Chapter III: Part 3

Before this paper was perfected (it is very good now, and can be obtained from Hughes & Kimber of West Harding Street, though Belfont's of Paris is the best), the artist either copied his sketches, studies, or pictures himself, on the stone, if he understood lithography; or else his drawings were copied for him by some other artists who were trained lithographers. One most notable example of this is to be found in J. F. Lewis's "Alhambra." The originals by Lewis were redrawn on the stone by J. D. Harding, J. Lane, and W. Ganci, as well as by Lewis himself; inevitably some of these men's individuality was apparent, and even in the case of Lewis, much must have been lost by copying his own designs; and if original work is given to professional lithographers, in ninety-nine cases out of one hundred all the real character is taken out of it. To-day, however, one may draw upon transfer paper, being careful only not to touch it with one's fingers, either in lithographic chalk or lithographic ink, which is only the chalk rubbed down and put on with a pen or brush, on this paper, which should be fastened down like an oil sketch, in a box having a cover, by drawing pins. Take the drawing to the printer; he will put it on the stone and print it for you far better than you can do it yourself; still this is rather expensive, as the transferring of the drawing to the stone and pulling a few proofs will cost you about a guinea. But if your design can be drawn in your own studio, or at the lithographer's, on the stone, it is not only much simpler, but the result may be better, and you can employ more varied methods of work. For example, you may draw with the lithographic crayon--Lemercier's are the best; get them at Lechertier & Barbe's--just as you would with ordinary chalk or crayon. For if the stone is grained like paper, the design, if well printed, should look almost exactly like a drawing on paper. On a smooth or ungrained stone you may draw or write with pen or brush and lithographic ink, which is only the crayon rubbed down with gum arabic, or ammonia and water, as you would rub down Indian ink, only you must heat the saucer in which you are rubbing it, a little. When you have done this, use Gillott's lithographic pens, putting the ink on the pen with a brush, or use a trimmed sable brush brought to a fine point; you must make your lines carefully, and get your ink of the right consistency, otherwise it tends to blot and spread or smear. Again, you may mix more of the medium with the rubbed-down crayon. I should say it rubs, when warm, without water; this medium may be obtained ready mixed from Way & Sons, Wellington Street, Strand; paint with it as you would in water colours, adding more of the medium or more ink as you wish little or much colour. I have tried only a couple of experiments in this way, and they were both complete failures. The trouble I found was this: in making light tones, the moment the brush charged with colour touches the stone, the stone itself turns much darker than the colour you are putting on it; and as it dries out very slowly, the making of a wash drawing is a most tedious process, unless one has had enough experience of the work to know just the effect of the finished drawing, or rather just the effect of the wash applied, which cannot be seen in its proper tone, while working on the stone, since the appearance the stone presents so long as it is wet is absolutely different to what it will look like when dry, and it is almost impossible to work over washes, because the colour floats off if they are gone over again, or at least smudges and smears; still, corrections and additions can be made with the crayon point, and the whole design brought pretty well together. The best work in wash has been done by Lunois, a Frenchman. Corrections are at all times difficult to make in lithographs, the error having to be scratched out and the stone repaired in that spot, before the new work can be put in again.

Stump drawings may be made by getting the crayon in powder and smearing it on the stone in masses with a rag. Effects can be obtained by removing too much colour with ordinary scrapers and putting in modelling with stumps and the point of the crayon; or all three of the methods I have mentioned may be combined, as they often are, on the same stone, notably in the work of Hervier.

Tints may be obtained by stippling and splatter work, as in pen drawings. There is a machine called an air brush, used by lithographers for this purpose, but the introduction of mechanical dodges has done much to harm lithography.

Zinc may be grained and drawn upon in the same way; why this metal is not more generally used, I do not know, for it is much lighter, more portable, and can be easily mounted on a plain stone to print from.

Until lately it was maintained that only what was drawn on stone could be got off it in a print. But Mr. Goulding, the etching printer, who has been making a series of experiments, says he can get almost as much variety of effect, by wiping the surface of the stone carefully, in a small number of prints, as he can from a copper plate (_see_ Lecture on the printing of Etchings). Still, for you, the process ordinarily will end with the drawing. Even the transferring is only to be successfully done by skilled workmen, and until you can print an etching decently, it would be scarcely worth while to try a lithograph.

