Pen and Ink Drawing Lessons & Techniques
"PEN DRAWING
AN ILLUSTRATED TREATISE"
BY CHARLES D. MAGINNIS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I.—Style in Pen Drawing
CHAPTER VI.—Architectural Drawing
CHAPTER VII.—Decorative Drawing
CHAPTER III - TECHNIQUE
The first requirement of a good pen technique is a good Individual Line, a line of feeling and quality. It is usually a surprise to the beginner to be made aware that the individual line is a thing of consequence,—a surprise due, without doubt, to the apparently careless methods of some successful illustrators. It is to be borne in mind, however, that some illustrators are successful in spite of their technique rather than because of it; and also that the apparently free and easy manner of some admirable technicians is in reality very much studied, very deliberate, and not at all to be confounded with the unsophisticated scribbling of the beginner. The student is apt to find it just about as easy to draw like Mr. Pennell as to write like Mr. Kipling.
The best way to acquire such a superb freedom is to be very, very careful and painstaking. To appreciate how beautiful the individual line may be one has but to observe the rich, decorative stroke of Howard Pyle, Fig. 66, or that of Mucha, Fig. 65, the tender outline of Boutet de Monvel, the telling, masterly sweep of Gibson, or the short, crisp line of Vierge or Rico. Compared with any of these the line of the beginner will be either feeble and tentative, or harsh, wiry, and coarse.
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| FIG. 6 | B. G. GOODHUE |
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| FIG. 7 | HERBERT RAILTON |
Variety of Line The second requisite is Variety of Line,—not merely variety of size and direction, but, since each line ought to exhibit a feeling for the particular texture which it is contributing to express, variety of character. Mr. Gibson's manner of placing very delicate gray lines against a series of heavy black strokes exemplifies some of the possibilities of such variety. Observe, in Fig. 6, what significance is imparted to the heavy lines on the roof of the little foreground building by the foil of delicate gray lines in the sky and surrounding roofs. This conjunction was employed early by Mr. Herbert Railton, who has made a beautiful use of it in his quaint architectural subjects. Mr. Railton's technique is remarkable also for the varied direction of line and its expression of texture. Note this characteristic in his drawing of buttresses, Fig. 7.