Landscape Sketching in Pen and Ink Read online

  From "More Adventures among Churches" (Faith Press)

  A MEDIEVAL BRIDGE ON THE MEDWAY

  Perhaps it would be helpful in attacking this problem of skies to compare the three drawings in this part of the book: "Truro," a sketch from The Book of the Clyde, and "A Medieval Bridge on the Medway." In the first of these the distant rising cumulus clouds are indicated in outline. The drawing is such an elaborate one and so strong in blacks that these do not overweight the sky.

  In the Clyde sketch, however, which shows nothing but confused outlines of trees and hills, clouds as in the Truro or Medway drawings would be fatal. Their shapes are too much the shapes of the trees, and they might look like great trees themselves. The similarity of the dome shape of trees and the dome shape of clouds would not matter in a water-colour drawing because the colour and tonal contrast would be so great that there would be no confusion.

  ("Church Times")

  A SHIPYARD IN ARCADY

  (Cavendish)

  FOLKESTONE FISH MARKET

  To meet this possible ambiguity of effect I drew the clouds in dotted lines, and thus they take on a buoyant quality and become airy and detached from the hilly sky line. Not so in the Medway sketch. Here the definite interest of the bridge and flatter landscape holds the eye and the billowy clouds appear as heavy and even solid looking things, but sufficiently of the sky order of things not to confuse the landscape. I might mention in making these comparisons that the artifice of using a vague and dotted outline to clouds is one that could only be used when the printing is to be good. This Clyde drawing was made for a book illustration. In quick newspaper printing there would be a danger of the dotted line joining up into one solid and continuous line and thus the artifice would become useless.

  And now, putting aside for the moment the difficulties and dangers of bad printing, let us study together further problems of selection and representation in sketching. There is nothing so useful as the continual habit of selecting subjects when you are prospecting with a sketch book. Many of these selections are never likely to be taken any farther, but it is a good habit to make a quick and scribbled memorandum of a possible picture. The very best pictures are sometimes to be seen from trains or under conditions when it is impossible to stop. However, a note made in ten seconds is often of use in building up a composition. The hobby of picture making is an accumulative study and very soon you will be able to see "pictures" in the most unlikely places.

  One of the most unexpected subjects that it has been my good fortune to find was on the Grand Junction Canal, near West Drayton. I suddenly came upon Noah's Ark in all its glory. It was being used as a carpenter's shop in a waterside depot for painting and repairing canal boats. Beside it, in the morning sun, lay boats with bows and sterns freshly adorned in all the colours of the rainbow. I immediately thought of a happy title—a great incentive to completing a drawing expressive of a certain mood— and called it "A Shipyard in Arcady."

  It is often useful in a very confused and complicated subject, as in some lights is the Fish Market at Folkestone, to practise some degree of omission of detail, and yet—being in the nature of a portrait—the facts of the view, with all its over-richness of detail will have to be faced.

  It is a good plan to draw everything that you can see in a careful pencil drawing and then to fill in some features in tone with light and shade, and others in outline only. In a place like Folkestone Fish Market smoke and sea mists will often help you. In this sketch I have filled in only the outline of a few features of the town and then drawn the nearer houses in full light and shade.

  I do not propose to go into questions of technique in drawing the sea because he who can manage a lee shore or the chop of wind against tide will not need any hints from me. I will rather keep to those subjects that are within the compass of teachability. The moving storm, the crumbling wave, and the wreathing vapours of twilight are all subjects beyond tuition.

  Let us rather walk together beside the waters of the Medway. Milton has called the Medway " Medway smooth," so placidity is evidently a recognized quality of its nature. The Medway shores will keep reasonably still while we study them.

  From "More Adventures among Churches" (Faith Press)

  WOULDHAM, ON THE MEDWAY

  From " The Book of the Clyde " (Lane)

  DUMBUCK

  We come to Wouldham, and, choosing a position on a somewhat decrepit quay, look downstream towards the church. The tide has ebbed sufficiently to strand two boats, and the water is calm enough to give us an easy time with reflections.

  These reflections are easy. A few wriggling lines will express the sheet of placid water so long as the wriggling marks are exactly underneath the things reflected.

  However, if we are not careful, we may give the effect of a large pond. Of course the boats show that it is a river rather than a pond, but we must provide something more than this circumstantial evidence. We must make people who look at the drawing feel that the river is flowing. Therefore it is necessary to look for lines and shapes and arrangements of objects that suggest rhythm, succession, and gentle movement.

  The line of the tops of the trees, the tide line of the mud, and the line of the quay-side all conspire to help. We will seize on them whatever else we leave out. Then the succession of bare tree-trunks and the echoing procession of posts in diminishing size give this idea of motion. All these things are there and it is an exact and true topographical document, but by emphasis we have made it into a picture also.

  The placing of a good black mass somewhere in a line drawing, often supported by a lesser black, is a great help to the decorative effect of the whole design. In the Wouldham sketch the shadow of the broken wall does a lot to compose the subject, and this is supported by the lesser black of the boat. In the sketches of Dumbuck and Offham that come next are blacks that key up the subjects to some extent—in the former subject the black trees of the middle distance and in the latter the tall Scotch fir.

