By Charles D. Williams.
It is only in comparatively modern times that the art of illustration
has received the encouragement that makes for perfection. For this,
the cheapening of the manufacturing cost in printing is mainly
responsible. An illustration proper should always accompany text and
in days past the making of a book was so costly in itself that the
possibility of illustration was almost beyond thought. Only the
wealthy could afford illustrated books and as their reading was very
limited, naturally illustration was crowded to the wall. Those with
money to spend on pictures preferred decorations or portraits,
consequently the endeavors of artists were aimed at supplying what
suited the tastes of buyers. Illustration is and always has been the
art of the people. It makes clearer to the imagination their stories
and their songs, it mirrors their manner of life, interests, and
pursuits in a way that brightens what would otherwise often be
commonplace.
Art seems to entwine itself about the strongest figures in a
community, absorbing with its nourishment the ethical qualities of
the leader. Thus we have Michael Angelo in a community ruled by the
church, creating, at its demands, a "Day of Judgment," a "Magdalen at
the Cross," a "Moses," and Velasquez, evolving a marvellous technique
while immortalizing in wonderful portraits the vanity of his Spanish
lords.
So that at the present day, with the people in ascendency, what is
more probable than the perfect development of the art which most
appeals to their tastes? Every day, artists of the highest
intelligence find in illustration an opportunity to give the best that
is in them, and the chances that illustration will reach the heights
of perfection attained by other branches of art are exceedingly good.
The opportunities for an illustrator are without end, and the problems
are beyond number. It is a difficult performance to hand out, to
order, pictures in which human emotions stand counterfeited. In the
fact that illustration springs from and stands with the written tale
and must finally serve its proper place between board covers, the man
who labors at it finds some of his work already finished for him by
the author. But it is a saving that tantalizes more than it assists.
The technical equipment of the artist must twist into realistic
semblance, clear to the eye, the imaginary product of the author. He
must not add to it nor take away from it--even for the sake of beauty
in his picture--one iota of the facts given him. His imagination,
grasping all the ideas of the author, must assemble them and find a
place for each one, good, bad, and indifferent, and present them to
the reader in a form that will command his approval.
The artist cannot tease the mind with the vague influence of
description, as can the author, nor can he veil his products with the
pleasing glamour of unreality. Without haze his work stands forth,
bold facts in half-tone reproduction and printer's ink, fighting an
uncertain fight at best with the imagination of the reader.
People will have illustrations, though. If the pictures do not
literally fill the bill, they nevertheless please. Something definite,
carrying a story idea, is always acceptable.
Something which excites the imagination invariably challenges
interest, and the illustrator who is true to his calling and above
shirking his task enhances the interesting features of a book a
thousand fold, if he spares no pains in arriving at an actual
expression of the author's intention.
The knowledge that an illustrator brings to his work should be as
broad and varied as human history. Above and beyond his ability to
draw or execute in a manner technically pleasing, should stand his
knowledge of people, places, and events. It should include all Things,
Ologies, and Isms. A living Index he must be, knowing just enough to
readily discover more, and with this knowledge he must make others
feel and imagine.
If the author would tell of wars, Trojan, Egyptian, or Siamese, the
illustrator must follow him and be truthful. He must know enough of
Troy, Egypt, or Siam to make clear to the reader the face, form, and
clothes of the characters, their weapons of bloodshed, their way of
killing, how they marched to do it and through what manner of country.
He must know or find out all these things, and within all his pictures
must carry the spirit of terror and murder that stalked at the time,
so carefully expressed that the terror and murder will be of that
particular epoch and no other. All this must be shown as clearly as
that the characters belong to their helmets or shields, their war
chariots or bamboo lances. Simple the task may seem in these days of
public libraries and ready reference, yet it is a most nerve-racking
business, this placing an embossed helm or set of greaves on the hero
of a story, so that he may stand out a Roman, and when the labor is
finished having him stare genially out at you, insistently proclaiming
the masquerade, and seemingly proud of his resemblance to a St. Louis
button salesman.
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.
The illustrator finds that the speech an author puts into the mouths
of his characters is the best index to their personality. They may be
described as tall or short, dark or light, stout or thin, and their
creator may explain their capacities for love, hate, villany, or
dissipation, but it is only the words with which they express their
ideas that really describes them. His description of the beauty of a
girl will not be accepted on trust. He must supply her with deportment
and breeding before her beauty can be truly imagined. Thus it may be
explained that the measure of an author's conception and clearness
often determines the qualities in an illustration. The true
illustrator is sensitive to faults in the delineation of character,
and, although he may not be aware of it, his work will show it. Of
course it often happens that an artist is taken up with ideas of
technique and, author or no author, will make his pictures in just
such a way; but such work is hardly illustration and serves itself
better standing alone.
And thus it goes throughout the scene to be pictured--place, time, and
people, all must be imagined twice and equally clear, by both the
author and the illustrator, before the reader will agree.
To the illustrator, hampered by given quantities, falls the most
difficult task in this duet of imagination, and he can at best hope
only for the reader's approval, as all credit for conception goes to
the author. It is on this approval, though, that he builds, for if he
succeeds in making things clearer to the reader's imagination, he has
accomplished what he set out to do and has proved himself worth his
hire.
So the aims of illustration are set forth, but whether the laborer
completes his work well or ill, whether he brings great ability or
only honest intention to its accomplishment, he is engaged in a
business as fascinating as it is uncertain. Failure only drives him to
another try, and success is always just around the corner. The
illustrator who would live by his work must live with it. If he has a
thought in his mind that does not deal in some form with illustrations
and half-tone plates, he is wasting that thought and his time besides.