A Practical Hand-book of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction

by Charles G. Harper

It is not to be supposed that because the pen is so handy an instrument, and inks and paper, of sorts, are everywhere, that the making of a pen-drawing is a simple affair of a few uneducated strokes. The less you know of the art, the easier it seems, and they do but show their ignorance who speak of its simplicity. You will want as much power of draughtsmanship, and more, for drawing in this medium than in many others; because the difference between good drawing and bad is more readily seen in line-work than in other methods, and since in these days the standard of the art has been raised so high. You will want not less study in the open air, or with the life-class for figure-work, than the painter gives or should give to his preliminary studies for his art. This drudgery you will have to go through, whether in the schools of the Science and Art Department (which does not recognize this, the livest art of our time), or in the studio and under the care of some artist who receives pupils in the fashion of the atélier system in France. But such studios are rare in England. It seems likely that the student of pen-drawing, who starts with learning draughtsmanship of any sort, must first go through much of the ordinary grind of the schools, and, when he has got some sort of proficiency, turn to and worry out the application of the pen to his already received teaching. No one will teach him pen-drawing as an individual art; of that there is no doubt. Perhaps the best course he could pursue would be to become acquainted with the books illustrated by the foremost men, and study them awhile to see in what manner they work with the pen, and with this knowledge set to work with models, in the same way as a painter would do. Or, if your work is of another branch beside the figure, go to the fields, the hedgerows, and all the glory of the country-side, and work first-hand. The sketch-book is a necessity, and should always be in the student’s pocket for the jotting down of notes and memoranda.

I do not think many pen-draughtsmen are careful enough to make a thorough pencil study as the basis of their pen-drawing, although that is the best way to proceed, and their drawings would be all the better for the practice. It is to this absence of the preliminary pencil-work, this shirking of an undoubted drudgery, that is due the quantity of uninspired, fumbling drawing with the pen that we see nowadays. The omission of a carefully made original pencil-sketch, over which to work in pen and ink, renders commonplace the work of many artists which, if only they were less impatient of toil, would become transfigured. What is so injurious to the man who has learnt his art is fatal to one who is by way of beginning its study. Make, then, a pencil-drawing in outline, using an HB pencil, as carefully as if that only were the end and object of your work. Work lightly with this hard pencil upon the paper or cardboard you have selected, indicating shadows rather than filling them in. It is necessary to make only faint pencil lines, for they will have to be rubbed out eventually, after the pen-drawing has been made over them. If the marks were deep and strong, a great deal of rubbing would have to be done to get them out, and that injures the surface of the paper and greys the black lines of the ink used. On the other hand, if the pencil-marks were not rubbed out, they would very likely photograph and reproduce in the process-block. To a pen-draughtsman of experience the reproduction of his pencil-marks can be made an additional beauty; but the student had much better be, at first, a purist, and make for clean pen-strokes alone on his finished drawing.

It must always be remembered, if you are working for reproduction (and consequent reduction of scale from the drawing to the process-block), that the pen-work you have seen printed in the books and papers and magazines was made on a much larger scale than you see it reproduced in their pages. Very frequently, as in the American magazines, the reduction is to about one quarter scale of the original drawing; but, working for process in England, the drawing should, generally speaking, be from two-thirds to one-half larger than the reproduction. These proportions will, as a rule, give excellent results.

Seeing that your drawing is to be so much larger than the process-block, it follows that the pen-work can, with advantage, be correspondingly vigorous. It would help you better than any description to a notion of what an original drawing should be like, if you could obtain a glance at the originals of any good pen-draughtsmen. But unfortunately, there are few exhibitions in which pen-work has any place.

When your pencil study is completed in an outline giving all details down to the minutest, you can set about the pen-drawing. Often, indeed, if carefully made, the pencil-sketch looks too good to be covered up with ink. If you wish to retain it, it can, if made upon thin paper, be traced upon cardboard with the aid of black carbon paper, or better still (since blue will not photograph) with blue transfer paper, which you can either purchase or make for yourself by taking thin smooth paper and rubbing powdered blue chalk upon one side of it, or scribbling closely upon it with blue pencil. There is another way of tracing the pencil-drawing: by pinning over it a sheet of thin correspondence paper (of the kind called Bank Post) and working upon that straight away.

But, after all, it would, for the sake of retaining something of the freshness of first impressions, be best to sacrifice your pencil study and work away on that.

Now the pen-drawing is begun, care should be taken to draw only clear and perfectly black lines, and not to run these together, but to keep the drawing what the process men call “open.”

If details are put in without regard for the fining down which reduction gives, it is only too likely that the result will show only dirty, meaningless patches where was a great deal of delicate pen-work. Of course, the exact knowledge of how to draw with the pen to get the best results by process cannot properly be taught, but must be learned by experience, after many miscalculations.

It will be found, too, that many things which it would be inadvisable for the beginner to do (especially if he cannot command his own choice of process-engraver) are perfectly legitimate to the practised artist who has studied process work. The student should not be at first encouraged to make experiments in diluted inks or retained pencil-marks, or any of those delightful practices by which one who is thoroughly conversant with photographic processes and pen-drawing varies the monotony of his medium. He should begin by making his drawings as simply as he can, so that they express his subject. And this simplicity, this quality of suggestion, is the true field of pen-work. The best work is reticent and sober, giving the greatest number of essential facts in the fewest strokes. If you can express a fact with sufficient intelligibility in half a dozen pen strokes, it is inartistic and inexpedient to worry it into any number of scratches. This is often done because the public likes to see that there has been plenty of manual labour put into the work it buys. It is greatly impressed with the knowledge that any particular drawing took days to complete, and it respects that drawing accordingly, and has nothing but contempt for a sketch which may have taken only an hour or so, although the first may be artless and overloaded with unnecessary detail, and the second instinct with actuality and suggestion. But if you are drawing a landscape with a pen, that is no reason for putting in an elaborate foreground of grass, carefully working up each square inch. Such a subject can be rendered by a master in a few strokes, and though, possibly, you may never equal the artistry of the master, you can follow his ideals. Another and allied point in pen-and-ink art is its adaptability to what is termed “selection.” You have, say, before you the view or object to be drawn. You do not need to make a drawing in which you shall niggle up every part of it, but you select (the trained eye readily does this) its salient feature and emphasize it and make it fall properly into the composition, leaving aught else either suggested or less thoroughly treated. Here is a pen-drawing made with a very special regard to a selection only of the essential. [The Gatehouse, Moynes Court], is a singular structure near the shore of the Severn estuary, two miles below Chepstow. The singularity of its design, rarely paralleled in England, would give the artist the motive for sketching, and its tapering lines and curious roofs are best preserved in a drawing that deals chiefly in outline, and has but little shading wherewith to confuse the queer profile of these effective towers. This drawing was reproduced by the bitumen process. The lines in the foreground, suggestive of grass, were drawn in pencil. The pen-sketches and studies of the foremost artists which have been made, not for publication, but for practice, but which have sometimes been reproduced, as, for instance, some slight sketches of Charles Keene’s, delight the artist’s eye simply by reason of their suggestive and selective qualities. If you do not delight in these things, but have a desire to (as the untaught public might say) “see them finished,” then it seems likely either that you have not the artistic sense, or else you have not sufficient training; but I should suspect you were in the first category, and should then advise you to leave matters artistic alone.