inexpedient; they are heavy, and take up too much space. If they were
necessary, of course you would have to put up with the inconvenience of
carrying two or more pounds’ weight of them about with you, but they
are not necessary.
Every one who makes drawings in pen and ink is continually looking
out for an ideal paper; many have found their ideals in this
respect; but that paper which one man swears by, another will, not
inconceivably, swear at, so no recommendation can be trusted. Again,
personal predilections change amazingly. One day you will be able to
use Bristol-board with every satisfaction; another, you will find its
smooth, dead white, immaculate surface perfectly dispiriting. No one’s
advice can be implicitly followed in respect of papers, inks, or pens.
Every one must find his own especial fancy, and when he has found it he
will produce the better work.
The pen-draughtsman who is a paper-fancier does not leave untried even
the fly-leaves of his correspondence. Papers have been found in this
way which have proved satisfactory. All you have to do is to go to some
large stationer or wholesale papermaker’s and get your fancy matched.
It would be an easy matter to obtain sheets larger than note-paper.
Whatman’s HP, or hot-pressed drawing-paper, is good for pen-drawing,
but its proper use is not very readily learnt. To begin with, the
surface is full of little granulations and occasional fibres which
catch the pen and cause splutterings and blots. Sometimes, too, you
happen upon insufficiently sized Whatman, and then lines thicken almost
as if the drawing were being made upon blotting-paper.
A good plan is to select some good HP Whatman and have it calendered.
Any good stationer could put you in the way of getting the calendering
done, or possibly such a firm as Dickinsons’, manufacturers of paper,
in Old Bailey, could be prevailed upon to do it. If you want a firm,
hard, clear-cut line, you will of course use only Bristol-board or
mounting-board, or papers with a highly finished surface. Drawings upon
Whatman’s papers give in the reproductions broken and granulated lines
which the process-man (but no one else) regards as defects. Should the
block itself be defective, he will doubtless point to the paper as the
cause, but there is no reason why the best results should not proceed
from HP paper. Messrs. Reeves and Sons, of Cheapside, sell what they
call London boards. These are sheets of Whatman mounted upon cardboard.
They offer the advantages of the HP surface with the rigidity of the
Bristol-board. The Art Tablets sold by the same firm are cardboards
with Whatman paper mounted on either side. A drawing can be made upon
both sides and the tablet split up afterwards.
In connection with illustration, amongst the most remarkable inventions
of late years are the prepared cardboards generally known amongst
illustrators as “scratch-out cardboards,” introduced by Messrs. Angerer
and Göschl of Vienna, and by M. Gillot of Paris. These cardboards are
of several kinds, but are all prepared with a surface of kaolin, or
china-clay. Reeves sell eight varieties of these clay-boards. They
are somewhat expensive, costing two shillings a sheet of nineteen by
thirteen inches, but when their use is well understood they justify
their existence by the rich effects obtained, and by the saving of time
effected in drawing upon them. Drawings made upon these preparations
have all the fulness and richness of wash, pencil, or crayon, and may
be reproduced by line processes at the same cost as a pen-drawing
made upon plain paper. The simplest variety of clay-board is the one
prepared with a plain white surface, upon which a drawing may be
made with pen and ink, or with a brush, the lights taken out with
a scraper or a sharp-pointed knife. It is advisable to work upon
all clay-surfaced papers or cardboards with pigmental inks, as, for
instance, lampblack, ivory-black, or Indian ink. Ebony stain is not
suitable. The more liquid inks and stains have a tendency to soak
_through_ the prepared surface of china-clay, rather than to rest only
_upon_ it, thereby rendering the cardboard useless for “scratch-out”
purposes, and of no more value than ordinary drawing-paper. A drawing
made upon plain clay-board with pen and brush, using lampblack as a
medium, can be worked upon very effectively with a sharp point. White
lines of a character not to be obtained in any other way can be thus
produced with happy effect. Mr. Heywood Sumner has made some of his
most striking decorative drawings in this manner. It is a manner of
working remarkably akin to the wood-engraver’s art—that is to say,
drawing or engraving in white lines upon a black field—only of course
the cardboard is more readily worked upon than the wood block. Indeed,
wood-engravers have frequently used this plain clay-board. They have
had the surface sensitized, the drawing photographed and printed upon
it, and have then proceeded to take out lights, to cut out white lines,
and to hatch and cross-hatch, until the result looks in every way
similar to a wood engraving. This has then been photographed again, and
a zinc block made that in the printing would defy even an expert to
detect.
