Transcriber’s Notes:
Underscores “_” before and after a word or phrase indicate _italics_
in the original text.
Small capitals have been converted to SOLID capitals.
Illustrations have been moved so they do not break up paragraphs.
Typographical errors have been silently corrected but other variations
in spelling and punctuation remain unaltered.
The use of “v” in REPRODVCTION and Illvstrations as they appear on the
title page and in the heading for the list of illustrations have been
retained.
[Illustration]
A · PRACTICAL · HANDBOOK · OF · DRAWING
FOR MODERN METHODS · OF · REPRODVCTION
BY
CHARLES G. HARPER,
AUTHOR OF “ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY.”
[Illustration]
_Illustrated with Drawings by several Hands, and with Sketches
by the Author showing Comparative Results obtained by the
several Methods of Reproduction now in Use._
LONDON: CHAPMAN & HALL, LD.
1894.
_TO CHARLES MORLEY, ESQ._
_DEAR MR. MORLEY_,
_It is with a peculiar satisfaction that I inscribe this book to
yourself, for to you more than to any other occupant of an editorial
chair is due the position held by “process” in illustrating the hazards
and happenings of each succeeding week._
_Time was when the “Pall Mall Budget,” with a daring originality
never to be forgotten, illustrated the news with diagrams fashioned
heroically from the somewhat limited armoury of the compositor. Nor
I nor my contemporaries, I think, have forgotten those weapons of
offence—the brass rules, hyphens, asterisks, daggers, braces, and
other common objects of the type-case—with which the Northumberland
Street printers set forth the details of a procession, or the
configuration of a country. There was in those days a world of
meaning—apart from libellous innuendo—in a row of asterisks; for did
they not signify a chain of mountains? And what Old Man Eloquent was
ever so vividly convincing as those serpentine brass rules that served
as the accepted hieroglyphics for rivers on type-set maps?_
_These were the beginnings of illustration in the “Pall Mall Budget”
when you first filled the editorial chair. The leaps and bounds
by which you came abreast of (and, indeed, overlook) the other
purveyors of illustrated news, hot and hot, I need not recount, nor
is there occasion here to allude to the events which led to what some
alliterative journalist has styled the Battle of the Budgets. Only
this: that if others have reaped where you have sown, why! ’twas ever
thus._
_For the rest, I must needs apologize to you for a breach of an
etiquette which demands that permission be first had and obtained
before a Dedication may be printed. To print an unauthorized tribute to
a private individual is wrong: when (as in the present case) an Editor
is concerned I am not sure that the wrong-doing halts anything before_
lèse majesté.
_Yours very truly,
CHARLES G. HARPER._
LONDON,
_May, 1894_.
[Illustration: PREFACE]
Everywhere to-day is the Illustrator (artist he may not always
be), for never was illustration so marketable as now; and the
correspondence-editors of the Sunday papers have at length found a new
outlet for the superfluous energies of their eager querists in advising
them to “go in” for black and white: as one might advise an applicant
to adventure upon a commercial enterprise of large issues and great
risks before the amount of his capital (if any) had been ascertained.
It is so very easy to make black marks upon white cardboard, is it not?
and not particularly difficult to seize upon the egregious mannerisms
of the accepted purveyors of “the picturesque”—that _cliché_ phrase,
battered nowadays out of all real meaning.
But for really serious art—personal, aggressive, definite and
instructed—one requires something more than a _penchant_, or the
stimulating impulsion of an empty pocket, or even the illusory
magnetism of the _vie bohême_ of the lady-novelist, whose artists still
wear velvet coats and aureoles of auburn hair, and marry the inevitable
heiress in the third volume. Not that one really wishes to be one of
those creatures, for the lady-novelists’ love-lorn embryonic Michael
Angelos are generally great cads; but this by the way!
What is wanted in the aspirant is the vocation: the feeling for beauty
of line and for decoration, and the powers both of idealizing and of
selection. Pen-drawing and allied methods are the chiefest means of
illustration at this day, and these qualities are essential to their
successful employ. Practitioners in pen-and-ink are already numerous
enough to give any new-comer pause before he adds himself to their
number, but certainly the greater number of them are merely journalists
without sense of style; mannerists only of a peculiarly vicious
parasitic type.
“But,” ask those correspondents, “does illustration pay?” “Yes,” says
that omniscient person, the Correspondence-Editor. Then those pixie-led
wayfarers through life, filled with an inordinate desire to draw, to
paint, to translate Nature on to canvas or cardboard (at a profit), set
about the staining of fair paper, the wasting of good ink, brushes,
pens, and all the materials with which the graphic arts are pursued,
and lo! just because the greater number of them set out, not with the
love of an art, but with the single idea of a paying investment of time
and labour—it does _not_ pay! Remuneration in their case is Latin for
three farthings.
Publishers and editors, it is said, can now, with the cheapness
of modern methods of reproduction as against the expense of
wood-engraving, afford to pay artists better because they pay engravers
less. Perhaps they can. But do they?
Pen-drawing in particular has, by reason of these things, almost come
to stand for exaggeration and a shameless license—a convention that
sees and renders everything in a manner flamboyantly quaint. But this
vein is being worked down to the bed-rock: it has plumbed its deepest
depth, and everything now points to a period of instructed sobriety
where now the untaught _abandon_ of these mannerists has rioted through
the pages of illustrated magazines and newspapers to a final disrepute.
