Landscape Sketching in Pen and Ink Page 3
The nature of a farmyard is as different as possible from a motor road as anything could be. So in the case of the former a few ragged strokes expressive of straw and mud will be sufficient. Almost any broken lines or dots will keep the eye from travelling over a surface rapidly. Not so the corner of the smooth road. By putting nothing whatever in the way of marks on the main surface of the road and by emphasizing carefully the curves and lines of the edge of the road the eye travels uninterruptedly and the feeling of motion—potential motion, for no car is passing at the moment—is given to the picture. Beyond the road is a stream, here broadened out to a pleasant sheet of shallow water. The portion of paper on which it is to be presented, however, is about one inch long and only one eighth of an inch deep, and even this small area is crossed by trunks of trees and a telegraph post.
(Cavendish)
A FARMYARD IN KENT
(Cavendish)
BLACKSMITH'S CORNER, WESTERHAM
There will not be much room for detail, that is, to show that this surface is water and nothing else. What is to be done about it? The answer is that only one thing can be done that will be successful on this tiny scale. The distant bank must be drawn carefully, and from this some dark points must reflect. A black dot with a series of little black lines in diminishing importance underneath these will suffice. I think, or at least I hope, that it is clear there is some water beyond the road.
I should like to suggest to students who are using this book as a means of building up a technique of their own in sketching, that they should not necessarily adopt the method which I have found useful. There are many ways of drawing, and my method in these different cases is only one.
It would be helpful if a student chose some subject exactly akin to each subject here given as an example, and when he comes to the particular problem of expression mentioned let him try and evolve a pen line or texture that he feels will be eloquent. If it succeeds, well and good; if not, he can begin again and fall back on the device I have used.
Let us study another quite different landscape, in this case a scene in the heart of Dorset. The general shape of almost everything in sight is suggestive of woolly bears. Now if we are not very careful a landscape completely made up of woolly bears of slightly different tones and in slightly differently arranged masses will be rather a muddle. Remember there is no colour at our command, so we must be more than ever careful of our form.
We must think out a treatment that will get some order into our landscape. If we can find a position which will give us some tree trunks cutting across these flocks of woolly bears we shall obtain contrast, something straight to counteract so many curves.
The best expedient that I can think of to get order out of this difficult subject is that of keeping to white paper as the expression of each field or expanse of grass in between the trees or wooded sections. Any attempt to show the different tones of different crops would be fatal, because, however careful we are and however skilful, we shall probably be unable to distinguish spaces of grass from trees. By keeping all our detail for the trees themselves and the group of cottages we show in effect that these are things upon the ground, and by delicate copying of the shapes we see we can give the undulation of the country very effectively.
When we come to the cottages, although they are thatched and thus share the blunt outlines of everything else to some extent, we can find some hard, straight lines about them which must be emphasized.
And now from this landscape of gentle curves and undulating surfaces let us take one that gives us a chance of more vigorous expression and more "exciting" adventure. So good-bye to Dorset. We will climb to the savage ridges of Helvellyn and try and catch something of the mountain wildness of this romantic lake district.
From "Unknown Dorset" (Lane)
THE VALLEY OF DELIGHT
FIG. 14
(Cavendish)
HELVELLYN
Now a subject like this is really far easier to draw because the component lines are definitely there. You can actually see lines in these rocks and ridges, whereas in the case of smooth fields or feathery masses of trees you must look for lines or invent them to express the tendency of things and their arrangement.
In this mountain landscape the great sequence of lines that dominate the composition are those that lead to and from the long ridge that reaches the summit in the clouds. Another ridge leads to this from the right, on the other side of the tarn. The point of view chosen is from a ledge of rock on this ridge and in order to maintain a connection with it we must emphasize all lines that lead up towards the peak. I do not mean we should put in anything that we do not see. There are hundreds of lines and ridges and cracks and marks, but, by dwelling on those that converge toward this peak and by dwelling less on the lines and marks that do not, we can succeed in getting a feeling of continuity and show that the track we are on is leading us up to the summit of the mountain.
The diagram, Fig. 14 (on page 30), will show the main lines of the design. There is first a convergence of lines to A, then a convergence to B, and finally a convergence toward the sun, which is somewhere above C. The repetition of the curved lines of the farm by the curved lines of the clouds helps the "eloquence" of the design—for these two zones of curved lines are the only parts of the picture not angular and hard. By expressing cloud and water as essentially different from the mountain, we have enormously strengthened the savage feeling of the scene which we want to convey.
