Preliminary.

Ir is usual to say that there are three Arts of Designarchitecture, sculpture, and painting. The nineteenth century has added a fourth to the number. Drawing in Pen and Ink, or, as it is otherwise called, Black and White, has, owing to special requirements, definitely taken rank as a separate art. By the aid of photography in its now. highly developed state, a new and cheap method of engraving known as "Process" has, in some degree, revolutionised the world of matters artistic. Until within recent years most of the published drawings were prepared for the printer by the beautiful but costly art of wood engraving. What was formerly left altogether to the skill of the trained carver on wood is now more frequently produced automatically by a very simple method. The original drawing is photographed upon a plate of zinc. This plate is then carved chemically, or "bitten," as it is called, in an acid bath, and the result is a surface which, when inked, gives a replica of the drawing. Not only, however, has a great change come over the system of engraving, but the art of drawing itself, responding to new needs, has made enormous strides. There have never been such drawings as we see to-day, and what is more encouraging, the public taste has been raised to such a standard as to be intolerant of the crude, old-fashioned, and inaccurate style of illustration.

Through the influence of the schools of the Royal Academy and South Kensington Museum, with their

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affiliated branches, the art of design has been enormously nurtured. New systems and more capable teachers have sprung up, and much excellent work has been done. It is becoming, indeed, a sort of convention that everyone who can write should be able to draw. But, however this may be as regards the individual, it is beyond doubt that there is an increasing number of matters which are represented by the draughtsman and engraver. Not the 'least important indication of this fact is the progress of illustrated publications, both in number and quality. We may not, perhaps, return to an age of picture-writing, when men will be accustomed to draw their ideas instead of describing them in words. There is much, nevertheless, to be said for lessons by pictures, news by pictures, and the like, rather than by letterpress. Certainly we can understand almost anything better by an illustration than by any amount of "wordpainting." We know, for instance, Dr. Johnson's defininetwork as "anything reticulated at equal distances with interstices between the intersections." But the most crude, the most appallingly inartistic sketch of the apparatus would be a better explanation than that.

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Although hundreds of persons of both sexes are daily engaged in making pen-and-ink drawings for the hostsever increasing hosts-of illustrated publications, opportunities for acquiring a practical knowledge of Black and White are, curiously enough, exceedingly rare. In London, Paris, and New York there are annual exhibitions of Pen and Ink work. We have also numerous schools for teaching drawing as an introduction to painting. But academies and institutions affording reliable guidance and information in the art of Black and White have yet to be established in the numbers which the importance of the subject demands.

It is not generally understood that an artist may be a Royal

Academician and an excellent painter, and yet a very inferior draughtsman for the purposes of reproduction in black and white. The explanation of this is, that a drawing which must pass through the hands of engravers and printers before it reaches the public cannot be worked out so completely as a drawing intended to be looked at in itself, and not merely in the reproduction. Modern pen-drawing

is based on the fact that artists now know how to work for the special needs of "process." With this in view it is hoped that these pages will set before the student and artist a broad and accurate foundation upon which to study and reflect. No claim is made that everything necessary to equip an artistic draughtsman will be found, nor is the student asked to dispense with large and exhaustive works dealing with the critical and vague side of Pen and Ink work. Simplicity has been studied even to the verge of frequent repetition. Complexity has been avoided, because experience has shown over and over again that the lessons of drawing-masters and text-books are too often a maze of advice impossible for the memory to retain, and frequently serving only to disgust and discourage, without conveying any satisfactory instruction.

Art and Mature.

ONE great reason why numerous students fail to excel in art is because their training proceeds on a plan altogether too narrow. It is long after he learns to draw when the average art pupil discovers that the capacity to make an excellent copy of a model is not everything. When it is clearly understood what Art is, rules and principles are more easily grasped and appreciated.

It is usual to say that Art This is extremely vague imitative functions, Art

is everything which is not Nature. and insufficient. Besides its represents a craving in the mind such as anyone may feel when he sees a good picture or piece of sculpture, or when he perceives sounds and harmonies. It is the means by which the internal and spiritual is revealed to the sense. In connection with drawing the first function of Art is to gratify the eye. A mere mechanical draughtsman-a designer of architectural plans, for example, may gratify nothing else; such are masters of the little style. A master of the grand style-a Rubens-may probably rouse the soul within us. A perverted genius-a Doré, perhaps—may choose a theme that shocks us.

Hence it is that Art is capable of a wide interpretation. It is commonly said that Nature has no lines. And the meaning of this dictum is not always clearly understood. In the natural world objects, such as the sea, the clouds, the land, and so on, present themselves to our eyes as a number of flat

patches or spaces or masses of colour and shade in different strengths. Yet in all this assemblage of natural objects, full as it is of gradation in tone, there is nothing like a real linethe line, that is, which is defined geometrically as the shortest distance between two points. Even the sensible horizon out at sea, which is often described and represented (Ex. 20) as a line, is in actuality no such thing; it is merely the ending of a particular portion of space drawn and spoken about as a "line." Yet by

means of lines Black and White Art, employing the aid of light and shade, gives us on a flat surface the appearance of objects and bodies in nature which have no lines in themselves. Here, at once, we have a wide distinction between Art and Nature; it would be impossible to represent artistically anything in the natural world without the use of lines. Thus, in order to draw anything which is seen in Nature it is necessary to make a form of it. The rough attempts of our pothook and slate-pencil days to represent a man, or a horse, or a house was a struggle to give a form to any of these objects. The horse, or the house, or the man, so far as the eye is concerned, was simply a mass or space, lighter or darker in tone and of varying colour, amidst other surroundings, and a boundary supposed to represent the object was transferred to a slate or a piece of paper. Thus the schoolboy, like the artist, supplies the lines himself because

Ex. 2.