The book “Les règles du dessin et du lavis” consists of 214 pages of plain text and additional 24 pages of illustrations. These illustrations are numbered from one to twenty four and basically placed as reference images in order to support the text. On the upper left side of each image, the section is written, in which the illustration is referenced, and the numbers of the illustrations are placed on the upper right side of the image. Some of the illustrations are placed in the book as fold-out spreads and some of them are subdivided into smaller parts, which are called as “Figures”
First three illustrations belong to the first part and depict the right equipment ( brushes, pens, desk, etc. ), which are needed to draw architectural illustrations. The next ten illustrations are referenced in the second part, ranging from section, elevation and ground plan drawings to different types of scales with the imperial unit “foot”. The last 11 illustrations are to support the third part of the book and they are essentially guidelines to draw maps and there are also some technical drawings of the gadgets to find the right size for the map.
As a result of small page size, no columns were needed for organising the written part. Headings are written bigger, and the first letter of the first word of each section is also distinctively bigger than the normal text. A relatively big margin is placed on each page, which is approximately a fourth of the whole pages’ width
Comparing 214 pages of text with 24 pages of illustrations, the text may occur to be more dominant than the illustrated part, and the images may just be seen as references for a better understanding. However, the importance of these illustrations should not be underestimated, as the book is about techniques of architectural drawings. Without these illustrations, the text would be too vague and much less informative than it is with the drawings. Although the text and the illustrations are placed separately, they should be seen as a descriptive whole.