Considering that the process is perfectly autographic, that the materials are few and cheap, it is strange that it is so little employed at present. But a very serious attempt is being made to revive it, and as an artist like Mr. Whistler is the leader and initiator, I believe it will be successful.

Colour printing by lithography, though very complicated, might be tried by you; as many stones must be prepared for transferring the design, made either on paper or stone, from the paper to stone, or from one stone to another, as there are colours, and only that part of the design which is of one colour must appear on one stone; if you try to get colour prints in the usual fashion by printing one colour over the other, you will obtain the usual commercial muddling lithographic appearance. But if you mix your own colours for the lithographer, and have the colours placed side by side, in flat masses like the Japanese block prints (_see_ Wood Engraving Lecture), you should get good results.

There are endless other processes and methods of work, but they are all more or less complicated, and require special training and special tools, and even machinery, and one who wishes to pursue the subject further must go to a lithographer and learn the trade.

But in order to get artistic effects only, one has but to draw or paint on paper or stone as one would ordinarily. The means are most simple, and the results should be most interesting.

LECTURE VIII.

_ETCHING._

In all the various methods of making illustrations to which I have so far called your attention, it was necessary that some part of the work should be done by a specially trained craftsman, at least if any practical and commercial result was desired.

Now in etching, the more you yourselves do and the less any one else does, the better should be the result.

An etching is, in its narrowest sense, a print from a metal plate into which a design has been bitten or eaten by acid; again, in most of the other methods, the printing was from relief blocks like type, and therefore those illustrations could be printed with type. Now we have to consider another sort of work, namely, intaglio, or incised, or sunken work not printed from the surface, but from lines cut below it, and therefore unavailable for letterpress printing. Of course it would be easy to make a relief block in metal, or an incised block of wood, to reverse the treatment in printing, but it would not be natural or right.

The whole difference is this: if a wood block has a line cut in the surface and the whole face is inked with a roller, the line will print white and the rest of the block black. If the etching plate is inked and cleaned off, as is always done, it will print white; if a line is cut in it, the ink will remain in that and produce a black line. Of course they must be printed in appropriate presses.

In its broadest sense an etching may be produced in any one of a number of ways, by the artist, on a metal plate which may be printed from.

It is never a process or mechanical engraving, and never was and never will be, and the attempt to palm off mechanical blocks or plates is a swindle and a humbug.

Etchings are produced in the following manner; at least this is the best and simplest method.

A plate of highly polished copper, zinc, or even steel, iron, or aluminium is obtained from the makers, William Longman, of Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, or from Messrs. Hughes & Kimber, West Harding Street, Fetter Lane, or Messrs. Roberson, 99, Long Acre. Copper, however, is the best and almost universally used. This should be carefully cleaned with a soft rag and whiting; then it should be gripped by a vice with a wooden handle, in one corner, care being taken to put a piece of soft paper between the vice and the plate to keep the teeth of the former from scratching it; heated, either upon an iron frame with a spirit or Bunsen lamp under it, or over the gas, until, if you take a ball of etching ground and touch the plate with it, the ground melts. This ground is made of resin, wax, and gum; the best is made by Sellers in England and Cadart in France. All these materials can be bought of Roberson or Hughes & Kimber. Touch the hot plate in several places with the ground. It should melt at once; then take an American etching roller (which I think you can only obtain at Roberson's) and go over the plate rapidly with it in every direction, until the little masses of melted ground have been spread evenly and thinly in a film all over it. With a little practice you should be able to do this in a couple of minutes, and you can lay in this way (which is unknown virtually in England) a thinner, harder, more even and very much better ground, with less trouble, than in any other. Heat the plate again a little more, and take a bundle of wax tapers twisted together by heating them, light them and pass them under the face of the plate held, varnished side downwards, by the vice; do not touch the plate with the taper, or the varnish, being still melted, will come off, but go rapidly back and forward, allowing the flame only to touch the surface. In a few minutes the varnish will have been completely blackened by the smoke. Next, take a bottle of stopping-out varnish (which you may as well buy; don't bother to make it) and cover the back and edges of the plate. If this is done while the plate is hot, it dries very fast, and as soon as the plate is cool it is ready to work on.

