Part 4

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.