Many illustrators are fond of making wash drawings and then strengthening them with pen or pencil. The advantage is not easy to see, a mixed and indifferent character being usually felt.
Pencil drawing with a reinforcement of a few ink lines, or pencil by itself, is a method which appears to me to be deserving of much more attention and cultivation than it has usually received.
EVENING AT WEST MERSEA.
Half-tone from pencil drawing. (Original 4½ x 3½.)
Average pencil drawing is inclined to be too weak, and wanting in those characteristics which have been already pointed out as essential in wash drawings, but if the drawing be vigorous, and the pencil strokes clean and distinct, some capital results may be obtained. In order to procure the grey of pencil work a very fine screen is used, and the printing carefully attended to, so that pencil sketches are hardly suitable for the cheaper and more rapid class of printing. The lights should be cut away on the block.
The accompanying sketch of a cottage is simply torn from the leaf of a sketch-book in which it was made without any regard for the requirements of the process; the strong shadows were slightly reinforced with pen and ink, and the whole carefully reproduced.
COTTAGE AT HERONGATE.
Half-tone from pencil sketch slightly strengthened with pen and ink.