and it is for this alone
that the illustrator toils through the dry dust of reference libraries
and costume shops.

Models are either a great aid or a great drawback in the picturing of
characters, for while they assist the artist by simplifying the labor
of drawing, they often handicap him by intruding their own personality
into the work, thereby spoiling the sense of character aimed at. When
an illustrator allows this to happen, it does not matter how beautiful
or accurate his sketch may be, he fails in the first essential of his
craft, entering forthwith into the field occupied by painters and
decorators, who can do the same thing very much better. So, while the
model is often a necessary appendage to the construction of a
character, it is imperative that the spirit and sense spring from the
artist, whose business is, not to reproduce the model, but to use it
sparingly as he would a book of reference.

The illustrator finds that the speech an author puts into the mouths
of his characters is the best index to their personality. They may be
described as tall or short, dark or light, stout or thin, and their
creator may explain their capacities for love, hate, villany, or
dissipation, but it is only the words with which they express their
ideas that really describes them. His description of the beauty of a
girl will not be accepted on trust. He must supply her with deportment
and breeding before her beauty can be truly imagined. Thus it may be
explained that the measure of an author's conception and clearness
often determines the qualities in an illustration. The true
illustrator is sensitive to faults in the delineation of character,
and, although he may not be aware of it, his work will show it. Of
course it often happens that an artist is taken up with ideas of
technique and, author or no author, will make his pictures in just
such a way; but such work is hardly illustration and serves itself
better standing alone.

And thus it goes throughout the scene to be pictured--place, time, and
people, all must be imagined twice and equally clear, by both the
author and the illustrator, before the reader will agree.

To the illustrator, hampered by given quantities, falls the most
difficult task in this duet of imagination, and he can at best hope
only for the reader's approval, as all credit for conception goes to
the author. It is on this approval, though, that he builds, for if he
succeeds in making things clearer to