The Tower and Steeple which Transform the House into a Church.
CHAPTER IX
QUICK INK PICTURES
When you happen to drop ink on paper you may be using, do not look disconsolate and feel uncomfortable. Make a joke of the accident by turning the blot into something funny. Fold the paper over the ink-spot, press the two sides together; then open the fold, and you will find the dull, round blot transformed into a queer, comical-looking object the like of which was never seen on land or sea. The strange thing about these oddities is that try as you may you cannot coax any two ink-drops to change themselves into the same shape; they utterly refuse to do so. Experiment with them and you will soon realize that each has its own independent idea regarding the figure it will assume, insisting, when you press it, upon taking the matter into its own hidden hands and turning into whatever it pleases. The various results are generally decorative and might often be used with good effect for book-plates.
If You Have a Group
of three or four ink-drops, they may be controlled to a certain extent. Hold the paper so that the wet ink will trickle downward, and you can join the blots together, elongating the design; then, when the paper is folded lightly, if you press the ink with short, gentle strokes out sidewise the tiny splashes tend in that direction, and an upward movement will cause the ink to spread upward—sometimes in little streaks, again in a bulging way, giving an uneven, undulating boundary. Should the paper be folded across the ink the result would be a single figure, while an allowance of an eighth or quarter of an inch space before creasing the paper gives two designs, one a duplicate because a print of the other. A similar method of making ink-impressions is to splash the fluid on the paper with a paint-brush and then to fold and press it; or, group drops of ink with the splash of a brush and press the two sides of the paper together.
Ink Marine. Fig. 244.
The ink-impressions may be made to take the form of
Landscapes and Marines