PAPER.

EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUMS.

EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUM.

CHURCHYARD CROSS, RAGLAN.Application of shading medium.

Electrotype copies of line blocks cost from three-farthings to three-halfpence per square inch, and from half-tone blocks, twopence, although it is not advisable to have electrotypes taken of these fine and delicate blocks. If duplicates are wanted of half-tones, the usual practice is to have two original blocks made, the process-engraver charging for the second block half the price of the first.

PAPER.

The process engraver will tell you, if you seek counsel of him, that you should use Bristol-board, and of that only the smoothest and most highly finished varieties. But, however easy it may render his work of reproduction, there is no necessity for you to draw upon cardboard or smooth-surfaced paper at all. Paper of a reasonable whiteness is, of course, necessary to any process of line engraving which has photography as a basis, but to say that stiff cardboards or papers of a blue-white, as opposed to the cream-laid variety, are necessary is merely to obscure what is, after all, a simple matter.

Bristol-board is certainly a very favourite material, and the varieties of cardboards sold under that name are numerous enough to please anybody. Goodall’s sell as reliable a make as can be readily found. Itis white enough to please the photo-engraver, and of a smooth, hard surface; and a hard surface you must have for pen-work. But it is an unsympathetic material, and it is an appreciably more difficult matter to make a pencil sketch upon it than upon such papers as Whatman’s HP.

Mounting-boards are frequently used, chiefly for journalistic pen-work, when it may be supposed nobody cares anything about thefinesseof the art, but only that the drawing shall be up to a certain standard of excellence, and, more particularly, up to time. Mounting-boards are appreciably cheaper than good Bristol-board, but if erasures are to be made they are troublesome, because under the surface they are composed of the shoddiest of matter. They are convenient, indeed admirable, for studies carried out in a masculine manner with a quill pen, or for simple drawings made with an ordinary writing nib, with not too sharp a point. For delicate technique they are not to be recommended.

Indeed, for anything but work done at home, cardboards of any sort are inexpedient; they are heavy, and take up too much space. If they were necessary, of course you would have to put up with the inconvenience ofcarrying two or more pounds’ weight of them about with you, but they are not necessary.

Every one who makes drawings in pen and ink is continually looking out for an ideal paper; many have found their ideals in this respect; but that paper which one man swears by, another will, not inconceivably, swear at, so no recommendation can be trusted. Again, personal predilections change amazingly. One day you will be able to use Bristol-board with every satisfaction; another, you will find its smooth, dead white, immaculate surface perfectly dispiriting. No one’s advice can be implicitly followed in respect of papers, inks, or pens. Every one must find his own especial fancy, and when he has found it he will produce the better work.

The pen-draughtsman who is a paper-fancier does not leave untried even the fly-leaves of his correspondence. Papers have been found in this way which have proved satisfactory. All you have to do is to go to some large stationer or wholesale papermaker’s and get your fancy matched. It would be an easy matter to obtain sheets larger than note-paper.

Whatman’s HP, or hot-pressed drawing-paper, is good for pen-drawing, but its proper use is not very readily learnt. To begin with, the surface is full of little granulations and occasional fibres which catch the pen and cause splutterings and blots. Sometimes, too, you happen upon insufficiently sized Whatman, and then lines thicken almost as if the drawing were being made upon blotting-paper.

A good plan is to select some good HP Whatman and have it calendered. Any good stationer could put you in the way of getting the calendering done, or possibly such a firm as Dickinsons’, manufacturers of paper, in Old Bailey, could be prevailed upon to do it. If you want a firm, hard, clear-cut line, you will of course use only Bristol-board or mounting-board, or papers with a highly finished surface. Drawings upon Whatman’s papers give in the reproductions broken and granulated lines which the process-man (but no one else) regards as defects. Should the block itself be defective, he will doubtless point to the paper as the cause, but there is no reason why the best results should not proceed from HP paper. Messrs. Reeves and Sons, of Cheapside, sell what they call London boards. These are sheets of Whatman mounted upon cardboard.They offer the advantages of the HP surface with the rigidity of the Bristol-board. The Art Tablets sold by the same firm are cardboards with Whatman paper mounted on either side. A drawing can be made upon both sides and the tablet split up afterwards.

