With Pen & Ink by James Hall

Author:James Hall
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dover Publications
Published: 2020-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

TWELFTH PROBLEM

To render a figure subject in several values

A FIGURE with its background, whether indoors or out-of-doors, gives the widest opportunity for various effective forms of decorative pen work. In the first place the costume of the figure may be given any one of an infinite variety of patterns; then the details of the costume — trimming, jewelry, millinery, hair-dressing, etc.—all offer many possibilities of treatment. When a landscape background is added the possibilities are doubled. The free natural pattern of leafage and cloud forms and the embroidery-like design of field or flower bed may be translated into numberless forms of pen play.

The dual treatment of the lady of olden days suggests what may be done in the way of transforming a composition by slightly changing the costume treatment and by the use of different surroundings.

The student may profitably take each of these compositions as a basis for experimentation in varying the effect by change of patterns and of values. For example, the wall could be made black, broken by pattern, and the floor could be white or broken by the lines of boards or tiles, or by a patterned rug. The figures of the gown could be made different, larger or closer in distribution. Finally the foliage mass without could be made up of larger or smaller leaves, thus producing a lighter or a darker value, and the sky could be made without clouds or with differently formed clouds. Having once started to experiment in such variations, the student will begin to realize that he has one key to the world of artistic invention, for new creations in the last analysis are often found to be skillful rearrangements or new combinations of materials that have been used many times before. The student should realize, however, that exercises in rearrangement such as are here advocated are but a means of learning. Before one has a right to consider his drawing original he must be able to work out his own compositions. While such compositions will show the influence of definite study of others' work, they should in no sense be conscious adaptations or imitations of another's productions. The student who works from nature, and from imagination and memory at the same time that he is studying the language of art as used in the works of artists, need not fear any danger of becoming an imitator in any wrong way; for he will learn the language of art for the purpose of expressing his own ideas of form, and the language will become his own to the same extent that a spoken language becomes one's own through its natural use.

The second composition worked out with a variation of values simply adds another example to the one already discussed.

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