Artists are now beginning to ask how they can dissociate themselves
from that merely manufacturing army of frantic draughtsmen who never,
or rarely, go beyond the exercise of pure line-work; and the widening
power of process gives them answer. Results striking and unhackneyed
are always to be obtained to-day by those who are not hag-ridden by
that purely Philistine ideal of the clear sharp line.
These pages are written as a plea for something else than the eternal
round of uninspired work. They contain suggestions and examples of
results obtained in striving to be at one with modern methods of
reproduction, and perhaps I may be permitted to hope that in this
direction they may be of some service.
CHARLES G. HARPER.
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
THE RISE OF AN ART 9
COMPARATIVE PROCESSES 22
PAPER 78
PENS 92
INKS 96
THE MAKING OF A PEN-DRAWING 102
WASH DRAWINGS 121
STYLES AND MANNER 135
PAINTERS’ PEN-DRAWINGS 154
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
ENGLISH PEN ARTISTS OF TO-DAY: Examples of their work,
with some Criticisms and Appreciations. Super royal
4to, £3 3_s._ net.
THE BRIGHTON ROAD: Old Times and New on a Classic
Highway. With 95 Illustrations by the Author and
from old prints. Demy 8vo, 16_s._
FROM PADDINGTON TO PENZANCE: The Record of a Summer
Tramp. With 105 Illustrations by the Author. Demy
8vo, 16_s._
[Illustration]
[Illustration: List of Illvstrations]
PAGE
VIGNETTE ON TITLE
KENSINGTON PALACE. Photogravure _Frontispiece_
THE HALL, BARNARD’S INN 25
A WINDOW, CHEPSTOW CASTLE 29
ON WHATMAN’S “NOT” PAPER 31
FROM A DRAWING ON ALLONGÉ PAPER 31, 32
BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY. Bitumen process 38
BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY. Swelled gelatine process 39
A NOTE AT GORRAN. Bitumen process 43
A NOTE AT GORRAN. Swelled gelatine process 43
CHARLWOOD. Swelled gelatine process 45
CHARLWOOD. Reproduced by Chefdeville 45
VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS. Bitumen process 48
VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS. Bitumen process.
Sky revised by hand-work 49
KENSINGTON PALACE 51
SNODGRASS FARM 53
SUNSET, BLACK ROCK 55
DRAWING IN DILUTED INKS, REPRODUCED BY GILLOT 57
CHEPSTOW CASTLE 61
CLIFFORD’S INN: A FOGGY NIGHT 65
PENCIL AND PEN AND INK DRAWING REPRODUCED BY HALF-TONE
PROCESS 68
THE VILLAGE STREET, TINTERN. NIGHT 70
LEEBOTWOOD 71
EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUMS 75, 76
CHURCHYARD CROSS, RAGLAN 76
CANVAS-GRAIN CLAY-BOARD 84
PLAIN DIAGONAL GRAIN 85
PLAIN PERPENDICULAR GRAIN 85
DRAWING IN PENCIL ON WHITE AQUATINT GRAIN CLAY-BOARD 86
BLACK AQUATINT CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF DRAWING 87
BLACK DIAGONAL-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF
DRAWING 87
BLACK PERPENDICULAR-LINED CLAY-BOARD AND TWO STAGES OF
DRAWING 88
VENETIAN FÊTE ON THE SEINE, WITH THE TROCADERO ILLUMINATED 89
THE GATEHOUSE, MOYNES COURT 110
PORTRAIT SKETCHES 118, 119
THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AT NIGHT, FROM THE RIVER 122
VICTORIA EMBANKMENT NEAR BLACKFRIARS BRIDGE: A FOGGY
NIGHT 123
CORFE RAILWAY STATION 125
THE AMBULATORY, DORE ABBEY 127
MOONLIGHT: CONFLUENCE OF THE SEVERN AND THE WYE 131
DIAGRAM SHOWING METHOD OF REDUCING DRAWINGS FOR
REPRODUCTION 133
PAINTER’S PEN-DRAWING—PASTURAGE, BY MR. ALFRED HARTLEY 155
" " PORTRAIT, BY MR. BONNAT 156
TOWING PATH, ABINGDON, BY MR. DAVID MURRAY 158
A PORTRAIT FROM A DRAWING BY MR. T. BLAKE WIRGMAN 159
FINIS 161
A PRACTICAL HANDBOOK OF DRAWING FOR REPRODUCTION.
INTRODUCTORY.
Pen-drawing is the most spontaneous of the arts, and amongst the
applied crafts the most modern. The professional pen-draughtsman was
unknown but a few years since; fifteen years ago, or thereabouts,
he was an obscure individual, working at a poorly considered craft,
and handling was so seldom thought of that the illustrator who could
draw passably well was rarely troubled by his publisher on the score
of technique. For that which had deserved the name of technique was
dead, so far as illustration was concerned, and “process,” which was
presently to vivify it, was, although born already, but yet a sickly
child. To-day the illustrators are numerous beyond computation, and the
name of those who are impelled to the spoiling of good paper and the
wasting of much ink is indeed legion.
