Illustrator

“ Illustration has nevertheless an intellectual function by which it diverges altogether from decoration and even, in the narrowest sense of the word, from art: for the essence of illustration lies neither in use nor in beauty. The illustrator’s impulse is to reproduce and describe given objects. ”

“ Surely it is pleasant to reflect that one so unique in our letters is able, week by week and month after month, to appeal to such a large public, to dower his work with such lordly space and noble type, to have his own illustrator, even though this last is somewhat out of key, being a trifle too flippant and sybaritic for such solemn letterpress. ”

“ The illustrator when he is at work often thinks more of the art critic who may review his book than the readers who are to enjoy it. Purely conventional groups of figures, whether set in a landscape, or against a decorative background, as a rule fail to retain a child's interest. He wants invention and detail, plenty of incident, melodrama rather than suppressed emotion. Something moving, active, and suggestive pleases him most, something about which a story can be woven not so complex that his sense is puzzled to explain why things are as the artist drew them. ”

“ In truth the illustrator, whether green-eyed or not, being a monster that doth make the meat he feeds on, is apt to become excited with his work, and to go on ever widening the circle of his purveyances, and opening new avenues toward the raw material on which he works. To show how widely such a person may levy contributions, I propose to take, not a whole volume, not even a whole page, but still a specific and distinguished piece of English literature, and describe the way in which a devotee of this peculiar practice would naturally proceed in illustrating it. ”

“ Whether it be the triumph of a master or a pot-boiling illustrator, the real artist never takes his art lightly. Life, even reputation, he may play with, but his craft is a serious thing. In short, the study of the thousands of designs—some obviously burlesqued by the engraver, others admirably rendered—will not leave an unprejudiced spectator with a cut and dried opinion. That, as it happened, a number of really distinguished men enlisted themselves as illustrators may be granted, but each one did his own work in his own way ”

“ The Illustrator.—The employment of wood engravings in conjunction with literature created a new phase of artistic work. The task of the illustrator or designer is peculiar. He sketches out his design on the wood block, and then passes it on to the engraver. His drawing is not intended as a permanent form of pictorial art, but as a suggestive sketch, which, while perfectly intelligible to the engraver, will be free from such intricacies in its composition as might interfere with its effective interpretation. ”

“ It is clear that such an ideal of illustration is for the attainment of a few only. The ordinary illustrator, making drawings for cheap reproduction in the ordinary book, can no more work in this mood than the journalist can model his style on the prose of Milton. But journalism is not literature, and [Pg 3] pictured matter-of-fact is not illustration, though it is convenient and customary to call it so. However, here one need not consider this, for the decorative illustrator has usually literature to illustrate, and a commission to be beautiful and imaginative in his work. ”

“ If the illustrator print his conception of an author’s meaning upon the same page as the latter’s text, this does not belittle him any more than it increases a painter’s greatness to give his picture the place of honour in a Museum, or the sculptor’s genius to allow him to obstruct the traffic of a street. ”

“ Book Illustration.—“I have taken lessons in drawing and painting for five years, and except for holding a second-class certificate instead of a first in one subject, I have gained the art class teacher’s certificate. Just lately I have been taking lessons in black and white work, and should like to become a book-illustrator.—J. L. R.”
We do not wish to damp the hopes of “J. L. R.,” but it takes much more than lessons in the technique of black and white drawing to make a book-illustrator. Girls who become successful illustrators show early a real talent for drawing. ”

“ But things are rapidly changing.10 One may pick up some ephemeral paper to-day, to find it has process-blocks of better quality, and is better printed, than 'the art book of the season,' be it what it may. The illustrator is the really popular artist of the period—the natural product of the newer conditions. For one painter who makes a living entirely by pictures, there are dozens who subsist upon illustrating; while, against one picture of any reputable sort—framed and sold—it would be impossible to estimate the number of drawings made specially for publication. ”

“ Since the time the printing press was finally invented there have been new processes and new methods, but an illustration as such has remained unchanged. Joseph Pennell tells us in his book on the Illustration of Books that an illustration “is a design intended to give an artist’s idea of an incident, episode, or topographical site, or it may be but a mere diagram referred to by a writer.”
Requirements for an illustrator. A good illustrator requires good preparatory training. ”

“ The illustrator or artist will, therefore, unless he give careful and precise instruction as to what parts are to be cut away, or can superintend the work himself, feel considerable hesitation in entrusting such a delicate task to a stranger. One little touch in the wrong place, one bit of plain white too many, and the harmony of the whole illustration will be upset; so that many will reasonably prefer a weak flat print to the uncertainty which must attend the leaving of a block to a mechanic's mercies. ”

“ Of old, the book illustrator, if, as was usual, he was not himself the traveler, drew as pictures of primitive folk merely the men and women that surrounded him, figures of men and women of his own stage of civilization, and merely added to these such salient features as he was able, from the traveler's tales, to fancy that his supposed primitive subject had. . . . The modern anthropological illustrator does indeed generally draw from photographs, but almost always from photographs taken under non-natural conditions. ”

“ Where the illustrator is not a great artist the discretion is no doubt a wise one. What for instance could be more charming, more completely successful than this little picture of a messenger bringing a lady a flower, no doubt with a pleasing message with it? In our next cut the artist has been much more ambitious. ”

“ Thus from a photogram of even the most elaborate subject an absolutely correct drawing may be made fit for reproduction without the illustrator having any knowledge or skill as a draughtsman.
By placing the unskilled in such a position, photography appears to have removed the last obstacle to the more frequent use of appropriate illustration; and the ease with which both pleasing and accurate outlines can be made should render inexcusable the shamefully untruthful "sketches" which every day appear in newspaper and magazine. ”

