Drawing for Printers. / A practical treatise on the art of designing and illustrating in connection with typography. Containing complete instruction, fully illustrated, concerning the art of drawing, for the beginner as well as the more advanced student.

by Ernest Knaufft

Of course, this preliminary “placing” of the lines is difficult until the eye is trained to see correctly. I have

Portrait caricature of the French actor Dailly, from a French periodical. Half-tone from a wash drawing.

known beginners who could hardly grasp the idea of what an outline is, so I suggest the excellent method of trying to see objects as silhouettes. It is not a bad plan to put a whisk broom, a screw-driver and a hammer against a window pane and draw them in silhouette. {214} The Beggarstaff is very interesting from this point of view—if you will think of the cocked hat as a mass, like the Quaker hat, you will find it easier to draw its outline than as if you see it in all its component parts, as in the Penlick drawing. We have given previously many silhouette illustrations to emphasize this method of seeing things in mass. We also make this point: that the ability to see objects in silhouette is helpful, not only for the purpose of representing an entire object in silhouette, but also because details can frequently be thus represented with excellent effect. For example, the hair and mustache in the Penlick, and the hair in the Dailly are in silhouette.

Besides outline and silhouette, shading may be employed by the draftsman to bring out form. The Dailly differs considerably from the Beggarstaff—it is fully shaded, and shading brings out the forms of the planes and muscles of the face.

Pen drawing by Albert Mantelet.

antelet’s initial gives us a third kind of drawing. It is partly shaded. The Sphinx design is an excellent example of shading contrasted with silhouette. In order to learn to shade, it is well to draw from white objects, such as plaster casts or pasteboard boxes, placed in a good light, which should come from one direction only. It makes little difference what material is used to draw with; your aim should be to accustom yourself to distinguish light and shade. If you can distinguish it upon the object it is not difficult to draw it on paper.

Lettering and the adaptability or application of {215}