A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape, Plates 38-43
Alexander Cozens British
Mezzotint on plates 39 and 41-43 by William Pether British
Not on view
This album contains plates 38 to 43 from Cozens’s drawing manual "A New Method of Assisting the Invention in Drawing Original Compositions of Landscape" (1786), in which he presented a technique he called "blotting." To make a blot, the artist smudged ink onto paper to map out the basic structure of a landscape composition. The resulting shapes could then be refined into a sketch and were meant to be the starting point of a more finished drawing or painting. Cozens illustrated his theoretical discussion of blotting with forty-three plates depicting sixteen types of ink blots, twenty different skies as well as seven plates detailing the progression from blot to sketch and finished drawing.
The plates in this album depict steps two and three of the blotting technique, i.e., the progression from sketch (pl. 38) to finished drawing (pl. 39), as well as three possible variations on a single blot (pl. 40-43). Cozens used aquatint to distinguish light, medium, and dark tones in the prints, which were then refined further by William Pether with mezzotint engraving. The plates are titled as follows:
38. A print, representing a sketch made out with a brush, from the preceding blot.
39. A print, representing the same sketch, made into a finished drawing.
40. A blot.
41. A print, representing a drawing done with a brush, from the preceding blot.
42. A second drawing done from the same blot.
43. A third drawing done from the same blot.
