Part 3

But if your design is more in the nature of a composition with elaborate figures, or figures in action, it will be almost impossible to do this. True, most interesting sketches may be made, and should be made and must be made direct from nature. But your final design will in nearly every case have to be built up from these. Therefore, unless you can "see the whole thing in your head" before you put it on paper, so clearly that you only want a model to keep you right, I think you had better make sketch after sketch, and then transfer the best to the sheet on which it is to be completed by putting transfer paper under the sketch and tracing paper over it. Probably you will pencil on the final drawing, but do as little as you can, for the camera, when the drawing comes to be photographed, pays just as much attention to smudges, finger marks, pencil lines, and meaningless accidents as it does to those portions which are brim full of meaning. By neglecting these matters all artists give engravers much trouble, and unless the engraver is an artist too he not infrequently bestows great pains on the reproduction of an accidental line, even though in order to do so he ruins the entire drawing. And again, in all cheap work your drawing is placed with a number of others and no special attention is paid to it, and it reproduces somehow, or don't, which is much the same thing. But in case of failure you will be blamed by the public.

The first thing to remember in putting your drawing on the paper is the space it is to fill; if it is to be a full page, it must be made the size of that page or twice as large; at any rate it must have some definite relation to it. In the case of half a page, it is only necessary that the top or bottom of the drawing should fit across the printed matter; still, the drawing should not be made so high that it will not fit in, or so narrow as to be ineffective, but if you will look at any book or magazine you will see what I mean.

Again, for cheap rapid work as little cross-hatching as possible should be indulged in, for all cross-hatched lozenges become smaller lozenges in reduction, and the smaller they are the easier it is for them to fill up and clog with ink. Draw your shadows with parallel lines whenever you can without being mechanical; they engrave and print well.

After several years' experience I am quite unable to say how much or how little a drawing should be reduced, for there is no reason why it should be drawn the same size it is to be engraved, save that the nearer it is the same size, the nearer the result should be to the original; if the reduction is to be great, it is easier to make the design larger and have it mechanically reduced. The excessive reduction of a drawing tends to make the lines run together into a black mass sometimes, and the enlargement of a drawing--this, too, may be done--makes the lines at times look crude and clumsy. But it is impossible to foretell results in any two cases. Only there is one matter: a good drawing in line will, with good engraving and printing, look well, whether the artist knew anything of process or not. But there are some things to be observed, if certain results are wished for.

In simple cheap work the ink should be uniformly black, for the engraved block will be put with type, and inked with the same amount and strength of colour all over; therefore, in order to get variety, distance, effect, you must use lines of different widths, placed at varying distances apart, not of different degrees of colour. In theory at least, then, the foreground should be drawn with a firm bold line, the middle distance with a medium-sized line, the lines themselves closer together, and the extreme distance with a thin line. But there is no rule, only get variety in your line and this will produce variety and interest in the engraved result.

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.