  The drawing of Dumbuck presented the same difficulty about the lines of the clouds and their possible confusion with the lines of the hills, as the other sketch on the Clyde, on page 58, and as that too was for a book illustration and one that would be well printed I got out of the difficulty in the same way by outlining the clouds in dots.

  (Cavendish)

  MEDIEVAL OFF AM

  In all illustration work the pen and ink artist will be up against a great many difficulties of which the people that employ him know nothing. He will be asked to draw very new looking things—such as buildings handsomely restored—to look old, because they are old, and he will be asked to portray a comparatively insignificant object in a large view so that it looks important. I had two such problems, and two sketches here, "Offham" and "The Oldest Inn of Norwich," show the difficulties encountered and only in one case, I fear, overcome.

  The drawing of Offham depicts the village green on which stands a thing which at first sight appears to be a signpost. It is not a signpost, however, but a quintain—the only one, I am told, in England. I do not know exactly how the thing worked, but I have been told that it held a sack of sawdust, depending from one arm and exhibited a disc on the other. A horseman with lance tilted at the disc and registered a hit. If he missed he was covered with confusion, but if he struck the bull's-eye according to plan he had to be very nimble in ducking for the sack of sawdust would swing round and unhorse him unless he pressed forward in the half-second of grace.

  I was unwise in attempting too much. I tried to combine a view of the village green and its old houses and the quintain also. On the larger scale of its first production the quintain came out clearly, but on this reduced scale it is too mixed up with the roof of the cottages. The weight, painted white, which now hangs from the left arm of this strange device in place of the sack of sawdust, appears as part of the window behind it. From the point of view from which this sketch was made the drawing is a failure, and I exhibit it here as a warning and in the same grim spirit of sat
isfaction as the temperance lecturer does when he produces the awful example.

  The other drawing, "The Oldest Inn of Norwich," has succeeded in a greater measure. The difficulty I had to face here was the fact that the oldest inn of Norwich at first sight did not appear to be so particularly old. Probably it wasn't. It had been re-roofed no doubt, and partially rebuilt, and it is generally the interior of such buildings that exhibit their oldest features. I therefore sought for a treatment that, while doing no violence to the topographical accuracy of the scene, might make my drawing of the inn look as though it might be the oldest inn of the city.

  "From Unknown Norfolk" (Lane)

  THE OLDEST INN OF NORWICH

  A touch of snow was my chance. This helped to give a more ancient quality to the roof, and a Gothic window, loaded with snow could be brought into the view to complete the illusion. Plastered with drifted snow, some very prosaic buildings on the right did not obtrude themselves and all went well. Footsteps in the white foreground might suggest good King Wenceslas passing as any one else, and so a complete medieval picture in the streets of Norwich to-day was possible, and in it was nothing but the truth.

  Note also as you build up your technique for illustration work that the nature of your toning can have a very great deal to do with the success of the drawing. In any case, to show up the snow in the most distant building, there will have to be a considerable amount of shading. If this were done with a succession of planes of neat paralleled lines this would no doubt render the architectural facts of the building correctly, but—except in the hands of a skilful draughtsman—the building would not appear to be very old. The carelessly distributed and rugged lines on the gable of the inn, lines that have "bad joints" and omissions, in this sketch greatly accentuate the appearance of rough plaster fissured and uneven, with here and there a dust of snow on some protuberance.

  Beware of many solid blacks in a drawing unless you are certain that it is going to be well printed. They have a knack of going gray and nothing is so depressing as a starred and mealy-looking black. The next example I want to show you is "Aladdin in Ipswich," which was designed for an illustration for my book, "Unknown Suffolk." I knew it would be well reproduced and so used a solid black sky to show up the grain towers—at least I supposed them to be grain elevators—and give the whole place the appearance of the magic castle in the pantomime.

  It is a thing worth remembering that as a rule a drawing is most likely to be successful in its effect when its principal objects are consistently lighter or darker than the sky behind them. Also it is well to note that fine points like the details of a Gothic building are less likely to get "damaged" or coarsened when they are light against dark than when they are dark against light. In the sketch, "Canterbury in Snow," the pinnacles of the various towers of the Cathedral are seen crisp and delicate against the black of the night sky. Had the scheme of light and shade been as in the "Guston" drawing, i.e. the pinnacles sticking up into a white sky, these would probably have been coarsened or blunted.

  From "Unknown Suffolk" (Lane)

  ALADDIN IN IPSWICH

  Note, too, that the very different treatment of the light and shade in these two sketches, "Canterbury" and "Guston," is justified, if my judgment in the matter be right, by the result. The great mass of Canterbury Cathedral, although here small and at some distance, can take care of itself. It is sufficiently intricate and important to dominate the sky-line.

  The little church of Guston, however, treated in that way would be "swamped" by the sky, whereas, as seen here, its simple lines are effective against the clear white above it.

  Now we come to the last example in this section in our attempts to solve technical problems. This really belongs to the next part of the book, for the problem was one more of archaeology than of printing.

