Chapter II: Part 2

If you make your drawings much larger than they are to be reproduced, you will often be greatly surprised at the change in their appearance. Greys will, by filling up, become darker, and lights lighter owing to the concentration around them of masses of colour; that is, blacks become blacker, and whites whiter in reproduction. But do remember that though the drawings by Boyd Houghton, Millais, F. Walker and Pinwell were made the size you see them, on the wood, in the books of twenty-five years ago, the drawings made to-day by Abbey, for example, are four or five times as large as the published engravings, and are not, in the originals, filled with that microscopic work which appears in the reproductions. But do not make crude lines under the impression that they will ever be anything but crude. Try to make a beautiful drawing, a beautiful line--unless you can do this you will never get a beautiful reproduction; and once you have learned to draw, study the best books and the best magazines, always remembering that drawings to-day are made much larger, as a rule, than you see them on the printed page.

Again, in reproduction you will often find that some parts of the same drawing change more than others; some places, for example, become too weak, others too strong. I cannot explain this, but you will find that it does happen. At times it may be because the photograph is bad, or the etching is rotten, but even with good photography and etching the final result is often disappointing.

In pen work you may run the gamut from solid blacks to the most delicate grey line. Do not try to always, but select a colour scheme which is restrained and appropriate to every drawing.

Solid black will reproduce best because it is a solid mass, excepting in cheap rapid printing, when solid blacks either get too much or too little ink. A number of black lines close together will reproduce almost equally well, because in engraving and printing these lines support the paper and do not take up too much ink. A single thin line, on the contrary, always thickens in the engraving, and often prints badly because in the printing press the ink and paper bear down too heavily upon it and it receives too much ink and thickens up.

I have recommended you to use only black ink and white paper; before you have worked much you will try experiments, I am sure, in greying ink, putting water with it, and leaving pencil marks, or adding lines with lithographic chalk, or crayon; but you will find out the moment the drawing is printed that everything comes quite black, and if you have made your distance in broad grey lines it will possibly ruin your whole scheme. Greys may be obtained by engraving the blocks by hand, rouletting, or a number of other ways which I shall explain. Line drawings may also be made altogether in pencil, on rough paper, in chalk or crayon, reinforced, if necessary, with a blot of ink, or a wash, or a line with a pen here and there; but for line work with these materials you must employ a grained paper in order to get a proper mechanical direct reproduction of the work. Bristol boards must not be used. Sometimes these combinations of pen and pencil work are excellent; but they must harmonise, otherwise the result is unpleasant.

Some idea of the effect your drawing will present when engraved may be obtained by the use of a diminishing glass; and, _vice versâ_, you might study some of the engravings in the books and magazines around you with a magnifying glass.

Corrections in line drawings with pen should be made either with an ink eraser, a razor, the razor knife, or by painting over the place with Chinese white, or, if it be large, by pasting down a bit of paper on it. This is the most usual way; if the paper is thin and the edges well joined, it is the best. Or you may cut a hole from the back and let in a bit of paper, paring down the edges, or scraping them down; but be careful about the edges, because they make a nasty line when the drawing is photographed. In pencil, crayon, or charcoal work, remove imperfections in the ordinary way with a bit of rubber. You will not, of course, lose your head and elaborate a pen drawing, any more than you would a chalk or charcoal drawing or etching. You will select your lines with the utmost care, put them down with the greatest intelligence, and the more care and intelligence you exercise the better will be your illustrations; however, this is what you are trying to do every time you make a drawing in line from life or the antique, and I will not bore you by repeating what you hear every day in your ordinary school work, nor will I do more than remind you how careful you must be in your composition, in your arrangement of lines, in your placing of blacks, in making up your picture; only exercise the judgment necessary to compose any other work of art.

Your drawings should be works of art; be proud of them; but also regard them as a means to an end, and, as I have said, for cheap and rapid printing draw on smooth white paper with good black ink, and do not use big solid blacks, or single thin lines. Keep your work as open as possible and do not have it reduced. That is, draw as near the size it is to appear (if you can find that out) as possible. For the best engraving and printing, draw as you like. Anything to-day can be photographed and engraved; the great difficulty is in the printing. Remember that if you do not put distinction and character into your work, the engraver and printer cannot. They will take much away in any case.

As you are working for an editor, you will have to please him. Do so if you can without hurting your work and your own standard of right and wrong.

But always work in your own way, if that is at all possible for reproduction and printing, if not, you will have to change your methods. For you are working for a definite purpose, illustration; therefore your work must engrave.

