No. XI.
A Portrait, by T. C. Gotch.
Pen-and-ink drawing (size 7½ × 6½ in.); from his picture in the Exhibition of the New English Art Club, 1889.
Mr. Gotch is well known for his painting of children; but he has also the instinct for line drawing, and a touch which reproduces well without any help from the maker of the zinc block.
The absence of outline, and the modelling suggested by vertical lines, also the treatment of background, should be noticed. This background lights up when opposed to white and vice-versa.
But to attempt to teach rapid sketching in pen and ink is beginning at the wrong end, and is fatal to good art; it is like teaching the principles of pyrotechnics whilst fireworks are going off. And yet we hear of prizes given for rapid sketches to be reproduced by the processes. Indeed, I believe this is the wrong road; the baneful result of living in high-pressure times. It is difficult to imagine any artist of the past consenting to such a system of education.
Sketching from life is, of course, necessary to the student (especially when making illustrations by wash drawings, of which I shall speak presently), but for line work it should be done first in pencil, or whatever medium is easiest at the moment. The lines for reproduction require thinking about, thinking what to leave out, how to interpret the grey of a pencil, or the tints of a brush sketch in the fewest lines. Thus, and thus only, the student learns “the art of leaving out,” “the value of a line.”
The tendency of modern illustrators is to imitate somebody; and in line drawing for the processes, where the artist, and not the engraver, has to make the lines, imitation of some man’s method is almost inevitable.