11½ × 7½. KENSINGTON PALACE.
Bitumen process.
It is by experiments we learn to achieve distinction; by immediate failure that we rise to ultimate success; and ofttimes by pure chance that we discover in these days some new trick of method by which process shall do for the illustrator something it has not done before. There is still, no doubt, in the memory of many, that musty anecdote of the painter who, fumbling over the proper rendering of foam, applied by some accident a sponge to the wet paint, and lo! there, by happy chance, was the foam which had before been like nothing so much as wool.
SNODGRASS FARM.
From a drawing by Harry Fenn. An example of splatter-work.
In the same way, I suppose, some draughtsman discovered splatter-work. He may readily be imagined, prior to this lucky chance, painfully stippling little dots with his pen; pin-points of ink stilted and formal in effect when compared with the peculiarly informal concourse of spots produced by taking a small, stiff-bristled brush (say a toothbrush), inking it, and then, holding the bristles downwards and inclining toward the drawing, more or less vigorously stroking the inky bristles towards one with a match-stick. Holding the brush thus, and stroking it in this way, the bristles send a shower of ink spots upon the drawing. Of course this trick requires an extended practice before it can be performed in workmanlike fashion, and even then the parts not required to be splattered have to be carefully covered with cut-paper masks. [Mem.—To use a fixed ink for drawings on which you intend to splatter, because it is extremely probable that you will require to paint some portions out with Chinese white, and Chinese white upon any inks that are not fixed is the despair of the draughtsman.] Here is an [excellent example of splatter]. It is by that resourceful American draughtsman, Harry Fenn. Indeed, the greatest exponents of this method are Americans: few men in this country have rendered it with any frequency, or with much advantage. I have essayed its use to aid this sunset view of [Black Rock], and to me it seems to come well. But the finer spots are very difficult of reproduction; some are lost here. There is a most ingenious contrivance, an American notion, I believe, for the better application of splatter. It is called the air-brush, and it consists of a tube filled with ink, and fitted with a description of nozzle through which the ink is projected on to paper by a pneumatic arrangement worked by the artist by means of a treadle. You aim the affair at your drawing, work your treadle, and the trick is done. The splatter is remarkably fine and equable, and its intensity can be regulated by the distance at which the nozzle is held from the drawing. The greater advantage, however, in the use of the air-brush would seem to lie with the lithographic draughtsmen, who have to cover immense areas of work.