If you wish to succeed you must see all the illustration you can, you must talk to editors and illustrators, and you must go down into the printing office and the engraver's shop.

You must learn your trade, for if you have not passed through the drudgery of the apprentice, you will never become a master of your craft.

LECTURE IV.

_THE REPRODUCTION OF LINE DRAWINGS._

As illustrators, or would-be illustrators, your work is not at an end with the completion of your drawings; you must look after them while they are being engraved, and you should see them through the press. From the time you are given a commission to illustrate a subject until the printed result is in the hands of the public, the work in all its stages should be the object of your untiring attention. It is true that at present the fact that you take an interest in your profession will be counted against you in some quarters, for should you happen--as is not unlikely--to know more of drawing, engraving, and printing than the art editor, the engraver, or the printer, your suggestions will not be received with enthusiasm, nor your criticisms with delight. Suggestions mean changes, and criticism means objections to the routine way of doing things. Then you may not feel a great interest in the scientific side of your work, yet chemistry plays an important part in illustration. The mechanical reproduction of drawings is based entirely on chemical action, and you must know something of this matter if you would get good results.

But let us consider the whole subject. Drawings in line were originally, in the fifteenth century, reproduced by wood cutting;[1] that is to say, the drawing was made in line with pen, point, or brush on the side of a plank, and all those portions of the block which were not drawn upon were cut away with knives and chisels, the design only remaining in relief; this relief was dabbed over with ink or paint, and a piece of damp paper was laid on it. The back of this paper was rubbed, burnished, or pressed on to the inked surface of the block and took up the ink from it; on removing the paper an impression in reverse of the inked block was found on the under side of it. And this was the method, with improvements, employed in printing from type, for three hundred years.

[1] Of course I shall refer to metal engraving in another
lecture.

About the beginning of this century the design began to be drawn upon the end of a block of box-wood--a cross section of it--and the parts left blank were cut away with gravers, tools used by engravers in metal, or else lines were engraved on the surface of the block, which printed as whites in the blacks; the grain of the cross section of box-wood was firmer and finer, and with the gravers more delicate lines could be engraved and more true results obtained; and at the same time continual improvements were being made in the presses, steam being substituted for hand power, and the manufacture of paper and ink totally revolutionised.

These methods were employed until about 1865, when, instead of the drawings being made by the artists on the block of wood, they began to be drawn on paper in line, and then photographed on to the wood. This was a great improvement, because the artist could now make his designs of any size he wished and have them photographed down to the required dimensions and reversed for him: the mere reversing in many cases was both tedious and uninteresting.[2]

[2] If the drawing is a portrait of a place, it must be reversed
on the wood or metal in order that the print may appear as the
original does in nature.

The final step which brings us to the present, though not by any means, I am sure, to the end of the chapter, is the superseding of the woodcutter or wood engraver in line, by the mechanical engraver in metal or gelatine.

Now you may do your drawings, if you wish, in line with a pencil or brush upon the prepared piece of box-wood, and the engraver may cut away all those portions of the wood-block which you have not touched, remembering always that though you draw freely he must engrave laboriously, and the more free your drawing becomes, the more complicated must his engraving be. So when you make a sketchy drawing on wood, none but the most accomplished engraver can retain that look of freedom and sketchiness; if the lines of the drawing become really complicated, in cross hatching, for example, he cannot follow them, he must suggest them. Hence, unless the engraver really loves this sort of work, it is but drudgery, and the better the reproduction the more skilled labour wasted.

Now photography has changed all this. A photograph of the drawing, of the required size it is to appear on the printed page, is taken. The drawing may be enlarged or reduced to this size, and the negative thus obtained is placed in reverse in a photographic printing frame, in contact with a sensitised zinc plate, coated with a thin film either of albumen or bitumen, or it may be that a gelatine film is the material used for printing on. In the first method the albumen coated piece of zinc is removed from the printing frame as soon as the photographic print has been made; it is then coated with ink and placed in water, the albumen and ink upon it adhere to those parts of the zinc which have been exposed to light, and may be washed off the other parts, thus leaving the picture on the zinc in ink. By the bitumen process the picture is printed in the same way: the plate is placed in a bath of turpentine, the picture appears on the zinc, and the bitumen dissolves off the other parts.

