Chapter XIV

A CHAPTER OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND A RÉSUMÉ — VALLOTTON HEADS ONLY UNDERSTOOD BY THOSE WHO CAN SEE LIGHT AND SHADE UPON OBJECTS — MEDALLIONS BY DAVID D’ANGERS SHOWING THE PLANES OF THE FACE — THESE PLANES BROUGHT OUT IN SOME OF THE VALLOTTON HEADS, AND IN MEDALLIONS BY LORMIER AND D’ILLZACH, AND IN DRAWING BY CHAUME — LANDSCAPE BY LE ROUX, CARICATURE BY FORAIN — THE LE ROUX AND THE PAUL DRAWINGS INDICATE THE FORCE OF OUTLINE — EXAMPLES OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF TECHNIC.

The definite character of our illustrations to the last two chapters should have made so strong an impression upon the reader (_if_ he practices drawing) that there ought to be little necessity of further letterpress explaining the different technics of pen drawing. {133} So please permit us to introduce a large number of illustrations in this chapter, with slight comment; it being surmised that the reader will, however, give a fuller consideration to the drawings themselves than we do. Each one should be studied again and again, the reader not copying it, but making a drawing in the same style of some similar object. This chapter, moreover, must serve as a general résumé of our instruction in freehand drawing and pen drawing; it virtually ends the first part of our text-book; the succeeding matter will be confined to the consideration of different methods of decorating title-pages, and of designing chapter headings, tailpieces, etc.; and the third part will consist of the consideration of different methods of engraving, chalk-plate, wood engraving and color printing.

Now for our résumé.

In order to learn to draw you must first learn to discern the outline of objects, which you may do by seeing them in silhouette.

To draw the hair in outline, as in Vallotton’s third Nietzsche, you must first see the hair as in the first Nietzsche; that is, see it in mass or in silhouette in nature. Before Vallotton took a brush in hand to put on the solid black of the hair in number one you may be sure he drew a pencil outline like the outline in number three; but before he drew that outline he saw the mass as in number one.

The Vallotton drawings may be further studied from two very different view-points. The third Friedrich Nietzsche is pure outline, like the examples of Engström■

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{135} FELIX VALLOTTON. MALTHUS. PAUL ROBIN.

HEADS DESIGNED BY F. VALLOTTON.

Vallotton has made it a practice to engrave a great many of his own designs. We do not know whether these heads were engraved by him, or merely drawn by him and photo-engraved, but the manner in which they are designed—that is, with great economy of line, and a few simple, telling spots—is one which is the outgrowth of his practice in wood engraving; he would work exactly like this if drawing on wood. (We shall treat of wood engraving for printers in a future chapter.)]

■{136} given in our early chapters, and is very simple and easy to understand, though not by any means easy to draw. The drawing of Malthus, on the other hand, is not easy to understand, for in addition to the outlines it is modeled—that is, it contains masses of shadow which bring out the different planes of the face. And it is necessary to study light and shade, as indicated in Chapter VII, before we can fully understand a drawing of this kind.

In order to model, you must learn _to see the light and shade upon objects_. When your eye is trained to see light and shade, you can draw the hair as in the second Nietzsche, and you can see planes in the face, as in the Malthus.

Although the David d’Angers diagrams were drawn to show the general masses of the head as they are brought out in successive stages by a sculptor, yet they become very interesting to the printer who has not had the benefit of an art school education, for they show him at a glance how much of the character of the human head is dependent upon the different planes of the face, and it explains better than words what is meant by planes. Chapter VIII should be read in connection with it, and the Vallotton portraits, especially that of Malthus, may be examined critically with this in mind, for you will then see that Vallotton has introduced masses of black with the idea of suggesting planes in the face.

