common rough paper, such as is usually found in sailors’ log-books; in
fact, it was a log-book the present writer used during the greater part
of a tour in Devon, nothing else being obtainable in those parts save
the cloth-bound, gold-lettered sketch-books whose porterage convicts
one at once of amateurishness. And here let me say that a sailor’s
log-book, though decidedly an unconventional medium for sketching in,
seems to be entirely admirable. The paper takes pencil excellently
well, and the faint blue parallel lines with which the pages are ruled
need bother no one; they will not (being blue) reproduce. To save
the freshness of the impression, the sketch was lightly finished in
ink, and sent for reproduction uncleaned. The illustration shows the
result. It is an example of the bitumen process, whose original sin
of exaggerating all the pencil marks which it has been good enough to
reproduce at all is partly cloaked by the intervention of hand-work all
over the block. You can see how continually the graver has been put
through the lines to produce a greyness, yet how unsatisfactory the
result!
The drawing was now sent for reproduction by the swelled gelatine
process. The result is a much more satisfactory block. Everything that
the original contained has been reproduced. The sullen blacknesses of
the pinnacled rocks are nothing extenuated, as they were in the first
example, where they seem comparatively insignificant, and the technical
qualities of pen and pencil are retained throughout, and can readily
be identified. The same remarks apply even more strongly to the small
blocks from the _Note at Gorran_.
[Illustration: _Pen and pencil drawing, reproduced by bitumen
process._]
[Illustration: 13¼ × 9½. A NOTE AT GORRAN.
_Pen and pencil drawing, reproduced by swelled gelatine process._]
But such a pure pen-drawing as that of _Charlwood_, shown here in
blocks by (1) Messrs. Dawson’s swelled gelatine process, and (2) by Mr.
Chefdeville’s sympathetic handling of the albumen process, would have
come almost equally well by bitumen, or by an ordinary practitioner’s
treatment of albumen. It offered no technical difficulties, and there
is exceedingly little to choose between these two blocks. Careful
examination would show that a very slight thickening of line had taken
place throughout the block by the gelatine method, and this must ever
be the distinguishing difference between that process and those in
which acids are used to eat away the metal of the block—that the
gelatine renders at its best every jot and tittle of a drawing, and
would by the nature of the process rather exaggerate than diminish; and
that in those processes in which acids play a part, the process-man
must be ever watchful lest his zinc plate be “over-etched”—lest the
upstanding metal lines be eaten away to a scratchy travesty of the
original drawing. But you will see that although the lines in the
swelled gelatine _Charlwood_ are appreciably thicker than in its
albumen fellow, yet the latter prints darker. The explanation is in the
metals of which the two blocks are composed. Zinc prints more heavily
than copper.
[Illustration: _Pen-drawing reproduced by swelled gelatine
process._]
[Illustration: 8¼ × 6¼.
_Pen-drawing reproduced by Chefdeville._]
It should not be forgotten that, to-day, hand-work upon process-blocks
is become very usual. To paraphrase a well-worn political catch-phrase,
the old methods have been called in to redress the vagaries of the
new: the graver has been retained to correct the crudities of the
rocking-bath. To be less cryptic, the graver is used nowadays to
tone down the harsh and ragged edges of the etched zinc. Here is an
illustration that will convey the idea to perfection. Here is, in this
_View from the Tower Bridge Works_, a zincographic block, grounded
with bitumen and etched by the aid of acids. The original drawing was
made upon Bristol-board, with Stephens’ ebony stain, and an F nib of
Mitchell’s make. The size of that drawing was twelve and a half inches
across; the sky drawn in with much elaboration. A first proof showed a
sky harsh and wanting in aërial perspective. A graver was put through
it, cutting up the lines into dots, and thus putting the sky into
proper relation with the rest of the picture.
Another interesting and suggestive comparison is between photogravure,
or heliogravure, as it is sometimes called, and type-printing processes
for the reproduction of line. The frontispiece to this volume is a
heliogravure plate by Dujardin, of Paris, from a pen-drawing that
offered no obstacles to adequate reproduction by the bitumen process.
In fact, you see it here, reproduced in that way, and of the same size.