For uncounted years before the invention of photo-mechanical methods of
engraving, there had been practised a method of drawing with the pen,
which formed a pretty pastime wherewith to fleet the idle hours of the
gentlemanly amateur, and this was, for no discoverable reason, called
“etching.”
It is needless at this time to go into the derivatives of that word,
with the object of proving that the verb “to etch” means something
very different from drawing in ink with a pen; it should have, long
since, been demonstrated to everybody’s satisfaction that etching is
the art of drawing on metal with a point, and of biting in that drawing
with acids. But the manufacturers of pens long fostered the fallacy by
selling so-called etching-pens: probably they do so even now.
By whom pen-drawings were first called etchings none can say. Certainly
the two arts have little or nothing in common: the terms are not
interchangeable. Etching has its own especial characteristics, which
may, to an extent, be imitated with the pen, but the quality and
direction of line produced by a rigid steel point on metal are entirely
different from the lines drawn with a flexible nib upon paper. The line
produced by an etching needle has a uniform thickness, but with the
needle you can work in any imaginable direction upon the copper plate.
With a nib upon paper, a line varying in thickness with the pressure of
the hand results, but there is not that entirely free use of the hand
as with the etching point: you cannot with entire freedom draw from and
toward yourself.
The greatest exponents of pen-drawing have not entirely conquered
the normal inability of the pen to express the infinite delightful
waywardnesses of the etching-point. Again, the etched line is only less
sharp than the line made by the graver upon wood; the line drawn with
the pen upon the smoothest surface is ragged, viewed under a magnifying
glass. This, of course, is not a plea for a clean line in pen-work—that
is only the ideal of commercial draughtsmanship—but the man who can
produce such a line with the pen at will, who can overcome the tendency
to inflexible lines, has risen victorious over the stubbornness of a
material.
The sketch-books, gilt-lettered and india-rubber banded, of the
bread-and-butter miss, and what one may be allowed, perhaps, to term
the “pre-process” amateur generally, give no hint of handling, no
foretaste of technique. They are barren of aught save ill-registered
facts, and afford no pleasure to the eye, which is the end, the
sensuous end, of all art. Rather did these artless folk almost
invariably seek to adventure beyond the province of the pen by strokes
infinitely little and microscopic, so that they might haply deceive the
eye by similarity to wood engravings or steel prints. But in those days
pen-drawing was only a pursuit; to-day it is a living art. Now, an art
is not merely a storehouse of facts, nor a moral influence. If it was
of these things, then the photographic camera would be all-powerful,
and all that would be left to do with the hands would be the production
of devotional pictures; and of those who produced them the best artist
would infallibly be him with a character the most noted for piety.
Art, to the contrary, is entirely independent of subject or morals.
It is not sociology, nor ever shall be; and those who practise an art
might be the veriest pariahs, and yet their works rank technically,
artistically, among the best. Art is handling _in excelsis_, and its
results lie properly in the pride of the eye and the satisfaction of
the æsthetic sense, though Mr. Ruskin would have it otherwise.
Is this the lashing of a dead horse, or thrice slaying the slain? No,
I think not. The moral and literary fallacies remain. Open an art
exhibition and give your exhibits technical, not subject titles, and
you shall hear a mighty howl, I promise you. Mr. Hamerton, too, has
recently found grudging occasion to say that, for artists, “it does
not appear that a literary education would be necessary in all cases.”
Whenever was it necessary? But then Mr. Hamerton is himself one of
those philosophic writers of a winning literary turn who can practise
an art in by no means a distinguished way, but who write dogma by
the yard and fumble over every illustration of their precepts. His
_Drawing and Engraving_—a reprint from his _Encyclopædia Britannica_
article—is worse than useless to the student of illustration, and
especially of pen-drawing, because Mr. Hamerton has long been left
behind the times. He knows little of the admirable modern methods
of reproducing line-work, but gives us etymologies of drawing and
historical dissertations on engraving, which we do not want. Of such
antiquated matter are even the current editions of encyclopædias
fashioned. The fact is, the bulk of art criticism is written by men
who can only string platitudes and stale studio slang together,
without beginning to understand principles. The appalling journalese
of much “art criticism” is hopelessly out of date; the slang of a
half-forgotten _atélier_ is the lingo of would-be criticism to-day.
It seems strange that a man who can write pretty _vers de société_ or
another who writes essays (essays, truly, in the philological sense),
should for such acquirements be amongst those to whom is delegated the
criticism of art in painting, drawing, or engraving; but so it is.
