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.
Pen-drawing reproduced by swelled gelatine process.