If these two prints are now covered with powdered rosin, gum, and ink, they may be placed in a bath of nitric acid and water, and the exposed parts bitten or etched away. This is a most interesting and delicate process, and success depends in good work more upon the skill and artistic intelligence of the etcher than the chemicals used. The object is to remove all the whites as in wood engraving, half remove the greys, and leave the blacks. After the zinc has been bitten a short time it is taken out of the bath again, covered with gum, resin and ink to protect it from the acid, heated, when the protecting mass melts and runs down the sides of the bitten lines and protects them also; this process is continued until the block is sufficiently etched. When the exposed parts are all eaten away the picture appears in relief. This occupies a few hours, maybe but an hour or less. When completed, the zinc picture is mounted upon a piece of wood, to make it the same height as the type, placed in a printing press and copies are made of it, or from electrotypes or stereotypes, at the rate of from twenty to 20,000 an hour. This is, I hope, an intelligible outline of the photo-engraving process; every mechanical engraver has some variation which is his carefully guarded secret. The blocks may be of zinc or copper or other metal, and all sorts of chemicals are used. But I cannot too strongly impress upon you that good work in mechanical engraving is only to be obtained by artistic workmen; still, remarkable results are to be seen all about, even in the cheapest prints. But the very best process engravings are produced only by men who are artists and care for each block. In the case of the best engravers they will know better than you which process to use, and there is no more necessity for you to try to tell a mechanical engraver how the work is to be done, than for you to tell a wood engraver what tools he shall work with. Bad drawings may look better by one process than another, and good illustrations may be spoiled more by one method than another. But every intelligent engraver will try again and again until he gets the best result he can.

The gelatine process consists in printing the picture on a sensitised film of gelatine. Now if this gelatine is soaked in water the parts representing the whites swell, and the darks, really the picture, remain as they were, as the light has rendered them insensible to water; from this swelled gelatine mould a cast in plaster of Paris can be taken, from this a wax mould is made, and finally an electrotype. The process is only used, I believe, by one firm; the results are good, but no better than the others.

Let us consider for a moment what are the advantages and disadvantages of mechanical reproduction. The first advantage is rapidity of production--a facsimile wood engraving may take weeks to produce, a mechanical engraving takes a day or so; this is not an artistic but a commercial gain. The wood engraving loses, the more intricate and complicated and close the details become; the mechanical or process engraving not infrequently gains.

The wood engraver may make mistakes in cutting the lines in the wood block, but if the lines are properly put down, the camera and the process engraver should not; and if they do, much less time is lost and labour wasted than with wood engravings.

Mechanical engraving is a much less costly method. These are not any of them very artistic reasons, but they count with publishers, and they count with you. But the great artistic advantage is that the artist may make his drawing of any size he wishes; it is not cut to pieces but preserved, and if it is properly drawn, as I have explained to you, it should produce in complicated work a more faithful result. In simple line work it is almost impossible to tell a wood engraving from a process block.

The drawbacks are that the line is sometimes too faithfully copied--that the engraving is shallow, and that the wood yields a richer, fatter effect than any metal, mechanical block.

These are artistic drawbacks, but they may all be overcome by the artist. The line, if good, cannot be too faithfully copied; the engraving, if shallow, can be made deeper, engraved anew by the wood engraver. The fat line so much prized was made with a brush, and, as I have said, brush work reproduces perfectly. And in the majority of cases the original wood or process blocks are never printed from, but casts of them called stereotypes or electrotypes are used; therefore the fat line of the wood is more or less the product of the imagination. I do not mean to say the original wood or metal block will not give a richer impression than any cast from it, but I do say it is only in the case of proofs that the original is used.

If a pencil or other drawing in line is to be reproduced, in which the varying colour of the pencil mark is to be retained, its greyness for example, or if the pen line is very delicate, or there are many single unsupported lines in the drawing, another method must be employed. A microscopically ruled glass screen, ruled with fine lines made with a diamond and filled in with ink, is placed in the camera in front of the glass plate on which the picture is to be photographed. There are various ways in which this is done, with the object of breaking up into line the tones which would otherwise print perfectly black, or, of supporting those weak lines which would print too heavily. This negative thus obtained is printed on to the zinc or copper plate, is then etched much as in the case of the simple line block. This process, usually called half-tone, was invented for reproducing wash, but is much used now for line, especially when the dots or line of the screen are cut away by the wood engraver in the whites. The photo engraver is now endeavouring so to shift or adjust his screen that the dots will come only where they are wanted to break up the solid black, and some most interesting results have been obtained. When I am describing the reproduction of wash drawings, I shall return to this subject.

