Part 1

Transcriber’s Notes:

Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_ in the original text. Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals. Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs. Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered. The use of “v” in REPRODVCTION and Illvstrations as they appear on the title page and in the heading for the list of illustrations have been retained.

A · PRACTICAL · HANDBOOK · OF · DRAWING FOR MODERN METHODS · OF · REPRODVCTION

BY CHARLES G. HARPER, AUTHOR OF “ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY.”

_Illustrated with Drawings by several Hands, and with Sketches by the Author showing Comparative Results obtained by the several Methods of Reproduction now in Use._

LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD. 1894.

_TO CHARLES MORLEY, ESQ._

_DEAR MR. MORLEY_,

_It is with a peculiar satisfaction that I inscribe this book to yourself, for to you more than to any other occupant of an editorial chair is due the position held by “process” in illustrating the hazards and happenings of each succeeding week._

_Time was when the “Pall Mall Budget,” with a daring originality never to be forgotten, illustrated the news with diagrams fashioned heroically from the somewhat limited armoury of the compositor. Nor I nor my contemporaries, I think, have forgotten those weapons of offence—the brass rules, hyphens, asterisks, daggers, braces, and other common objects of the type-case—with which the Northumberland Street printers set forth the details of a procession, or the configuration of a country. There was in those days a world of meaning—apart from libellous innuendo—in a row of asterisks; for did they not signify a chain of mountains? And what Old Man Eloquent was ever so vividly convincing as those serpentine brass rules that served as the accepted hieroglyphics for rivers on type-set maps?_

_These were the beginnings of illustration in the “Pall Mall Budget” when you first filled the editorial chair. The leaps and bounds by which you came abreast of (and, indeed, overlook) the other purveyors of illustrated news, hot and hot, I need not recount, nor is there occasion here to allude to the events which led to what some alliterative journalist has styled the Battle of the Budgets. Only this: that if others have reaped where you have sown, why! ’twas ever thus._

_For the rest, I must needs apologize to you for a breach of an etiquette which demands that permission be first had and obtained before a Dedication may be printed. To print an unauthorized tribute to a private individual is wrong: when (as in the present case) an Editor is concerned I am not sure that the wrong-doing halts anything before_ lèse majesté.

_Yours very truly, CHARLES G. HARPER._

LONDON, _May, 1894_.

Everywhere to-day is the Illustrator (artist he may not always be), for never was illustration so marketable as now; and the correspondence-editors of the Sunday papers have at length found a new outlet for the superfluous energies of their eager querists in advising them to “go in” for black and white: as one might advise an applicant to adventure upon a commercial enterprise of large issues and great risks before the amount of his capital (if any) had been ascertained.

It is so very easy to make black marks upon white cardboard, is it not? and not particularly difficult to seize upon the egregious mannerisms of the accepted purveyors of “the picturesque”—that _cliché_ phrase, battered nowadays out of all real meaning.

But for really serious art—personal, aggressive, definite and instructed—one requires something more than a _penchant_, or the stimulating impulsion of an empty pocket, or even the illusory magnetism of the _vie bohême_ of the lady-novelist, whose artists still wear velvet coats and aureoles of auburn hair, and marry the inevitable heiress in the third volume. Not that one really wishes to be one of those creatures, for the lady-novelists’ love-lorn embryonic Michael Angelos are generally great cads; but this by the way!

What is wanted in the aspirant is the vocation: the feeling for beauty of line and for decoration, and the powers both of idealizing and of selection. Pen-drawing and allied methods are the chiefest means of illustration at this day, and these qualities are essential to their successful employ. Practitioners in pen-and-ink are already numerous enough to give any new-comer pause before he adds himself to their number, but certainly the greater number of them are merely journalists without sense of style; mannerists only of a peculiarly vicious parasitic type.

“But,” ask those correspondents, “does illustration pay?” “Yes,” says that omniscient person, the Correspondence-Editor. Then those pixie-led wayfarers through life, filled with an inordinate desire to draw, to paint, to translate Nature on to canvas or cardboard (at a profit), set about the staining of fair paper, the wasting of good ink, brushes, pens, and all the materials with which the graphic arts are pursued, and lo! just because the greater number of them set out, not with the love of an art, but with the single idea of a paying investment of time and labour—it does _not_ pay! Remuneration in their case is Latin for three farthings.

Publishers and editors, it is said, can now, with the cheapness of modern methods of reproduction as against the expense of wood-engraving, afford to pay artists better because they pay engravers less. Perhaps they can. But do they?

