Read Ebook: The Illustration of Books A Manual for the Use of Students Notes for a Course of Lectures at the Slade School University College by Pennell Joseph

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Equally pleasant, too, is working for the weekly illustrated press--how long this form of publication will last is doubtful--making drawings which will be printed of a large size and show really the ability of the artist. It is pleasant, too, when the editor is an artist or man of sympathetic intelligence.

Another very important matter is the recognising of the fact that illustration at its best is equal in artistic rank with any other form of artistic expression; and that in every country save England illustrators rank with any other artists. Here one is forced to take to paint to gain admittance to the Royal Academy, though most of the distinguished members of that body won their reputations, and live on them, not by colour, but by the despised trade of illustrating. Critics--even the best of them--will tell you that an illustrator is just a little lower than a painter. It is false if the art of the one is as good in quality as that of the other; else Rembrandt's etchings are inferior to his paintings, which is absurd.

But to-day many illustrators, in fact the mass, do not take themselves seriously. They squabble and haggle, they hurry and push, they are as much shopkeepers as your out-of-work painter. Others must have their stuff in every paper. Others' portraits and eventless bourgeois lives appear in every magazine, especially if the portrait is done for nothing and a few drawings are thrown in. Others crib the superficial qualities of the popular one of the moment, whether his game is eccentricity, mysticism, or primitiveness, three excellent dodges for hiding incapacity or want of training.

Not that there are no good men who do find their means of expression among the primitives or who are really mystic, or truly grotesque, but for every one of these there is an army of frauds.

But all the while good work is being done. You may not see the real artist's name in letters a foot long on every hoarding, or his productions in every book that comes out. But once in a while he does an article, or even a drawing and then the mystics, the hacks, the primitives, and even some few of the public, buy it and treasure it up.

Therefore be serious, be earnest; and if you cannot be--if you think illustration but a stepping-stone to something better--leave it alone and tackle the something better. You may never succeed in that; you will certainly fail in illustration.

There is still another point, the financial one. Here illustration approaches architecture. Ruskin said somewhere, probably by accident, for it is so true, "Never give your drawings away; tear them up or keep them till some one wants to buy them." At the present time the profession is so crowded at the bottom that some shopkeeping editors have profited by this to reduce their prices almost to nothing--literally, by threatening and sweating, obtaining the work of mere students and people who are without money or brains, though they may be possessed of artistic ability, for next to nothing. In the case of painters they have said, "Send us a photo or sketch of your picture, and we will put it in; and think of the advertisement."

What you who want to be illustrators must think of is that the painters who give their work to these people are fools. Would a writer give his story for nothing, or a poet his sonnet? And when these editors say they can get such an one's drawing for so much less, tell them to get it, they will come after you on their knees later if you have anything in you, or their papers do not come to grief in the meantime.

Of course there can be no hard-and-fast rule about remuneration, but the labourer is worthy of what he can get. And it has only been within the last few years that the clever dodge of swindling the public by bad photos and worse art, of sweating artists by employing hacks and students has been practised, for the benefit of two people, grasping proprietors and still more grasping editors.

In connection with this matter, let me read you an extract from a letter recently received by me from the greatest living illustrator , and read at one of the meetings of the Society of Illustrators:--

"It has for too long been the case that the unsuccessful practitioner of other arts has turned to illustration of the baser sort as a last chance of earning a living. I dare say he has a right to a living, but in these days of cheap and nasty illustrated journals, the low standard of work he brings, as a rule, to a branch of the artistic calling always considered by me a dignified and important branch, I do not believe in recognising or encouraging; and it certainly seems to me that a certain distinction should be made between men who take not the slightest artistic interest in their work and those who conscientiously endeavour to do it well and honestly.

"I have seen the abnormal growth and prosperity of cheap and nasty illustration, to my great regret. I suppose that so long as there is a large market for it, men will be found to supply it, and evidently this is the sort of thing finding favour to-day.

"The standard set up by the 'Cornhill' and 'Once a Week,' and by Menzel and Meissonier abroad, seems to be out of key with the present taste. It must be that ignorance of good work is responsible"--ignorance, I may add, on the part of the artist and editor--in their case intentional or deplorable; in the case of the public it is but the blind leading the blind.

