The most generally adopted method of making a line drawing for illustration to-day is with a pen and ink, upon white paper. There are but four tools, and a surface to work on required. The tools are simple and cheap enough, the ability to use them rightly and well is rare enough, even though every book is decorated and all newspapers are to be illustrated in the near future.
First, as to the pens: there is, as you know, an endless variety of them, all the best. Some are made specially for the artist, and of these the most generally used is Gillott’s 659 (all colourmen keep them), a barrel pen, which fits a special handle; when one has mastered this pen, unsympathetic, hard and scratchy at first, and each pen, by the way, has to be broken in, one finds that the most amazing variety of line can be obtained with it, from the most delicate to the boldest. The beginner thinks because it is a small tool that only small work can be done with it; experience and practice will prove to him that it is a most sensitive implement, and he will learn to take care of his pens, keeping them on the holder in a box which they just fit, for these pens improve with age, getting better and better until they are almost like living things, and then they break.
From this most delicate and sensitive of pens I would call your attention to the hardest and most unsympathetic, the glass pen, or stylus; this is a useful tool, but while the Gillott is to be used in work demanding freedom of touch and consequent variety of line, the glass pen is only to be used—unless you like it—when lines of uniform thickness are wanted. It carries a large quantity of ink, and, as lines can be made in any direction with it, it is more like an etching needle than anything else I know of; and if these pens were really well made in metal and not of glass, and of different sizes and would give lines really varying in width, they would be much used; as it is they are very unreliable, easily broken, and expensive. I find that they are liable to tear up the paper, or refuse to work in an annoying fashion. It has been pointed out that they are most useful for tracing, and also that if they clog up they may be easily cleaned by dipping in water and wiping off with a dry rag. I may say that they should be thoroughly wiped, and in fact all pens should, after they are cleaned, or the ink is changed, as you may not only spoil your pen, but your ink as well, by dipping your pen without cleaning, either in water or another sort of ink, as one ink may contain some chemical matter which absolutely ruins another. Some rubber should be placed in the bottom of your inkstand, for if the glass pen drops heavily it will be broken; but not paper, unless you wish to spend all your time wiping pulp off your pen. The best of these pens I have found are those sold by Roberson, 99, Long Acre. Between these two extremes, of flexibility in the Gillott, and firmness in the stylus, are to be found all sorts and conditions of pens. And I may say that you may never like, and you need never use, any special kind, but instead your favourite writing pen; if you like that best, it is the tool for you, use it. There are, however, some other sorts of pens to which I may call your attention. If only some fountain-pen maker had the sense to invent a pen for artists, he would make his fortune. But fountain-pens at present are unreliable in action and unsuitable for use with drawing inks, so they are out of the question altogether for us.
A very good tool is the quill pen. Much variety can be obtained with it, especially in broad dragged work. I use technical terms because you understand them, I hope, and it is only the technical side of illustration I propose to touch. With the back of this pen you can get rich and broken effects, especially when it is half dry. The quill, the stylus, and the reed, were the tools for pen-drawing used by the old men. You can buy quill pens anywhere. Reed pens you had better make for yourselves; go to a reed bed in the early summer, cut off the top of the stalk, strip off the outer covering, and cut the inner canes into sections between the joints, cut your pen and finish it at once, or rather a lot of them, for when the reed is dry it is liable to split and is not half so flexible.
Pen work with reed pens really should only be done when they are fresh; but at all times they glide easily over the paper, though any pen will do this after you have mastered it. Reed pens also make a broad fat line and hold lots of colour.
Another pen which is useful sometimes is Perry’s Auto-Stylo, or marking pen, from Perry’s, Holborn Viaduct; lines half an inch broad or as fine as a hair can be made with it, and I have at times used it as a brush; it is a most amusing instrument.
Brandauer’s round pointed pens are used by some. But the pen you should use is the pen you can use; that is, the pen with which you can get the most variety of line. Or you may use half a dozen, from the finest Gillott to the biggest reed. It is not the pen, but the person who uses it. Sometimes it is not a bad thing to remember this.
Many artists are now taking up the use of the brush; most probably it was used by the old men, certainly the men of the last generation employed it, as it was much easier to work on the wood block with a brush than a pen. And we know that the Japanese pen is a brush. The advantages are flexibility of line, amount of colour it will hold, freedom from scratchiness, and absolute freedom of movement in every direction—the greatest advantage of all—the line itself is fuller and fatter, more pleasing. The drawbacks, well, there scarcely are any, save that to use either brush or pen well is about as difficult as to play the violin; that is all.
The commonest brush for line work is that used by lithographers, a sable rigger which they cut to a fine point, removing the outside hairs; but almost any good pointed brush will do. Very good indeed are the genuine Japanese brushes, the small thin ones are the best—in black handles—you can pick these up sometimes at the Japanese dealers, but I imagine any artist’s colourman would send to Japan for them if there was a sufficient demand; I have got them in quantities for a penny each.
There are various mechanical tint tools like air brushes in use; they are of little importance to the artist, and if you want a dotted tint you can get it by dipping a toothbrush in ink and rubbing the inked hairs with a match stick, when the ink will be splattered in dots and blots all over the paper. You may lay a piece of paper on the parts you wish to keep white, and paint or scratch out spots that are too dark, or you may impress your inked thumb or pieces of inked silk on the paper, or indulge in any trick of this sort that amuses you and gives the desired result.