The copper intaglio plate is in every way superior to the relief block,
as might have been expected. The hardness of the latter method gives
way, in the heliogravure plate, to a delightful softness, even when the
plate is clean-wiped and printed in as bald and artless a fashion as
a tradesman’s business card; but now it is printed with care and with
the _retroussage_ that is generally the meed of the etching, you could
not have distinguished it _from_ an etching had you not been told its
history.
[Illustration: 12½ × 9. VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS.
_Bitumen process._]
[Illustration: 12½ × 9. VIEW FROM THE TOWER BRIDGE WORKS.
_Bitumen process. Sky revised by hand-work._]
The procedure in making a heliogravure is in this wise:—A copper
plate, similar to the kind used by etchers, receives a ground of
bichromatized bitumen. A photograph is taken of the drawing to be
reproduced, and from the negative thus obtained a _positive_ is made.
The positive, in reverse, is placed upon the grounded plate and printed
upon it. The bitumen which has been printed upon by the action of light
is thus rendered wholly insoluble, and the image of the drawing remains
the only soluble portion of the ground. The plate is then treated with
turpentine, and the soluble lines thus dissolved. Follows then the
ordinary etching procedure. This is a more simple and ready process
than the making of a relief block. It is, however, more expensive to
commission, but then expense never is any criterion of original cost.
The printing, though, is a heavy item, because, equally with etchings
or mezzotints, it must be printed upon a copper-plate press, and
this involves the cleaning and the re-inking of the plate with every
impression.
The subject which the present plate bears does not show the utmost
capabilities of the heliogravure. It was chosen as a fair example
to show the difference between two methods without straining the
limitations of the relief block. But if the drawing had been most
carefully graduated in intensity from the deepest black to the palest
brown, the copper plate would have shown everything with perfect
ease. Large editions of these plates are not to be printed without
injury, because the constant wiping of the soft copper wears down the
surface. But to obviate this defect a process of _acierage_ has been
invented, by which a coating of iron is electrically deposited upon the
surface of the plate, rendering it, practically, as durable as a steel
engraving.
[Illustration: 11½ × 7½. KENSINGTON PALACE.
_Bitumen process._]
It is by experiments we learn to achieve distinction; by immediate
failure that we rise to ultimate success; and ofttimes by pure chance
that we discover in these days some new trick of method by which
process shall do for the illustrator something it has not done before.
There is still, no doubt, in the memory of many, that musty anecdote of
the painter who, fumbling over the proper rendering of foam, applied
by some accident a sponge to the wet paint, and lo! there, by happy
chance, was the foam which had before been like nothing so much as wool.
[Illustration: SNODGRASS FARM.
_From a drawing by Harry Fenn. An example of splatter-work._]
In the same way, I suppose, some draughtsman discovered splatter-work.
He may readily be imagined, prior to this lucky chance, painfully
stippling little dots with his pen; pin-points of ink stilted and
formal in effect when compared with the peculiarly informal concourse
of spots produced by taking a small, stiff-bristled brush (say a
toothbrush), inking it, and then, holding the bristles downwards and
inclining toward the drawing, more or less vigorously stroking the inky
bristles _towards_ one with a match-stick. Holding the brush thus, and
stroking it in this way, the bristles send a shower of ink spots upon
the drawing. Of course this trick requires an extended practice before
it can be performed in workmanlike fashion, and even then the parts not
required to be splattered have to be carefully covered with cut-paper
masks. [_Mem._—To use a fixed ink for drawings on which you intend to
splatter, because it is extremely probable that you will require to
paint some portions out with Chinese white, and Chinese white upon any
inks that are not fixed is the despair of the draughtsman.] Here is
an excellent example of splatter. It is by that resourceful American
draughtsman, Harry Fenn. Indeed, the greatest exponents of this method
are Americans: few men in this country have rendered it with any
frequency, or with much advantage. I have essayed its use to aid this
sunset view of _Black Rock_, and to me it seems to come well. But the
finer spots are very difficult of reproduction; some are lost here.
There is a most ingenious contrivance, an American notion, I believe,
for the better application of splatter. It is called the air-brush, and
it consists of a tube filled with ink, and fitted with a description of
nozzle through which the ink is projected on to paper by a pneumatic
arrangement worked by the artist by means of a treadle. You aim the
affair at your drawing, work your treadle, and the trick is done. The
splatter is remarkably fine and equable, and its intensity can be
regulated by the distance at which the nozzle is held from the drawing.