This is the first stage. The waxy ground is put on to protect the plate from the acid with which it is to be bitten, and it must be so well made and well put on, that one can draw through it, without tearing it up and without any resistance; also it must adhere firmly to the plate, where it is not drawn through, and must resist the acid perfectly in the untouched parts. The smoking is done to enable you to see your lines in the copper, light on dark; this is rather curious at first, but you will get used to it. The stopping-out varnish is also to protect the plate, and is only a cheaper sort of ground dissolved in oil of lavender or ether. When the plate is cool, it should be of a brilliant uniform black, and if there are any dull, smoky-looking places on it, the ground is burnt. Here the ground may be rubbed off, or will show cracks, if you touch it, in these places, and the varnish should be cleaned off the face with turpentine, the plate carefully dried and regrounded. Otherwise the varnish will either crack while you are drawing on it, or come off in the bath of acid, and your work will be spoiled.

You draw upon the varnished plate with needles or points; any steel points will do, from a knitting-needle to the best big point you can get. The small needles invented by Mr. Whistler I find the best; but this is a personal liking. They are of all shapes and sizes. You may commence and draw in your entire subject, only remembering that you must leave your foreground lines further apart than those in the distance.

You may make your drawing either with the same needle, all over, or with needles of different sizes; for though one half of the art is in the drawing, the other half, and the really characteristic half, is in the biting. There is very little to be said about the drawing, save that you must draw just as well as ever you can; you will find out almost immediately that you have the most responsive tool in your fingers, and that you can work with it in any direction. Do not bother, if you use the same needle, because the drawing looks flat, and the lines are of the same width; the biting will fix all that. Draw away; if you are afraid to tackle the copper straight away with a point, paint your design on it, with a little Chinese white, or, if you have a pencil drawing of the subject, you may make a tracing from it, and go over that, transferring it to the plate; or you may turn the drawing face down and run it through a copper plate press; the drawing will come off on the varnished surface in reverse, and if you are doing a portrait of a place you must otherwise reverse it yourself. If you wish to sketch from nature in reverse, put up a mirror on an easel, and turn your back to the subject, drawing from the picture in the mirror, for, you must remember, that any subject drawn, as you see it, on a copper plate, or even a wood-block, prints in reverse.

Next, to bite or etch the drawing into the copper plate, take equal parts of nitric acid and water and mix them in a glass-stoppered bottle, some hours before you wish to use the mixture, for there is enough heat produced by the chemical action to melt the ground if it is used at once.

Or have a quantity of what is known as Dutch mordant made; this is composed of--

Two parts Chlorate of Potash,
Ten parts Hydrochloric Acid,
Eighty-eight parts water.

Next, get an ordinary photographer's porcelain or rubber bath or tray; lay the plate in it, pour the acid over it; in a few seconds bubbles will arise, in all the lines; brush them away with a feather; leave the plate, if there is any fine work on it, in the bath for only two or three minutes, say for a light sky; take it out with rubber finger-tips or a stick, for the acid will burn your fingers and a drop will rot your clothes, staining them light yellow; wash the plate thoroughly in clean water, dry it carefully with blotting-paper. Take some of your stopping-out varnish, thin it with a little (a very little) turpentine, paint over the very lightest parts of the drawing with a camel's-hair brush dipped in the diluted varnish, and thus stop them out--that is, stop them from biting any more by painting them with the varnish. Wait till the places where you have painted the varnish are thoroughly dry; then put the plate in the bath again and bite the next stronger, nearer set of lines; of course, save where the lines are covered by the stopping-out varnish, they will keep on biting. Continue biting and stopping out till you get to the foreground, where the lines should now be quite broad and deep; take off the ground front and back by washing it with a rag dipped in turpentine, dry it, and the plate is ready to print from.

Another method is to commence by drawing in the darks, biting them, then drawing in the middle distance, the darks going on biting all the while, and finally the extreme distance, when the whole plate will be biting together; by this method no stopping out is necessary, but in working out of doors it is awkward to carry baths and acid around with one, otherwise one must run back to the studio, to bite between each stage. But these two methods can be mixed up, and frequently are, and you may also work in the bath, drawing lines through or over others, thus getting richness while the biting is going on. The bad fumes which are given off during the biting are not dangerous. In working with the Dutch mordant, which bites slower than nitric acid and makes no bubbles, but bites straight down, while nitric acid enlarges the lines laterally, you will inhale much of the fumes, but they won't hurt you. Although you do not see any action with the Dutch mordant, brush the lines with a feather, else a deposit is formed and they will bite unevenly.