Therefore, finally, try to do good work, and when you have done it demand to be well paid for it. If you have not the moral or financial backbone for this, go and chop wood--or paint.

The line has always been employed, not only by artists, but by the artless, to express form; the only difference being that the artist uses a vital line full of meaning, the artless a meaningless line without vitality. But often the work of the two approaches so closely that at times it can scarcely be distinguished; however, that is a critical, and not a technical, matter.

I do not propose to give you a history of the methods employed to obtain lines, in fact, a history of drawing. There are many such books, and as for drawing you study that every day, in the life and antique, and I hope outside as well. But it is to line work and its reproduction in the present, that I wish to call your attention.

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 , 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.

Ink is probably the most important material employed in pen-drawing. It must be good, that is, it must be black--it should not shine--it must never settle, it must flow easily, dry quickly, and never clog the pen. There are many varieties of good ink, but the only ink I know of to-day, which gives me exactly what I want and is obtainable of the same quality all over the world, all over Europe at any rate--and this is an enormous advantage--is Bourgeois' Encre de Chine Liquide. During several years it has never varied, and that is more than I can say of any other. It is indelible, a desirable quality in ordinary use. The only bad thing about it is the vile, ill-balanced bottle and the rotten cork, which always breaks and often gets you into a mess. The best bottle I have ever seen is that in which Higgins' American drawing ink comes.

This is not a talk on inks, but a hint as to what I have found the most satisfactory and reliable--if you do not like this one, every colourman makes an ink or sells some one else's; try it. Among the best are Higgins', Winsor and Newton's, Newman's, Rowney's, Reeves', Stevens' ebony stain.

Freshly-ground Indian ink is the best of all, but to grind up your ink is too much trouble, too tedious and too unreliable to be worth the bother it entails. Indian ink, under certain conditions, shines and glitters, and this is not pleasant, and hinders photography. Lamp black and ivory black are quite dead and free from shine, but they are not fixed colours. They may be easily fixed with gall or gum.

Writing inks usually, if not always, have blue in them; therefore they will not photograph, they run about, blot, and generally misbehave. Sometimes one gets good black writing-ink; when you do get it, use it. But Indian or Chinese ink is best, and as I know of no better preparation at present, I commend Bourgeois' Encre de Chine Liquide; it comes in the tall bottle with the diagonal black and yellow dragon on the label. Coloured inks, save blue, may be used, but unless the illustration is to be printed in that colour the result is almost always disappointing; delicate washes of brown, for instance, becoming staring solid blacks.

In sketching out of doors with ink, a method I most strongly recommend, pour your ink, or rather enough of it, into an exciseman's ink-bottle, one of those unspillable affairs which you can cork up--though, save to keep the dust out of them, there is no occasion to do so--and attach it by a sort of watch-guard to your buttonhole, putting the bottle in your pocket. Messrs. Newman, 24, Soho Square, have fixed up some of these bottles for me, and they will, I have no doubt, supply them.

The general way with artists is to put their uncorked ink-bottle in their waistcoat pocket; if they should happen to lean over, on straightening up the ink is found upon their trousers or frocks, or sketch-block--in the male a result most conducive to strong language, especially if the trousers are spoiled; the drawing doesn't so much matter.

Also provide yourself with a hardish lead pencil H., or, better, a blue one, as the blue doesn't photograph, but it's hard to get off the paper, and don't look well; also some lithographic crayon or Wolff's carbon pencils; a good rubber, pure rubber or bread for the pencil, an ink rubber or eraser for the ink; some Chinese white and gum for patching up things; and for use in the house, an old razor to scratch out, and out of doors a folding eraser, such as Mr. Percy Young, of Gower Street, supplies: get the folding ones, as the others are not only less convenient but rather dangerous to carry.

Lastly, the paper: the photo-engraver will tell you Bristol board. Certainly, a simple open line drawing in pure black upon pure white smooth paper, very little reduced, should give a truer result than anything else. But what it does really is to give engraver and printer less trouble, and that is what most of them want; in the majority of cases it is best to aid them, otherwise your work is spoiled. Therefore, if you like Bristol board, use it, and use it whether you like it or no, if you are doing work for ordinary printing. But if your illustration is to be well engraved and well printed, use what paper you like. But to get satisfactory results from rough paper requires much experience, and you had better arrive at that experience by doing simple things, in a fashion which will engrave well; go to printing offices and engravers' shops, find out what is necessary, try to work in harmony with the engraver and printer, and they will do their best for you: most of them care about their work, and are genuinely sorry if they cannot make yours look well, so work with them, and they will work with you.

