Sundry elemental methods of getting an image on to zinc for etching without the intervention of photography may perhaps suggest themselves to the reader. Thus, for instance, an outline drawing may be made in transfer ink on transfer paper and at once laid down on the zinc and etched. A glass plate, coated with a soft opaque substance, may have a design scratched thereon and be used in place of a negative; but such methods are crude and limited, and need not be considered here.
We will now pass to an examination of the various kinds of drawings suitable for reproduction by relief process blocks, describing as nearly as possible how they are made and with what materials.
CHAPTER VIII.
METHODS OF LINE REPRODUCTION.
To those who have not previously given the matter attention, it will be a source of some astonishment to find a wide range of tones, that is varying degrees of light and shade, may be suggested by so simple and unpromising a means as black lines on a white ground. Perhaps no better means exists for getting some insight of this than by careful and persistent study of the line illustrations constantly appearing in the better class periodicals, such as The English Illustrated, The Strand, Harper's, Sketch, Black and White, and many others. In these we get frequent examples of the work of different men, and shall soon begin to realise not only the wide possibilities of line work, but the extremely different styles of various artists; and so long as the practice is not too long continued, or too much relied on, some advantageous exercise may be found in carefully copying such examples; being watchful in so doing that, quite independent of outline, our copy suggests the same materials, fabrics, &c., as are suggested in the original, and that this suggestion be arrived at by the same kind of treatment.
In this kind of drawing there is obviously no such thing actually as "tone," everything being black or white, and yet it is possible to suggest every gradation and most delicate tonal relationships of colours by this elementary means; the varied textures of objects can also be most convincingly suggested.[4]
Probably one of the first things that will strike us, on inspecting many styles of drawing, is the fact that while some draughtsmen expend enormous labour in filling the whole design with multitudinous strokes of the pen, others obtain effect by a very few lines and great expanses of white paper. A great number of strokes rapidly put in, in the manner of shading with pencil, and a few bold lines slowly and deliberately drawn, constitute the two chief differences of style. In the latter, the principal study is perhaps to know what to leave out, and nowhere is the knowledge and skill of the artist better seen than when the subject is satisfactorily rendered with the least possible amount of labour, there being not one unnecessary or superfluous line. Such powerful sketches, by Mr. Reginald Cleaver, may be seen in The Daily Graphic, and by Mr. Phil May in The Sketch. In these drawings a maximum of effect is attained with a minimum of work, and one feels that every line is essential and not one can be spared.