It is very difficult to tell when a plate is well bitten, the biting is very difficult, but on taking it out of the bath and holding it on a level with your eye, you can see the bitten lines; you can also feel the biting with a needle, and you may take off a bit of the varnish with your thumb-nail or turpentine and look at the lines, re-covering them again with the stopping-out varnish; but after this, of course, they will not bite in that place.

Again, the lines do not bite evenly; where they are close together they bite faster, and, after the plate has been in the acid some time, it may change its speed of biting; differences of atmosphere and temperature affect it even with the same acid on the same day; if the nitric acid is too weak add more acid; if too strong pour in water, and quick, else the ground will come off: it is too strong when it boils and bubbles all over; it is too weak when there are no bubbles. Dutch mordant eats always slowly, and never, so far as I know, destroys the ground. At the last, for very strong darks, you may sometimes use a little pure nitric acid, but it will most likely tear up the ground, and if you leave it long enough will spoil all your lines, giving you only a great black hole. These are the systems employed by all etchers; the lengthy dissertations about white ground, silver ground, positive and negative processes, need not concern you, they are never practised, and mostly unknown to the best men. These simple directions should enable you to produce artistic plates, if you have the necessary ability. Still, when you have had a proof of your plate pulled--I will talk of printing in the next lecture--you will find that there are all sorts of imperfections in it, possibly holes, places where it is not bitten enough or too much bitten, or that it is too dark or too light all over; it is but seldom that a plate is right when the first proof is pulled. If you find a hole bitten in it, take a burnishing tool, flatten the hole down as much as possible, find the place on the back with a pair of calipers, hammer it up from the back, placing it on an anvil, burnish it again and polish the surface with charcoal, oil, and rags; revarnish the place, redraw, and rebite it. If it is only a small place you may take up some nitric acid on a feather, and paint the little spot to be rebitten with that. A few drops of the acid have nearly as much power as a great deal. In fact you may paint the face of your plate with acid and do your biting in that way, without ever immersing it in the bath at all. If it is too much bitten it must be rubbed down with charcoal and oil, a tedious process. If it is too light it must be rebitten all over; then take a rebiting roller, putting some liquid etching ground on a separate plate, take the ground up on the roller and roll the face of the plate very carefully; the ground should cover the face without going into any of the lines; heat it very slightly to dry the ground, leave it for a day or so and then bite as before. If there are places where lines want joining or little touches of dark would be effective, put them in with a graver or a point.

You may use a graver altogether, and produce a line engraving; or a point, either steel or diamond, and make what is known as a dry-point etching, that is, merely a scratched drawing on the copper; the point throws up, as you draw with it, a furrow, which is greater or less as you incline the point, and this holds the ink, and is called burr, and gives for a few proofs great richness; a steel face can, however, be put on the copper plate, and any number of pulls may be taken. The difference between the cutting of lines with a graver and the drawing of them with a point is this: the graver, both in metal and wood, is pushed from one; the point in etching, and even the knives in wood cutting, are drawn toward one.

Messrs. Roberson have invented a plate of celluloid which, for dry point work, seems to be fairly good, and as this plate is white or cream-coloured, as one draws on it the lines may be filled up with paint, and one may thus see the drawing as one works. Of course, the same thing may be done with dry point on copper. The great advantage of the celluloid is its lightness. It must not, however, be heated in printing, otherwise it will be ruined. Many etchers are now making experiments with aluminium, but no certain results have as yet been obtained.

There are many other forms of engraving included under the title of Etching, although, properly speaking, they have nothing to do with it.

Aquatint: a ground, made by depositing powdered resin in solution with spirits of wine, is poured on the plate, slightly heated, and as it dries the resin adheres to the plate and cracks up irregularly; a drawing may be made on this, and stopped out in the usual way. Or powdered resin may be sprinkled on the plate, heated, when it will adhere, or the plate may be placed in a box containing resin in very fine powder, heated, and the box shaken; the resin will settle on it and produce the ground.