Other kinds of clay-boards are impressed with a grain or with plain
indented lines, or printed upon with black lines or reticulations,
which may be scratched through with a point, or worked upon with brush
or pen. Examples are given here:
[Illustration: CANVAS-GRAIN CLAY-BOARD.]
No. 1. White cardboard, impressed with a plain canvas grain.
This gives a fine painty effect, as shown in the drawing of polled
willows: a drawing made in pencil, with lights in foreground grass and
on tree-trunks scratched out with a knife or with the curved-bladed
eraser sold for use with these preparations.
[Illustration: PLAIN DIAGONAL GRAIN.]
[Illustration: PLAIN PERPENDICULAR GRAIN.]
2. Plain white diagonal lines. Pencil drawing.
3. Plain white perpendicular lines. Pencil drawing.
4. Plain white aquatint grain. Pencil drawing.
These four varieties require greater care and a lighter hand in working
than the others, because their patterns are not very deeply stamped,
and consequently the furrows between the upstanding lines are apt to
become filled with pencil, and to give a broken and spotty effect in
the reproduction.
[Illustration: DRAWING IN PENCIL ON WHITE AQUATINT GRAIN CLAY-BOARD.]
5. Black aquatint. This is not a variety in constant use. Three states
are shown.
6. Black diagonal lines. This is the pattern in greater requisition.
The method of working is shown, but the possibilities of this pattern
are seen admirably and to the best advantage in the illustration of
_Venetian Fête on the Seine_.
[Illustration: BLACK AQUATINT CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING.]
[Illustration: BLACK DIAGONAL-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF
DRAWING.]
7. Black perpendicular lines. Same as No. 6, except in direction of
line.
[Illustration: BLACK PERPENDICULAR-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF
DRAWING.]
[Illustration: VENETIAN FÊTE ON THE SEINE, WITH THE TROCADERO
ILLUMINATED.
_Pen and ink on black diagonal-lined clay-board. Lights scratched out._]
Drawings made upon these grained and ridged papers must not be stumped
down or treated in any way that would fill up the interstices,
which give the lined and granular effect capable of reproduction by
line-process. Also, it is very important to note that drawings on these
papers can only be subjected to a slight reduction of scale—say, a
reduction at most by one quarter. The closeness of the printed grains
and lines forbids a smaller scale that shall be perfect. Mr. C. H.
Shannon has drawn upon lined “scratch-out” cardboard with the happiest
effect.
PENS.
A common delusion as to pens for drawing is that only the finer-pointed
kinds are suitable. To the contrary, most of the so-called “etching
pens” and crow-quills and lilliputian affairs sold are not only
unnecessary, but positively harmful. They encourage the niggling
methods of the amateur, and are, besides, untrustworthy and dreadfully
scratchy. You can but rarely depend upon them for the drawing of
a continuous line; frequently they refuse to mark at all. I know
very well that I shall be exclaimed against when I say that a good
medium-pointed pen or fine-pointed school nib are far better than
three-fourths of the pens especially made for draughtsmen, but that is
the case.
With practice, one can use almost any writing nib for the production of
a pen-drawing. Even the broad-pointed J pen is useful. Quill pens are
delightful to work with for the making of pen-studies in a bold, free
manner. A well-cut quill flies over all descriptions of paper, rough or
smooth, without the least catching of fibres or spluttering. It is the
freest and least trammelling of pens, and seems almost to draw of its
own volition.