Spaces of tint on line drawings can be and almost always are obtained by the use of what is known as shading mediums; that is, pieces of gelatine or copper with lines or dots engraved in them are filled with printer's ink, and these lines or dots are transferred by the engraver to the parts of the picture on the zinc plate where they are wanted before the plate is etched. There are many ways in which the artist can get the same effect by inking bits of silk and pressing them on the drawing, by inking his thumb, or by drawing with a pencil or chalk or even pen over a rough book-cover, the only object is to get a bit of tone in a line drawing: in cheap work it is often very effective, in the best work it is usually out of place. All the artist need do is indicate the spot, or the outlines of the parts where the tint is wanted, by a blue pencil. If the engraver knows how the block is to be printed he will use the tint that will print best. They are all useful, but not very sympathetic.

Photo-Lithography and kindred methods are either of little importance or will be referred to under Lithography. Finally, if the lines are too black or too strong they can be cut away or thinned, or darks opened up by the engraver, just as on a wood block; or a little wheel in a handle called a roulette may be run over parts of the engraving which are too heavy--the teeth of the wheel break the lines into dots and lighten them.

LECTURE V.

_THE MAKING OF WASH DRAWINGS AND THEIR REPRODUCTION BY MECHANICAL PROCESS._

When I speak of wash drawings, I would really refer to all painting or drawing, in colour or monochrome, in tone, as distinguished from work in line, which was the subject of my last lecture.

Many persons do not like line work, never master it, and are insensible to its beauty when they see it. For these there is another method of expression, although, I cannot repeat too often, an illustrator should be able to work in more ways than one. One may make one's illustration in colour in oil, in gouache, in body colour, in wash; in fact paint a picture in the usual way, though, even with the best and most careful methods of reproduction, it will be almost invariably found that in the various stages of photographing, etching and printing, very much, if not all, the charm has disappeared, even though the result be printed in colour, for up to the present no colour can be perfectly reproduced, or rendered into black and white, even by the best engraver in the world. And no colour can be reproduced except by the artist himself. A few men like Detaille, De Neuville, and Lynch have, I believe, invented a special colour scheme for the requirements of colour reproduction, and some of the engravings made from their pictures by Messrs. Boussod, Valladon & Co. are very wonderful; but in the best examples I imagine there is an enormous amount of careful touching up and going over by hand, which places these reproductions in the category of proofs rather than of prints. Certainly there is a vast difference between them and the colour work usually seen in the same firm's commercial publications, good as they are, and there is a yawning gulf between these and the colour print we have with us always. Therefore, if you wish to work in oil I would suggest that you work in monochrome, and further I would advise you to make your designs in simple black and white--that is if the reproduction is to be printed with black ink; for the nearer your original is to the colour in which it is to be printed, the nearer will the engraver and printer be able to approach it. I would also suggest that perfectly dead colours should be used, because varnish or any sort of glaze, shine or glitter, will tell in the photograph, and even the most careful engravers are rather given to reproducing the photographic copy than the original, even though the latter be at their side.

One method, that has been successful lately, is mixing oil colour with turpentine until it flows like water, and then working on paper; this reproduces most excellently, the only drawback being that the colour rubs off easily.

Body colour and gouache are much used; the only thing to be remembered is that you should keep to the same colours and the same method of work all the way through each drawing. It is very interesting to combine body colour with wash; often in the original design the combination is most pleasing, but the camera does not approve of it, and frequently plays the most unexpected tricks with these combinations. Therefore, either stick to body colour, lamp black, ivory black and white,[3] or pure wash; in the latter case there is nothing which photographs so well as charcoal grey, made by Newman & Co. The most delicate washes reproduce beautifully. It is rather hard to manage, but once you can manage it, it is almost perfect. It is best for work in a very light key, in the extreme darks it is liable to get heavy and sombre and gritty; and if you want a positive black it is well to put it in with ink or some stronger black, even at the risk of knocking things rather out of tone. The only objection to charcoal grey is that it is rather difficult to work over it. Still, in illustration in wash you will always get a cleaner, sharper effect by doing your drawing at once, getting your effect right with the first wash, than by any amount of tinkering at it.

[3] Winsor & Newton and Reeves have lately been experimenting in
this way, and their Albanine and Process black are well spoken
of by photo engravers.

In this pure wash work you should be careful, very careful, not to let any meaningless pencil lines show through, as they always photograph, cannot be taken out, and at times spoil the whole effect; in fact, imperfections in wash drawings always reproduce more perfectly than the perfections themselves, and it is well to keep your paper reasonably clean, to avoid smudging, blots and lines, or otherwise you will be disappointed in the result. It is often very effective in an original drawing to put in a lot of colour, but it nearly always comes out wrongly in the reproduction. On the other hand, although body colour often comes badly with wash, if you work over or into either your wash or body colour with pen, chalk, or pencil of the same substance as the wash, the result is harmonious often and excellent. I mean, if you make a drawing in wash with Indian ink and work on it with liquid Indian ink in a pen, the result will be right. If you touch up charcoal grey with charcoal, the wash and line unite--these things, however, you will soon learn by experience, even though that experience is gained in a rather painful manner. Still, at present the better magazines and papers are not a practising ground for students, as they were some time ago, and you must be able to do good work before you can expect any intelligent editor to print it.

