I have recommended you to use only black ink and white paper; before you have worked much you will try experiments, I am sure, in greying ink, putting water with it, and leaving pencil marks, or adding lines with lithographic chalk, or crayon; but you will find out the moment the drawing is printed that everything comes quite black, and if you have made your distance in broad grey lines it will possibly ruin your whole scheme. Greys may be obtained by engraving the blocks by hand, rouletting, or a number of other ways which I shall explain. Line drawings may also be made altogether in pencil, on rough paper, in chalk or crayon, reinforced, if necessary, with a blot of ink, or a wash, or a line with a pen here and there; but for line work with these materials you must employ a grained paper in order to get a proper mechanical direct reproduction of the work. Bristol boards must not be used. Sometimes these combinations of pen and pencil work are excellent; but they must harmonise, otherwise the result is unpleasant.
Some idea of the effect your drawing will present when engraved may be obtained by the use of a diminishing glass; and, vice versâ, you might study some of the engravings in the books and magazines around you with a magnifying glass.
Corrections in line drawings with pen should be made either with an ink eraser, a razor, the razor knife, or by painting over the place with Chinese white, or, if it be large, by pasting down a bit of paper on it. This is the most usual way; if the paper is thin and the edges well joined, it is the best. Or you may cut a hole from the back and let in a bit of paper, paring down the edges, or scraping them down; but be careful about the edges, because they make a nasty line when the drawing is photographed. In pencil, crayon, or charcoal work, remove imperfections in the ordinary way with a bit of rubber. You will not, of course, lose your head and elaborate a pen drawing, any more than you would a chalk or charcoal drawing or etching. You will select your lines with the utmost care, put them down with the greatest intelligence, and the more care and intelligence you exercise the better will be your illustrations; however, this is what you are trying to do every time you make a drawing in line from life or the antique, and I will not bore you by repeating what you hear every day in your ordinary school work, nor will I do more than remind you how careful you must be in your composition, in your arrangement of lines, in your placing of blacks, in making up your picture; only exercise the judgment necessary to compose any other work of art.
Your drawings should be works of art; be proud of them; but also regard them as a means to an end, and, as I have said, for cheap and rapid printing draw on smooth white paper with good black ink, and do not use big solid blacks, or single thin lines. Keep your work as open as possible and do not have it reduced. That is, draw as near the size it is to appear (if you can find that out) as possible. For the best engraving and printing, draw as you like. Anything to-day can be photographed and engraved; the great difficulty is in the printing. Remember that if you do not put distinction and character into your work, the engraver and printer cannot. They will take much away in any case.
As you are working for an editor, you will have to please him. Do so if you can without hurting your work and your own standard of right and wrong.
But always work in your own way, if that is at all possible for reproduction and printing, if not, you will have to change your methods. For you are working for a definite purpose, illustration; therefore your work must engrave.
If you wish to succeed you must see all the illustration you can, you must talk to editors and illustrators, and you must go down into the printing office and the engraver’s shop.
You must learn your trade, for if you have not passed through the drudgery of the apprentice, you will never become a master of your craft.