The greater advantage, however, in the use of the air-brush would seem
to lie with the lithographic draughtsmen, who have to cover immense
areas of work.
[Illustration: 6 × 8¼. SUNSET, BLACK ROCK.
_Splatter-work._]
Here follows an experiment with diluted inks: the drawing made upon
HP Whatman with all manner of nibs. It is all pen-work, worked with
black stain, and with writing ink watered down to different values.
This is an attempt to render as truthfully as possible (and as
unconventionally) the sunset shine and shadow of a lonely shore, blown
upon with the wild winds of the Channel. A little stream, overgrown
with bents and waving rushes, flows between a break in the low cliffs
and loses itself in the sands. The sun sets behind the ruined house,
and between it and the foreground is a clump of storm-bent trees,
constrained to their uneasy inward pose not by present breezes, but to
this shrinking habit of growth by long-continued stress of weather.
The block is by Gillot, of Paris, who was asked to get the appearance
of the original drawing in a line-block. This he has not altogether
succeeded in doing: perhaps it was impossible; but the _feeling_ is
here. It is a line-block, rouletted all over in the attempt to get
the effect produced by watered inks. The roulettes, by which these
greynesses are produced, are peculiar instruments, consisting of
infinitesimal wheels of hard steel whose edges are fashioned into
microscopically small points or facets. Mounted at the end of a stick
more nearly resembling a penholder than anything else, the wheel is
driven along (and into) the surface of the metal by pressure, making
small indentations in it. There are varieties of roulettes, the
differences between them lying in the patterns of the projections from
the wheel. The varieties in the texture of rouletting seen in this
print are thus explained.
[Illustration: 10 × 6½. DRAWING IN DILUTED INKS, REPRODUCED BY GILLOT.
_Block touched up by hand and freely rouletted._]
Now come some experiments in mixtures. The mixed drawing has many
possibilities of artistic expression, and here are some essays in
mixtures, harnessed to tentative employments of process.
First is this experiment in pen and pencil reproduced in half-tone.
It is a view of _Chepstow Castle_—that really picturesque old border
fortress—from across the river Wye, a river that comes rushing down
from the uplands with an impetuous current full of swirls and eddies.
The town of Chepstow lies at the back, represented in this drawing
only by its lights. The huts and sheds that straggle down to the
waterside, and the rotting pier, where small vessels load and unload
insignificant cargoes, are commonplace enough, but they go to make a
fine composition; and the last sunburst in the evening sky, the stars
already brilliant, and the white gleams from the hurrying river, are
immensely valuable, and things of joy to the practitioner in black and
white. Rain had fallen during the day, and, when the present writer sat
down to sketch, still lent a fine impending juicy air to the scene that
seemed incapable of adequate translation into pure line; therefore,
upon the pencil sketch was added pen-work, and to that more pencil,
and, when finished, the drawing was sent to be processed, with special
instructions that the white spaces in the sky should be preserved,
together with those on the buildings, but that all else might acquire
the light grey tint which the half-tone always gives, as of a drawing
made upon paper of a silvery grey. In the result you can see this
purely arbitrary, but delightful, ground tint everywhere; it gives
absolutely the appearance of a drawing made upon tinted cardboard, but,
truly, the only paper employed was a common, rough make, that would be
despised of the lordly amateur. Here you see the half-tone process on
its best behaviour, and I think it has secured a very notable result.
[Illustration: 11¾ × 8¾. CHEPSTOW CASTLE.
_Drawing in pen and ink and pencil made on rough paper. Reproduced by
half-tone process._]
Here is another experiment, _Clifford’s Inn: a Foggy Night_—a mixture
of pen and ink and crayon worked upon with a stump, and then lightly
brushed over with a damp, not a full, brush; the lights in the windows
and the reflections taken out with the point of an eraser.
It should be said that in drawing thus for half-tone reproduction the
drawing should be made much more emphatic than the print is intended
to appear; that is to say, the deepest shadows should be given an
additional depth, and the fainter shading should be a shade lighter
than you would give to a drawing not made with a view to publication.