Drawings or paintings--in fact all work in tone is reproduced mechanically by what is known as the half-tone process, which I referred to briefly in my last lecture.

The drawing is photographed, but in front of the sensitised glass, a microscopically ruled screen is placed to break up this tone into dots or lines, really to get the same effect as the wood engraver obtains with his dots and lines. Otherwise, the tones being flat, or even if they are gradated, would print as a black mass; but these screens break up the masses into little squares, which receive the printing ink on their faces, and the colour or original effect of the picture is thus preserved. It is rather difficult to explain this, but the screen produces white lines in the darks and dark lines in the whites; you can see them by looking at any block. Afterwards, the process is exactly the same as for line drawings. This reproduction of wash work is very uncertain; good effects are obtained, about as often as failures. The delicate tones are not infrequently altogether lost. There are no positive blacks or whites, but a uniform grey tint covers the entire block, in which all delicacy is often hidden. Therefore, to get a good effect, when printed, the drawing should be simply made, that is if it is for cheap engraving and rapid printing; but if for the best books and magazines, wood engravers may be employed to remedy the imperfections of the photograph and the mistakes of the etcher. That is, whites may be cut, blacks toned down, lines thinned, or large spaces on the block may be left for the engraver to work upon: most remarkable results may be seen in the better American magazines.

There are many qualities in a drawing which that senseless machine, the camera, will never reproduce. There are also a few points which it is very difficult (in tone work) for an engraver to render, but they may both combine and obtain most interesting effects.

For instance, it is very difficult to give in a wood engraving the look of paint on canvas, without losing much of the picture itself, for if the wood engraver begins to try to imitate texture he not infrequently loses the subject. The mechanical process seems to do this very easily, especially if the brush marks on the canvas are at all prominent. But the delicacy is frequently lost; so, too, are the strong blacks, though a good wood engraver can remedy these defects by treating the metal block just as though it was wood, engraving on it, cutting out, save where it is right, all the mechanical look. But two factors are necessary, first a good engraver, and, second, a publisher who is willing to pay for this engraving, which is expensive. The majority of publishers will not do so, though they will pay for the work of a good or notorious author. They will employ a feeble artist, a poor engraver, and a cheap printer, and talk of how much better the work was done thirty years ago. Of course it was; it was decently drawn and mostly badly engraved, vilely printed, but well paid for; now the photograph is the standard and the results are all about us; therefore you must think of the results. So make broad simple masses, keep your work as flat as you can, remembering that all blacks will have the little white dots of the screen more or less showing through them--these can be kept out by the engraver, but they certainly will appear in the cheapest work; remembering that all delicate grey tones will be eaten up by the screen, therefore don't put them in if you can help it; and, finally, that unless whites are cut out they will never appear, instead you will have a dotted grey effect.

In the very near future many of these imperfections will disappear, for you must remember that it is scarcely ten years since half tone began to be used at all. But look, whenever you see them--and they are everywhere--at the reproductions of half-tone work; try and study out how the artist got his effect; go to the art editor who published the drawing and ask to see the original. Talk with artists who do good work in black and white; they are mostly human, intelligent, and willing to help and advise you. Go to the engravers' shops and find out what the engraver will tell you, and to printing offices and see your work on the press.

I have already spoken of the reproductions of line drawings by the half-tone process. One is sometimes tempted to wish that all line work could be reproduced by half tone and tone work could be reproduced by line, because if the line is delicate or the drawing is thin, the screen over it gives a tint which is pleasing, at times makes it look like an etching somewhat, especially if the tint be judiciously cut out. You might look at some of C. D. Gibson's work, where very great delicacy has been obtained in this way. Engravers are now endeavouring to get the tint just where it is wanted, and I have no doubt they will succeed. When they do, photo-engraving by the half-tone process will be greatly improved.

Finally, study the requirements of the process not only as artists, but from the point of view of the engraver; go down to his shop and find out how the work is done; make him show and tell you; insist on seeing proofs of your drawings--good proofs, too; make corrections on them, first learning what corrections can be made. You cannot have blacks put in your engravings if they did not exist in the drawings, and, roughly speaking, you can only tone down, not strengthen any engraving; but you will find, save in cases of blacks, it is only toning down that the engraving wants, thinning and greying of lines.