No one who has not surmounted the difficulties of a medium can truly
appreciate technique in it, whether that medium be words, or paint, or
ink. No one, for instance, would give a painter or a pen-artist the
chance to review a poet’s new volume of poems. You would not send a
plumber to pronounce upon a baker’s method of kneading his dough. No;
but an ordinary reporter is judged capable of criticizing a gallery
of pictures. You cannot get much artistic change out of his report,
nor from the articles on art written by a man whose only claim to the
standing of “art critic” is the possession of a second-class
certificate in drawing from the Science and Art Department. But of such
stuff are the neurotic Neros of the literary “art critique” fashioned,
and equally unauthorized by works are the lectures on illustration with
which the ingenious Mr. Blackburn at decent intervals tickles suburban
audiences or the amiable _dilettante_ of the Society of Arts into the
fallacious belief that they know all about it, “which,” to quote the
Euclidian formula, “is absurd.” Indeed, not even the most industrious,
the best-informed, nor the most catholic-minded man could ever lecture,
or write articles, or publish an illustrated critical work upon
illustration which should show an approximation to completeness in its
examples of styles and methods. The thing has been attempted, but will
never be done, because the quantity of work—even good work—that has
been produced is so vast, the styles so varied. The great storehouses
of the best pen-work are the magazines, and from them the eclectic will
gather a rich harvest. The _Century_ and _Harper’s_ are now the chief
of these. The _Magazine of Art_ and the _Portfolio_, which were used to
be filled with good original work, are now busied in providing such
_réchauffés_ as photographic blocks from paintings old and new, but
chiefly old, because they cost nothing for copyright. As for newspaper
work, the _Daily Graphic_ is creating a school of its own, which does
far better work than ever its New York namesake (now defunct) ever
printed.
Some beautiful and most suggestive pen-drawings are to be found in
the earlier numbers of _L’Art_ and many Parisian publications, such
as the _Courier Français_, _Vie Moderne_, _Paris Illustré_, and _La
Petit Journal pour Rire_. Many of the _Salon_ catalogues, too, contain
admirable examples.
THE RISE OF AN ART.
Photo-mechanical processes of reproduction were invented by men who
sought, not to create an art, not to help art in any way, but only to
cheapen the cost of reproduction. “Line” processes—that is to say,
processes for the reproduction of pure line—though not the first
invented amongst modern methods, were the first to come into a state
of practical utility; though even then their results were so crude
that the artists whom necessity led to draw for them sank at once
to a deeper depth than ever they had sounded when the _fac-simile_
wood-cutter held them in bondage. They became the slaves of mechanical
limitations and chemical formulæ, which was a worse condition than
having been henchmen of a craftsman. So far as the æsthetic sense is
concerned, the process illustration of previous date to (say) 1880
might all be destroyed and no harm done, save, perhaps, the loss of
much evidence of a documentary character toward the history of early
days of processes.
There have been two great factors in their gradual
perfection—competition with the wood-engravers and of rival process
firms one with another, and, perhaps more important still, the
independency of a few artists who have found methods of drawing with
the pen, and have followed them despite the temporary limitations of
the process-man. The workmen have “drawn for process” in the worst and
most commercial sense of the term; they have set down their lines after
the hard-and-fast rules which were formulated for their guidance. For
years after the invention of zincography, artists who were induced to
make drawings for the new methods of engraving worked in a dull round
of routine; for in those days the process-man was not less, but more,
tyrannical than his predecessor, the wood-engraver; his yoke was, for a
time, harder to bear.
One was enjoined to make drawings with only the blackest of Indian ink,
upon Bristol-board, the thickest and smoothest and whitest that could
be obtained, and upon none other. It was impressed upon the draughtsman
that he should draw lines thick and wide apart and firm, and that
his drawings should be made with a view to, preferably, a reduction
in scale of one-third. Also that by no means should his lines run
together by any chance, except in the matter of a coarse and obvious
cross-hatch. And so, by reason of these things, the pen-work of that
time is become dreadful to look upon at this day. The man who then drew
with a view to reproduction squirmed on the very edge of his chair,
and with compressed lips, and his heart in his mouth, drew upon his
Bristol-board slowly and carefully, and with so heavy a hand, that
presently his wrist ached consumedly, and his drawing became stilted
in the extreme. Not yet was pen-drawing a profession, for few men had
learned these formulæ; and the zincography of that time made miserable
all them that were translated by it into something appreciably
different from their original work. Illustration, although already
sensibly increased in volume, was artistically at the lowest ebb. It
was a manufacture, an industry; but scarcely a profession, and most
certainly it had not yet become an art.
When technique in drawing for process began to appear as an individual
technique opposed to the old _fac-simile_ wood-engraving needs, it was
a handling entirely abominable and inartistic. If old-time drawing
for the wood-engravers was pursued in grooves of convention, working
for the zincographer proceeded in ruts. There have never been, before
or since, such horribly uninspired things produced as in the first
years of process-work in these islands. Such dull, scratchy, spotty,
wiry-looking prints resulted: they were, as now, produced in zinc,
and they proclaimed it unmistakably. Had not these new methods been
about one-fifth the cost of wood-engraving, they would have had no
chance whatever. But we are a commercial and an inartistic people, and
publishers, careless of appearance, welcomed any results that gave them
a typographic block at a fifth of its former cost.
Process, in its beginnings, was not a promising method of reproduction.
Men saw scarcely anything in it save cheap (and nasty) ways of
multiplying diagrams, and the bald and generally artless elevations of
new buildings issued from architects’ offices. But in course of time,
better blocks, with practice, became possible, and freer use of the
pen was obtained; although at every unhackneyed stroke the process-man
shrieked disaster. It is incalculable how much time has been wasted,
how many careers set back, by obedience to the hard-and-fast rules laid
down for the guidance of artists by the process-people of years since.