In connection with illustration, amongst the most remarkable inventions of late years are the prepared cardboards generally known amongst illustrators as “scratch-out cardboards,” introduced by Messrs. Angerer and Göschl of Vienna, and by M. Gillot of Paris. These cardboards are of several kinds, but are all prepared with a surface of kaolin, or china-clay. Reeves sell eight varieties of these clay-boards. They are somewhat expensive, costing two shillings a sheet of nineteen by thirteen inches, but when their use is well understood they justify their existence by the rich effects obtained, and by the saving of time effected in drawing upon them. Drawings made upon these preparations have all the fulness and richness of wash, pencil, or crayon, and may be reproduced by line processes at the same cost as a pen-drawing made upon plain paper. The simplest variety of clay-board is the oneprepared with a plain white surface, upon which a drawing may be made with pen and ink, or with a brush, the lights taken out with a scraper or a sharp-pointed knife. It is advisable to work upon all clay-surfaced papers or cardboards with pigmental inks, as, for instance, lampblack, ivory-black, or Indian ink. Ebony stain is not suitable. The more liquid inks and stains have a tendency to soakthroughthe prepared surface of china-clay, rather than to rest onlyuponit, thereby rendering the cardboard useless for “scratch-out” purposes, and of no more value than ordinary drawing-paper. A drawing made upon plain clay-board with pen and brush, using lampblack as a medium, can be worked upon very effectively with a sharp point. White lines of a character not to be obtained in any other way can be thus produced with happy effect. Mr. Heywood Sumner has made some of his most striking decorative drawings in this manner. It is a manner of working remarkably akin to the wood-engraver’s art—that is to say, drawing or engraving in white lines upon a black field—only of course the cardboard is more readily worked upon than the wood block. Indeed, wood-engravers have frequently used this plain clay-board. They havehad the surface sensitized, the drawing photographed and printed upon it, and have then proceeded to take out lights, to cut out white lines, and to hatch and cross-hatch, until the result looks in every way similar to a wood engraving. This has then been photographed again, and a zinc block made that in the printing would defy even an expert to detect.

Other kinds of clay-boards are impressed with a grain or with plain indented lines, or printed upon with black lines or reticulations, which may be scratched through with a point, or worked upon with brush or pen. Examples are given here:

CANVAS-GRAIN CLAY-BOARD.

No. 1. White cardboard, impressed with aplain canvas grain.

This gives a fine painty effect, as shown in the drawing of polled willows: a drawing made in pencil, with lights in foreground grass and on tree-trunks scratched out with a knife or with the curved-bladed eraser sold for use with these preparations.

PLAIN DIAGONAL GRAIN.

PLAIN PERPENDICULAR GRAIN.

2.Plain white diagonal lines. Pencil drawing.

3.Plain white perpendicular lines. Pencil drawing.

4.Plain white aquatint grain. Pencil drawing.

These four varieties require greater care and a lighter hand in working than the others, because their patterns are not very deeply stamped, and consequently the furrows between the upstanding lines are apt to become filled with pencil, and to give a broken and spotty effect in the reproduction.

DRAWING IN PENCIL ON WHITE AQUATINT GRAIN CLAY-BOARD.

5.Black aquatint. This is not a variety in constant use. Three states are shown.

6.Black diagonal lines. This is the pattern in greater requisition.The method of working is shown, but the possibilities of this pattern are seen admirably and to the best advantage in the illustration ofVenetian Fête on the Seine.

BLACK AQUATINT CLAY-BOARDBLACK DIAGONAL-LINED CLAY-BOARDAND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.

BLACK AQUATINT CLAY-BOARDBLACK DIAGONAL-LINED CLAY-BOARD

AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.