All this, I have no doubt, is very dry and uninteresting and tedious, but unless you get these things into your heads in the beginning, your drawings will not photograph well, engrave well, or print well; and if they don't, you will not get any illustration to do, and you may have yourselves to blame for it.

LECTURE VI.

_REPRODUCTION OF DRAWINGS BY WOOD ENGRAVING._

Wood engraving, as a fine art, has been virtually invented, developed, brought to apparent perfection, and yet ceased to exist, temporarily, almost, as a trade, in this century.

A wood engraving is an engraving made with a graver, upon a cross section of box-wood, that is upon the end, and not the side, of a plank, in relief. As in the case of mechanical engraving, all the wood, excepting that underneath the design upon the block, is cut away, and the picture remains alone in relief, raised upon the surface of the block of the same height as the type; thus the block may be placed on the press and printed with the type.

The first great wood engraver was Thos. Bewick, and he, unlike many of his followers to-day, was an artist, and mostly made his own drawings on the block and cut them as he wished. He saw that wood engraving was a substitute for the slower, more tedious, and more expensive method of steel engraving; that, most important, many of the qualities of steel could be imitated in wood, as the same tools were used; that it could be printed with type; and, save that the richness of colour could not be retained, that it had most of the advantages of metal and few of its disadvantages, and was vastly cheaper. From the first, the imitation of steel was considered the proper aim, and though early in this century Stothard drew with a pen upon the block, and his designs were facsimiled in the wood by Clennell, the prevailing fashion was the imitation of steel engraving, even by Bewick himself. Many of his lines are exactly those used by the steel engravers. By the middle of the century steel engraving virtually disappeared, its practitioners being unable to compete with wood engravers. There have been but few original engravers in this form of art, and though the work of some of the steel engravers who reproduced Turner and Roberts, Wilkie and Landseer, is marvellous, the art is almost dead at present. Cheapness has killed it. Wood engraving also killed lithography--a lithograph cannot be printed with type--and consequently the wood engraver became a most important person. He ran a shop with many assistants; he commissioned artists to make drawings for his assistants to engrave, he dictated the way in which these drawings were to be done, the way in which the lines were to be drawn and washes made, so that they could be cut most easily. He commissioned writers to work up or down to the artists; he printed the books and sold them to the publishers, who were content to put their names on the title pages. And by this method much good and more bad work was accomplished, but the engraver finally became supreme, autocratic, dictatorial, insufferable; and then he vanished, as a shop. Process stepped in, in its turn, on account of its cheapness; and to-day, unless the engraver is an artist, he is but the slave of the process man, a hard fate--but his own. Before the introduction of photography, artists had to make their designs for the wood engraver the size they were wanted upon the block of wood, if portraits of places, reverse them, in pen, brush, pencil, or wash; the engraver cut around and through these designs, making a translation of them in relief on the block which could be printed from. But the drawing had disappeared, and the artist had nothing but the engraving to show for it, hence endless difficulties arose; good artists hated to have their drawings cut to pieces; good engravers hated to have their work criticised unfavourably; also, drawing of a small size, and in reverse on the block was difficult to learn, and only a mechanical craft of no artistic advantage when learned. Therefore, as soon as it was possible to escape from the drudgery, to draw of any size on paper and have that drawing photographed on to a sensitised wood block, of the size it was wanted, in reverse, all artists took to it. And a new school of engravers arose, men who tried to invent new methods of engraving so that they could express the medium, as well as the subject, in which a picture was produced. True from Stothard onward, through Meissonier and Menzel, engravers had tried to render pen and pencil drawings in line on wood; now everything began to be attempted, charcoal, etchings, steel, water colours, lithographs, oils. All the imperfections, accidents, and blemishes were preserved, even if the picture disappeared. But a number of most distinguished artist wood engravers appeared, especially in America, though few of them learned their trade in that country. But they received more encouragement, better pay, better printing, and better artists worked for them. And so the school of American wood engravers, many of whom are not Americans, was born.

Now how is the modern work done? The artist's picture in any medium, of any size, is given to the photographer, who copies and reverses it, prints it on the block of wood which has been sensitised for that purpose. The print is usually not very good, that is, it is darker, with many of the qualities of the drawing lost; but it serves only as a guide or a tracing for the engraver, who takes his tools, and with the drawing behind him, reflected in a mirror to reverse it, proceeds to cut the photograph of the drawing into relief, at the same time trying to preserve the look of the canvas, paper, or metal on which it was made, and the feeling of the colour, wash, or paint with which it was executed. All this is most difficult, but a most artistic result may be obtained, and one has but to refer to the magazines of America and some of the weekly papers of Germany, France, and Spain, for a proof of it.

