THE GRANDMOTHER. Pen Drawing, by E. Renard, from a French Catalogue. The parallel lines in the background represent a tint, and herein is the foundation of pen drawing, as distinguished from wash drawing: parallel lines are used to represent a tint; if they are farther apart they represent a lighter tint, if nearer together a darker tint; or again, if the artist presses on his pen more heavily on one set of lines than another, he can also get a darker tone without putting the lines any closer together. For newspaper work such a method is preferable to placing the lines near together; the Wyatt Eaton shows the pressing on the pen method perfectly.
{115} paper, on a cylinder press, and when you are making your drawing it is for you to keep in mind the kind of paper it is to be printed on, and to keep your lines sufficiently open accordingly. Ordinary intelligence should be your guide. Let us take the Renard Grandmother for an example; in the background is a series of the simplest lines imaginable. If you should make your drawing the same size as our cut, and the lines the same distance apart, it could be easily reduced to an inch wide, and print in a magazine, but it would not then print in a country newspaper; the lines would be so near together that they would fill up. The cut might print in a city newspaper, but it is not likely. The truth is that a printer can tell better about this than I can. All I can say is that as a general thing a set of parallel lines print better than cross-hatched lines.
(In using the expressions, “a magazine,” “a city newspaper” and “a country newspaper,” to represent first, second and third class printing, I am well aware that the distinction is an arbitrary and not a real one; that sometimes by using good ink, good stock and by printing slowly, the country printer can run a cut in his newspaper with better results than can a city paper using poorer stock and ink for the sake of economy, and printing at lightning speed. But the reader will kindly let the expressions stand for (1) perfect press, good stock and ink, and expert overlaying; (2) perfect press, ordinary “news” stock, poor ink, and little overlaying; (3) poorest stock, ink, cheap press, and not expert overlaying.)
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PORTRAIT OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. Drawn, probably with a quill pen, by Wyatt Eaton, in 1888, the original 8 by 10 inches. The drawing was made in an open manner so that it would print on the poorest kind of paper, as it was used as a placard to announce a story by Stevenson, in the New York Sun. Reproduced by kind permission of the S. S. McClure Co., by whom it is copyrighted. A reduction of this drawing, greater than the above, adorned the cover of the March, 1897, McClure’s Magazine.
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Next to the preference of one set of lines to cross-hatched lines, it is to be said that a dark is better obtained by pressing on the pen than by putting the lines near together. We publish a superb example of pen drawing for newspaper work—the Stevenson, by Wyatt Eaton. We believe that this is the ne plus ultra of newspaper portraiture, for the lines are strong and vigorous, there being no possibility of their running together in printing. I should advise you to look at this portrait under a magnifying glass that you may realize how very simple the treatment is.
McClure’s “Human Documents” contains a baker’s dozen of half-tones of Stevenson, from photographs. You might procure this pamphlet and copy the half-tones in pen, using the Wyatt Eaton as a guide.