Sketch of Crossed Legs

This preliminary sketch by architect and designer Arnold William Brunner demonstrates the gestural drawing techniques that influenced early comic illustration. The composition—featuring a figure with crossed legs rendered in loose ink lines, with accent shading—exemplifies the economical figure drawing that would become essential to newspaper comic strips. The spontaneous line work and anatomical study reflect practices that artists like Richard Outcault and later cartoonists adapted for sequential narrative. Such sketches formed the foundation of visual shorthand that made comics readable at small reproduction sizes in daily papers, establishing conventions that defined the medium's birth in the 1890s Sunday supplements.