Pen-drawing in particular has, by reason of these things, almost come to stand for exaggeration and a shameless license—a convention that sees and renders everything in a manner flamboyantly quaint. But this vein is being worked down to the bed-rock: it has plumbed its deepest depth, and everything now points to a period of instructed sobriety where now the untaught _abandon_ of these mannerists has rioted through the pages of illustrated magazines and newspapers to a final disrepute.

Artists are now beginning to ask how they can dissociate themselves from that merely manufacturing army of frantic draughtsmen who never, or rarely, go beyond the exercise of pure line-work; and the widening power of process gives them answer. Results striking and unhackneyed are always to be obtained to-day by those who are not hag-ridden by that purely Philistine ideal of the clear sharp line.

These pages are written as a plea for something else than the eternal round of uninspired work. They contain suggestions and examples of results obtained in striving to be at one with modern methods of reproduction, and perhaps I may be permitted to hope that in this direction they may be of some service.

CHARLES G. HARPER.

CONTENTS.

PAGE INTRODUCTORY 1 THE RISE OF AN ART 9 COMPARATIVE PROCESSES 22 PAPER 78 PENS 92 INKS 96 THE MAKING OF A PEN-DRAWING 102 WASH DRAWINGS 121 STYLES AND MANNER 135 PAINTERS’ PEN-DRAWINGS 154

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY: Examples of their work, with some Criticisms and Appreciations. Super royal 4to, £3 3_s._ net.

THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic Highway. With 95 Illustrations by the Author and from old prints. Demy 8vo, 16_s._

FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE: The Record of a Summer Tramp. With 105 Illustrations by the Author. Demy 8vo, 16_s._

PAGE VIGNETTE ON TITLE KENSINGTON PALACE. Photogravure _Frontispiece_ THE HALL, BARNARD’S INN 25 A WINDOW, CHEPSTOW CASTLE 29 ON WHATMAN’S “NOT” PAPER 31 FROM A DRAWING ON ALLONGÉ PAPER 31, 32 BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY. Bitumen process 38 BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY. Swelled gelatine process 39 A NOTE AT GORRAN. Bitumen process 43 A NOTE AT GORRAN. Swelled gelatine process 43 CHARLWOOD. Swelled gelatine process 45 CHARLWOOD. Reproduced by Chefdeville 45 VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS. Bitumen process 48 VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS. Bitumen process. Sky revised by hand-work 49 KENSINGTON PALACE 51 SNODGRASS FARM 53 SUNSET, BLACK ROCK 55 DRAWING IN DILUTED INKS, REPRODUCED BY GILLOT 57 CHEPSTOW CASTLE 61 CLIFFORD’S INN: A FOGGY NIGHT 65 PENCIL AND PEN AND INK DRAWING REPRODUCED BY HALF-TONE PROCESS 68 THE VILLAGE STREET, TINTERN. NIGHT 70 LEEBOTWOOD 71 EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUMS 75, 76 CHURCHYARD CROSS, RAGLAN 76 CANVAS-GRAIN CLAY-BOARD 84 PLAIN DIAGONAL GRAIN 85 PLAIN PERPENDICULAR GRAIN 85 DRAWING IN PENCIL ON WHITE AQUATINT GRAIN CLAY-BOARD 86 BLACK AQUATINT CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING 87 BLACK DIAGONAL-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING 87 BLACK PERPENDICULAR-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING 88 VENETIAN FÊTE ON THE SEINE, WITH THE TROCADERO ILLUMINATED 89 THE GATEHOUSE, MOYNES COURT 110 PORTRAIT SKETCHES 118, 119 THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AT NIGHT, FROM THE RIVER 122 VICTORIA EMBANKMENT NEAR BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE: A FOGGY NIGHT 123 CORFE RAILWAY STATION 125 THE AMBULATORY, DORE ABBEY 127 MOONLIGHT: CONFLUENCE OF THE SEVERN AND THE WYE 131 DIAGRAM SHOWING METHOD OF REDUCING DRAWINGS FOR REPRODUCTION 133 PAINTER’S PEN-DRAWING—PASTURAGE, BY MR. ALFRED HARTLEY 155 " " PORTRAIT, BY MR. BONNAT 156 TOWING PATH, ABINGDON, BY MR. DAVID MURRAY 158 A PORTRAIT FROM A DRAWING BY MR. T. BLAKE WIRGMAN 159 FINIS 161

A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK OF DRAWING FOR REPRODUCTION.

INTRODUCTORY.