A very similar ground may be made by passing the ordinarily-grounded plate through a copper-plate printing-press, with a piece of sandpaper over it, three or four times, then the design may be painted on it in stopping-out varnish, and at times a very good result may be obtained. Lines may be put in, etched before the ground is laid; but personally I don't like the lines at all; without them the result is rather like a bitten painting. Silk and canvas can also be placed on the grounded plate, which is then run through the press, to get tints in the ground.

Tints may be obtained after the plate is bitten by painting it with olive oil and sprinkling flowers of sulphur on it, which gives a very charming tint, but it does not last long; I believe that if acid is poured over it, it may last better. Mr. Frank Short says so, but I have never tried the experiment.

Soft ground etchings are made by mixing etching ground and tallow together in equal proportions, covering the plate with this composition by means of the roller: that is, put some of the composition on a clean plate, pass the roller over it till it is covered with the soft ground, and then roll it on to the plate on which you propose to work, smoke it and then stretch a piece of rough-grained or lined drawing paper over the face, as paper is stretched for making water-colours, draw upon this with a lead pencil and then carefully take the paper off; you must not rest on or touch the plate with your fingers; the ground comes away with the paper where the pencil has passed, and the design is seen on the copper, and is then to be bitten in as in ordinary etching.

Mezzotint is also included, for some unknown reason, with etching. The face of the plate is roughened in every direction by going over it with a toothed instrument called a rocker, until it will print perfectly black; the design is then traced on it; the drawing is made by scraping down the lights, and finally by burnishing the whites quite smooth.

Tint effects can also be obtained by a smooth-toothed wheel, the roulette, the same as that used by process engravers; only here it produces blacks, while they use it to get lights.

Monotypes, that is paintings made in colour or black and white on a bare copper plate in the usual way, though they must be handled thinly, may be passed through the press, and they will yield one exquisitely soft and delicate impression. The electrotyping and duplicating of them changes their character and value entirely: it is a ridiculous and inartistic proceeding.

But after going through all this list,--I have barely referred to steel engraving in line, which, as I have said, is only working with an ordinary graver in steel, and is slow and tedious, unsatisfactory drudgery; or to stipple engraving, dotting and biting in dots, instead of lines, as practised by Bartolozzi,--one comes back to the simple method I described at first, the method with some improvements of Rembrandt, the method of Whistler, or in dry point the method of Helleu; and what is good enough for those masters should be good enough for you.

LECTURE IX.

_THE PRINTING OF ETCHINGS._

Which is the more interesting and amusing--the drawing, biting, or printing of an etching has never been decided. But no artist is willing, if he can help it, to allow any one else, once he has mastered the method of work, to perform any part of the operation for him.

The printing of an etching is, in theory, very simple; in practice, it is most difficult, but most delightful.

The plate being bitten, as I have described in a previous lecture, must now be printed, for the prints from it, and not the plate itself, are the end of etching--really of all illustration.

You will have to spend several pounds on an etching outfit, so you had better get a good one. The small ones, including press, ink, chemicals, quite complete, sold by Roberson, of 99, Long Acre, are most excellent as far as they go, for small plates, and taking round the country with one on a sketching tour; but for serious work, a more practical set of tools is necessary. Therefore I would advise you first to take lessons of a good etcher, who will allow you to work with him, or to go to a printer and get him to show you how the work is done.