  (Cavendish)

  CANTERBURY IN SNOW

  ("Church Times")

  GUSTON, NEAR DOVER

  I set myself to show in one drawing that Canterbury, for all its medieval and modern rebuilding, is really a visible continuation of the old Roman-planned city.

  The High Street of Canterbury is not the old Watling Street that ran straight from Dover to London, south-east and northwest, but it is more or less parallel to that ancient highway. The gridiron formation of the city's ways, parallel with or at right-angles to the streets of the Roman town, are maintained. Thus the city is four-square, north-west, south-west, south-east and north-east.

  From the top of St. Dunstan's Church, from which point I made this sketch, the town-planning of the Romans is apparent. The only exception to this square "lay-out" is the Cathedral. The Cathedral was a late comer and although built, north, east, south, west, nothing else in the town follows its lines. It stands at an angle of forty-five degrees to the rest of Canterbury.

  A drawing like this to the uninitiated looks very complicated and difficult, but it is really very simple. Let it be admitted it is laborious and accounts for a considerable amount of time, but that is not the same thing as being difficult. If you can draw one house and one church, you can draw a city.

  From the technical point of view, in case you have never tried a subject like this, I will try and suggest the best method of attack. First rule a pencil line for the horizon and then rule a few more pencil lines underneath it at intervals. Then with a set-square mark off a good many vertical lines in pencil, dropping down from this horizon line to the foot of the picture, also put in vanishing-point lines as in Fig. 5 on page 7. These will be useful to act as a guide when you come to drawing the details of houses, which otherwise—such is my experience—will fall about and give the appearance of a frightful earthquake in full progress.

  (Cavendish)

  CANTERBURY FROM THE WEST

  PART IV

  PROBLEMS OF INTERPRETATION AND OF THE IMAGINATIVE TREATMENT OF SKETCHING IN PEN AND INK

  WE must now assume that the reader is no longer a beginner. He has to some extent mastered the means of expression in line. He has evolved some technique of his own, and he has learned to make himself eloquent in spite of rotary printing and dreadful conditions which at first reduced his speech to a stammer.

  In fact this part of my little book is meant for those who are out for adventure. It deals with higher problems than those of representation and mechanics. It deals in fact—forgive the paradox—with the mechanics of poetry. You are no longer content to be a conveyance (to borrow a simile from Ruskin) and take your readers to a place and leave them to their own conclusions about it. You wish to go with them and talk to them and enthuse them with things that you see—things indeed that most of them will not see without you. Mr. Terrick Williams once said to me: "Really, a picture is not of the best sort unless it is clear that the artist sees something that no one else sees."

  This statement is a witty expression of a profound philosophy in picture making. Its truth is apparent if you will think of any painting of great charm. Turner's "Fighting Temeraire," Whistler's "Nocturne in Blue and Silver," or Cotman's 'Wherries on the Yare"—to take three well-known landscapes in the National Gallery—are all examples of pictures in which the artist has seen something that no one else would have seen. Of course, we can all see it now—as post-Columbus scientists have all been able to balance hard-boiled eggs on their ends—but these masters have opened another door of observation for us.

  With this preamble, I should like to disclaim all sense of superiority of method and write for my artists of adventure—press and illustration—as one experimenter to another. Some of my experiences will amuse you and some may give you ideas when you are up against the same problems.

  Pen and ink is before all other things the perfect medium for illustration. In the first place, it is the cheapest method of picture-printing in books, can go in with the text and is the only one that will give an exact image of the artist's work. Line for line, and dot for dot, the reader is looking at the picture itself and not at a translation.

  Pen and ink is not
only the perfect medium for illustration —it is illustration. During a long and varied career as an artist, I have been commissioned to draw all sorts of places in many parts of the world, but only once have I been asked to do a drawing of a scene in pen and ink for the sake of the thing itself and not for reproduction.

  Well, now for problems and adventures. The two next sketches are from a series of travel articles that saw the light as "Adventures with a Sketch-book." They concern the voyage of a barge by means of a canal through the Vosges. This channel proceeds in a most romantic manner, like a silver thread running through hilly and wooded country. The waterway is now high-banked and above the level of the surrounding country, and now deep set in a rocky gorge. By repeating one feature, the picturesque rudder and stern of the barge, in various settings, I hoped to get some feeling of continuity and romantic progress on the part of this Sinbad the Sailor of a mountain pass.

  From "Adventures with a Sketch-book" (Lane)

  NEAR LIVERDUN

  From "Adventures with a Sketch-book" (Lane)

  IN THE VOSGES

  In this same travel story, I found myself getting farther and farther afield until I came to a most primitive and almost medieval part of Europe, the Bohemian Forest. This was before the War, when Bohemia seemed a great deal farther away than it is to-day. I thought I had walked into a fairy tale, for the people of this land all firmly believed in witches, werwolves and vampires. I got quite used to the good folk in a village making a protective sign against the evil eye as I sketched quite inocently in their streets.

  For these reasons I made most of my drawings look like the scenes in Hans Andersen's fairy tales, but they are true to topography for all that. This is the entrance to the town of Prachatitz, a living link with the fierce days of Ziska and of John Hus.