For instance, it is very difficult to give in a wood engraving the look of paint on canvas, without losing much of the picture itself, for if the wood engraver begins to try to imitate texture he not infrequently loses the subject. The mechanical process seems to do this very easily, especially if the brush marks on the canvas are at all prominent. But the delicacy is frequently lost; so, too, are the strong blacks, though a good wood engraver can remedy these defects by treating the metal block just as though it was wood, engraving on it, cutting out, save where it is right, all the mechanical look. But two factors are necessary, first a good engraver, and, second, a publisher who is willing to pay for this engraving, which is expensive. The majority of publishers will not do so, though they will pay for the work of a good or notorious author. They will employ a feeble artist, a poor engraver, and a cheap printer, and talk of how much better the work was done thirty years ago. Of course it was; it was decently drawn and mostly badly engraved, vilely printed, but well paid for; now the photograph is the standard and the results are all about us; therefore you must think of the results. So make broad simple masses, keep your work as flat as you can, remembering that all blacks will have the little white dots of the screen more or less showing through them—these can be kept out by the engraver, but they certainly will appear in the cheapest work; remembering that all delicate grey tones will be eaten up by the screen, therefore don’t put them in if you can help it; and, finally, that unless whites are cut out they will never appear, instead you will have a dotted grey effect.
In the very near future many of these imperfections will disappear, for you must remember that it is scarcely ten years since half tone began to be used at all. But look, whenever you see them—and they are everywhere—at the reproductions of half-tone work; try and study out how the artist got his effect; go to the art editor who published the drawing and ask to see the original. Talk with artists who do good work in black and white; they are mostly human, intelligent, and willing to help and advise you. Go to the engravers’ shops and find out what the engraver will tell you, and to printing offices and see your work on the press.
I have already spoken of the reproductions of line drawings by the half-tone process. One is sometimes tempted to wish that all line work could be reproduced by half tone and tone work could be reproduced by line, because if the line is delicate or the drawing is thin, the screen over it gives a tint which is pleasing, at times makes it look like an etching somewhat, especially if the tint be judiciously cut out. You might look at some of C. D. Gibson’s work, where very great delicacy has been obtained in this way. Engravers are now endeavouring to get the tint just where it is wanted, and I have no doubt they will succeed. When they do, photo-engraving by the half-tone process will be greatly improved.
Finally, study the requirements of the process not only as artists, but from the point of view of the engraver; go down to his shop and find out how the work is done; make him show and tell you; insist on seeing proofs of your drawings—good proofs, too; make corrections on them, first learning what corrections can be made. You cannot have blacks put in your engravings if they did not exist in the drawings, and, roughly speaking, you can only tone down, not strengthen any engraving; but you will find, save in cases of blacks, it is only toning down that the engraving wants, thinning and greying of lines.
All this, I have no doubt, is very dry and uninteresting and tedious, but unless you get these things into your heads in the beginning, your drawings will not photograph well, engrave well, or print well; and if they don’t, you will not get any illustration to do, and you may have yourselves to blame for it.
LECTURE VI.
REPRODUCTION OF DRAWINGS BY WOOD ENGRAVING.
WOOD engraving, as a fine art, has been virtually invented, developed, brought to apparent perfection, and yet ceased to exist, temporarily, almost, as a trade, in this century.
A wood engraving is an engraving made with a graver, upon a cross section of box-wood, that is upon the end, and not the side, of a plank, in relief. As in the case of mechanical engraving, all the wood, excepting that underneath the design upon the block, is cut away, and the picture remains alone in relief, raised upon the surface of the block of the same height as the type; thus the block may be placed on the press and printed with the type.
The first great wood engraver was Thos. Bewick, and he, unlike many of his followers to-day, was an artist, and mostly made his own drawings on the block and cut them as he wished. He saw that wood engraving was a substitute for the slower, more tedious, and more expensive method of steel engraving; that, most important, many of the qualities of steel could be imitated in wood, as the same tools were used; that it could be printed with type; and, save that the richness of colour could not be retained, that it had most of the advantages of metal and few of its disadvantages, and was vastly cheaper. From the first, the imitation of steel was considered the proper aim, and though early in this century Stothard drew with a pen upon the block, and his designs were facsimiled in the wood by Clennell, the prevailing fashion was the imitation of steel engraving, even by Bewick himself. Many of his lines are exactly those used by the steel engravers. By the middle of the century steel engraving virtually disappeared, its practitioners being unable to compete with wood engravers. There have been but few original engravers in this form of art, and though the work of some of the steel engravers who reproduced Turner and Roberts, Wilkie and Landseer, is marvellous, the art is almost dead at present. Cheapness has killed it. Wood engraving also killed lithography—a lithograph cannot be printed with type—and consequently the wood engraver became a most important person. He ran a shop with many assistants; he commissioned artists to make drawings for his assistants to engrave, he dictated the way in which these drawings were to be done, the way in which the lines were to be drawn and washes made, so that they could be cut most easily. He commissioned writers to work up or down to the artists; he printed the books and sold them to the publishers, who were content to put their names on the title pages. And by this method much good and more bad work was accomplished, but the engraver finally became supreme, autocratic, dictatorial, insufferable; and then he vanished, as a shop. Process stepped in, in its turn, on account of its cheapness; and to-day, unless the engraver is an artist, he is but the slave of the process man, a hard fate—but his own. Before the introduction of photography, artists had to make their designs for the wood engraver the size they were wanted upon the block of wood, if portraits of places, reverse them, in pen, brush, pencil, or wash; the engraver cut around and through these designs, making a translation of them in relief on the block which could be printed from. But the drawing had disappeared, and the artist had nothing but the engraving to show for it, hence endless difficulties arose; good artists hated to have their drawings cut to pieces; good engravers hated to have their work criticised unfavourably; also, drawing of a small size, and in reverse on the block was difficult to learn, and only a mechanical craft of no artistic advantage when learned. Therefore, as soon as it was possible to escape from the drudgery, to draw of any size on paper and have that drawing photographed on to a sensitised wood block, of the size it was wanted, in reverse, all artists took to it. And a new school of engravers arose, men who tried to invent new methods of engraving so that they could express the medium, as well as the subject, in which a picture was produced. True from Stothard onward, through Meissonier and Menzel, engravers had tried to render pen and pencil drawings in line on wood; now everything began to be attempted, charcoal, etchings, steel, water colours, lithographs, oils. All the imperfections, accidents, and blemishes were preserved, even if the picture disappeared. But a number of most distinguished artist wood engravers appeared, especially in America, though few of them learned their trade in that country. But they received more encouragement, better pay, better printing, and better artists worked for them. And so the school of American wood engravers, many of whom are not Americans, was born.