To those artists who, with an artistic recklessness of results entirely
admirable and praiseworthy, set down their work as they pleased,
we owe, more than to any others, the progress of process; by their
immediate martyrdom was our eventual salvation earned. And in the sure
and certain hope of a reproduction really and truly _fac-simile_, the
draughtsman in the medium of pen-and-ink is to-day become a technician
of a peculiar subtlety.
To-day, with the exercise of knowledge and discrimination, drawings
the most difficult of reproduction may be rendered faithfully; it is
a matter only of choice of processes. But in the mass of reproduction
at this time, this knowledge, this discrimination, are often seen to
be lacking. It is a matter of commerce, of course, for a publisher, an
editor, to send off originals in bulk to one firm, and to await from
one source the resulting blocks. But unknowing, or reckless of their
individual merits and needs, our typical editor has thus consigned some
drawings to an unkind fate. There are many processes even for the
reproduction of line, and drawings of varying characteristics are
better reproduced by different methods; they should each be sent for
reproduction on its own merits.
It was in 1884 that there began to arise quite a number of original
styles in pen-work, and then this new profession was by way of becoming
an art. You will not find any English-printed book or magazine
before this date showing a sign of this new art, but now it arose
suddenly, and at once became an irresponsible, unreasoning welter of
ill-considered mannerisms. Ever since 1884, until within the last year
or two, pen-draughtsmen have rioted through every conceivable and
inconceivable vagary of manner. The artists who by force of artistry
and character have helped to spur on the process-man against his will,
and have worked with little or no heed to the shortcomings of his
science, have freed the hands of a dreadful rabble that has revelled
merely in eccentricity. Thus has liberty for a space meant a licence
so wild that to-day it has become quite refreshing to turn back to the
sobriety of the old illustrators of from thirty to forty years ago, who
drew for the _fac-simile_ wood-engraver.
From 1857, through the ’60’s, and on to 1875, when it finally shredded
out, there existed a fine convention in drawing for illustration and
the wood-engraver. Among the foremost exponents of it were Millais,
Sandys, Charles Green, Robert Barnes, Simeon Solomon, Mahony, J. D.
Watson, and J. D. Linton. Pinwell and Fred Walker, too, produced
excellent work in this manner, before they untimely died.
The _Sunday Magazine_, _Once a Week_, _Good Words_, _Cornhill_, the
first two years of the _Graphic_, and, where the drawings have not been
drawn down to their humourous legends, the volumes of _Punch_ during
this period, are a veritable storehouse of beautiful examples of this
peculiarly English school. It was a convention that grew out of the
wood-engraver’s imposed limits, and they became transcended by the art
of the young artists of that day.
There is a certain sweetness and grace in those old illustrations
that seems to increase with the widening of that gulf between our
day and the day of their production. It is not for the sake of their
draughtsmanship alone (though that is excellent), but chiefly for their
technical qualities, and their fine character-drawing, that those
monumental achievements in illustration appeal so strongly to the
artistic eye to-day. We have been accustomed during these last years
to the stress of mannerism, the _bravura_ treatment of imported art,
bringing with it strange atmospheres which have nothing in common with
our duller skies, and, truth to tell, we want a change. Now, we might
do much worse than hark back to the ’60’s, and study the peculiar style
brought about by the needs of the wood-engraver, but transformed into
an admirable school by men who wrought their trammels into a convention
so great that it cannot fail, some day, to be revived.
It is greatly to be deplored that we have not left to us the original
drawings of that time and these men. In the majority of cases,
and through a long series of years, the drawings from which these
_fac-simile_ wood-engravings were made were drawn by the artists on
the wood block, and engraved, so that we have left to us only the
more or less successful engraver’s imitation of the artists’ original
line-work. But when these blocks were the work of the Dalziels, or of
Swain, we may generally take them as a close approximation to the
original drawing. Pen and pencil both were used upon the wood blocks:
some of these are to be seen at the South Kensington Museum, with the
original drawings upon them still uncut, photography having in the mean
while become applied to the use of transferring a drawing from paper to
the wood surface.
Unless you have practised etching on copper, in which you have to draw
upon the plate in reverse, you can have little idea of the relief
experienced by the artists of thirty years ago, when the necessity for
drawing in reverse upon the wood was obviated.
Now, I am not going to say that with pen and ink and
process-reproduction you could obtain the sweetness of the
wood-engraved line, but something of it should be possible, and
the dignified, almost classic, reserve and repose of this style of
draughtsmanship could be, in great measure, brought back to help
assuage the worry of the ultra-clever pen-work of to-day, and to form
a grateful relief from that peculiarly modern vice in illustration, of
“making a hole in the page.”
The great difficulty that would lie in the way of such a revival would
be that those who would attempt it would need to be good draughtsmen;
and of these there are not many. No tricks nor flashy treatment hid
bad drawing in this technique, as in much of the slap-dashiness of
to-day. And not only would sound draughtsmanship be essential, but also
characterization of a peculiarly well-seen and graphic description. The
illustrator of a generation ago worked under tremendous disadvantages.