Brandauer’s pens are, generally, very good, chiefly for the reason
that they have circular points that rarely become scratchy. They
make a small nib, No. 515, which works and wears well; this last an
unusual quality in the small makes. Perry & Co. sell two very similar
nibs, No. 601 (a so-called “etching pen”) and No. 25; they are both
scratchy. Gillott’s crowquill, No. 659, is a barrel pen, very small
and very good, flexible, and capable of producing at once the finest
and the boldest lines; but Brandauer’s Oriental pen, No. 342 EF, an
ordinary fine-pointed writing pen, is just as excellent, and its use is
more readily learnt. It takes some time and practice to discover the
capabilities of the Gillott crowquill; the other pen’s possibilities
are easier found. Besides, the tendency with a microscopic nib is
to niggled work, which is not to be desired at the cost of vigour.
Mitchell’s F pen is a fine-pointed school writing nib. It is not
particularly flexible, but very reliable and lasts long. Gillott has
recently introduced a very remarkable nib, No. 1000, frankly a drawing
pen, flexible in the extreme, capable of producing at will the finest
of hair-lines or the broadest of strokes.
Some illustrators make line drawings with a brush. Mr. J. F. Sullivan
works in this way, using a red sable brush with all superfluous hairs
cut away, and fashioned to a point. Lampblack is the best medium for
the brush.
To draw in line with a brush requires long practice and great
dexterity, but men who habitually work in this way say that its use
once learnt, no one would exchange it for the pen. Of this I can
express no opinion. Certainly there are some obvious advantages in
using a brush. It does not ever penetrate the surface of the paper, and
it is capable of producing the most solid and smooth lines.
Stylographic and fountain pens, of whatever make, are of no use
whatever. Glass pens are recommended by some draughtsmen for their
quality of drawing an equable line; but they would seem to be chiefly
useful in mathematical and engineering work, which demands the same
thickness of line throughout. These pens would also prove very useful
in architects’ offices, in drawing profiles of mouldings, tracery,
and crockets, because, not being divided into two nibs, they make any
variety of curve without the slightest alteration in the character of
the line produced. Any one accustomed to use the ordinary divided nibs
will know the difficulty of drawing such curves with them.
INKS.
It is, perhaps, more difficult to come by a thoroughly reliable ink
than to be exactly suited with papers and pens; and yet greater
attention has been given by manufacturers to inks than to those other
necessaries.
You can, often with advantage, use a writing pen; but no one, however
clever he may be, can make a satisfactory drawing for reproduction
with the aid of writing-inks. They are either not black enough, or
else are too fluid, so that it is impossible to run lines close
together, or to cross-hatch without the ink running the lines into one
another. It may, perhaps, be remarked that this is an obvious error,
since many of Keene’s most delightful drawings and studies were made
in writing-inks—black, blue-black, or diluted, or even in red, and
violet, and blue inks. Certainly Keene was a great man in whatever
medium he used, but he was not accustomed to be reproduced in any other
way than by so-called _fac-simile_ wood engraving. In this way all his
greynesses and faint lines could have their relative values translated,
but even in the cleverest surface-printing processes his work could not
be adequately reproduced.
Stephens’s ebony stain is perhaps the most widely used ink at this
time. It is not made for the purpose of drawing, being a stain
for wood; but its merits for pen-drawing have been known for some
considerable time. It is certainly the best, cheapest, and least
troublesome medium in the market. It is, when not diluted, an intensely
black liquid with an appreciable body, but not too thick to flow
freely. It dries with a certain but not very obtrusive glaze, which
process-engravers at one time objected to most strongly, _because_ they
wanted something to object to on principle; but they have at length
become tired of remonstrating, and really there was never any objection
to the stain upon that score. It flows readily from the pen, and when
drying upon the nib is not gummy nor in any way adhesive, but powders
easily—avoiding the abomination of a pen clogged with a sticky mess of
half-dry mud, characteristic of the use of Indian ink. Ebony stain is
sold in substantial stone bottles, and so does not readily become
thick; but when, owing to any cause, it does not run freely enough, a
sparing dilution with water restores its fluid properties. Diluted too
often or too freely, it becomes of a decided purple-brown tint; but as
a good-sized bottle costs only sixpence, and holds enough to last a
year, it need not be repeatedly diluted on the score of its cost. It
is not a fixed ink, and readily smudges when washed over or spotted
with water—so cannot be used in combination with water-colour or
flat-washes. Neither can Chinese white be used upon a drawing made in
Ebony stain. These are disadvantages that would tell against its use by
illustrators who make many alterations upon their work, or who paint in
lights on a pen-drawing with body-colour; but for pure pen-drawing, and
for straight-away journalistic work, it is invaluable.