7.Black perpendicular lines. Same asNo. 6, except in direction of line.

BLACK PERPENDICULAR-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.

VENETIAN FÊTE ON THE SEINE, WITH THE TROCADERO ILLUMINATED.Pen and ink on black diagonal-lined clay-board. Lights scratched out.

VENETIAN FÊTE ON THE SEINE, WITH THE TROCADERO ILLUMINATED.

Pen and ink on black diagonal-lined clay-board. Lights scratched out.

Drawings made upon these grained and ridged papers must not be stumped down or treated in any way that would fill up the interstices,which give the lined and granular effect capable of reproduction by line-process. Also, it is very important to note that drawings on these papers can only be subjected to a slight reduction of scale—say, a reduction at most by one quarter. The closeness of the printed grains and lines forbids a smaller scale that shall be perfect. Mr. C. H. Shannon has drawn upon lined “scratch-out” cardboard with the happiest effect.

PENS.

A common delusion as to pens for drawing is that only the finer-pointed kinds are suitable. To the contrary, most of the so-called “etching pens” and crow-quills and lilliputian affairs sold are not only unnecessary, but positively harmful. They encourage the niggling methods of the amateur, and are, besides, untrustworthy and dreadfully scratchy. You can but rarely depend upon them for the drawing of a continuous line; frequently they refuse to mark at all. I know very well that I shall be exclaimed against when I say that a good medium-pointed pen or fine-pointed school nib are far better than three-fourths of the pens especially made for draughtsmen, but that is the case.

With practice, one can use almost any writing nib for the production of a pen-drawing. Even the broad-pointed J pen is useful. Quill pens aredelightful to work with for the making of pen-studies in a bold, free manner. A well-cut quill flies over all descriptions of paper, rough or smooth, without the least catching of fibres or spluttering. It is the freest and least trammelling of pens, and seems almost to draw of its own volition.

Brandauer’s pens are, generally, very good, chiefly for the reason that they have circular points that rarely become scratchy. They make a small nib, No. 515, which works and wears well; this last an unusual quality in the small makes. Perry & Co. sell two very similar nibs, No. 601 (a so-called “etching pen”) and No. 25; they are both scratchy. Gillott’s crowquill, No. 659, is a barrel pen, very small and very good, flexible, and capable of producing at once the finest and the boldest lines; but Brandauer’s Oriental pen, No. 342 EF, an ordinary fine-pointed writing pen, is just as excellent, and its use is more readily learnt. It takes some time and practice to discover the capabilities of the Gillott crowquill; the other pen’s possibilities are easier found. Besides, the tendency with a microscopic nib is to niggled work, which is not to be desired at the cost of vigour.Mitchell’s F pen is a fine-pointed school writing nib. It is not particularly flexible, but very reliable and lasts long. Gillott has recently introduced a very remarkable nib, No. 1000, frankly a drawing pen, flexible in the extreme, capable of producing at will the finest of hair-lines or the broadest of strokes.

Some illustrators make line drawings with a brush. Mr. J. F. Sullivan works in this way, using a red sable brush with all superfluous hairs cut away, and fashioned to a point. Lampblack is the best medium for the brush.

To draw in line with a brush requires long practice and great dexterity, but men who habitually work in this way say that its use once learnt, no one would exchange it for the pen. Of this I can express no opinion. Certainly there are some obvious advantages in using a brush. It does not ever penetrate the surface of the paper, and it is capable of producing the most solid and smooth lines.

Stylographic and fountain pens, of whatever make, are of no use whatever. Glass pens are recommended by some draughtsmen for their quality of drawing an equable line; but they would seem to be chieflyuseful in mathematical and engineering work, which demands the same thickness of line throughout. These pens would also prove very useful in architects’ offices, in drawing profiles of mouldings, tracery, and crockets, because, not being divided into two nibs, they make any variety of curve without the slightest alteration in the character of the line produced. Any one accustomed to use the ordinary divided nibs will know the difficulty of drawing such curves with them.