Pen-drawing is the most spontaneous of the arts, and amongst the applied crafts the most modern. The professional pen-draughtsman was unknown but a few years since; fifteen years ago, or thereabouts, he was an obscure individual, working at a poorly considered craft, and handling was so seldom thought of that the illustrator who could draw passably well was rarely troubled by his publisher on the score of technique. For that which had deserved the name of technique was dead, so far as illustration was concerned, and “process,” which was presently to vivify it, was, although born already, but yet a sickly child. To-day the illustrators are numerous beyond computation, and the name of those who are impelled to the spoiling of good paper and the wasting of much ink is indeed legion.

For uncounted years before the invention of photo-mechanical methods of engraving, there had been practised a method of drawing with the pen, which formed a pretty pastime wherewith to fleet the idle hours of the gentlemanly amateur, and this was, for no discoverable reason, called “etching.”

It is needless at this time to go into the derivatives of that word, with the object of proving that the verb “to etch” means something very different from drawing in ink with a pen; it should have, long since, been demonstrated to everybody’s satisfaction that etching is the art of drawing on metal with a point, and of biting in that drawing with acids. But the manufacturers of pens long fostered the fallacy by selling so-called etching-pens: probably they do so even now.

By whom pen-drawings were first called etchings none can say. Certainly the two arts have little or nothing in common: the terms are not interchangeable. Etching has its own especial characteristics, which may, to an extent, be imitated with the pen, but the quality and direction of line produced by a rigid steel point on metal are entirely different from the lines drawn with a flexible nib upon paper. The line produced by an etching needle has a uniform thickness, but with the needle you can work in any imaginable direction upon the copper plate. With a nib upon paper, a line varying in thickness with the pressure of the hand results, but there is not that entirely free use of the hand as with the etching point: you cannot with entire freedom draw from and toward yourself.

The greatest exponents of pen-drawing have not entirely conquered the normal inability of the pen to express the infinite delightful waywardnesses of the etching-point. Again, the etched line is only less sharp than the line made by the graver upon wood; the line drawn with the pen upon the smoothest surface is ragged, viewed under a magnifying glass. This, of course, is not a plea for a clean line in pen-work—that is only the ideal of commercial draughtsmanship—but the man who can produce such a line with the pen at will, who can overcome the tendency to inflexible lines, has risen victorious over the stubbornness of a material.

The sketch-books, gilt-lettered and india-rubber banded, of the bread-and-butter miss, and what one may be allowed, perhaps, to term the “pre-process” amateur generally, give no hint of handling, no foretaste of technique. They are barren of aught save ill-registered facts, and afford no pleasure to the eye, which is the end, the sensuous end, of all art. Rather did these artless folk almost invariably seek to adventure beyond the province of the pen by strokes infinitely little and microscopic, so that they might haply deceive the eye by similarity to wood engravings or steel prints. But in those days pen-drawing was only a pursuit; to-day it is a living art. Now, an art is not merely a storehouse of facts, nor a moral influence. If it was of these things, then the photographic camera would be all-powerful, and all that would be left to do with the hands would be the production of devotional pictures; and of those who produced them the best artist would infallibly be him with a character the most noted for piety. Art, to the contrary, is entirely independent of subject or morals. It is not sociology, nor ever shall be; and those who practise an art might be the veriest pariahs, and yet their works rank technically, artistically, among the best. Art is handling _in excelsis_, and its results lie properly in the pride of the eye and the satisfaction of the æsthetic sense, though Mr. Ruskin would have it otherwise.

Is this the lashing of a dead horse, or thrice slaying the slain? No, I think not. The moral and literary fallacies remain. Open an art exhibition and give your exhibits technical, not subject titles, and you shall hear a mighty howl, I promise you. Mr. Hamerton, too, has recently found grudging occasion to say that, for artists, “it does not appear that a literary education would be necessary in all cases.” Whenever was it necessary? But then Mr. Hamerton is himself one of those philosophic writers of a winning literary turn who can practise an art in by no means a distinguished way, but who write dogma by the yard and fumble over every illustration of their precepts. His _Drawing and Engraving_—a reprint from his _Encyclopædia Britannica_ article—is worse than useless to the student of illustration, and especially of pen-drawing, because Mr. Hamerton has long been left behind the times. He knows little of the admirable modern methods of reproducing line-work, but gives us etymologies of drawing and historical dissertations on engraving, which we do not want. Of such antiquated matter are even the current editions of encyclopædias fashioned. The fact is, the bulk of art criticism is written by men who can only string platitudes and stale studio slang together, without beginning to understand principles. The appalling journalese of much “art criticism” is hopelessly out of date; the slang of a half-forgotten _atélier_ is the lingo of would-be criticism to-day.

