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.
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.