We introduce the de Chaume to accompany the David d’Angers, Lormier and d’Illzach medallions, to emphasize the matter of the planes of the human face.■

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■We do not want our readers to think that the shadows we have pointed out in our text are the only ones to be noticed in the human face. Under certain circumstances, notably when an actor’s face is illuminated by the footlights, there are shadows upon it quite different from those we have analyzed in previous chapters. But the shadows we have pointed out are those most prominent in a photograph, and those most frequently employed by the artist, but if your drawing is to be very extensive you must learn to look for new shadows in new aspects; and the de Chaume shows some such shadows, yet in the case of the naso-labial line it is easy to see that■

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■{139} it is not far different from other naso-labial lines which we have considered.

Again, much of our instruction has been given using the human face as a basis of study; but it is not for a moment to be surmised that the study of drawing should be limited to the human face. We have intended only to suggest a process of study; this process may be■

J. C. DOLLMAN, R.I.

Pen drawing from the artist’s water color, made for an exhibition catalogue. This cut shows an excellent style of newspaper drawing, consisting of outline, and a gray got by parallel lines, without crosshatching.]

■applied to anything under the sun. Hence we give the Forain and the Le Roux outline to portray still life and landscape. And it is worthy of note that still life need not be circumscribed to mere drill; on the contrary, it is very frequently introduced into drawing—much to the perfecting of the composition. The dishpans, pots■

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Pen drawing by the artist from his painting.]

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■and coal shovel, in the Forain, are particularly suggestive from this view-point. The Le Roux is given in order that our text-book may include an example of landscape, and also that the pupil may realize that drawing is frequently a matter of the right line in the right place. As we said in Chapter XIII, just as we studied the matter of the naso-labial line, and the orbicular muscle, one should study the direction of the wickers of a trash basket, so the artist has studied here the characteristic lines of tree trunk, foliage, hillside, and grasses. If you will study a city street or a shipyard in the same spirit—that is, search for the characteristic lines—you will be able to make a drawing which, even though it lacks■

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■artistic finish, will have a certain graphic value; and for this very reason (we mean, to show that outline may be graphic) we purposely introduce into this chapter the Paul caricatures, consisting mainly of outlines, like those we gave in our first chapters, and we bid you harp upon them with the fact ever in your mind that they are not arbitrary, but each line stands for some prototype in nature; and that we may go a little farther in the analyzation of the face, we publish some models in relief in which the planes of the face are brought out. These planes were considered in Chapter VII, and you must■

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■{148} look at Fantin-La-Tour’s cast head in order to understand them. Do so, and then let your eye jump to the Vallotton heads, and we think you will grasp their characteristics immediately, for you will see wherein they differ from the Engström drawings. They differ in this: that in addition to pure outline, they mass the constructive shadows found in the David d’Angers. In other■

This cut has a peculiar interest technically. The foregoing was dictated with the original in hand, which was a direct process cut in which one set of lines ran perpendicularly. Our engraver, however, instead of reducing the cut by the direct process, reduced it by half-tone, through a screen with diagonal lines, hence the perpendicular lines have disappeared.]

■words, the black under Vallotton’s eyebrows does not mean that his eyebrows are abnormally thick, but it means that he has deep sunken eyes, and that there is■

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■_a shadow under_ the eyebrows and in the plane of the superior orbicular muscle, which recedes, and Vallotton wishes to emphasize this. And in the Malthus he does not mean that Malthus had a triangular birth-mark on his right cheek, but he means that he had a prominent cheekbone, and a sunken cheek beneath it; hence the shadow, which is what we call “a modeling shadow.”

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We cannot complete our chapter without mentioning that the styles of drawing we have suggested by no means exhaust the different methods at your disposal. While it is well to confine yourself to outline, or outline and solid black, or outline and slight shading, yet you may experiment in many more complicated methods, as seen in the Monet, and the Ringel d’Illzach, for even if you do not use these methods for illustrations they help you to observe the capital lights and darks in nature.

{151} PART II.

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Old-fashioned silhouette. See chapter on wood engraving.]

CHAPTER I.