It seems strange that a man who can write pretty _vers de société_ or another who writes essays (essays, truly, in the philological sense), should for such acquirements be amongst those to whom is delegated the criticism of art in painting, drawing, or engraving; but so it is. No one who has not surmounted the difficulties of a medium can truly appreciate technique in it, whether that medium be words, or paint, or ink. No one, for instance, would give a painter or a pen-artist the chance to review a poet’s new volume of poems. You would not send a plumber to pronounce upon a baker’s method of kneading his dough. No; but an ordinary reporter is judged capable of criticizing a gallery of pictures. You cannot get much artistic change out of his report, nor from the articles on art written by a man whose only claim to the standing of “art critic” is the possession of a second-class certificate in drawing from the Science and Art Department. But of such stuff are the neurotic Neros of the literary “art critique” fashioned, and equally unauthorized by works are the lectures on illustration with which the ingenious Mr. Blackburn at decent intervals tickles suburban audiences or the amiable _dilettante_ of the Society of Arts into the fallacious belief that they know all about it, “which,” to quote the Euclidian formula, “is absurd.” Indeed, not even the most industrious, the best-informed, nor the most catholic-minded man could ever lecture, or write articles, or publish an illustrated critical work upon illustration which should show an approximation to completeness in its examples of styles and methods. The thing has been attempted, but will never be done, because the quantity of work—even good work—that has been produced is so vast, the styles so varied. The great storehouses of the best pen-work are the magazines, and from them the eclectic will gather a rich harvest. The _Century_ and _Harper’s_ are now the chief of these. The _Magazine of Art_ and the _Portfolio_, which were used to be filled with good original work, are now busied in providing such _réchauffés_ as photographic blocks from paintings old and new, but chiefly old, because they cost nothing for copyright. As for newspaper work, the _Daily Graphic_ is creating a school of its own, which does far better work than ever its New York namesake (now defunct) ever printed.

Some beautiful and most suggestive pen-drawings are to be found in the earlier numbers of _L’Art_ and many Parisian publications, such as the _Courier Français_, _Vie Moderne_, _Paris Illustré_, and _La Petit Journal pour Rire_. Many of the _Salon_ catalogues, too, contain admirable examples.

THE RISE OF AN ART.

Photo-mechanical processes of reproduction were invented by men who sought, not to create an art, not to help art in any way, but only to cheapen the cost of reproduction. “Line” processes—that is to say, processes for the reproduction of pure line—though not the first invented amongst modern methods, were the first to come into a state of practical utility; though even then their results were so crude that the artists whom necessity led to draw for them sank at once to a deeper depth than ever they had sounded when the _fac-simile_ wood-cutter held them in bondage. They became the slaves of mechanical limitations and chemical formulæ, which was a worse condition than having been henchmen of a craftsman. So far as the æsthetic sense is concerned, the process illustration of previous date to (say) 1880 might all be destroyed and no harm done, save, perhaps, the loss of much evidence of a documentary character toward the history of early days of processes.

There have been two great factors in their gradual perfection—competition with the wood-engravers and of rival process firms one with another, and, perhaps more important still, the independency of a few artists who have found methods of drawing with the pen, and have followed them despite the temporary limitations of the process-man. The workmen have “drawn for process” in the worst and most commercial sense of the term; they have set down their lines after the hard-and-fast rules which were formulated for their guidance. For years after the invention of zincography, artists who were induced to make drawings for the new methods of engraving worked in a dull round of routine; for in those days the process-man was not less, but more, tyrannical than his predecessor, the wood-engraver; his yoke was, for a time, harder to bear.

One was enjoined to make drawings with only the blackest of Indian ink, upon Bristol-board, the thickest and smoothest and whitest that could be obtained, and upon none other. It was impressed upon the draughtsman that he should draw lines thick and wide apart and firm, and that his drawings should be made with a view to, preferably, a reduction in scale of one-third. Also that by no means should his lines run together by any chance, except in the matter of a coarse and obvious cross-hatch. And so, by reason of these things, the pen-work of that time is become dreadful to look upon at this day. The man who then drew with a view to reproduction squirmed on the very edge of his chair, and with compressed lips, and his heart in his mouth, drew upon his Bristol-board slowly and carefully, and with so heavy a hand, that presently his wrist ached consumedly, and his drawing became stilted in the extreme. Not yet was pen-drawing a profession, for few men had learned these formulæ; and the zincography of that time made miserable all them that were translated by it into something appreciably different from their original work. Illustration, although already sensibly increased in volume, was artistically at the lowest ebb. It was a manufacture, an industry; but scarcely a profession, and most certainly it had not yet become an art.