As with every profession, there are little things one learns in the studio which help in the physical side of the work. It will not be necessary to detail all the various "tricks of the trade"; so many of them are simply individual tricks; but the following few suggestions will be of general assistance:
When working on a pencil sketch always keep a feather duster at hand for brushing away indiarubber crumbs, so that the work
may be kept clean without having the attention distracted. Drawing demands the utmost concentration, and anything which tends to distract is bad for the work.
Always use a soft rubber, not a hard one, and see that it is of really good quality.
Use a softish pencil for ordinary sketching in preference to a hard or medium hard; it gives a freer style.
To erase an ink line in a line drawing a safety razor blade is the best thing to use. It should be held upright on the board, not at an angle with the point digging in.
Whilst a good deal may be done to patch up a line job, such as stripping off an unsatisfactory part and replacing it with a fresh strip of board, and by erasing and redrawing, very little may be done to a half-tone drawing once past the pencil stage. It is very important in half-tone work that the board is not scratched across, or an ink-eraser used, or anything else done which will impair the quality of the surface. All such blemishes will show up as blurs in the reproduction, since they affect the light values during the photographic process. Patches of board or paper stuck on will similarly show up where a shadow falls along their edges.
Finished jobs are invariably sent from the studio with a clean piece of semi-transparent "detail" paper over the front. This serves a double purpose; it keeps the drawing clean, and provides for the arrangement of the copy corrections, etc., which accompany the drawing to be shown without damaging the drawing. The sketches are also enclosed in a folder of dark paper. The freelance artist who wants her work to look smart and properly finished must not neglect these two points.
REFERENCES
The uses of a scrap-book of references have already been mentioned in Chapter III. In addition to that personal reference book, every artist uses other references to work from. Besides using references to check up details of background, or special clothes and accessories such as are seen in a golfing group, many artists find it
a great help to work with drawings of some of the star fashion artists beside them, and to refer to them occasionally to see how they would do the job. This sort of "reference" may savour rather of cribbing; but there is a difference between the permissible use of such references for inspiration, the measuring of one's work by a reputable yard-stick as it were, and the downright copying occasionally indulged in.
Besides her scrap-book of references, the artist should keep copies of all her reproduced drawings. One reproduction is worth five unreproduced specimens, especially to the young free-lance in search of commissions. The artist is usually told for what paper a drawing is wanted, and whether full page, half-page, or what not. But this is by no means a rule the client may not divulge what use he proposes to make of the drawing; or he may change his mind and use it in another paper, or several papers. Consequently one never really knows where the work will appear, which adds interest to the game of collecting specimens.
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