{30} with what kind of a pen you may make your drawing. Having mastered these principles, you would then understand such a criticism on Engström’s work as the following: Mr. Engström sometimes employs the pure silhouette, as in the “Hedin,” and sometimes silhouette in a modified form, as in the “Jörgen”; in the former case an artist sacrifices rotundity, detail and texture (the white streaks on the “Jörgen” hat suggest the surface of the beaver; this we call texture; a felt hat has no such white streaks upon it, and might be adequately represented by a set of lines such as are used on Jörgen’s coat, but no silhouette can suggest texture); in his caricatures Engström unites with the silhouette effect the single-plane effect of the Egyptian hieroglyphs. (The hieroglyphs were mostly painted on walls and the feet represented as though flush with the wall, and not one farther from us than the other, hence we say that they are on one plane.) Many caricaturists have effectually burlesqued the Egyptian method of drawing and the placing of their figures. The trousers and the cane in the “Jörgen” drawing are the only objects in one plane; the coat collar is distinctly rounded. In the Moloch illustration we see also silhouette treatment. You can easily imagine how Hedin’s hat, if the proper size, would fittingly rest on Crispi’s head.
{31}
CRISPI UNDER HOSTILE LIGHTNING. Caricature by B. Moloch. An example of silhouette drawing.
TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENT. Designed by Eugene Grasset.
CHAPTER III.
HIEROGLYPHIC DESIGNS OR SILHOUETTES — THEIR USE AS TYPOGRAPHICAL ORNAMENTS — OBJECTS SEEN AS ON ONE PLANE — PLACING YOUR OBJECT — HORIZONTAL LINES PARALLEL TO THE EYE — HORIZONTAL LINES NOT PARALLEL TO THE EYE.
WE PUBLISH two kinds of drawings with this chapter, which many be classified as follows: The Grassets are hieroglyphic-like designs or silhouettes; the Crispi, in his robe de chambre, which for want of the artist’s name we shall call the Don Chisciotte cut—“Don Chisciotte” you no doubt suspect is the Italian for Don Quixote, and it is the name of a cartoon paper—is a pure outline drawing.
Now let us take them in turn. Every printer will recognize that the Grasset designs are excellent, for they may be printed with greater ease than shaded drawings, and their simplicity is in perfect harmony with the solid black of type. Now, not only would it {33} be pleasant for you as a printer to begin making some such silhouettes, but it is very good practice in drawing for you to search the house for objects that you can put up against the window pane and draw their contours, filling them in with black. A whisk broom, a pair of scissors, a pair of eyeglasses, a leaf, a feather may be put up against the glass and its silhouette copied, and you then realize how many objects may be represented by their contours. Later you learn how to silhouette objects less flat; you may try the ink bottle with a pen in it, the glue pot with the brush in it; this leads you to such a thorough understanding of Grasset’s flowers as pages of writing would never give. In walking in the streets after such an exercise you will notice not only the “block” of a man’s hat (which we spoke of in Chapter I), but you will notice what kind of a silhouette it makes against the sky; then the shape of the birds, the weather vanes, the church steeples as they are “etched against the sky,” as the poets say, will have a new interest for you.