Indian ink is the traditional medium. It has the advantage of fixity;
lines drawn with it, when once dry, will not smudge when washed over,
and, at most, they give but a very slight grey or brown tint to the
paper. Indian ink can be bought in sticks and ground with water in a
saucer; but there seems to be no reason for any one to go to this
trouble, as liquid Indian inks are to be bought in bottles from
Messrs. Reeves. The best Indian ink, when freshly ground, gives a
fine black line that dries with that bogey of the process-man, a
glaze; but lampblack is of a more intense blackness, and dries with a
dull surface. Lampblack is easily soluble, and therefore has not the
stability of good Indian ink to recommend it. For ordinary use with
the pen, it has too much of the pigmental nature, and is very apt to
clog the nib and to cause annoyance and loss of time. Lampblack and
Ivory-black are better suited to the brush. Hentschel, of 182, Fleet
Street, sells an American preparation called “Whiting’s Process-Drawing
Ink,” which professes to have all the virtues that should accompany
a drawing-ink. It is very abominable, and has an immediate corrosive
effect upon pens. The drawing-materials’ shop in King William Street,
Strand, sells “Higgins’ American Drawing Ink,” done up in ingeniously
contrived bottles. It is well spoken of.
_Encre de Chine Liquide_ is the best liquid Indian ink sold, and is
very largely used by draughtsmen. It can be obtained readily at any
good colour-shop. It is far preferable to most of the liquid Indian
inks prepared by English houses, which when left standing for a few
minutes deposit a sediment, and at best are inadequate concoctions of a
greenish-grey colour. Messrs. Reeves and Sons have recently introduced
a special ink for pen-drawing, which they call “Artists’ Black.” It is
as good as any. It is a liquid ink, sold in shilling bottles.
Mr. Du Maurier uses blue-black writing-ink from an inkstand that
is always allowed to stand open and receive dust and become half
muddy. He prefers it in this condition. Also he generally works upon
HP drawing-paper. It is interesting to know this, but to work in
blue-black ink is an amiable eccentricity that might prove disastrous
to any one following his example. His work is not reproduced by
zincography, but by _fac-simile_ wood engraving. It may be laid down as
an inflexible rule, if you are beginning the study of pen-drawing, if
your work is for hurried newspaper production, or if you have not the
control of the reproduction in your own hands, to draw for line-process
in the blackest ink and on the whitest paper.
Many architects and architectural draughtsmen, who are accustomed
to exhibit pen-drawings of architecture at the Royal Academy, are
accustomed to draw in brown inks. Prout’s Brown is generally used,
and gives a very pleasing effect to a drawing. It photographs and
reproduces readily, but it must always be borne in mind that, if
printed in black ink, the reproduction will inevitably be much heavier.
Scarlet inks, and even yellow inks, have been used by draughtsmen for
special purposes, and are allowable from the photographic point of
view; but blue must not be used, being an actinic colour and impossible
to photograph.
THE MAKING OF A PEN-DRAWING.
It is not to be supposed that because the pen is so handy an
instrument, and inks and paper, of sorts, are everywhere, that the
making of a pen-drawing is a simple affair of a few uneducated strokes.
The less you know of the art, the easier it seems, and they do but
show their ignorance who speak of its simplicity. You will want as
much power of draughtsmanship, and more, for drawing in this medium
than in many others; because the difference between good drawing and
bad is more readily seen in line-work than in other methods, and since
in these days the standard of the art has been raised so high. You
will want not less study in the open air, or with the life-class for
figure-work, than the painter gives or should give to his preliminary
studies for his art. This drudgery you will have to go through, whether
in the schools of the Science and Art Department (which does not
recognize this, the livest art of our time), or in the studio and
under the care of some artist who receives pupils in the fashion of
the _atélier_ system in France. But such studios are rare in England.
