#000447
The Illustrator's Guide to Pen and Pencil Drawing Techniques
Harry Borgman
*The Illustrator's Guide to Pen and Pencil Drawing Techniques* is a thorough, practical manual from Harry Borgman, a working commercial artist who knew how to teach. Aimed at beginning illustrators and anyone wanting to draw better, it methodically covers the two great linear media: it lays out the tools, demonstrates every basic graphite and ink stroke, and then shows how to combine them into finished pictures—portraits, landscapes, still lifes. It doesn't stop at the basics either, branching into charcoal, carbon, wax, and colored pencil, and into mixing ink with wash and markers. With something like 400 black-and-white illustrations and 70 in color, it teaches by showing as much as telling. There's nothing flashy here, and that's its strength: it's a patient, generous, workbench-friendly guide that repays anyone willing to pick up a pen or pencil and actually practice.
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The author
Harry Borgman was a professional American illustrator and commercial artist who wrote a series of clear instructional books on drawing and rendering. He taught from the standpoint of a working practitioner, concerned less with theory than with the concrete question of how to get good results with pen, pencil, and ink.
The book
Published by Watson-Guptill in 1989, the guide is organized as a systematic course. It documents materials and tools, demonstrates the full range of graphite stroke techniques and their variations, and shows how to build them into finished work; it does the same for ink, adding instruction on combining ink with wash and markers. Along the way it covers charcoal, carbon, wax, and colored pencil, applied to portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, and is packed with roughly 400 black-and-white and 70 color illustrations.
How to use it
This is a book to work through with a sketchbook open, not to read passively. Its virtue is completeness and step-by-step clarity; its examples belong to the pre-digital age of commercial illustration, which gives it a pleasing craftsmanly feel and makes it especially useful for anyone learning traditional media.
For more context
It sits alongside Watson-Guptill's wider library of drawing manuals and classic texts on pen-and-ink technique.
Sources - Internet Archive - Open Library
- Type
- Book
- Author / Maker
- Harry Borgman
- Publisher
- Watson-Guptill
- Place of publication
- New York
- Year
- 1989
- ISBN
- None
- Shelf
- Craft & How-to
- Location
- Colorado