Tinted cards may be used in drawing for half-tone, but yellow tints must be avoided, for obvious photographic reasons; and blue tints, photographically, are practically pure white. If tinted cardboard is used at all, it should be in tints of grey or brown.
14 × 12. MOONLIGHT: CONFLUENCE OF THE SEVERN AND THE WYE.
Oil sketch on canvas in Payne’s grey. Half-tone process. Fine grain.
A very satisfactory way of working for half-tone is to work in oil monochrome. The reproductions from [oil sketches] come very well indeed by half-tone processes: full and vigorous. The photo-engraver always objects to oil because of its gloss, but this can be obviated by mixing your colour with turpentine or benzine, which give a dull surface. The sketch shown on p. 130 was made in this way. It was a smoothly worked sketch, with no aggressive brush-marks, but it may be noted that brush-marks come beautifully by this process: if anything, rather stronger than in the original, because the shadows cast by them reproduce as well. But if you sketch in oils for reproduction, be chary of vigorous brushwork in white: it comes unpleasantly prominent in the block.
In giving instructions for the reproduction, and reduction, of drawings, the measurement in one direction of the reproduction desired should be plainly indicated thus: ← 4½ inches →. Unless absolutely unavoidable, drawings should not be sent marked “½ size,” “⅓ scale,” and so on, because these terms are apt to mislead. People not accustomed to measurements are very uncertain in their understanding of them, and, absurd as it may seem to those who deal in mensuration, they very frequently take ½ scale and ½ size as synonymous terms; while ½ scale is really ¼ size, and so on, in proportion.
The proportions a drawing will assume when reduced may be ascertained in this way. You have, say, a narrow upright drawing, as shown in the [above diagram], and you want the width reduced to a certain measurement, but having marked this off are at a loss to know what height the reproduction will be. Supposing it to be a pen-drawing, vignetted, as most pen-drawings are; in the first place, light pencil lines touching the farthest projections of the drawing should be ruled to each of its four sides, meeting accurately at the angles A, B, C, D. This frame being made, a diagonal line should be lightly ruled from upper to lower corner, either—as shown—from B to C, or from A to D. The measurement of the proposed reduction should then be marked off upon the base line at E, and a perpendicular line ruled from it to meet the diagonal. The point of contact, F, gives the height that was to be found, and a horizontal line from F to G completes the diagram, and gives the correct proportions of the block to be made.