(Original 5¾ x 3.)
PEN AND INK ON BLACK LINE SCRAPE BOARD WITH WHITE SCRAPED OUT.
(Original 5½ x 3¼.)
A more rapid way of obtaining an effect can hardly be imagined than by these "scraped" boards, and in good hands, or with practice, the effects obtainable are often very charming. The drawings should, as a rule, be not greatly larger than the reproduction intended—a reduction of one-third or one-half being about the best. All the different kinds of black grain boards are treated in the same manner as above described.
PENCIL ON VERTICAL GRAIN WHITE SCRAPE BOARD.
By C.J. Vine. (Original 4 x 3.)
Now the use of white grained boards is less a scraping method than pure line drawing, much of the "line" being almost mechanically produced by drawing upon the "ribbed" surface with pencil. We know if we place a piece of paper upon a rough, cloth-covered book and rub a blacklead pencil over it we get a mottled effect, the blacks and whites of which are reproductions of the projections and depressions on the book cover; so if we draw on a ribbed surface clay-board with pen and ink, the ink follows elevation and depression in one continuous pen stroke. If, however, we draw with a black pencil, without undue pressure, the pencil passes from one elevation to another, or from one "rib" to another, and thus forms a broken or dotted line, which, although in actual colour as black as an ink line, yet being broken and not solid, will reproduce lighter or greyer. A number of adjacent pencil lines would therefore produce a flat tint of dots, very similar to the tint of a "half-tone" block or a "shading medium," in addition to which, and upon which, ink lines may be made to produce deeper blacks. On the accompanying illustration are pencil marks and ink strokes drawn on a piece of grained white board, the grain or "ribs" being vertical. To the left, a single detached pencil stroke forming dotted lines; next are adjacent pencil lines constituting a grained tint, something very like the full tone of the black-grained blocks before considered, and coarser or finer in proportion as the pencil is pressed more or less heavily; next we have some pen and ink lines, the difference of which will at once be seen; and finally, a mixture of pencil and pen, on which the knife has subsequently been used to scratch some small lights. This exhausts the practical possibilities of white grained scrape boards.