“Phiz” etched his inimitable illustrations of Dickens upon steel with
all the attendant drawbacks of working in reverse, yet he would be
a bold man or reckless who should decry him. He was, at his best,
greater beyond comparison than THE Cruickshank—George, in the
forefront of that artistic trinity—and he reached his highest point in
the delightful composition of “Captain Cuttle consoles his Friend,” in
_Dombey and Son_. Composition and characterization are beyond anything
done before or since. It is distinctly, obviously, great, and it fits
the author and his story like—like a glove. One cannot find a newer
and better simile than that for good fitting. And (not to criticize
modern work severely _because_ it is modern) the greater bulk of
illustration to-day fits the stories it professes to elucidate like a
Strand tailor.
There are facilities now for buying electrotypes from magazines and
illustrated periodicals, by which engravings that have already served
one turn in illustrating a story can be purchased, to do duty again
in illustrating another; and this is a practice very widely prevalent
to-day. And why can this be so readily done? The answer is near to
seek. It is because illustration is become so characterless that it is
so readily interchangeable. Perhaps it may be sought to lay the blame
upon the author; and certainly there is not at this time so ready a
field for character-drawing as Dickens presented. But I have not seen
any illustrations to Mr. Hardy’s tales, nor to Mr. Stevenson’s, that
realize the excellently well-shown types in their works.
If you should chance to see any early volumes (say from 1859 to 1863)
of _Once a Week_ for sale, secure them: they should be the cherished
possessions of every black and white artist. After this date their
quality fell off. Charles Keene contributed to _Once a Week_ some
of his best work, and the Mr. Millais of that date in line is more
interesting than the Sir John Millais of to-day in paint. There is, in
especial, a beautiful drawing by him, an illustration to the
_Grandmother’s Apology_, in the volume for 1859, page 40. But, frankly,
it is a mistake to instance one illustration where so very many
are monumental productions. Fred Walker contributed many exquisite
drawings; Mr. Whistler, few enough to make us ardently wish there were
more; and the same may be said of Mr. Sandys’ decorative work—his
_Rosamond, Queen of the Lombards_, his _Yet once more let the Organ
play_, his _King Warwulf_, _Harald Harfagr_, or _The Old Chartist_.
These things are a delight: the artist’s work so insistently good, the
quality of the engraver’s lines so wonderfully fine.
For all the talk and pother about illustration, there is nothing to-day
that comes within miles of the work done in, say, 1862-1863 for _Once
a Week_. It would be difficult to over-praise or to over-estimate
the value of this fine period. It was the period of the abominable
crinoline; but even that hideous fashion was transfigured by the
artistry of these men. That is evident in the beautiful drawing,
_If_, contributed by Sandys to the _Argosy_ for 1863, in which the
grandly flowing lines of the dress show what may be done with the most
unpromising material.
The most interesting drawings in the _Cornhill Magazine_ range from
1863 to 1867. Especially noteworthy are the illustrations by Fred
Walker—_Maladetta_, May, 1863, page 621, and _Out of the Valley of
the Shadow_, January, 1867, page 75. If you compare the first of these
with the little pen-drawing by Charles Green, reproduced by process
in _Harper’s Magazine_, May, 1891, page 894, entitled, “Give me those
letters,” you will see how Mr. Green’s hand has retained the old
technique he and his brother illustrators learnt in drawing for the
wood-engraver, and you will observe how well that old handling looks,
and how admirably it reproduces in the process-work of to-day. Two
other most successful wood blocks from the _Cornhill Magazine_ may be
noted—_Mother’s Guineas_, by Charles Keene, July, 1864, and _Molly’s
New Bonnet_, August, 1864, by Mr. Du Maurier.
COMPARATIVE PROCESSES.
Processes, at first chiefly of the heliogravure or photogravure
variety—processes, that is to say, of the intaglio or plate-printing
description, printed in the same way as etchings and mezzotints, from
dots and lines sunken in a metal plate instead of standing out in
relief—date back almost to the invention of photography in 1834; and
all modern processes of reproducing drawings have a photographic basis.
Even at that time it was demonstrated that a glass negative could
be used to reproduce the photographic image as an etched plate that
would print in the manner of a mezzotint. Mr. H. Fox-Talbot, to whom
belongs, equally with Daguerre, the invention of photography, was the
first to show this. He devised an etched silver plate that reproduced a
photograph direct.
Photo-relief, or type-printing, blocks date from such comparatively
recent times as 1860, when the _Photographic Journal_ showed an
illustration printed from a block by the Pretsch process.
At this present time there are three methods of primary importance for
the reproduction of line drawings—
The swelled gelatine process,
The albumen process,
The bitumen process.
The first of these three processes is the most expensive, and it has
not so great a vogue as the less costly methods, which are employed for
the illustration of journals or publications that do not rely chiefly
upon the excellence of their work. It is employed almost exclusively by
Messrs. A. and C. Dawson in this country, and it is in all essentials
identical with the old Pretsch process that first saw the light
thirty-three years ago.
Acids do not enter into the practice of it at all. The procedure is
briefly thus: A good dense negative is taken of the drawing to be
reproduced to the size required. The glass plate is then placed in
perfect contact with gelatine sensitized by an admixture of bichromate
of potassium to the action of light. Placed in water, the gelatine thus
printed upon from the negative, swells, excepting those portions that
have received the image of the reduced drawing. These are now become
sunken, and form a suitable matrix for electrotyping into. Copper
is then deposited by electro-deposition. The copper skin receives a
backing of type-metal, and is mounted on wood to the height of type,
and the block, ready for printing, is completed.
