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

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}

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

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.

Pen drawing by Albert Mantelet.

antelet’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}

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

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.

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

“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.

ooking at these initials from this point of view, they offer various suggestions. Here, for example, are more natural forms, but not in the Japanese styles. A close observer of nature might be able to engrave a somewhat clumsier, {218} but none the less interesting, initial of this kind, while he could not draw a Japanese-like design with the grace of Auriol.

eaves and flowers are not the only motives at the designer’s service. Here is a little street vista in which the suggestion of buildings is nicely brought out, yet the lines are by no means exact. If one or two lines have been cut away in the process of engraving, we hardly miss them; and if a few more should be cut away from the design as it is, they would not be missed. A style of designing in which free lines are used in this way has its value, though we should not advise one to found a study of drawing upon such principles.

ines in themselves, as well as nature’s forms, may be used. This “L” is little more than a repetition of Arabic design; again in our example of Holbein’s book-cover design we see an echo of Moorish and Grolier designing, which were Arabic in character.

ike the former initial “L,” this one depends upon lines for its ornamentation. These are curved lines instead of straight ones, and where, as in the upper part, it resembles the Holbein cover, it is in a measure Moorish; but where, as along

{219}

POSTER. Designed and engraved on wood by the Beggarstaff Brothers. Showing a clever use of silhouette and outline, with appropriate Old English lettering. One of the most harmonious designs we publish.

{220} the letter L, the curves have a knot at each end, one longer than the other, the design is based upon the Rococo, which is often used in modern illustration, when lightness and irregularity are required. The French illustrator Maurice Leloir, in his decorations of some eighteenth century books, Such as “Sterne’s Sentimental Journey,” used it advantageously.

iving forms may be substituted for lines, and the ingenious combination of the figure and its shadows in this specimen suggests a method of construction which is often used by designers. The sky in this little cut is nicely engraved, and could serve as a good exercise for one who had been practicing wood cutting a month or two.

Leaving out the initial, a little rectangular cut like the foregoing makes an effective introduction to a paragraph, and again suggests practice in wood engraving.

All the cuts illustrating this chapter, except the Holbein, are taken from numbers of the French journal, L’Artist, published between 1861 and 1868, and they represent a method of designing in vogue during those years and as far back as 1830, and as late as 1870. The initials were doubtless originally designed for a special purpose, so that the subject related to the text, but later on cuts
{221}

PEN DRAWING BY PENLICK. From La Petit Journal Pour Rire. The legend reads: “Our Soldiers. Machin, the staff officer, the terror of the soldier, doesn’t joke with the rules and regulations; has risen from the rank and file; a very useful individual; it’s always Machin here and Machin there, ask Machin. He terrorizes the one-year volunteers, whom he treats as young shoots (literal translation beets); an old bachelor to the core.”

{222} were put in the case and used promiscuously year after year; and when the letter needed was not at hand, a cut like the last example was employed to adorn the page, as a decoration.

Here we have a design by Holbein with Arabesque or Celtic interlacing, which is often studied by designers, and used with pleasing results.

It is probable that all the early Italian and French leather book-covers were imitations of Arab book-covers (or, at any rate, Eastern covers) brought into Europe by the Moors in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Their Mohammedan religion forbade their picturing the figures of man or beast, and so the efforts of their designers were almost entirely centered on lettering, and on interlacing streamers or bands, or whatever we may call them (since these were also used by Celtic and Byzantian designers they are sometimes called Celtic or Byzantian interlacing); and their book-covers consisted of beautiful inlays of colored leather on ingenious combinations of interlaced lines.

In the next chapter the subject of wood engraving will be taken up, and it will make this chapter more interesting.

LA REVUE. Headpiece from a French periodical.