If these points are not borne in mind, the result is apt to be flat and
featureless.
If a half-tone block exhibits these disagreeable peculiarities, high
lights can always be created by the aid of a chisel used upon the metal
surface of the block. The more important process firms generally employ
a staff of competent engravers, who, now that wood engraving is less
widely used, have turned their attention to just this kind of work—the
correcting of process-blocks. The artist has but to mark his proof with
the corrections and alterations he requires. The two illustrations
shown on page 68, from different states of the same block, give a
notion of correcting the flatness of half-tone. The second block shows
a good deal of retouching in the lights taken out upon the paper and
the jug, and in the hatching upon the drinking-horn.
[Illustration: 9½ × 6¾. CLIFFORD’S INN: A FOGGY NIGHT.
_Drawn in pen and ink and crayon, and brushed over. Reproduced by
half-tone process, medium grain._]
Half-tone processes are practised in much the same way as the albumen
and bitumen line methods already described, in so far as that they are
worked with acids and upon zinc or copper. At first these half-tone
blocks were made in zinc, but recently some reproductive firms have
preferred to use copper. Messrs. Waterlow and Sons, in this country,
generally employ copper for half-tone blocks from drawings or
photographs. Copper prints a softer and more sympathetic line, and
does not accumulate dirt so readily as zinc. All the half-tone blocks
in this volume are in copper. By these processes the photographs
that one sees reproduced direct from nature appear in print without
the aid of the artist. They are often referred to as the Meisenbach
process, because the Meisenbach Company was amongst the first to use
these methods in this country. The essential difference in their
working is that there is a ruled screen of glass interposed between
the drawing or object to be photographed and the negative. Generally a
screen of glass is closely ruled with lines crossing at right angles,
and etched with hydrofluoric acid. Into the grooves thus produced,
printing-ink is rubbed. The result is a close network of black lines
upon glass. This screen, interposed between the sensitized plate
in the camera and the object to be photographed, produces upon the
negative the criss-cross appearance we see in the ultimate picture.
In the half-tone reproductions by Angerer and Göschl, of Vienna, this
appearance is singularly varied. The screen used by them is said to be
made from white silk of the gauziest description, hung before a wall
covered with black velvet in such a manner that the blackness of the
velvet can be seen and photographed through the silken film. A negative
is made, and from it a positive is produced, which exhibits a curiously
varied arrangement of dots and meshes. The positive is used in the same
way as the ruled-glass screens.
[Illustration: 6¾ × 6¼. PENCIL AND PEN AND INK DRAWING REPRODUCED BY
HALF-TONE PROCESS.]
The network characteristic of half-tone relief blocks can be made fine,
or medium, or coarse, as required. The fine-grained blocks are used for
careful book and magazine printing, and the medium-grained for printing
in the better illustrated weeklies; the coarse-grained are used for
rougher printing, but still are nearly always too fine for newspaper
work. The _Daily Graphic_, however, has solved the problem of printing
them sufficiently well for the picture to be discerned. Beyond this the
rotary steam-printing press has not yet advanced.
In appearance somewhat similar to a half-tone block, but with the
tint differently applied, is the illustration of _The Village Street,
Tintern: Night_. Here is a pure pen-drawing, scratched and scribbled
to blackness without much care for finesse, the great reduction and
the tint being reckoned upon to assuage all angularities. The original
drawing was then lightly scribbled over with blue pencil to indicate to
the process-man that a mechanical tint was required to be applied upon
the block, and word was specially sent that the tint was to be squarely
cut, not vignetted. The result seems happy. This is a line block, not
tone.
[Illustration: 11½ × 9. THE VILLAGE STREET, TINTERN. NIGHT.
_Application of shading medium._]
In such a case the procedure is normal until the image is printed upon
the sensitized ground of the zinc plate. Then the prescribed tint
is transferred by pressure of thumb and fingers, or by means of a
burnisher, from an engraved sheet of gelatine previously inked with a
printing roller. The zinc plate is then etched in the familiar way.
[Illustration: 11½ × 8¾. LEEBOTWOOD.