INKS.

It is, perhaps, more difficult to come by a thoroughly reliable ink than to be exactly suited with papers and pens; and yet greater attention has been given by manufacturers to inks than to those other necessaries.

You can, often with advantage, use a writing pen; but no one, however clever he may be, can make a satisfactory drawing for reproduction with the aid of writing-inks. They are either not black enough, or else are too fluid, so that it is impossible to run lines close together, or to cross-hatch without the ink running the lines into one another. It may, perhaps, be remarked that this is an obvious error, since many of Keene’s most delightful drawings and studies were made in writing-inks—black, blue-black, or diluted, or even in red, and violet, and blue inks. Certainly Keene was a great man in whatever medium he used, but he was not accustomed to be reproduced in any otherway than by so-calledfac-similewood engraving. In this way all his greynesses and faint lines could have their relative values translated, but even in the cleverest surface-printing processes his work could not be adequately reproduced.

Stephens’s ebony stain is perhaps the most widely used ink at this time. It is not made for the purpose of drawing, being a stain for wood; but its merits for pen-drawing have been known for some considerable time. It is certainly the best, cheapest, and least troublesome medium in the market. It is, when not diluted, an intensely black liquid with an appreciable body, but not too thick to flow freely. It dries with a certain but not very obtrusive glaze, which process-engravers at one time objected to most strongly,becausethey wanted something to object to on principle; but they have at length become tired of remonstrating, and really there was never any objection to the stain upon that score. It flows readily from the pen, and when drying upon the nib is not gummy nor in any way adhesive, but powders easily—avoiding the abomination of a pen clogged with a sticky mess of half-dry mud, characteristic of the use of Indian ink. Ebony stain issold in substantial stone bottles, and so does not readily become thick; but when, owing to any cause, it does not run freely enough, a sparing dilution with water restores its fluid properties. Diluted too often or too freely, it becomes of a decided purple-brown tint; but as a good-sized bottle costs only sixpence, and holds enough to last a year, it need not be repeatedly diluted on the score of its cost. It is not a fixed ink, and readily smudges when washed over or spotted with water—so cannot be used in combination with water-colour or flat-washes. Neither can Chinese white be used upon a drawing made in Ebony stain. These are disadvantages that would tell against its use by illustrators who make many alterations upon their work, or who paint in lights on a pen-drawing with body-colour; but for pure pen-drawing, and for straight-away journalistic work, it is invaluable.

Indian ink is the traditional medium. It has the advantage of fixity; lines drawn with it, when once dry, will not smudge when washed over, and, at most, they give but a very slight grey or brown tint to the paper. Indian ink can be bought in sticks and ground with water in asaucer; but there seems to be no reason for any one to go to this trouble, as liquid Indian inks are to be bought in bottles from Messrs. Reeves. The best Indian ink, when freshly ground, gives a fine black line that dries with that bogey of the process-man, a glaze; but lampblack is of a more intense blackness, and dries with a dull surface. Lampblack is easily soluble, and therefore has not the stability of good Indian ink to recommend it. For ordinary use with the pen, it has too much of the pigmental nature, and is very apt to clog the nib and to cause annoyance and loss of time. Lampblack and Ivory-black are better suited to the brush. Hentschel, of 182, Fleet Street, sells an American preparation called “Whiting’s Process-Drawing Ink,” which professes to have all the virtues that should accompany a drawing-ink. It is very abominable, and has an immediate corrosive effect upon pens. The drawing-materials’ shop in King William Street, Strand, sells “Higgins’ American Drawing Ink,” done up in ingeniously contrived bottles. It is well spoken of.

