Pen Drawing

Rembrandt is the greatest exponent of the pen and wash tech nique. He relied mainly on delicately toned washes for the render ing of light and shade in his expressive drawings. Other followers of this method, each in his distinctive style, were Claude de Lor raine with his fine pen-drawings of Italian landscapes, Nicolas Poussin with his careful preliminary studies for composition, and Tiepolo with his sketchy technique. Many more draughtsmen might be mentioned, their drawings pretended no detached place as works of art, and no strict adherence to the limitations of the pen was observed. It was with the development of process repro duction at the beginning of the 19th century that pen and ink art as a separate art came into being.

Technique.

Three main divisions appear in the method of the pen and ink drawing, which have been vaguely mentioned in speak ing of the drawings of Rembrandt, da Vinci and Rubens. The first of these deals with sheer line or draughtsmanship with slight or strong allowance toward tone; the second deals with tone con ception, as of the colourist, with much or little allowance toward line; and the third deals with line and tone or colour equally esti mated and treated consciously as in design. Upon closer study, however, these general methods fall into six more specific di visions: (I) The outline or open drawing, in which much or little may be included. The range of this method may run from the fragmentary or the compact line, of the manner of Holbein, to the manner of Heinrich Kley, who plays so continuously upon outline, even upon the outlines of the inner bones of animals and men, that tone finally appears. (2) Outline with shadow massings in slow or fast line tone, as in the case of much of Vierge's work and that of Charles Keene and of Griggs. In this method much is made of the two-tone effect with white the strong value; it may reach the other extreme, wherein the low tone becomes a brush black, dominating the whole drawing with the white high-lights arising out of it constituting the structure of the picture, as in the work of Sartorio, the Italian. (3) Outline, freely or otherwise done, with the introduction of local colour, arbitrarily and more or less flatly applied. This typifies much of the work of Phil May and of Charles Dana Gibson. (4) An approach to form and colour with or without outline, suggested by loose and delicate strokes of the pen, wherein form and colour emerge delicately from the white paper. This is well seen in the work of Abbey and of Norman Lindsay of Australia. (5) The same method as the above with a more positive introduction of local colour and textures and, by reason of more general or background tone, a decided localization of white with touches of flat black. This is seen in the pen work of Fortuny and of Casanova. (9) The method that belongs to the decorator or ornamentist, of men like Crane and Beardsley. It is the flat presentation with a main viewpoint not toward reality and truth but toward romance and formalism, with the slow conscious line and tone laid in with intent for surface design and beauty.

All pen and ink drawing will be found to touch upon these few methods, with variations in effect and technique. Technique is like handwriting; while it may be cultivated, it soon becomes the sign of an inner sense and feeling back of the hand. The artist with the pen, observing objective life, whether it be primarily structural or tonal, or both, and with pen to paper, interpreting the feel of the contact there, comes naturally to the line that is his own; and in his tones, where the artist with the brush might escape confession or lose expression, the artist with pen and ink puts on expression and meaning over and above the main content of his work. Thus in the work of Thomas Fogarty, in the touch and play of his pen, may be perceived a fine gentility and a sense of relationships that are rich and subtle; while in the drawings of J. Coll, one feels the strong dramatic gesture and sees the sub jective qualities. In like manner, in the pen drawings of Marold and Meissonier, neither of whom seemed to feel or to stress the line greatly but strove for full tone by fine cross-hatchings, lightly stroked surfaces and values semi-stippled with whites apparently scratched with a knife, is observed a sureness determined, it seems, by an allegiance to things academic. The decorative drawings of Garth Jones have a classic and mural bigness, with a free and bold yet conscious line, while the decorative works of T. M. Cleland are executed as if by a master craftsman with a hand expert at the laying in of ebony and gold.

The work of the author of this article is characterized by partial or full tone with line made use of not so much for the presenta tion of form in drawing as to designate the movement and stir of things not seen but felt, as of the wind and the movements in sensation of distances and height. The line and its direction are employed also to present, through the effect of broken colour, the qualities of depth and solidity and a visual activity in tone or a compositional treatment of tone areas.

Present-day Uses.—Considerably less pen and ink art is found in the weekly and monthly popular periodicals of the United States and Great Britain since the advent of the half-tone process repro duction. Behind this, of course, is the aim of editors to meet only the desires of the readers who seek only a photographic presenta tion of fact; the half-tone printed on coated paper suggests this reality. However, many of the high-class magazines continue the use of the pen and ink drawing, seeking always to improve the quality of illustration, and laying special emphasis on decorative values. In England the most distinguished pen and ink artists are often associated with Punch. Outside the periodical field, where they are used for both illustrative and decorative purposes, pen and ink drawings are widely used in textbooks and encyclopaedias. (See also ILLUSTRATION ; PENCIL DRAWING ; LINE ENGRAVING. )