_THE REPRODUCTION OF LINE DRAWINGS._
As illustrators, or would-be illustrators, your work is not at an end
with the completion of your drawings; you must look after them while
they are being engraved, and you should see them through the press.
From the time you are given a commission to illustrate a subject until
the printed result is in the hands of the public, the work in all its
stages should be the object of your untiring attention. It is true
that at present the fact that you take an interest in your profession
will be counted against you in some quarters, for should you
happen--as is not unlikely--to know more of drawing, engraving, and
printing than the art editor, the engraver, or the printer, your
suggestions will not be received with enthusiasm, nor your criticisms
with delight. Suggestions mean changes, and criticism means objections
to the routine way of doing things. Then you may not feel a great
interest in the scientific side of your work, yet chemistry plays an
important part in illustration. The mechanical reproduction of
drawings is based entirely on chemical action, and you must know
something of this matter if you would get good results.
But let us consider the whole subject. Drawings in line were
originally, in the fifteenth century, reproduced by wood cutting;[1]
that is to say, the drawing was made in line with pen, point, or
brush on the side of a plank, and all those portions of the block
which were not drawn upon were cut away with knives and chisels, the
design only remaining in relief; this relief was dabbed over with ink
or paint, and a piece of damp paper was laid on it. The back of this
paper was rubbed, burnished, or pressed on to the inked surface of the
block and took up the ink from it; on removing the paper an impression
in reverse of the inked block was found on the under side of it. And
this was the method, with improvements, employed in printing from
type, for three hundred years.
[1] Of course I shall refer to metal engraving in another
lecture.
About the beginning of this century the design began to be drawn upon
the end of a block of box-wood--a cross section of it--and the parts
left blank were cut away with gravers, tools used by engravers in
metal, or else lines were engraved on the surface of the block, which
printed as whites in the blacks; the grain of the cross section of
box-wood was firmer and finer, and with the gravers more delicate
lines could be engraved and more true results obtained; and at the
same time continual improvements were being made in the presses, steam
being substituted for hand power, and the manufacture of paper and ink
totally revolutionised.
These methods were employed until about 1865, when, instead of the
drawings being made by the artists on the block of wood, they began to
be drawn on paper in line, and then photographed on to the wood. This
was a great improvement, because the artist could now make his designs
of any size he wished and have them photographed down to the required
dimensions and reversed for him: the mere reversing in many cases was
both tedious and uninteresting.[2]
[2] If the drawing is a portrait of a place, it must be reversed
on the wood or metal in order that the print may appear as the
original does in nature.
The final step which brings us to the present, though not by any
means, I am sure, to the end of the chapter, is the superseding of the
woodcutter or wood engraver in line, by the mechanical engraver in
metal or gelatine.
Now you may do your drawings, if you wish, in line with a pencil or
brush upon the prepared piece of box-wood, and the engraver may cut
away all those portions of the wood-block which you have not touched,
remembering always that though you draw freely he must engrave
laboriously, and the more free your drawing becomes, the more
complicated must his engraving be. So when you make a sketchy drawing
on wood, none but the most accomplished engraver can retain that look
of freedom and sketchiness; if the lines of the drawing become really
complicated, in cross hatching, for example, he cannot follow them, he
must suggest them. Hence, unless the engraver really loves this sort
of work, it is but drudgery, and the better the reproduction the more
skilled labour wasted.
Now photography has changed all this. A photograph of the drawing, of
the required size it is to appear on the printed page, is taken. The
drawing may be enlarged or reduced to this size, and the negative thus
obtained is placed in reverse in a photographic printing frame, in
contact with a sensitised zinc plate, coated with a thin film either
of albumen or bitumen, or it may be that a gelatine film is the
material used for printing on. In the first method the albumen coated
piece of zinc is removed from the printing frame as soon as the
photographic print has been made; it is then coated with ink and
placed in water, the albumen and ink upon it adhere to those parts of
the zinc which have been exposed to light, and may be washed off the
other parts, thus leaving the picture on the zinc in ink. By the
bitumen process the picture is printed in the same way: the plate is
placed in a bath of turpentine, the picture appears on the zinc, and
the bitumen dissolves off the other parts.
If these two prints are now covered with powdered rosin, gum, and ink,
they may be placed in a bath of nitric acid and water, and the exposed
parts bitten or etched away. This is a most interesting and delicate
process, and success depends in good work more upon the skill and
artistic intelligence of the etcher than the chemicals used. The
object is to remove all the whites as in wood engraving, half remove
the greys, and leave the blacks. After the zinc has been bitten a
short time it is taken out of the bath again, covered with gum, resin
and ink to protect it from the acid, heated, when the protecting mass
melts and runs down the sides of the bitten lines and protects them
also; this process is continued until the block is sufficiently
etched. When the exposed parts are all eaten away the picture appears
in relief. This occupies a few hours, maybe but an hour or less. When
completed, the zinc picture is mounted upon a piece of wood, to make
it the same height as the type, placed in a printing press and copies
are made of it, or from electrotypes or stereotypes, at the rate of
from twenty to 20,000 an hour. This is, I hope, an intelligible
outline of the photo-engraving process; every mechanical engraver has
some variation which is his carefully guarded secret. The blocks may
be of zinc or copper or other metal, and all sorts of chemicals are
used. But I cannot too strongly impress upon you that good work in
mechanical engraving is only to be obtained by artistic workmen;
still, remarkable results are to be seen all about, even in the
cheapest prints. But the very best process engravings are produced
only by men who are artists and care for each block. In the case of
the best engravers they will know better than you which process to
use, and there is no more necessity for you to try to tell a
mechanical engraver how the work is to be done, than for you to tell a
wood engraver what tools he shall work with. Bad drawings may look
better by one process than another, and good illustrations may be
spoiled more by one method than another. But every intelligent
engraver will try again and again until he gets the best result he
can.
