The Building of a Book / A Series of Practical Articles Written by Experts in the Various Departments of Book Making and Distributing

by Unknown

When all is said and done the illustrator's strongest asset is spirit. Technique and a grain of insight will help a man over many a rut in portraiture, and a knowledge of patting clay and using a chisel has saved many a sculptor, but technical equipment alone never made an illustrator, because he deals too directly with life in action. Slack drawing and impatience of method will always be pardoned in an illustrator, if his picture convinces.

Let a writer tell of a pair in love and the illustrator pictures their kiss; if he convinces the reader that the kiss is in earnest, the drawing may be full of faults, but the point is made and nothing more is asked, save that "she" be pretty and "he" manly. Consider the difficulty of this trick of convincing, when the words of love carefully weighed and prepared by the author and set into the atmosphere of a scene equally well prepared will often occasion derisive smiles. So it may be explained that the purpose of illustration is to carry the spirit of action rather than to serve as a basis for deft expression of technical skill, and illustration will reach its highest development along the lines which give it an excuse for its existence.

The mechanical processes for the reproduction of illustrations have served to develop various methods of drawing the original picture. The half-tone screen in connection with photography has made possible an almost exact copy of the artist's work, and at very small cost. Formerly an illustration was drawn on a wood block and turned over to a wood engraver, who laboriously cut it into the block and as he cut away the drawing as he worked it was impossible to compare his reproduction with the original. It can be readily seen that only a very good engraver was to be trusted to reproduce anything of value, and as there were never very many engravers of the first class, artists' work usually suffered. Half-tone engraving reproduces a drawing by photography and necessarily shows much of the individual method of the artist. Zinc etching of pen-and-ink drawings is even more exact in its results. Lately, methods of reproducing colored originals and paintings have been brought forward, and the results are surprisingly good. Scientific photography is at the bottom of this, and the old method of lithography, which demanded ten or twelve printings in reproduction, and then fell short, seems to have seen the last day on which it will break the heart of the artist.

Because of the sun and the dry plate, illustrators had to find inks and methods which would aid the engraver as much as possible. The use of opaque white as a ground for the mixture of tones, with its resultant bluish cast in black-and-white drawing, has almost disappeared. The camera will not find gradations in blue and artists have found it better to use pure india ink washed out in water, allowing the white of the paper to serve for high lights. Of course, opaque has its uses, but it is only after much experience and many disappointments that an artist can learn just where to use it and how. Pen-and-ink drawings and crayon drawings on rough paper in which the crayon is applied direct, and not rubbed, will always please the engraver most and return the best reproductions; but in this case cleverness and technique demand the greater notice from the artist if he would have the result interesting. A successful pen drawing is an achievement almost equal to an etching and it is unfortunate, considering the ease with which it may be successfully engraved, that good pen drawing is so rare.

Black-and-white oil offers an inviting field to the illustrator who aims at a sense of completeness in his work. Honestly handled, there is no other method of working that can convey an equal feeling of solidity and earnestness. By its use an artist can suggest all the qualities of a full-color painting and impress one with the last-forever look that thought and study gives to earnest work.

Most drawings for reproduction are worked in wash—why, it is hard to say. Oil will shine and reflect lights, and the engraver has this to overcome; but, barring the lightness and appearance of ease that wash suggests, there is no very apparent difference in the reproductions, and oil has the advantage of greater simplicity in detail.

For deftness and brilliancy illustrations finished in crayon rubbed into tones easily surpass those done by other methods, but the process has the disadvantage of appearing thin in the reproduction, unless the plate is very carefully tooled and printed.

When the illustrator has chosen his subject and decided on the method of treatment that will best serve the demands of the story to be pictured, fully half his labor is completed.

The preliminary sketches necessary to the condensing of his ideas open the door to the real pleasure in his work—standing up a model and creating therefrom a character is pure joy, and it is for this alone that the illustrator toils through the dry dust of reference libraries and costume shops.

Models are either a great aid or a great drawback in the picturing of characters, for while they assist the artist by simplifying the labor of drawing, they often handicap him by intruding their own personality into the work, thereby spoiling the sense of character aimed at. When an illustrator allows this to happen, it does not matter how beautiful or accurate his sketch may be, he fails in the first essential of his craft, entering forthwith into the field occupied by painters and decorators, who can do the same thing very much better. So, while the model is often a necessary appendage to the construction of a character, it is imperative that the spirit and sense spring from the artist, whose business is, not to reproduce the model, but to use it sparingly as he would a book of reference.