Drawing Assignment: Henrietta the "Fair Hen"

Saul Steinberg

1. Find out something about Saul Steinberg as an artist. What work did he do? Click here for Wikipedia reference.

2. Practice Steinberg's line movement with pencil on scrap paper.

3. Draw your own hen illustration in Steinberg's style.
      a. Use pencil on 9x12" white paper. Very lightly, sketch a fairly large hen shape, filling most of the page.Add the head, tail, and feet.
      b. Establish a horizon line between the feet and the body.
      c. Add background details- trees, buildings, hills, etc.
      d. Change to use wide-tip black pen.Use lazy "s" lines which become feathers. The lines move with the flow of the hen's contours. Avoid straight lines for the feathers. Try not to outline the hen with a solid black line. Try not to touch lines, or cross over lines. Think of the lines as being electrically charged, so that if you touch one line to another a spark with result!

      e. When you have enough thick lines, change to a thin-tip pen and carefully fill in the white spaces. Continue flowing strokes.

From " Arts and Activities, March 1993, Mary McNamara Mulkey