It seems likely that the student of pen-drawing, who starts with
learning draughtsmanship of any sort, must first go through much of
the ordinary grind of the schools, and, when he has got some sort of
proficiency, turn to and worry out the application of the pen to his
already received teaching. No one will teach him pen-drawing as an
individual art; of that there is no doubt. Perhaps the best course he
could pursue would be to become acquainted with the books illustrated
by the foremost men, and study them awhile to see in what manner they
work with the pen, and with this knowledge set to work with models,
in the same way as a painter would do. Or, if your work is of another
branch beside the figure, go to the fields, the hedgerows, and all the
glory of the country-side, and work first-hand. The sketch-book is a
necessity, and should always be in the student’s pocket for the jotting
down of notes and memoranda.
I do not think many pen-draughtsmen are careful enough to make a
thorough pencil study as the basis of their pen-drawing, although that
is the best way to proceed, and their drawings would be all the better
for the practice. It is to this absence of the preliminary pencil-work,
this shirking of an undoubted drudgery, that is due the quantity of
uninspired, fumbling drawing with the pen that we see nowadays. The
omission of a carefully made original pencil-sketch, over which to work
in pen and ink, renders commonplace the work of many artists which,
if only they were less impatient of toil, would become transfigured.
What is so injurious to the man who has learnt his art is fatal to one
who is by way of beginning its study. Make, then, a pencil-drawing in
outline, using an HB pencil, as carefully as if that only were the end
and object of your work. Work lightly with this hard pencil upon the
paper or cardboard you have selected, indicating shadows rather than
filling them in. It is necessary to make only faint pencil lines, for
they will have to be rubbed out eventually, after the pen-drawing has
been made over them. If the marks were deep and strong, a great deal of
rubbing would have to be done to get them out, and that injures the
surface of the paper and greys the black lines of the ink used. On
the other hand, if the pencil-marks were not rubbed out, they would
very likely photograph and reproduce in the process-block. To a
pen-draughtsman of experience the reproduction of his pencil-marks can
be made an additional beauty; but the student had much better be, at
first, a purist, and make for clean pen-strokes alone on his finished
drawing.
It must always be remembered, if you are working for reproduction (and
consequent reduction of scale from the drawing to the process-block),
that the pen-work you have seen printed in the books and papers and
magazines was made on a much larger scale than you see it reproduced
in their pages. Very frequently, as in the American magazines, the
reduction is to about one quarter scale of the original drawing; but,
working for process in England, the drawing should, generally speaking,
be from two-thirds to one-half larger than the reproduction. These
proportions will, as a rule, give excellent results.
Seeing that your drawing is to be so much larger than the
process-block, it follows that the pen-work can, with advantage, be
correspondingly vigorous. It would help you better than any description
to a notion of what an original drawing should be like, if you could
obtain a glance at the originals of any good pen-draughtsmen. But
unfortunately, there are few exhibitions in which pen-work has any
place.
When your pencil study is completed in an outline giving all details
down to the minutest, you can set about the pen-drawing. Often, indeed,
if carefully made, the pencil-sketch looks too good to be covered
up with ink. If you wish to retain it, it can, if made upon thin
paper, be traced upon cardboard with the aid of black carbon paper,
or better still (since blue will not photograph) with blue transfer
paper, which you can either purchase or make for yourself by taking
thin smooth paper and rubbing powdered blue chalk upon one side of
it, or scribbling closely upon it with blue pencil. There is another
way of tracing the pencil-drawing: by pinning over it a sheet of thin
correspondence paper (of the kind called Bank Post) and working upon
that straight away.
But, after all, it would, for the sake of retaining something of the
freshness of first impressions, be best to sacrifice your pencil study
and work away on that.
Now the pen-drawing is begun, care should be taken to draw only clear
and perfectly black lines, and not to run these together, but to keep
the drawing what the process men call “open.”
If details are put in without regard for the fining down which
reduction gives, it is only too likely that the result will show only
dirty, meaningless patches where was a great deal of delicate pen-work.
Of course, the exact knowledge of how to draw with the pen to get the
best results by process cannot properly be taught, but must be learned
by experience, after many miscalculations.