Encre de Chine Liquideis the best liquid Indian ink sold, and is very largely used by draughtsmen. It can be obtained readily at anygood colour-shop. It is far preferable to most of the liquid Indian inks prepared by English houses, which when left standing for a few minutes deposit a sediment, and at best are inadequate concoctions of a greenish-grey colour. Messrs. Reeves and Sons have recently introduced a special ink for pen-drawing, which they call “Artists’ Black.” It is as good as any. It is a liquid ink, sold in shilling bottles.

Mr. Du Maurier uses blue-black writing-ink from an inkstand that is always allowed to stand open and receive dust and become half muddy. He prefers it in this condition. Also he generally works upon HP drawing-paper. It is interesting to know this, but to work in blue-black ink is an amiable eccentricity that might prove disastrous to any one following his example. His work is not reproduced by zincography, but byfac-similewood engraving. It may be laid down as an inflexible rule, if you are beginning the study of pen-drawing, if your work is for hurried newspaper production, or if you have not the control of the reproduction in your own hands, to draw for line-process in the blackest ink and on the whitest paper.

Many architects and architectural draughtsmen, who are accustomed to exhibit pen-drawings of architecture at the Royal Academy, are accustomed to draw in brown inks. Prout’s Brown is generally used, and gives a very pleasing effect to a drawing. It photographs and reproduces readily, but it must always be borne in mind that, if printed in black ink, the reproduction will inevitably be much heavier. Scarlet inks, and even yellow inks, have been used by draughtsmen for special purposes, and are allowable from the photographic point of view; but blue must not be used, being an actinic colour and impossible to photograph.

THE MAKING OF A PEN-DRAWING.

It is not to be supposed that because the pen is so handy an instrument, and inks and paper, of sorts, are everywhere, that the making of a pen-drawing is a simple affair of a few uneducated strokes. The less you know of the art, the easier it seems, and they do but show their ignorance who speak of its simplicity. You will want as much power of draughtsmanship, and more, for drawing in this medium than in many others; because the difference between good drawing and bad is more readily seen in line-work than in other methods, and since in these days the standard of the art has been raised so high. You will want not less study in the open air, or with the life-class for figure-work, than the painter gives or should give to his preliminary studies for his art. This drudgery you will have to go through, whetherin the schools of the Science and Art Department (which does not recognize this, the livest art of our time), or in the studio and under the care of some artist who receives pupils in the fashion of theatéliersystem in France. But such studios are rare in England. It seems likely that the student of pen-drawing, who starts with learning draughtsmanship of any sort, must first go through much of the ordinary grind of the schools, and, when he has got some sort of proficiency, turn to and worry out the application of the pen to his already received teaching. No one will teach him pen-drawing as an individual art; of that there is no doubt. Perhaps the best course he could pursue would be to become acquainted with the books illustrated by the foremost men, and study them awhile to see in what manner they work with the pen, and with this knowledge set to work with models, in the same way as a painter would do. Or, if your work is of another branch beside the figure, go to the fields, the hedgerows, and all the glory of the country-side, and work first-hand. The sketch-book is a necessity, and should always be in the student’s pocket for the jotting down of notes and memoranda.

I do not think many pen-draughtsmen are careful enough to make a thorough pencil study as the basis of their pen-drawing, although that is the best way to proceed, and their drawings would be all the better for the practice. It is to this absence of the preliminary pencil-work, this shirking of an undoubted drudgery, that is due the quantity of uninspired, fumbling drawing with the pen that we see nowadays. The omission of a carefully made original pencil-sketch, over which to work in pen and ink, renders commonplace the work of many artists which, if only they were less impatient of toil, would become transfigured. What is so injurious to the man who has learnt his art is fatal to one who is by way of beginning its study. Make, then, a pencil-drawing in outline, using an HB pencil, as carefully as if that only were the end and object of your work. Work lightly with this hard pencil upon the paper or cardboard you have selected, indicating shadows rather than filling them in. It is necessary to make only faint pencil lines, for they will have to be rubbed out eventually, after the pen-drawing has been made over them. If the marks were deep and strong, a great deal ofrubbing would have to be done to get them out, and that injures the surface of the paper and greys the black lines of the ink used. On the other hand, if the pencil-marks were not rubbed out, they would very likely photograph and reproduce in the process-block. To a pen-draughtsman of experience the reproduction of his pencil-marks can be made an additional beauty; but the student had much better be, at first, a purist, and make for clean pen-strokes alone on his finished drawing.