This is the method: the first thing to do is to obtain some good handmade paper, almost all old paper is excellent; it should be unruled, of course; often the tone of it is lovely, and it may contain most beautiful water-marks. I am referring to Dutch, French, English, or German papers of at least a century old. At times you may be able to pick up old ledgers, account-books, or packages of unprinted paper; treasure them up; if you don't print etchings on them, there is nothing more delightful to draw upon. There are also Japanese and India papers, which give most beautiful delicate translucent effect to prints. Vellum, parchment, and even silk or satin may be printed on. But as a general rule the old handmade Dutch paper is the most satisfactory, if you can get it. For ordinary work and experiments, modern paper is quite good enough, and very good handmade paper can be obtained from Roberson's. Let us suppose you are going to print; twenty-four hours before, take several sheets of paper, rather more than you want, in case of failure or for any other reason; cut the sheets the size you desire them, a little larger than the plate, so as to leave a decent margin. Cut the paper first; Japanese paper, for example, cannot easily be cut when it is wet. Get a sheet of window glass, lay it flat on a table, take the first sheet of paper and damp it on one side by passing a wet sponge over it, lay it on the glass; on top of this sheet lay another dry one; damp the top of that with the sponge; and continue laying down sheets and damping their upper faces till you have enough; put another sheet of window glass on the top, and a heavy weight upon it; in a day the whole mass should be completely dampened all through. I believe the same thing can be done by a copying press and book, and I have heard it is so done by lithographers, but the way I have described is the usual one that is followed by plate printers. The next thing is the press. A good secondhand one may be bought at Hughes & Kimber's, West Harding Street, Fetter Lane, for about five pounds. Much depends, however, on the size and finish. You should have it brought to your studio, set up and adjusted for you by skilled workmen. Then you must buy a heater and a jigger for your plates, ink, oil, canvas, and a number of other things, dabbers, a muller, an ink-slab, and a big palette knife; all these will run up a bill of ten pounds or so.

But having your press and other things, let us go to work: light the gas-burners under the heater which you have bought; if too much flame comes out and makes the iron top too hot, plug up some of the jets. Put your plate on the top of the heater. First, however, see that your press is adjusted, so that the plate will fit in. To do this, put a piece of paper on the top of the plate and run it in the press to try it, and see if it goes under the roller without tearing the paper. Take some of the ink out of the can, or better, get it in powder, put it on the ink-slab and mix it with oil with the palette knife; then take the muller and grind the ink until it is thoroughly ground and mixed and of about the thickness of paint as it comes out of the tube. But each plate will require more or less oil or colour, and some brown, red, or possibly blue mixed with it to take off the crude raw look which pure black often has in the print. The plate being now warm, not so hot as to boil or burn the ink, dab with a dabber the ink from the slab all over the face of the plate (it is warmed to wipe the ink off easily), slide it from the heater to the wooden box called a jigger, which must be placed alongside the former. You should get a printer to arrange your things for you. Take a piece of the rag or canvas for wiping, double it carefully and loosely in your hand--this requires much practice--and remove all the ink which is on the surface of the plate. Even after you have wiped it some time, an oily film will remain, which, unless you polish the plate with whiting rubbed on your hand, you cannot remove, and you do not want to, because the oil gives a delicious tone to the print. Some ink may be left in places on the surface to increase and strengthen the work, but what you must learn to do is not to wipe any of the ink out of the bitten lines. This is very difficult, and if you do wipe it out, you must commence all over again, only the chances are that you will know nothing about this until the plate is printed. The colour may also be increased by going over the surface of the plate, having again warmed it, if it has become cool, with a bit of soft taffatas silk with a trembling muscular motion of the arm and fingers. This action, called retroussage, which must be seen to be understood, drags the ink slightly over the surface of the plate without taking much out of the lines.

Now take off the weights from your paper, take up a sheet, which should be thoroughly damped, first brushing it with a soft brush to remove any drops of water or dirt or dust. The paper should be placed near the press. Put the plate face upwards on the press, on which the blankets have been properly arranged--you must see this done for yourselves--the plate underneath of course; lay the sheet of damp paper on the face of the plate and run it through the press once; it is well to put a sheet of ordinary thick paper on the top of the damp sheet, otherwise the latter will stick to the blankets; raise the blankets and take up the first sheet of paper, the print will most likely adhere to that, if it does not, take it up carefully by one edge, it will come away from the copper, and you will find the print on the under side of it.

Japanese and India prints require very careful handling, especially the latter. They are usually printed on to a sheet of plate paper by dusting it, or the back of the India paper, with flour; this, on passing through the press, is made into paste by the dampness of the India paper, and they are thus moulded together.

As soon as the prints are taken off the press, put them between sheets of blotting paper and allow them to dry for some time, they will come out flat; if you neglect this, they will crinkle up very badly, and are difficult to get smooth again.

This is the way a copper plate is printed, but you must see it done and practise for a long time before you can do it decently.