The gelatine process consists in printing the picture on a sensitised
film of gelatine. Now if this gelatine is soaked in water the parts
representing the whites swell, and the darks, really the picture,
remain as they were, as the light has rendered them insensible to
water; from this swelled gelatine mould a cast in plaster of Paris can
be taken, from this a wax mould is made, and finally an electrotype.
The process is only used, I believe, by one firm; the results are
good, but no better than the others.
Let us consider for a moment what are the advantages and disadvantages
of mechanical reproduction. The first advantage is rapidity of
production--a facsimile wood engraving may take weeks to produce, a
mechanical engraving takes a day or so; this is not an artistic but a
commercial gain. The wood engraving loses, the more intricate and
complicated and close the details become; the mechanical or process
engraving not infrequently gains.
The wood engraver may make mistakes in cutting the lines in the wood
block, but if the lines are properly put down, the camera and the
process engraver should not; and if they do, much less time is lost
and labour wasted than with wood engravings.
Mechanical engraving is a much less costly method. These are not any
of them very artistic reasons, but they count with publishers, and
they count with you. But the great artistic advantage is that the
artist may make his drawing of any size he wishes; it is not cut to
pieces but preserved, and if it is properly drawn, as I have explained
to you, it should produce in complicated work a more faithful result.
In simple line work it is almost impossible to tell a wood engraving
from a process block.
The drawbacks are that the line is sometimes too faithfully
copied--that the engraving is shallow, and that the wood yields a
richer, fatter effect than any metal, mechanical block.
These are artistic drawbacks, but they may all be overcome by the
artist. The line, if good, cannot be too faithfully copied; the
engraving, if shallow, can be made deeper, engraved anew by the wood
engraver. The fat line so much prized was made with a brush, and, as I
have said, brush work reproduces perfectly. And in the majority of
cases the original wood or process blocks are never printed from, but
casts of them called stereotypes or electrotypes are used; therefore
the fat line of the wood is more or less the product of the
imagination. I do not mean to say the original wood or metal block
will not give a richer impression than any cast from it, but I do say
it is only in the case of proofs that the original is used.
If a pencil or other drawing in line is to be reproduced, in which
the varying colour of the pencil mark is to be retained, its greyness
for example, or if the pen line is very delicate, or there are many
single unsupported lines in the drawing, another method must be
employed. A microscopically ruled glass screen, ruled with fine lines
made with a diamond and filled in with ink, is placed in the camera in
front of the glass plate on which the picture is to be photographed.
There are various ways in which this is done, with the object of
breaking up into line the tones which would otherwise print perfectly
black, or, of supporting those weak lines which would print too
heavily. This negative thus obtained is printed on to the zinc or
copper plate, is then etched much as in the case of the simple line
block. This process, usually called half-tone, was invented for
reproducing wash, but is much used now for line, especially when the
dots or line of the screen are cut away by the wood engraver in the
whites. The photo engraver is now endeavouring so to shift or adjust
his screen that the dots will come only where they are wanted to break
up the solid black, and some most interesting results have been
obtained. When I am describing the reproduction of wash drawings, I
shall return to this subject.
Spaces of tint on line drawings can be and almost always are obtained
by the use of what is known as shading mediums; that is, pieces of
gelatine or copper with lines or dots engraved in them are filled with
printer's ink, and these lines or dots are transferred by the engraver
to the parts of the picture on the zinc plate where they are wanted
before the plate is etched. There are many ways in which the artist
can get the same effect by inking bits of silk and pressing them on
the drawing, by inking his thumb, or by drawing with a pencil or
chalk or even pen over a rough book-cover, the only object is to get a
bit of tone in a line drawing: in cheap work it is often very
effective, in the best work it is usually out of place. All the artist
need do is indicate the spot, or the outlines of the parts where the
tint is wanted, by a blue pencil. If the engraver knows how the block
is to be printed he will use the tint that will print best. They are
all useful, but not very sympathetic.
Photo-Lithography and kindred methods are either of little importance
or will be referred to under Lithography. Finally, if the lines are
too black or too strong they can be cut away or thinned, or darks
opened up by the engraver, just as on a wood block; or a little wheel
in a handle called a roulette may be run over parts of the engraving
which are too heavy--the teeth of the wheel break the lines into dots
and lighten them.