It must always be remembered, if you are working for reproduction (and consequent reduction of scale from the drawing to the process-block), that the pen-work you have seen printed in the books and papers and magazines was made on a much larger scale than you see it reproduced in their pages. Very frequently, as in the American magazines, the reduction is to about one quarter scale of the original drawing; but, working for process in England, the drawing should, generally speaking, be from two-thirds to one-half larger than the reproduction. These proportions will, as a rule, give excellent results.

Seeing that your drawing is to be so much larger than theprocess-block, it follows that the pen-work can, with advantage, be correspondingly vigorous. It would help you better than any description to a notion of what an original drawing should be like, if you could obtain a glance at the originals of any good pen-draughtsmen. But unfortunately, there are few exhibitions in which pen-work has any place.

When your pencil study is completed in an outline giving all details down to the minutest, you can set about the pen-drawing. Often, indeed, if carefully made, the pencil-sketch looks too good to be covered up with ink. If you wish to retain it, it can, if made upon thin paper, be traced upon cardboard with the aid of black carbon paper, or better still (since blue will not photograph) with blue transfer paper, which you can either purchase or make for yourself by taking thin smooth paper and rubbing powdered blue chalk upon one side of it, or scribbling closely upon it with blue pencil. There is another way of tracing the pencil-drawing: by pinning over it a sheet of thin correspondence paper (of the kind called Bank Post) and working upon that straight away.

But, after all, it would, for the sake of retaining something of thefreshness of first impressions, be best to sacrifice your pencil study and work away on that.

Now the pen-drawing is begun, care should be taken to draw only clear and perfectly black lines, and not to run these together, but to keep the drawing what the process men call “open.”

If details are put in without regard for the fining down which reduction gives, it is only too likely that the result will show only dirty, meaningless patches where was a great deal of delicate pen-work. Of course, the exact knowledge of how to draw with the pen to get the best results by process cannot properly be taught, but must be learned by experience, after many miscalculations.

It will be found, too, that many things which it would be inadvisable for the beginner to do (especially if he cannot command his own choice of process-engraver) are perfectly legitimate to the practised artist who has studied process work. The student should not be at first encouraged to make experiments in diluted inks or retained pencil-marks, or any of those delightful practices by which one who isthoroughly conversant with photographic processes and pen-drawing varies the monotony of his medium. He should begin by making his drawings as simply as he can, so that they express his subject. And this simplicity, this quality of suggestion, is the true field of pen-work. The best work is reticent and sober, giving the greatest number of essential facts in the fewest strokes. If you can express a fact with sufficient intelligibility in half a dozen pen strokes, it is inartistic and inexpedient to worry it into any number of scratches. This is often done because the public likes to see that there has been plenty of manual labour put into the work it buys. It is greatly impressed with the knowledge that any particular drawing took days to complete, and it respects that drawing accordingly, and has nothing but contempt for a sketch which may have taken only an hour or so, although the first may be artless and overloaded with unnecessary detail, and the second instinct with actuality and suggestion. But if you are drawing a landscape with a pen, that is no reason for putting in an elaborate foreground of grass, carefully working up each square inch. Such a subject can be rendered by a master in a few strokes, andthough, possibly, you may never equal the artistry of the master, you can follow his ideals. Another and allied point in pen-and-ink art is its adaptability to what is termed “selection.” You have, say, before you the view or object to be drawn. You do not need to make a drawing in which you shall niggle up every part of it, but you select (the trained eye readily does this) its salient feature and emphasize it and make it fall properly into the composition, leaving aught else either suggested or less thoroughly treated. Here is a pen-drawing made with a very special regard to a selection only of the essential.The Gatehouse, Moynes Court, is a singular structure near the shore of the Severn estuary, two miles below Chepstow. The singularity of its design, rarely paralleled in England, would give the artist the motive for sketching, and its tapering lines and curious roofs are best preserved in a drawing that deals chiefly in outline, and has but little shading wherewith to confuse the queer profile of these effective towers. This drawing was reproduced by the bitumen process. The lines in the foreground, suggestive of grass, were drawn in pencil. The pen-sketches and studies of the foremost artists which have been made, not for publication, but for practice, but which have sometimes been reproduced, as, for instance, some slight sketches of Charles Keene’s, delight the artist’s eye simply by reason of their suggestive and selective qualities. If you do not delight in these things, but have a desire to (as the untaught public might say) “see them finished,” then it seems likely either that you have not the artistic sense, or else you have not sufficient training; but I should suspect you were in the first category, and should then advise you to leave matters artistic alone.

