Outline drawing
The outline drawing is a classical representation technique. It corresponds to the outline engraving or the outline etching as a reproduction process . It must be clearly distinguished from the silhouette , which is more like an inverse copy on printed paper, a negative of a photo or a silhouette of illuminated or illuminated bodies.
The outline drawing or the outline or contour engraving only reproduces the strict contours of the composition - without internal drawing and thus without plastic modeling and shading, which are achieved in copper engraving through a system of cross layers. In the case of the outline or contour stitch, the figures etc. are at most on a partially hatched background area to better stand out from the white paper ground.
Before Classicism mainly in the portrait collection of Johann Caspar Lavaters and otherwise only used for illustration in non-fiction and specialist books, before 1800 John Flaxman (1755–1826) introduced outline drawings - and the outline engraving to reproduce them - as a new manner in his series of illustrations to Dante , Homer etc. a. He soon found numerous imitators in Germany in this technique of engraving, etching and lithotography in the illustration sector, which was inexpensive for the distribution of works. To be emphasized are u. a. Bonaventura Genelli , Julius Nisle , Moritz Retzsch and Johann Christian Ruhl .
The Swiss Johann Ludwig Aberli (1723–1786) used the outline technique as early as the 1760s for his landscape sequences, the leaves of which he or his assistants washed or colored . This Aberlical manner was spread in the art industry and followed in many countries.
Related to the linear contour stitch is also around 1800 as an adequate means of reproduction - z. B. for drawn draft cardboard - developed cardboard engraving in which a hint of light and shadow was only achieved by the swelling of the lines with the grave stylus . Julius Thaeter (1804–1870) and his students ( Johann Burger ) were pioneers in cardboard engraving .