“ The open-air illustrator represents another aspect of illustration. To interpret the spirit of the text would, frequently, allow his art no exercise. Much of his text is itinerary. [Pg 57] His subject is before his eyes in actuality, or in photographs, and not in some phrase of words, magical with suggested forms, creating by its gift of delight desire to celebrate its beauty. Still, if the artist be independent of the intellectual and imaginative qualities of the book, his is no independent form of black and white. It is illustration; the author's subject is the subject of the artist. ”

“ There is no doubt that the makers of process blocks are the best instructors as to the results to be obtained by certain lines and combinations of lines; but in the majority of cases they will tell the artist too much, and lead him to take too much interest in the mechanical side of the business. The illustrator’s best protection against this tendency, his whole armour and coat of mail, is to be an artist first and an illustrator afterwards. ”

“ As a rule there is no occasion for the cataloguer to notice the illustrator, except for books of this special character. Where the artist is famous and his illustrations lend value to a book, or where books are likely to be required because illustrated by a notable artist, it is well to mark the fact either by entry or reference. ”

“ Until art be taken as seriously as literature, and be discussed with as much thought and care and attention by men who understand it practically as well as theoretically—for the theory of art is or no value, and the practice is everything—illustration will not find its proper place as one of the most living and important of the fine arts. But, no matter—the great illustrator is quite as much of a creator as the great painter or the great sculptor. ”

“ The difficulty which besets the modern book decorator, illustrator, or designer of printers' ornaments, of getting type which will harmonize properly with his designs, did not exist with the mediæval illuminator, who must always have been sure of balancing his designs by a body of text not only beautiful in the form of its individual letters, but beautiful and rich in the effect of its mass on the page, which was only enhanced when the initials were relieved with colour on gold, or beautiful pen work which grew out of them like the mistletoe from the solid oak stem. ”

“ Amongst the modern inventions for helping the hurried or feeble illustrator, is the system of laying on mechanical dots to give shadow and colour to a pure line drawing, by process. It is a practice always to be regretted; whether applied to a necessarily hasty newspaper sketch, or to one of Daniel Vierge’s elaborately printed illustrations in the Pablo de Segovia. One cannot condemn too strongly this system, so freely used in continental illustrated sheets, but which, in the most skilful hands, seems a degradation of the art of illustration. ”

“ If the Illustrator can get or make something absolutely unique he is a fortunate man. For example, I know one, stigmatized as eccentric, who has illustrated a printed catalogue of his own library with [Pg 60] portraits of the authors, copies of prints in the books, and duplicates of engraved title-pages; also one who has illustrated a collection in print or in manuscript of his own poems; also one who has illustrated a Life of Hercules, written by himself, printed by one of his own family, and adorned with prints from antique gems and other subjects ”

“ Now, however, the humble illustrator, the man who fashions his dreams into designs for commercial reproduction by wood-engraving or 'process,' has found an audience, and is acquiring rapidly a fame of his own. ”

“ I have known promising beginners to give up pen and ink drawing in despair because they found themselves unequal to subjects which would have presented not a few difficulties to the experienced illustrator. When the beginner grows faint-hearted, let him seek consolation and encouragement in the thought that were pen drawing something to be mastered in a week or a month there would be small merit in the accomplishment. ”

“ We do this without any forethought, without any artistic ability, and never for a moment considering that we are fulfilling the first theoretical function of the illustrator, and we make this sketch-plan partly because we could not so graphically describe what we wish in words; and, again, the drawing will produce a more lasting impression upon the person appealed to, and that without so great an effort of memory on his part. "Seeing is believing," and to see is also to remember. ”

“ He does for it what an illustrator does for any author—he adds detail and colour and gives preciseness and a certain elaboration to the general outline, the vaguer description, that is given him to work upon. ”

“ We will suppose some book of travel or poetry be set up in type by the printer, and a proof copy be made up with broad margins under the direction of the illustrator, who then takes it in hand and decorates each page as desired; or the pages are pulled as proofs on two or three kinds of paper, smooth for pen work, rough for crayon, or medium for wash drawings—what delightful variety might be secured! When the artist has added his marginal and inter-paragraph illustrations the pages are photo-reproduced, the complete block including both letterpress and drawings. ”

“ His services were eagerly sought as an illustrator of children's books and fanciful stories, and for many years he was employed on the Christmas numbers of the ‘Illustrated London News.’ He was one of the first to introduce wood engraving among English publishers as a means of cheap and popular illustration. ”

“ The last example of the photographer as illustrator, which can be given here, is where a photograph from life engraved on wood is published as a vignette illustration.20 It is worth observing, because it has been turned into line by the wood engraver, and serves for printing purposes as a popular illustration. ”

“ These dots and lines, used for shadow, or tone, are laid upon the plate by the maker of the block, the artist indicating, by a blue pencil mark, the parts of a drawing to be so manipulated; and as the illustrator has not seen the effect on his own line drawing, the results are often a surprise to everyone concerned. ”

“ The whole matter may be summed up in a statement once made by a well-known artist and illustrator: "There is no process in relief which has the same certainty, which gives the same colour and brightness, and by which gradations of touch can be more truly rendered. Few of our great artists, however, can be prevailed upon to draw for wood engraving, and when they do undertake an illustration, say of a great poem, the drawing, which has to be multiplied 100,000 times, has less thought bestowed upon it than the painted portrait of a cotton king." ”