7¼ × 9.THE GATEHOUSE, MOYNES COURT.Bitumen process. Drawing showing value of selection.

7¼ × 9.THE GATEHOUSE, MOYNES COURT.

Bitumen process. Drawing showing value of selection.

You should not forget that in drawing for reproduction you are not working like the painter of a picture. The painter’s picture exists for its own sake, not, like a pen or wash drawing, as only the means to an end. The end of these drawings is illustration, and when this is frankly acknowledged, no one has any right to criticize the neatness or untidiness of the means, so long as the end is kept properly in view.

We have not yet arrived at that stage of civilization when black-and-white art shall be appreciated as fully as colour. When we have won to that pinnacle of culture, then perhaps an original drawing in pen or monochrome will be cherished for its own sake; at present we are barbaric more than enough, and bright hues attract us only in lesser degree than our “friend and brother,” Quashee from the Congo. How nearly related we are these preferences may show more readily thanthe ranter’s impassioned oratory. As a drawing made for reproduction is only a stage on the way to the printed illustration, and is not the cynosure of collectors, it is successful or unsuccessful only in so far as it subserves this purpose. There is really no need for scrupulous neatness in the original; there is no necessity for it to have the appearance of a finished picture or of delicate execution, so only it will wear this appearance when reduced. That curious bugbear of neatness causes want of breadth and vigour, and is the cause of most of the tight and trammelled handling we see. Draughtsmen at the outset of their career are too much afraid of their mediums of white cardboard and ink, and too scrupulous in submitting their original drawings, beautifully cleaned up and trimmed round, to editors who, if they know their business, give no better consideration to them on that account. Mr. Ruskin has written, in hisElements of Drawing, some most misleading things with regard to drawing with the pen. True, his book was written in the ’50’s, before pen-drawing became an art, but it has been repeatedly reprinted even so lately as 1893, and consequentlyit is still actively dangerous. “Coarse art,”i.e.bold work, says Mr. Ruskin—he is speaking of pen-drawing—“is always bad art.” There you see Mr. Ruskin holding a brief for the British public which admires the ineffable artistry displayed in writing the Lord’s Prayer on a threepenny piece, but deplores the immorality shown in drawings done with a quill pen. The art of a pen-drawing isnotto be calculated on a sliding-scale graduated to microscopical fractions of an inch and applied to its individual strokes.

The appearance a drawing will present when reduced may be approximately judged by the use of a “diminishing glass,” that is to say, a concave glass.

Drawings should not be cleaned up with india-rubber, which destroys the surface of paper or cardboard and renders lines rotten; bread should be used, preferably stale bread two days old, crumbled and rubbed over the drawing with the palm of the hand. Mr. Ruskin says that in this way “you waste the good bread, which is wrong;” but you had better use a handful of “the good bread” in this way than injure a good drawing.

The copying of wood engravings or steel prints, not for their subjects, but for their peculiartechniques, is a vicious and inartistic practice. Time used in this way is time wasted, and worse than wasted, because this practice is utterly at variance with the spirit of pen-work.