As to the Bristol board, get the best; if the drawing is large and has to be rolled up, the thin, if not the thicker quality; it is known as so many sheets, two, four, six sheets the heaviest. You must get the best quality, otherwise there is a risk of bad spongy places in it, which may almost ruin the drawing, at any rate its appearance, and necessitate patching up which is delaying and annoying. Bristol boards, too, may always be made up into books or blocks. Some boards are now mounted so that they can be stripped off the mount when the drawing is finished, among them are Turnbull's Art Tablets; while the best surface of all, which is like marble or ivory to work on, a surface which may be rubbed or scratched without harm, is the old mounted thin Whatman or Bank Note paper prepared by Messrs. Roberson and Newman. These thin papers are mounted on heavy boards and kept under hydraulic pressure for weeks, until the whole becomes a solid mass. This mounted Whatman, when well made, is the best paper in the world; it is also the most expensive. Thin foreign correspondence paper may also be used, putting it over the sketch like tracing paper, and when the drawing is finished mounting it on card board; tracing paper may also be mounted. One scheme not much in vogue yet is to draw upon black paper with Chinese white, making the drawing in white lines instead of black. Any sort of writing paper, or all varieties of rough or smooth Whatman are useful. Of course in drawing on rough paper you are bound to get a rough broken result in printing; however, if you know what you are after, no one will object but the engraver. In fact any sort of white paper may be used for pen and ink work; only, the smooth gives the most certain results. There are also many grained papers which give a tint; that is, a mechanical tint is printed on the paper, lights are scratched in it, blacks are put in with a pen or brush, another tint in pencil or chalk is added, and many tricks may be played, one usually only a little less satisfactory than the other. These papers are made by Gillott, of Paris, and Anger and Goeschl, of Vienna, and generally supplied by colourmen; they are called Gillott or scratch papers.

There are also various clay or chalk surfaced papers which, after being drawn upon, may be scratched to get light in the design. The results are, however, rarely satisfactory. In fact, it is best to use a good handmade white paper; you will be surer of your result, and that is what you are working for.

Having given you a list of the necessary materials, I will try to tell you how you should use them. I shall not try to compel you to make short lines or long lines, black blots or white lines: work in your own fashion, only that must be good, and capable of being engraved and printed. I shall not tell you how to draw, but how to draw so that your work may reproduce and print best. You may commence your drawing in either one of two ways, by making a pencil sketch on your sheet of paper which is to be sent to the engraver, preferably in blue pencil which does not photograph, and in as few lines as possible; or by commencing straight away at your final work, in ink; if it is a drawing from nature, I do not see why you should not do this, for it will teach you care in selecting your lines and putting them down. And as you have an ink eraser in metal and rubber you should be able to remove those which are wrong.

The first thing to remember in putting your drawing on the paper is the space it is to fill; if it is to be a full page, it must be made the size of that page or twice as large; at any rate it must have some definite relation to it. In the case of half a page, it is only necessary that the top or bottom of the drawing should fit across the printed matter; still, the drawing should not be made so high that it will not fit in, or so narrow as to be ineffective, but if you will look at any book or magazine you will see what I mean.

Again, for cheap rapid work as little cross-hatching as possible should be indulged in, for all cross-hatched lozenges become smaller lozenges in reduction, and the smaller they are the easier it is for them to fill up and clog with ink. Draw your shadows with parallel lines whenever you can without being mechanical; they engrave and print well.

After several years' experience I am quite unable to say how much or how little a drawing should be reduced, for there is no reason why it should be drawn the same size it is to be engraved, save that the nearer it is the same size, the nearer the result should be to the original; if the reduction is to be great, it is easier to make the design larger and have it mechanically reduced. The excessive reduction of a drawing tends to make the lines run together into a black mass sometimes, and the enlargement of a drawing--this, too, may be done--makes the lines at times look crude and clumsy. But it is impossible to foretell results in any two cases. Only there is one matter: a good drawing in line will, with good engraving and printing, look well, whether the artist knew anything of process or not. But there are some things to be observed, if certain results are wished for.

