Recognizing this, you will grasp our idea in publishing these
different Ls. We do not say any special one, like our initial “L,”
could be of immediate use to you; but we do say that, in the hands of a
clever designer, every one could serve as a basis on which to build a
style of design.