BEACHY HEAD.
Crayon drawing on Michallet paper, right side. (Original 8½ x 5½.)
Thus from a photogram of even the most elaborate subject an absolutely correct drawing may be made fit for reproduction without the illustrator having any knowledge or skill as a draughtsman.
By placing the unskilled in such a position, photography appears to have removed the last obstacle to the more frequent use of appropriate illustration; and the ease with which both pleasing and accurate outlines can be made should render inexcusable the shamefully untruthful "sketches" which every day appear in newspaper and magazine.
The method of drawing on thin transfer paper with transfer ink, and then placing the drawing direct on to a zinc block, hardly needs to be referred to here. Such a simple means of placing the image on the zinc and then etching is necessarily of limited application, neither reduction nor enlargement is possible, and photography is not employed; it is merely a mechanical etching of the zinc in all parts not protected by the ink image, as transferred from the drawing in transfer ink, and is used for very rapid and imperfect portraits, &c., in the commoner class of newspaper work.
And now, whatever be the special characteristics and advantages of the camera, it is by no means my intention to advocate its use where even only a moderate amount of native artistic ability exists; and, in all probability, the possessor of such ability will more frequently prefer to use his sketch-book than his camera—and this is as it should be. There is always something of freshness about a first original sketch, be it in whatsoever medium, a quality which the most careful copy fails to repeat.
This brings us to consider whether it would not be well to make our first impressions or sketches in such a manner that they could be handed to the process worker right away; and we shall then have to consider what medium and what materials are suitable for "drawing from life." Certainly the ordinary pencil sketch, as taken from the pocket sketch-book, would not do. In the first place such sketches would rarely be vigorous enough, and whatever vigour they possessed would be sadly diminished by rubbing and the pressure of the opposite page.