Here, though much good wood engraving has been printed, outside the offices of Messrs. Macmillan, Cassell and Co., and the _Graphic_, it has of late years been mostly in the form of copies, electrotypes, clichés from foreign blocks which are supplied by their makers, all over the world, at a very low price, because they are not reserved for any one paper or book. And when you begin to see a man's painting, or drawing, or engraving in every paper, you begin to tire of him and his work. The editors of papers which publish clichés seem to be the only people who like the multiplication and cheapening of art, but then there is no accounting for their tastes. The tools and appliances for making wood engravings are simple enough, but to engrave anything but _facsimile_ work, or your own designs, will necessitate your going through considerable practical training; probably some years of apprenticeship.

To cut line drawings on the wood, or to cut designs in large simple masses, you do not require so much practice. All the tools you need are different sized gravers and gouges, a small chisel to cut large spaces, an engraver's rest for the block, so that it can be turned freely and easily about, and a whetstone to sharpen your tools.

Lamps and globes for water, shades for your eyes, you will scarcely need, but a magnifying glass, something like that which watchmakers use, may be useful. With these simple tools and some box-wood--they can all be bought in East Harding Street or at any colour maker's--you have the necessary appliances.

If you draw on the block, a slight wash of Chinese white will help to make it work easily. Draw with a brush or pencil; or if in wash, without body colour, as that will chip off. You have only to remember that the block, either plain or with the drawing on it, would print perfectly black, and that every line you make with the graver in the surface of it, will print white. Therefore, as I have said, to get an outline engraving, you simply cut away everything but the drawing, which is left in relief on the surface of the block, and which alone prints, the rest of it being cut away. It is not necessary to engrave the surface very deeply, only so much that neither the ink nor the paper will touch in the hollows between the lines or masses. Mistakes are not easy to remedy, except by making a hole in the block and inserting a plug of wood, and then engraving that afresh.

The art of engraving in _facsimile_, that is, of engraving around lines made with pen, or brush, or pencil, is comparatively easy, it only requires much training and a steady hand. But the ability to translate a work in colour into black and white, on a wood block, so that it shall give a good idea of the original, is far more difficult. To do it well, the engraver must not only have the knowledge of the technical requirements of his craft at his finger ends, only to be gained after years of apprenticeship, but he must be a trained artist as well. If he wishes to get the best results, he must have the original before him, he must understand it and appreciate it. And finally, he must have the technical skill to engrave it. Even then, most likely, the artist will not like the block. It is a difficult art, a thankless art, save in the rarest cases: one which requires years of special training, and at present in this country, no matter how great an artist one is, there is very little chance to practise it. Work of this sort you cannot expect to be able to do without years of training; if you care for it you must apprentice yourself to a wood engraver.

Still there are forms of wood engraving which you may take up, from the most primitive to the most complicated, and you may carry out the work from the designing of it to the printing of it yourselves, or, you may draw on the block and cut away, as in engravings by the late R. L. Stevenson (or were they done by Lloyd Osbourne or some other ghost?), and possibly you will have an experience like this:--

"A blemish in the cut appears,
Alas, it cost both blood and tears.
The glancing graver swerved aside,
Fast flowed the artist's vital tide,
And now the apologetic bard
Demands indulgence for his pard."

Or I imagine without much trouble you might invent something in the style of Valloton, a Frenchman, who is resurrecting wood cutting in a manner of his own, while carrying on the traditions of the old men. I hope you may be able to get as much life and go in it as he has. Make your drawing on the wood, or on paper, have it photographed on the wood in the latter case, and cut around the lines, leaving only the drawing. The greatest difficulty is with fine lines, and you see how cleverly Valloton has avoided making them. Or, like Lepère, another French artist--he would be a man to study with--do big, bold, effective things; or again you might attempt, as he does, colour work on wood, like that done by the Japanese, drawing it, engraving it, and printing it all yourselves.

Or, take up drawing and engraving in the manner of Caldecott, Crane, or Kate Greenaway, when they were reproduced and printed by Edmund Evans.

Process is fighting for colour too, but wood, at least in proofs, and that is all you would care for, gives some qualities far beyond process.