Fragment of sketch, Headcorn Mill, reproduced the same size as original pen work
(Cavendish)
HEADCORN MILL
As a contrast to this grim mountain picture we will find one of breezy expanse in the Weald of Kent. It is the old white windmill of Headcorn. To get the feeling of wind sweeping across the wold we will stand the mill well on the left of the picture, facing the wind, which is blowing from our right. Of course, the windmill, if it is working, will always face the wind, but think what an uncomfortable picture we should have if the mill were turned round, as it stands here within the margins of the picture, with the wind blowing from the left. The open space in front of the sails seems to express the direction from which the wind is coming, quite apart from the position of the windmill's sails.
I think it will be instructive at this stage for the student to study the sketch of Headcorn Mill above, and then having seen the result of the reproduction, turn to some fragments of its component parts on pages 32 and 34. These bits are reproduced exactly the same size as the original pen work. By comparing this large-scale work with the small-scale reproduction it is possible to see what happens in the way of alteration on account of the great reduction.
A fragment of the sketch of Headcorn Mill on page 33, reproduced same size as the original pen work
The great lesson it is necessary to learn is that pen work in shadows must be kept open. If it is closed in too much, although it may look well in the original drawing it will most certainly fill up and look poor in reproduction on a small scale.
You will note that the rough and very wild looking pen work in the shadows of the trees on page 32 is only scribble within a certain zone. The shape of the trees is very carefully drawn and the scribble is left to take care of itself, but within well defined boundaries. The result is that there there are flicks of white of all sorts and sizes gleaming out of the dark tone. These being irregular will not make a noticeable pattern as would a coarse screen, although they are large, and just because these white flicks are large they will not fill up.
At the same time it will be well to note the details in the mill as seen in the original size drawing opposite. The different faces of the woodwork, seen in different degrees of light according to the angle, are toned by nothing but details. The shadow side is made up of lines, but these lines show the planking. On the sunny side many details have to be left out to give light and so the shape is rendered, and the point of this technique is that not one dot or one line is meaningless. Nothing is so depressing as
a pen drawing in which the shadows look like some curious kind of coco-nut matting run to seed.
Not all problems of composition can be solved at once. Sometimes they are almost solved by accident. In a sketch I was making in Essex I drew the subject you see on the next page but without the clouds. The day was fine and the light was good and I drew the two mills and the bridge as you see them there, with a little bit of placid reflection in the river.
There was something unsatisfactory about it. The composition looked "silly." The two mills seemed too much alike. Soon, however, some big white clouds came sailing by and I decided to put in a dome of cloud. The improvement in the arrangement of the picture was instant. The flowing line of the clouds seemed to balance the two mills.
On looking at it since, I am convinced, although I did not notice this at the time, that the satisfaction caused by the line of the cloud is that it echoes the general arrangement of the arches of the bridge. This repetition of things, as in the clouds and tarn of the Helvellyn picture, is often a strengthening and satisfying factor in a design. Needless to say the device is one that must be kept in hand. It is like a dangerous drug which must never become a beverage.
Many novices find it very difficult to "do " trees except in their winter aspect. A distant mass of trees seen in the confusion of distance and sunshine is not one of the easiest things to represent. I think I can help some artist, however, by this suggestion. When you find a great wooded slope, as in the Surrey landscape sketched near Leith Hill, do not begin by thinking it is difficult. In this case I sat down and drew each tree as I saw it, a clean line outline of its shape without light and shade. By the time some hundreds of these outlines had accumulated the wooded hill in the sketch (as it should do) began to look very like a distant forest. Then a few cast shadows added and a few omissions, as on the right hand part of the distant ridge, and there is some irregularity of effect as of light and shade playing over the landscape.
From "Unknown Essex" (Lane)
BATTLEBRIDGE, ESSEX
From "Unknown Surrey" (Lane)
NEAR LEITH HILL
Such a vague, but not unpleasing, distance, however, must be seen with something in contrast, or it will be "over sweet." The two black fir trees with their straight stems and angular blocks of foliage are just sufficient to do this.
On this subject of composition and design, it does not in the least matter whether you can analyse a good effect. The little sketch of Cuckfield Church on page 39 was one that I made because it was the most striking view that I saw as I walked about the place.
I can see now, although I certainly did not notice it at the time, that the arrangement of the roof and walls of the workshop of the monumental mason almost exactly echo the shape of the church spire. There is a steep peak and then a splayed out base and, below it, straight walls.
The lines of the houses mimic this, but not so exactly as to be noticeable. The chimney stacks echo to some extent the full shape of the spire and at their base the roofs flatten out as in the base of the shingled spire. Even the tombstones leaning against the wall in two different directions echo the arrangement of the spire.
All this, as I said before, is "unconscious composition." I merely saw a view that I liked and drew it. I am now only trying to explain in technical terms why I liked it.
Another important thing that the beginner should note is the effect of bright sunshine on things. How often do we see a sketch that is evidently intended to give the effect of sunshine which does not look bright.