In simple cheap work the ink should be uniformly black, for the engraved block will be put with type, and inked with the same amount and strength of colour all over; therefore, in order to get variety, distance, effect, you must use lines of different widths, placed at varying distances apart, not of different degrees of colour. In theory at least, then, the foreground should be drawn with a firm bold line, the middle distance with a medium-sized line, the lines themselves closer together, and the extreme distance with a thin line. But there is no rule, only get variety in your line and this will produce variety and interest in the engraved result.

If you make your drawings much larger than they are to be reproduced, you will often be greatly surprised at the change in their appearance. Greys will, by filling up, become darker, and lights lighter owing to the concentration around them of masses of colour; that is, blacks become blacker, and whites whiter in reproduction. But do remember that though the drawings by Boyd Houghton, Millais, F. Walker and Pinwell were made the size you see them, on the wood, in the books of twenty-five years ago, the drawings made to-day by Abbey, for example, are four or five times as large as the published engravings, and are not, in the originals, filled with that microscopic work which appears in the reproductions. But do not make crude lines under the impression that they will ever be anything but crude. Try to make a beautiful drawing, a beautiful line--unless you can do this you will never get a beautiful reproduction; and once you have learned to draw, study the best books and the best magazines, always remembering that drawings to-day are made much larger, as a rule, than you see them on the printed page.

Again, in reproduction you will often find that some parts of the same drawing change more than others; some places, for example, become too weak, others too strong. I cannot explain this, but you will find that it does happen. At times it may be because the photograph is bad, or the etching is rotten, but even with good photography and etching the final result is often disappointing.

In pen work you may run the gamut from solid blacks to the most delicate grey line. Do not try to always, but select a colour scheme which is restrained and appropriate to every drawing.

Solid black will reproduce best because it is a solid mass, excepting in cheap rapid printing, when solid blacks either get too much or too little ink. A number of black lines close together will reproduce almost equally well, because in engraving and printing these lines support the paper and do not take up too much ink. A single thin line, on the contrary, always thickens in the engraving, and often prints badly because in the printing press the ink and paper bear down too heavily upon it and it receives too much ink and thickens up.

I have recommended you to use only black ink and white paper; before you have worked much you will try experiments, I am sure, in greying ink, putting water with it, and leaving pencil marks, or adding lines with lithographic chalk, or crayon; but you will find out the moment the drawing is printed that everything comes quite black, and if you have made your distance in broad grey lines it will possibly ruin your whole scheme. Greys may be obtained by engraving the blocks by hand, rouletting, or a number of other ways which I shall explain. Line drawings may also be made altogether in pencil, on rough paper, in chalk or crayon, reinforced, if necessary, with a blot of ink, or a wash, or a line with a pen here and there; but for line work with these materials you must employ a grained paper in order to get a proper mechanical direct reproduction of the work. Bristol boards must not be used. Sometimes these combinations of pen and pencil work are excellent; but they must harmonise, otherwise the result is unpleasant.

Your drawings should be works of art; be proud of them; but also regard them as a means to an end, and, as I have said, for cheap and rapid printing draw on smooth white paper with good black ink, and do not use big solid blacks, or single thin lines. Keep your work as open as possible and do not have it reduced. That is, draw as near the size it is to appear as possible. For the best engraving and printing, draw as you like. Anything to-day can be photographed and engraved; the great difficulty is in the printing. Remember that if you do not put distinction and character into your work, the engraver and printer cannot. They will take much away in any case.

As you are working for an editor, you will have to please him. Do so if you can without hurting your work and your own standard of right and wrong.

But always work in your own way, if that is at all possible for reproduction and printing, if not, you will have to change your methods. For you are working for a definite purpose, illustration; therefore your work must engrave.

If you wish to succeed you must see all the illustration you can, you must talk to editors and illustrators, and you must go down into the printing office and the engraver's shop.

You must learn your trade, for if you have not passed through the drudgery of the apprentice, you will never become a master of your craft.

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