In colour printing from wood blocks as many blocks must be made as there are colours, and there must be as many separate printings made from these blocks as there are colours in the printed picture. There must also be an outline block called the key block. Usually in European colour printing, whether from wood blocks, or by lithography, or even process, the colours are printed on top of each other; for example, a blue is printed over a yellow to get green, and at times several colours are superimposed, with the result that colour is lost and mud obtained. The Japanese have shown us how to make colour prints, however, and their method is now adopted by all intelligent colour printers. It consists in making the right colour before it is put on the block, and in placing the colours side by side like a mosaic. The work is done somewhat in this way; the artist makes his drawing, several tracings (as many as there are colours) are made from it, and one extra tracing must be made of the outline only. Or rather the outline alone is cut on the block, other blocks are then made for each colour, or the parts cut out of the same block; one will contain all the red, another all the blue, a third the yellow, and so on. They must be very accurately cut, so as to fit together and print truly, and you can see from Japanese prints how wonderfully well the work is done. Of course the editions from such blocks are very limited, and on this account, like etchings, often vary, the printers having tried experiments in colour. The grain of the wood is taken advantage of in printing, as it often gives a lovely pattern; a good printer will wash in gradated skies with the backgrounds, and no matter how wonderfully they are worked, if of the same colour, are printed usually from the same block. The Japanese, I believe, use water-colours; certainly the French and English, who have tried to imitate them, do, putting the colour, mixed with a little size or gum, on the face of the block with a sponge; in fact they are printed water-colours. Several Frenchmen have obtained in this way most notable results. Very similar was the fashion of colour printing called chiaroscuro, used in the early part of the century. The trouble with this was that the oil with which the inks were mixed, either ran, or spoiled the pages, or did not dry well. Drawings on grey paper in chalk can be wonderfully imitated in this way, and there are methods of using steel and copper plates, bitten into relief to get outlines or tints, which were also employed. To-day in the printing of wood engravings and process blocks by steam, at many thousands an hour, the same system of colour printing, by placing the colours side by side, is being attempted, for it is impossible to obtain fine tone or rich effect by placing one colour on top of another, even in slow printing by hand, while it is absurd to attempt it rapidly by steam. In the most successful attempts yet made, those of the _Le Quotidien Illustré_ and _Le Rire_, Paris papers, colour printing from process blocks has been most successfully done, and I do not doubt that in a very few years colour printing in magazines and newspapers will be very general.

As I have said, all intelligent printers have now come to the conclusion that simple flat colours, put on side by side, will alone give good artistic results; they have only learned this, however, after going quite to the other extreme: after trying to get pure colour and rich effects by using the three primary colours on top of each other, they obtained but crudeness, vulgarity, and mud.

Photography and chemistry are useful in art, but art cannot be created by these means. It may be that some one, some day, will be able to photograph a picture in colour, but there is as yet no evidence of it.

Wood engravings may also be made by scraping or lowering the fronts or backs of blocks, and rich, soft, fat effects can be produced. Very little has been done, I think, with these lowered blocks, some remarkable examples of which can be seen in Chatto and Jackson's "History of Wood Engraving."

Photography has aided the artist very much in wood engraving (though most engravers say it has not), and especially in colour printing it can be made great use of; as, instead of tracing a design on to several blocks, it can be photographed, thus ensuring accuracy--though the Japanese obtained this without any photographic aids--and saving much time.

Still, that is about as far as it goes at present, and photography will never supersede art, though it is engaged in a famous struggle with artlessness.

LECTURE VII.

_LITHOGRAPHY._

Lithography, for some time the rival of metal engraving and even for a time of wood, was invented at the end of the last century, and, as its name implies, is the art of drawing or writing upon stone. Briefly, a peculiar grained stone, found in Germany, may be drawn upon with greasy chalk or ink; afterward it is slightly etched, only washed really, with weak nitric acid and water to fix the drawing and somewhat reduce the surface of the stone; if the stone be now covered with gum, allowed to dry, and then inked, the ink adheres only to the drawing; and if a sheet of paper is placed on it, and the whole passed through a press, a print, or rather the drawing in ink, will come off on the paper. This is roughly the art of lithography.

The most important consideration for you, however, is the making of the drawing. This may be done in one of two ways: either upon the stone itself, or upon transfer paper specially coated, so that the entire drawing is transferred from the paper on which it is drawn, by mechanical means, to the stone, and not merely a print from the original drawing. For many reasons it would probably be best to draw upon the stone itself always; because, first and above all, the less intervention--even mechanical intervention--there is between the artist and his work, the better; and in many cases it is not possible to get good results unless the artist works on the stone. But if one has to make a large drawing out of doors, it is obviously impossible to carry about a big and heavy stone with one; therefore lithographic transfer paper must be used if the work is to be done from nature.