In the case of a window painted white, as in the workshop in the foreground of this picture, the effect of sunlight is to exaggerate the size of the woodwork and to diminish the apparent size of the panes. Thus by very great enlargement of the white and the reducing of the blacks to a minimum the appearance of sunshine is obtained. Each pane in the left-hand casement is represented by nothing more than a dot, yet the effect of bright sunshine on a white casement is true enough.
In finding subjects for sketching, many students do not take advantage of different weather conditions for different effects. To these, the fact of it being fairly warm and not raining is sufficient inducement to sit down and draw any view or any building. Yet the first "idea" of a sketch is often a direct result of the weather.
Often a splendid subject is seen from a train window—a fleeting glimpse of a water-mill by a sunny willow-fringed pool, a great grey castle with its bastions reflected in a dark reed-encumbered moat, a twilight impression of a many-roofed town half asleep beneath steep declivity of the downs. All these pictures are "made" by the light and the meteorological conditions.
The water-mill scene on a bright sunshiny day at noon with a high wind blowing will be so different that you will not be able to recognize it. The wind on the water has turned the mill-pond to a grey-blue, and there are no reflections. Your grey castle seen in a bright morning light does not appear to be half so massive as you had thought it, and the blue water rippling among the grasses at the foot of its walls, although pretty enough in itself, does not tend to emphasize the gloom and grandeur of the historic pile. Your many-roofed town under the downs looks rather flippant by bright afternoon light and the dark shapes that suggested medieval castles by twilight are only in reality a mixture of the gasworks and a large brewery.
From "Unknown Sussex" (Lane)
CUCKFIELD CHURCH
Where the interest of a subject is in the thing itself, as a picturesque lich-gate, a trestle bridge, or a curious gabled house, rather than in the relation of a number of things one to another in the landscape, then the light does not matter very much. A study of a trestle bridge made on a wet day is as interesting and effective as one made in bright sunshine.
There are subjects, however, that we seek to represent, not so much because of the things themselves, but because they suggest something that they are not. Thus, huge cement works seen through the haze of a misty morning on the Medway will seem to be a giant's castle or a vast creation of Mr. H. G. Wells's imagining in the new Utopia of A.D. 2132. It is necessary to draw this while the day is still misty or all the magic will be gone.
When I was just finishing off my explorations necessitated by writing a book called Unknown Kent, I came to Shoreham Mill on a rather dull and muggy afternoon. The dullness, however, was the cause of the exciting factor in the scene, for it made the wooded slopes across the stream come out as an indistinct blue-grey height that suggested something much vaster in the way of forest country than the little valley of the Darent could provide.
A jumble of cottages, heaped timber, wooden sheds, and buildings of the mill all muddled up together as the rough road fell steeply to the water-side came out with curious distinctness against this mysterious background of the woods. The whole scene, for the time, suggested a cameo from the Black Forest or the Vosges. Yet on another day and in a different light the place would look so different that the reader who took this for the place would imagine that I had been romancing.
Part of the equipment of a successful topographical artist is the instant recognition that an effect of light or accident of visibility is making the moment for him to say "Stay!" To represent a place as it is under ordinary and normal conditions is no small achievement, To do it well is to add to the accumulative consciousness of Traveller's Joy, for we love to compare one place with another. But best of all is to be able to show some scene or landscape at one of those rare moments when everything conspires together to show its essential character and individual charm.
From "Unknown Kent" (Lane)
SHOREHAM MILL, KENT
From "A Detective in Sussex" (Lane)
BARCOMBE
PART III
PROBLEMS OF THE DESIGN OF ILLUSTRATIONS WITH A VIEW TO SUCCESSFUL REPRODUCTION
LET me assume by now that the reader is sufficiently confident in expressing himself in pen and ink to look about him for worlds to conquer. He wishes to turn his skill to some professional account and enter this arena of competition, whe
re before the public eye he must fight with editors, publishers, block-makers, printers, printer's devils, and a hundred other devils that will trip him up and render him powerless or make him ridiculous. Many a clever draughtsman has been flattened out, crushed and extinguished by rotary machine printing. It is little consolation for him to go down to his Art Club and discourse on the wickedness of the people who reproduce his work so badly.
The only really intelligent thing he can do is to accept editors, publishers, engravers, paper makers, printers, ink merchants and critics as he must accept the Seven Deadly Sins. It is no use being superior and ignoring their existence. He must fight them.
I have had a very strenuous and varied experience in working for newspapers and illustrating books, and such small measure of success that I may have achieved has been due not to skill in drawing alone but in skill—or in what my enemies would label low cunning—in outmanoeuvring the seven devils to which I have alluded. I hasten to add that these seven devils are only devils in a Pickwickian sense. Editors, publishers, engravers, paper-makers, printers, ink-merchants, and critics, are all my firm friends, and it is to them conspiring with me in good works that I have often been able to turn failure to success under very difficult conditions.