It is not a proof of artistry or consummate draughtsmanship to be able to draw a straight line or a perfect circle, the absurd legend of Giotto and his circle notwithstanding.

There are many labour-saving tricks in drawing for reproduction, but these have usually little connection with the purely artistic side of illustration. They have been devised chiefly to aid the new race of artist-journalists in drawing for the papers which cater for that well-known desire of the public to see its news illustrated hot and hot. Most of these methods and the larger proportion of the men who practice them are frankly journalistic, but some few draughtsmen have succeeded in resolving this sleight of hand into novel and interesting styles, and their hurried work has achieved a value all its own, scarcely legitimate, but aggressive and clamouring for attention.

One of these tricks in illustration is a method which is largely practised for journalistic illustration in America—drawing in pen and ink upon photographs, which are afterwards bleached out, the outline drawings remaining to be processed. Although not a desirable practice from an artistic point of view, it is advantageously used for news work or upon any occasion in which expedition is essential. The photograph to be treated in this way is printed by the usual silver-print method, with the exception that the paper used is somewhat differently prepared. What is known as “plain salted paper” is used; that is to say, paper prepared without the albumen which gives to ordinary silver-prints their smooth, shiny appearance. The paper is prepared by being soaked in a solution made by the following formula:—

The print is made and fixed without toning. It may now be drawn upon with pen and Indian ink. The ink should be perfectly black and fixed. The drawing, if it is to be worth anything artistically, must not aimat anything like the fulness of detail which the photograph possesses. An outline drawing is readily made in this way, and a considerable amount of detail may be achieved. Indeed, the temptation is always to go over the photograph in pen and ink too fully, and only draughtsmen of accomplishment can resist this almost irresistible inducement to do too much. Still, admirable results have been obtained in this way by artists who know and practise the very great virtue of reticence.

When the drawing has been finished it is immersed in a solution of bichlorate of mercury dissolved in alcohol, which removes all traces of the photograph, leaving the drawing showing uninjured upon plain white paper. Omissions from the drawing may now be supplied and corrections made, and it is now ready for being processed. If very serious omissions are noticed, the photograph may be conjured back by immersing the paper in a solution of hyposulphite of soda.

Another and readier way is to draw upon photographs printed on ferro-prussiate paper. This paper may be purchased at any good photographic materials shop, or it can be prepared by brushing a sheetof paper over with a sensitizing solution composed of the two following solutions, A and B, prepared separately and then mixed in equal volumes:—

The paper must be prepared thus in a dark room and quickly dried. It will remain in good condition for three or four months, and is best preserved in a calcium tube. Prints made upon ferro-prussiate paper are formed in Prussian blue, and are fixed in the simplest way, on being taken from the printing frame, by washing in cold water.

An Indian ink drawing may now be made upon this blue photographic print, and sent for process without the necessity of bleaching, because blue will not reproduce. If, on the other hand, it is desired to see the drawing as black lines upon white paper, the blue print may be bleached out in a few seconds by immersing it in a dish of water in which a small piece of what chemists call carbonate of soda (common washing soda) has been dissolved.

Outline drawings for reproduction by process may be made upon tracing-paper. Most of the rough illustrations and portrait sketches printed in the morning and evening newspapers are tracings made in this way from photographs or from other more elaborate illustrations. Although this is not at all a dignified branch of art, yet some of the little portrait heads that appear from time to time in theSt. James’s Gazette,Pall Mall Gazette, and theWestminster Gazetteare models of selection and due economy of line, calculated to give all the essentials of portraiture, while having due regard to the exigencies of the newspaper printing press.

Thetwo outlineportrait sketchesshown here are reproduced from theSt. James’s Gazette. Their thick lines have a tendency to become offensive when subjected to careful book-printing, but appearing as they originally did in the rapidly printed editions of an evening paper, this emphasis of line was exactly suited to the occasion.

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