DRAWING FOR PRINTERS.
A PRACTICAL TREATISE ON THE ART OF
DESIGNING AND ILLUSTRATING
IN CONNECTION WITH
TYPOGRAPHY.
CONTAINING COMPLETE INSTRUCTION, FULLY
ILLUSTRATED, CONCERNING THE ART OF DRAWING,
FOR THE BEGINNER AS WELL AS THE
MORE ADVANCED STUDENT.
BY ERNEST KNAUFFT,
_Editor of The Art Student, and Director of the
Chautauqua Society of Fine Arts_.
CHICAGO:
THE INLAND PRINTER COMPANY.
1899.
COPYRIGHT, 1897 AND 1899,
BY ERNEST KNAUFFT.
PREFACE.
The author has no doubt but that many captious readers, upon opening
this book, will find it puzzling. They will think that it does not
present the subject in an orderly fashion. They would much prefer to
have us suggest one month’s study of outlines, and then finish with the
subject; then two months’ study of shading, which we would maintain
covered the whole ground; and they would wish us to separate with equal
positiveness the whole study of drawing into distinct portions. To
these criticisms I reply with the following parable:
Mrs. Smith, the mother of a large family, distressed by the bigness
of the physician’s bill (or rather by her husband’s complaints of the
same), procured at the druggist’s a case of homœopathic medicine, with
a booklet directing its dispensation, which would enable her to act as
her family physician, and bringing it home perused it with delight, as
she found every ailment which her children were heir to extensively
described therein—chicken-pox, croup, diphtheria and scarlet fever
were alphabetically set down, and their proper remedy clearly named.
When she retired she staid awake, almost hoping to hear little Johnny
cough or Mary toss in her crib, that she might prove her knowledge of
symptomatology, and the efficacy of the drugs.
Alas, a month’s experience brought with it a source of embarrassment
which she had not anticipated on procuring her book. True, she had
learned it by heart with ease, and knew that for a slight attack of
fever one drop of aconite and two of belladonna should be given on
alternate days, and that for an incipient attack of croup she should
give one drop of aconite every half hour, “which might be administered
more frequently if the case showed symptoms of rapid development.”
Alas, the difficulty did not arise from any omission in the book
directions for applying remedies, but the puzzling point was to
distinguish in nature between the symptoms of croup, for instance,
and those of an ordinary cold. Was Johnny’s sonorous barking due to
a real croupy throat, or was it the natural formation of his vocal
organs which gave so ominous a tone to a cough that might be only the
result of his wading in the rain barrel the morning before? Was Tommy’s
calling for “a wink of water” no less than six times in a night due
to a prospective fever, or was it the result of loneliness because he
had for the first time been put in the spare room, and wanted his
mother’s company? Was little Mary’s restlessness indicative of a coming
attack of measles, or the result of her cousin’s having read her, that
afternoon, “The Goblins ’ll Get You if You Don’t Watch Out.” These were
the puzzling questions; if the physician could only diagnose the case
for her, she herself could have administered the proper quota of drops
of aconite or belladonna.
The moral is plain. Those books on drawing which say, “Having made
correct outlines, begin to shade with an F pencil as follows,” are very
easy reading; but an attempt at application soon convinces one that
such instruction presupposes an amount of previous eye-training on the
part of the student which is not often the endowment of the ordinary
man.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY — A KNOWLEDGE OF DESIGNING OF VALUE TO
PRINTERS . . . 17