Colour prints from copper plates may be made in one or more ways. The various colours may be put on by applying them where they are wanted with stumps, or the plate may be painted by applying the colours with brushes. Several plates may be used, just as in lithography or coloured block printing, and these coloured plates wiped as I have been describing. Many prints, however, are coloured by hand after they are printed.

Mezzotints, acquatints, steel engravings, &c., are printed in the same way as copper-plates. The rubbing with the canvas and the hand, and the tremendous pressure to which the plates are subjected, quickly spoil the clearness and sharpness of the lines; therefore if any large number of prints are wanted, a coating of steel is put on the face of the copper-plate by steel-plating it; this protects the copper, and as soon as the steel facing shows signs of wear it may be removed, and a new film of steel applied; hence an unlimited edition can be printed in time from a copper plate. If it is necessary that the printing should be done more rapidly, electrotypes can be made from the original copper-plate (_see_ electrotype and stereotype Lecture), and several printers can then work on these electrotypes at the same time. The electrotypes are rarely equal to the originals.

Such is a brief outline of the method of printing copper plates; but I cannot too strongly impress upon you the fact that it is a handicraft which, though most interesting, requires long apprenticeship, with a master printer, and in one's studio, before good results can be obtained.

LECTURE X.

_PHOTOGRAVURE AND PHOTO-LITHOGRAPHY, ETC._

These processes or methods of reproduction are the outcome of the endeavour to supersede the artist and engraver. They are quite mechanical, or should be; in fact the less evidence there is of any intervention on the part of the operator or maker of a photographic plate, the better it will be for the work which is being reproduced; still, if an artist turns his attention to these processes, the finest results are obtained, even though he must completely efface himself in the work. M. Amand Durand made the best photogravures ever produced because he was an artist. No mere photographic or mechanical engraver ever approached him.

The theory of photogravure and photo-lithography, in the best work, is the same as that of photo-engraving, which is described in a previous Lecture. In photogravure a photograph of a drawing is usually made on a sensitised copper plate; this is coated with some acid-resisting varnish, but when the varnished plate is washed with water or some acid, the varnish covering the picture on the plate comes away, leaving the picture on the bare copper. This is then bitten in exactly the same way as an etching, the success of the plate depending entirely on the artistic intelligence of the person who does the biting. Or else the photographic print is made on the varnish itself just exactly in the same way as for a zinc block; only in this case the picture is washed away and not the surrounding portions; the biting is then proceeded with.

There are also many other processes of photogravure, while heliotype, autotype, Woodbury-type, collotype, are closely allied to it. The word type is probably used simply because by none of these methods can the plates be used with letterpress. All these processes, however, are very complicated, require expensive machinery, are quite outside the field of art, most secret, and, except theoretically, of little importance to you.

A good photogravure, for example, by Amand Durand or Ch. Dujardin is often a most excellent reproduction of a line-drawing or an etching--so good, in fact, as to be almost indistinguishable from an etching. But to endeavour to palm off pen drawings as etchings, when they have been reproduced in some such way, is to act the part of a common swindler.

Photo-lithography is exactly the same as photo-zincography--process block-making. The drawing is photographed on to transfer paper, covered with lithographic ink and transferred to the stone like any other lithograph. This is a mechanical process; there are a number of ways of getting the drawing on to the stone, and the results are described under many names. Collotypes and other varieties of photographic prints are made from gelatine or other films; they require expensive machines to produce, they are all mechanical processes which you could not readily use unless you went into the business, and are quite outside your art.

One is being continually shown processes which are going to revolutionise engraving and incidentally do away with the artist; this has not yet been accomplished. But just as one sees to-day the momentary triumph of the photographer--or rather of the person who is exploiting the poor photographer--one may remember that chromos have not annihilated painting, nor can the photograph ever be anything more than a useful aid to illustration.

LECTURE XI.

_MAKING READY FOR THE PRINTING PRESS._

Having made your drawing, had it reproduced by one of the methods I described, you must now have it printed.

