The Craft of Old Master Drawings

Back in print by popular demand, The Craft of Old Master Drawings is both a useful manual for contemporary artists and a historical work covering the period from the late Middle Ages to the mid-twentieth century. A comprehensive study of the techniques of drawing, it presents the old masters' techniques, tools and materials. It provides specific directions for making inks, styluses, reed and quill pens, and fabricated chalks, as well as instructions for preparing grounds for metalpoint drawings. At every step, the discussion is supplemented with illustrations from laboratory experiments and from drawings by both historical and recent artists. Of the more than sixty illustrations included, thirty-six are reproductions of master works, and among the others there are microphotographic enlargements of detail showing the differences in density and texture produced by various tools on different papers or grounds. It comprises a body of knowedge that is essential to artists, students of art history, curators, and collectors.

James Watrous (1908-1999) was the Oskar Hagen Professor of Art History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.