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 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}

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}

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}

CRAYON STUDY OF A CHILD. By J. Lefebvre. Half-tone from a lithographic
reproduction by F. Grellet.

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 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}

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}

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.