Excepting in the case of very limited fine editions of not more than one hundred copies, the original plates or blocks on which the designs have been engraved are very seldom used, because if anything should happen to the blocks or plates they would have to be done over again. So copies of them, called electrotypes and sometimes stereotypes, are made. The electrotype of a wood or metal block or plate is produced in the same way as an electrotype of any other object, by usually taking a wax cast of it, putting the cast in an electrotyping bath, when a shell of copper is deposited upon it. As many of these wax casts may be made as are wanted, and as many shells are deposited as desired. These copper shells are then backed up with wood or metal and are ready to print from. They are wonderfully cheaply and quickly turned out, and in the case of magazines and books, for which a large circulation is expected, are always used; and it is almost, with good work, impossible to tell the difference between the electrotype, and the original; from a process block or wood engraving, while the original block is preserved for making additional electrotypes for future editions. In the case of cheap books, or newspapers with illustrations, the _Daily Graphic_, for example--the _Chronicle_ was printed almost altogether from the original blocks, or electrotypes--the page of type is set up with the original blocks in it, and this is stereotyped to print from; that is, a papier maché mould is made of the entire page of type and illustrations, either by pounding down on to it, with a heavy brush, a thick sheet of papier maché till the entire page is moulded into the pulpy papier maché, or by covering it with successive sheets of thin damp paper until a solid mould or matrix of paper is made on the type; this matrix is hardened and placed in a curved steel case, and type metal poured into the case upon the paper mould; as soon as the type metal has cooled it is taken out, and a perfect cast of the page is seen in metal, curved so that it will fit on the cylinder of the printing press. If there are no illustrations, it may be printed right off, without further preparation; but if the page contains illustrations, in order to get the proper amount of colour on the blacks, and the delicacy of the greys, little pieces of paper must be put over and under the illustrations, on the printing press, to bring out their colour, by increasing or lessening the pressure. This is the way in which it is done: a man, called the overlay cutter, has several proofs of the illustration given him, and he cuts them out so as to produce a series of skeleton designs, one containing only the blacks, another the blacks and dark greys, the third the blacks, dark and light greys, and so on; these he pastes on the top of each other, forming the picture in relief, and this relief picture is either placed under the block to be printed from, or else on the opposite cylinder under the paper on which the picture is to be printed--it must be put on very accurately and firmly, for if it slips it will ruin the whole page. All this work connected with printing is most interesting, most complicated, and most wonderfully performed. In order to understand it thoroughly, you must go and work in a printing office; all illustrators should learn at least how overlays are made, how to correct them, and how to work on blocks or electros, though this is really the duty of the engraver; when they are on the printing press, little things may happen which may make or mar a whole book, which only the artist can detect, and which he should be able to set right. Therefore if you are making a beautiful book, you should not only see all the engraver's proofs of your drawings, but the printer's proofs as well; all this requires much work and more knowledge, but unless you care enough about your work to acquire this knowledge, I doubt if you will ever be a great success as an illustrator--that is, artistically.

Very much has been said lately about the artist considering the limitations of the printing press, the paper, and ink. Really to-day with the best engravers, the best printers and paper-makers, there are no limits to the possibilities of reproducing and printing drawings. The limits are the depth of the publisher's pocket. Almost any drawing whatever can be reproduced very well, by some means, provided the editor or publisher will pay the price charged for having it reproduced, and the engravers and printers have the knowledge of their craft to reproduce it. And if the book or magazine will stand the expense, it very likely will pay the publisher. But if you are working for a magazine, it is not likely that the proprietors can afford photogravures, therefore your work must be made so that it will reproduce well by wood engraving or process. And the necessity for attention to the mechanical requirements of drawing, engraving, and printing increase, as the price of the book or paper decreases, until when one comes down, financially, to the halfpenny papers, only those drawings can be used which will print at the utmost speed, and with the least care bestowed upon them, in poor ink and cheap paper. Still, there is no reason why the artistic quality also should degenerate; there are men at work to-day whose drawings would look just as well in the halfpenny evening papers as in a three-guinea book, and these men are to be congratulated on their perfect mastery of the cheaper methods of reproduction. Therefore try to do good work in your own way, and do not bother about anything but whether it will look well on the printed page.

UNWIN BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON AND CHILWORTH.

Transcriber's Note

Archaic and variant spelling is preserved as printed.

Minor punctuation errors have been repaired.

Hyphenation has been made consistent.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Illustration of Books, by Joseph Pennell