This process gives peculiar advantages in the reproduction of
pen-drawings made with greyed or diluted inks. The photographic
negative reproduces, of course, the varying intensities of such work
with the most absolute accuracy, and they are repeated, with scarcely
less fidelity, by the gelatine matrix. Pencil marks and pen-drawings
with a slight admixture of pencil come excellently well by this method.
Every pen-draughtsman who sketches from nature knows how, in re-drawing
from his pencil sketches, the feeling and sympathy of his work are
lost, wholly or in part; but if the finished pen-drawing is made over
the original pencil sketch and the pencilling retained, the effect is
generally a revelation. It is in these cases that the swelled gelatine
process gives the best results.
[Illustration: 4¾ × 7½. THE HALL, BARNARD’S INN.
_Drawing in pale Indian ink on HP Whatman paper. Drawn without
knowledge of process and reproduced by the swelled gelatine method._]
This example (_The Hall, Barnard’s Inn_) of a pen-drawing not made for
reproduction by process was made years ago. Now reproduced, it shows
that almost everything is possible to mechanical reproduction to-day.
This drawing, worked upon with never a thought or idea or knowledge of
process, comes every whit as well as if it had been drawn scrupulously
to that end. It is all pen-work, save the outline around it and the
signature, and they are in black chalk. The reduction from the original
is only three-quarters of an inch across, and the reproduction is in
every respect exact. Of course it is only swelled gelatine that could
perform this feat; but by that process it is clear that you get results
at once sympathetic and faithful, without the necessity of caring
overmuch about the purely mechanical drudgery of learning a convention
in pen and ink that shall be suitable for the etched processes. That
convention has been wrought—it may not be said by tears and blood,
but certainly with prodigious labour—by the masters of the art of
pen-drawing into something artistic and pleasing to the eye, while it
satisfies photographic and chemical needs. But here is a process that
demands no previous training in drawing for reproduction, and leaves
the artist unfettered. True, it opens a vista of easy reproduction
to the amateur, which is a thing terrible to think upon; but, on the
other hand, to it we owe some delightful reproductions of “painters’”
pen-drawings that make the earlier numbers of the illustrated
exhibition catalogues worth having.
[Illustration: 4½ × 8. A WINDOW, CHEPSTOW CASTLE.
_Drawing in Conté crayon on rough paper._]
The albumen process is perhaps the more widely used of the three.
By it the vast majority of the blocks used in journalistic work are
made. It is credibly reported that one firm alone delivers annually
sixty-three thousand blocks made by this process, which (it will thus
be seen) is particularly suited to reproduction of the most instant and
straight-away nature. It is also the cheapest method of reproduction,
which goes far toward explaining that gigantic output just quoted.
But, on the other hand, the albumen process in the hands of an artist
in reproduction (as, for instance, M. Chefdeville) is capable of the
most sympathetic results. It gives a softer, more velvety line than one
would think possible, a line of a different character entirely from
the clear, cold, sharp, and formal line characteristic of processes
in which bitumen is used. These two methods (albumen and bitumen) are
incapable of reproducing scarcely anything in _fac-simile_ but pure
line-work; pencil marks or greyed ink are either omitted or exaggerated
to extremity, and they can only be corrected by the subsequent use of
the graver upon the block. But black chalk or Conté crayon used upon
slightly granulated drawing-papers, either by themselves or mixed with
pen-work, come readily enough and help greatly to reinforce a sketch.
This sketch of _A Window, Chepstow Castle_, was made with a Conté
crayon. Unfortunately, these materials smear very easily, and have to
be fixed before they can be trusted to the photo-engraver with perfect
safety. Drawings made in this way may be fixed with a solution composed
of gum mastic and methylated spirits of wine: one part of the former to
seven parts of the latter. This fixing solution is best applied with a
spray apparatus, as sold by chemists. But better than crayons, chalks,
or charcoals are the lithographic chalks now coming somewhat into
vogue. They have the one inestimable advantage of fixity, and cannot be
readily smeared, even with intent. They are not fit for use upon
smooth Bristol-board or glazed paper, but find their best mediums in
HP and “not” makes of drawing-paper, and in the grained “scratch-out”
cardboards, of which more hereafter. They give greater depth of colour
than lead pencil, and reproduce more surely; and the drawings worked up
with them readily stand as much reduction as an ordinary pen-drawing.
The No. 1 Lemercier is the best variety of lithographic chalks for
this admixture; it is harder than others, and can be better sharpened
to a fine point. For detail it is to be used very sparingly or not at
all, because it is incapable of producing a delicate line; but for
giving force, for instance, to a drawing of crumbling walls, or to
an impressionist sketch of landscape, it is invaluable. The effects
produced by working with a No. 1 Lemercier litho-chalk are shown here.
The first example was drawn upon Whatman’s “not” paper, which gives a
fine, bold granulation. The two remaining examples are from sketches on
Allongé paper, a fine-grained charcoal paper of French make.
[Illustration: ON WHATMAN’S “NOT” PAPER (6½ × 4½).]
[Illustration: ON ALLONGÉ PAPER, RIGHT SIDE (6¼ × 4½).]
[Illustration: FROM THE DRAWING (4½ × 2½) ON ALLONGÉ PAPER (RIGHT
SIDE).]
