Fast flowed the artist’s vital tide,
And now the apologetic bard
Demands indulgence for his pard.”
Or I imagine without much trouble you might invent something in the style of Valloton, a Frenchman, who is resurrecting wood cutting in a manner of his own, while carrying on the traditions of the old men. I hope you may be able to get as much life and go in it as he has. Make your drawing on the wood, or on paper, have it photographed on the wood in the latter case, and cut around the lines, leaving only the drawing. The greatest difficulty is with fine lines, and you see how cleverly Valloton has avoided making them. Or, like Lepère, another French artist—he would be a man to study with—do big, bold, effective things; or again you might attempt, as he does, colour work on wood, like that done by the Japanese, drawing it, engraving it, and printing it all yourselves.
Or, take up drawing and engraving in the manner of Caldecott, Crane, or Kate Greenaway, when they were reproduced and printed by Edmund Evans.
Process is fighting for colour too, but wood, at least in proofs, and that is all you would care for, gives some qualities far beyond process.
In colour printing from wood blocks as many blocks must be made as there are colours, and there must be as many separate printings made from these blocks as there are colours in the printed picture. There must also be an outline block called the key block. Usually in European colour printing, whether from wood blocks, or by lithography, or even process, the colours are printed on top of each other; for example, a blue is printed over a yellow to get green, and at times several colours are superimposed, with the result that colour is lost and mud obtained. The Japanese have shown us how to make colour prints, however, and their method is now adopted by all intelligent colour printers. It consists in making the right colour before it is put on the block, and in placing the colours side by side like a mosaic. The work is done somewhat in this way; the artist makes his drawing, several tracings (as many as there are colours) are made from it, and one extra tracing must be made of the outline only. Or rather the outline alone is cut on the block, other blocks are then made for each colour, or the parts cut out of the same block; one will contain all the red, another all the blue, a third the yellow, and so on. They must be very accurately cut, so as to fit together and print truly, and you can see from Japanese prints how wonderfully well the work is done. Of course the editions from such blocks are very limited, and on this account, like etchings, often vary, the printers having tried experiments in colour. The grain of the wood is taken advantage of in printing, as it often gives a lovely pattern; a good printer will wash in gradated skies with the backgrounds, and no matter how wonderfully they are worked, if of the same colour, are printed usually from the same block. The Japanese, I believe, use water-colours; certainly the French and English, who have tried to imitate them, do, putting the colour, mixed with a little size or gum, on the face of the block with a sponge; in fact they are printed water-colours. Several Frenchmen have obtained in this way most notable results. Very similar was the fashion of colour printing called chiaroscuro, used in the early part of the century. The trouble with this was that the oil with which the inks were mixed, either ran, or spoiled the pages, or did not dry well. Drawings on grey paper in chalk can be wonderfully imitated in this way, and there are methods of using steel and copper plates, bitten into relief to get outlines or tints, which were also employed. To-day in the printing of wood engravings and process blocks by steam, at many thousands an hour, the same system of colour printing, by placing the colours side by side, is being attempted, for it is impossible to obtain fine tone or rich effect by placing one colour on top of another, even in slow printing by hand, while it is absurd to attempt it rapidly by steam. In the most successful attempts yet made, those of the Le Quotidien Illustré and Le Rire, Paris papers, colour printing from process blocks has been most successfully done, and I do not doubt that in a very few years colour printing in magazines and newspapers will be very general.
As I have said, all intelligent printers have now come to the conclusion that simple flat colours, put on side by side, will alone give good artistic results; they have only learned this, however, after going quite to the other extreme: after trying to get pure colour and rich effects by using the three primary colours on top of each other, they obtained but crudeness, vulgarity, and mud.
Photography and chemistry are useful in art, but art cannot be created by these means. It may be that some one, some day, will be able to photograph a picture in colour, but there is as yet no evidence of it.
Wood engravings may also be made by scraping or lowering the fronts or backs of blocks, and rich, soft, fat effects can be produced. Very little has been done, I think, with these lowered blocks, some remarkable examples of which can be seen in Chatto and Jackson’s “History of Wood Engraving.”