The Illustration of Books / A Manual for the Use of Students, Notes for a Course of Lectures at the Slade School, University College

by Joseph Pennell

First, in order to make the least important illustration, the student must have a sound training in drawing, and if he has worked in colour so much the better, for in the near future colour work will play a very important part, even in the least costly form of books and papers.

Second, the student must thoroughly understand the use of various mediums, oil (in monochrome at least), water colour, wash and body colour, pen and ink, chalk, etching, lithography, and he must have ability to express himself by almost all these methods. A knowledge, too, of the appearance the drawing will present after it has been engraved on wood or metal, processed, etched, or lithographed is necessary, because the illustrator will be held responsible for the results on the printed page; even though, as is usually the case, the fault is that of the engraver or printer, the public certainly will blame the artist alone. Therefore the editor or publisher will not employ him. The engraver will blame him if only to save his own business reputation. The printer will take away in every case many valuable qualities which the drawing possessed; but for the incompetency or inability of engraver and printer, the artist will be held accountable, and he must therefore understand engraving and printing well enough to place the blame where it belongs, if not on his own shoulders.

To be able, then, to obtain good printed results, requires a knowledge of the reproductive arts, on the part of the illustrator, in theory at least, almost equal to the practical skill demanded in drawing.

Third, but most important of all, the ability to discover the vital or characteristic motive of an author’s work, and so set it forth that the public may see it too. And the power to do this well is without doubt the real test of an illustrator.

Nothing is more difficult. The artist must please the author, therefore he should if possible know the writer personally; at least he must be in sympathy with, and interested in his work, else a difference arises at once; jealousy between author and artist, nearly always the fault of the author, who usually resents the presence of the artist at all, is the cause of half the failures in illustration. No artist would think of dictating to an author the fashion in which the latter should write his story, but every author, and not a few editors, try to tell their own artist how it shall be illustrated. To a certain extent this is right, and it would be altogether right, if only the author and editor knew anything of art; but not infrequently they do not, and the less they know the more they dictate.

It may be safely said that not once in a hundred times is the author satisfied with his illustrations, especially if they are made to decorate a story. And even the designs intended to illustrate a descriptive article seldom please the writer, simply because the author has no comprehension of the limitations of graphic art.

Still, with descriptive articles, the case is somewhat different. If the illustrator knows the author, he may undertake the journey, if to a foreign land, for example, with him, and a most delightful piece of collaboration may be the result. Or the author having visited the spot—sometimes he writes about it without having done so—may make out a list of subjects, and the artist may pick and choose from them, going to the place described to do so, with more or less satisfactory results. It is in this way that most of the better known magazines obtain their illustrated descriptive articles, but even by this method the artist and author usually disagree as to what should be drawn, the matter being looked at from two entirely different points of view. Or the artist may be asked to work up into drawings, from photographs, views of a place, or portraits of people never seen by him; some illustrators are very successful at this, work which in most men’s hands would be but the veriest drudgery and hack work, becoming interesting, attractive, and truly artistic.

But in most cases such drawings, even by the most skilful men, lack the go and life obtained when the work is done direct from nature, or at least without the photograph; and every true artist prefers nature to any photograph. There is nothing in the world more difficult to work from. One is confused by endless unimportant, unselected details; the point of view is never that which one would have selected, and the result, save in the rarest instances, is dubbed photographic even by the artless.

The most awful misfortune that may occur to an illustrator is to be compelled to use the photographs or sketches made by an author; here almost certain disaster awaits the artist. The author who cannot draw but will sketch is terrible; the author who can photograph is impossible. Both, they are sure, could make the illustrations if they but had the time; and the artist who is compelled to illustrate them could write the story or do the description, he knows, if he but took the trouble. At least, that is the view they take of each other. The result is almost certain failure.

Such people should contribute solely to the journals of actuality, where neither art nor literature find an abiding place, and the photograph, the amateur, and the personal paragraph are supreme.