It is also worth knowing that a good grained drawing may be made with
litho-chalk, by taking a piece of dull-surfaced paper, like the kind
generally used for type-writing purposes, pinning it tightly upon
glass- or sand-paper and then working upon it, keeping it always in
contact with the rough sand-paper underneath. A canvas-grain may be
obtained by using the cover of a canvas-bound book in the same way.
Both the albumen and the bitumen processes are practised with the
aid of acids upon zinc. In the first named the zinc plate is coated
with a ground composed of a solution of white of egg and bichromate
of ammonia, soluble in cold water. A reversed photographic negative
is taken of the drawing and placed in contact with the prepared zinc
plate in a specially constructed printing-frame. When the drawing
is sufficiently printed upon this albumen surface, the plate is
rolled over with a roller charged with printing-ink thinned down with
turpentine, and then, when this inking has been completed, the plate
is carefully rubbed in cold water until the inked albumen has been
rubbed off it, excepting those parts where the drawing appears. The
lines composing the drawing remain fixed upon the plate, the peculiar
property of the sensitized albumen rendering the lines that have been
exposed to the action of light insoluble. The zinc plate is then dried
and sponged with gum; dried again, and then the coating of gum washed
off, and then inked again. The plate, now thoroughly prepared, is
placed in the first etching bath, a rocking vessel filled with
much-diluted nitric acid. There are generally three etchings performed
upon a zinc block, each successive bath being of progressively stronger
acid; and between these baths the plate is gummed, and powdered with
resin, and warmed over a gas flame until the printing-ink and the
half-melted resin run down the sides of the lines already partly
etched; the object of these careful stages being to prevent what is
technically termed “under-etching”—that is to say, the production of a
relief line, whose section would be thus: [Upside down triangle] instead
of [Tent shape, open bottom]. The result in the printing of an
under-etched block would be that the lines would either break or wear
down to nothingness, whereas a block showing the second section would
grow stronger and the old lines thicker with prolonged use. The
section of a wood engraving is according to this second diagram.
In the case of the bitumen process, the photograph is taken as before,
the negative placed upon the zinc plate in the same way, and the image
printed upon the bitumen. When this has been done, the plate is flooded
with turpentine, and all the bitumen dissolved away, with the exception
of that upon the image. The subsequent proceedings are as in the case
of the albumen process, and need not be recounted.
It will be seen (if this outline can be followed) that the bitumen
process differs from the albumen only in the composition of the
ground (as an etcher would term it), but the quality of line is very
different. The zinc plates used are cut from polished sheets of the
metal, from one-sixteenth to one-eighth of an inch in thickness.
A well-etched block should feel sharp yet smooth to the thumb and
fingers, as if it were cut. A badly etched or over-etched block has
an altogether different feel: scratchy, and repulsive to the touch.
Frequently it happens that by carelessness or mischance the process-man
will over-etch a block; that is to say, he will allow it to remain in
the acid-bath a minute or so too long, so that the upstanding lines
become partly eaten away by the fluid. The result, when printed, is a
wretched ghost of the original drawing. An over-etched block, or a good
block in which the lines appear too thin and the reproduction in
consequence weak, can be remedied in degree by being rubbed down
with oilstone. This, if the lines are not under-etched, thickens the
upstanding metal and produces a heavier print. But some of the smaller
process firms have an ingenious, if none too honest, practice of
pulling a proof from the _unetched_ plate, and sending it along with
the defective block. This can readily be done by inking up the image
with a roller before printing, and then passing the thin plate of metal
through a lithographic press, or through a transfer press, such as is
to be found in every process establishment. Of course the print thus
secured is a perfect replica in little of the original drawing, and
looks eminently satisfactory. One can generally identify these proofs
before etching by their backs, which have, of course, not the slightest
marks of the pressure usually to be discerned upon even the most
carefully prepared proofs of finished blocks. The surface of a zinc
block sometimes becomes oxidized by the acid used in etching not having
been thoroughly washed off. This may occur at once if the acid is
strong, and then it generally happens that the block is irretrievably
ruined; but if oxidation occurs after some time, it is generally
superficial, and can be rubbed down. The process of oxidation begins
with an efflorescence, which may be best rubbed down with a thick stick
of charcoal, broken across the grain. But zinc blocks are frequently
ruined by carelessness in the printing-office after printing. When the
printing has been done it is customary to clean type and blocks from
the printing-ink by scrubbing them with a brush dipped in what printers
call “lye”—that is, a solution of pearl-ash—which, although it does
not injure the leaden types, is apt to corrode the zinc of which most
process blocks are made, if they are not carefully and immediately
washed in water and dried. A block with its surface destroyed in this
manner prints miserably, with a fuzzy appearance. The easiest way of
protecting blocks from becoming oxidized is to allow the printing-ink
to remain on them, or if you have none, rub them over with tallow.
[Illustration: 12½ × 9. BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY.
_Pen and pencil drawing, reproduced by the bitumen process._]
[Illustration: 12½ × 9. BOLT HEAD: A MISTY DAY.
_Pen and pencil drawing, reproduced by the swelled gelatine
process._]
Examples will now be shown of the varying results obtainable from the
same drawings by different processes.