_Showing application of shading medium to treatment of sky._]
These tints are produced by Day’s shading mediums; thin sheets of
gelatine engraved upon one side with lines or with a pattern of
stipple. There are very many of these patterns. They can readily be
applied, and with the greatest accuracy, because the gelatine is
semi-transparent, and admits of the operator seeing what he is about.
These mechanical tints are capable of exquisite application, but
they have been more frequently regarded as labour-saving appliances,
and have rarely been used with skill, and so have come to bear an
altogether unmerited stigma. They can be used by a clever process-man,
under the directions of the draughtsman, with great effect, and in
remarkably diverse ways. For it is not at all necessary that the tint
should come all over the block. It can be worked in most intricately.
The illustration, _Leebotwood_, shows an application of shading medium
to the sky. The proprietors (for it is a patent) of these devices
have endeavoured to introduce their use amongst artists, with a view
to their working the mediums upon the drawings themselves. It has
been shown that the varieties of shading to be obtained by shifting
and transposing the gelatine plates is illimitable, but as their use
involves establishing a printing roller and printer’s ink in one’s
studio, and as all artists are not printers born, it does not seem at
all likely that Day’s shading mediums will be used outside lithographic
offices or the offices of reproductive firms.
Here are appended some examples of the shading mediums commonly used.
The cost of reproduction by process varies very greatly. It is always
calculated at so much the square inch, with a minimum charge ranging,
for line-work, from two-and-sixpence to five shillings. For half-tone
the minimum may be put at from ten shillings to sixteen shillings.
Plain line blocks, by the bitumen or albumen processes, cost from
twopence-halfpenny to sixpence per square inch, and handwork upon the
block is charged extra. Some firms make a charge of one penny per
square inch for the application of Day’s shading mediums. Line blocks
by the swelled gelatine process are charged at one shilling per square
inch, and reproductions of pencil or crayon work at one-and-threepence.
Half-tone blocks from objects, photographs, or drawings range from
eightpence to one-and-sixpence per square inch, and the cost of a
photogravure plate may be put at two-and-sixpence for the same unit.
The best work in any photographic process is infinitely less costly
than wood engraving, which, although its cost is not generally
calculated on the basis of the inch, as in all process work, may range
approximately from three shillings to five shillings for engraving of
average merit.
[Illustration: EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUMS.]
[Illustration: EXAMPLES OF DAY’S SHADING MEDIUM.]
[Illustration: CHURCHYARD CROSS, RAGLAN.
_Application of shading medium._]
Electrotype copies of line blocks cost from three-farthings to
three-halfpence per square inch, and from half-tone blocks, twopence,
although it is not advisable to have electrotypes taken of these fine
and delicate blocks. If duplicates are wanted of half-tones, the usual
practice is to have two original blocks made, the process-engraver
charging for the second block half the price of the first.
PAPER.
The process engraver will tell you, if you seek counsel of him, that
you should use Bristol-board, and of that only the smoothest and most
highly finished varieties. But, however easy it may render his work
of reproduction, there is no necessity for you to draw upon cardboard
or smooth-surfaced paper at all. Paper of a reasonable whiteness
is, of course, necessary to any process of line engraving which has
photography as a basis, but to say that stiff cardboards or papers of
a blue-white, as opposed to the cream-laid variety, are necessary is
merely to obscure what is, after all, a simple matter.
Bristol-board is certainly a very favourite material, and the varieties
of cardboards sold under that name are numerous enough to please
anybody. Goodall’s sell as reliable a make as can be readily found. It
is white enough to please the photo-engraver, and of a smooth, hard
surface; and a hard surface you must have for pen-work. But it is an
unsympathetic material, and it is an appreciably more difficult matter
to make a pencil sketch upon it than upon such papers as Whatman’s HP.
Mounting-boards are frequently used, chiefly for journalistic pen-work,
when it may be supposed nobody cares anything about the _finesse_ of
the art, but only that the drawing shall be up to a certain standard
of excellence, and, more particularly, up to time. Mounting-boards are
appreciably cheaper than good Bristol-board, but if erasures are to be
made they are troublesome, because under the surface they are composed
of the shoddiest of matter. They are convenient, indeed admirable, for
studies carried out in a masculine manner with a quill pen, or for
simple drawings made with an ordinary writing nib, with not too sharp a
point. For delicate technique they are not to be recommended.