WHEN I speak of wash drawings, I would really refer to all painting or drawing, in colour or monochrome, in tone, as distinguished from work in line, which was the subject of my last lecture.
Many persons do not like line work, never master it, and are insensible to its beauty when they see it. For these there is another method of expression, although, I cannot repeat too often, an illustrator should be able to work in more ways than one. One may make one’s illustration in colour in oil, in gouache, in body colour, in wash; in fact paint a picture in the usual way, though, even with the best and most careful methods of reproduction, it will be almost invariably found that in the various stages of photographing, etching and printing, very much, if not all, the charm has disappeared, even though the result be printed in colour, for up to the present no colour can be perfectly reproduced, or rendered into black and white, even by the best engraver in the world. And no colour can be reproduced except by the artist himself. A few men like Detaille, De Neuville, and Lynch have, I believe, invented a special colour scheme for the requirements of colour reproduction, and some of the engravings made from their pictures by Messrs. Boussod, Valladon & Co. are very wonderful; but in the best examples I imagine there is an enormous amount of careful touching up and going over by hand, which places these reproductions in the category of proofs rather than of prints. Certainly there is a vast difference between them and the colour work usually seen in the same firm’s commercial publications, good as they are, and there is a yawning gulf between these and the colour print we have with us always. Therefore, if you wish to work in oil I would suggest that you work in monochrome, and further I would advise you to make your designs in simple black and white—that is if the reproduction is to be printed with black ink; for the nearer your original is to the colour in which it is to be printed, the nearer will the engraver and printer be able to approach it. I would also suggest that perfectly dead colours should be used, because varnish or any sort of glaze, shine or glitter, will tell in the photograph, and even the most careful engravers are rather given to reproducing the photographic copy than the original, even though the latter be at their side.
One method, that has been successful lately, is mixing oil colour with turpentine until it flows like water, and then working on paper; this reproduces most excellently, the only drawback being that the colour rubs off easily.
Body colour and gouache are much used; the only thing to be remembered is that you should keep to the same colours and the same method of work all the way through each drawing. It is very interesting to combine body colour with wash; often in the original design the combination is most pleasing, but the camera does not approve of it, and frequently plays the most unexpected tricks with these combinations. Therefore, either stick to body colour, lamp black, ivory black and white,[3] or pure wash; in the latter case there is nothing which photographs so well as charcoal grey, made by Newman & Co. The most delicate washes reproduce beautifully. It is rather hard to manage, but once you can manage it, it is almost perfect. It is best for work in a very light key, in the extreme darks it is liable to get heavy and sombre and gritty; and if you want a positive black it is well to put it in with ink or some stronger black, even at the risk of knocking things rather out of tone. The only objection to charcoal grey is that it is rather difficult to work over it. Still, in illustration in wash you will always get a cleaner, sharper effect by doing your drawing at once, getting your effect right with the first wash, than by any amount of tinkering at it.
[3] Winsor & Newton and Reeves have lately been experimenting in this way, and their Albanine and Process black are well spoken of by photo engravers.
In this pure wash work you should be careful, very careful, not to let any meaningless pencil lines show through, as they always photograph, cannot be taken out, and at times spoil the whole effect; in fact, imperfections in wash drawings always reproduce more perfectly than the perfections themselves, and it is well to keep your paper reasonably clean, to avoid smudging, blots and lines, or otherwise you will be disappointed in the result. It is often very effective in an original drawing to put in a lot of colour, but it nearly always comes out wrongly in the reproduction. On the other hand, although body colour often comes badly with wash, if you work over or into either your wash or body colour with pen, chalk, or pencil of the same substance as the wash, the result is harmonious often and excellent. I mean, if you make a drawing in wash with Indian ink and work on it with liquid Indian ink in a pen, the result will be right. If you touch up charcoal grey with charcoal, the wash and line unite—these things, however, you will soon learn by experience, even though that experience is gained in a rather painful manner. Still, at present the better magazines and papers are not a practising ground for students, as they were some time ago, and you must be able to do good work before you can expect any intelligent editor to print it.
Drawings or paintings—in fact all work in tone is reproduced mechanically by what is known as the half-tone process, which I referred to briefly in my last lecture.
The drawing is photographed, but in front of the sensitised glass, a microscopically ruled screen is placed to break up this tone into dots or lines, really to get the same effect as the wood engraver obtains with his dots and lines. Otherwise, the tones being flat, or even if they are gradated, would print as a black mass; but these screens break up the masses into little squares, which receive the printing ink on their faces, and the colour or original effect of the picture is thus preserved. It is rather difficult to explain this, but the screen produces white lines in the darks and dark lines in the whites; you can see them by looking at any block. Afterwards, the process is exactly the same as for line drawings. This reproduction of wash work is very uncertain; good effects are obtained, about as often as failures. The delicate tones are not infrequently altogether lost. There are no positive blacks or whites, but a uniform grey tint covers the entire block, in which all delicacy is often hidden. Therefore, to get a good effect, when printed, the drawing should be simply made, that is if it is for cheap engraving and rapid printing; but if for the best books and magazines, wood engravers may be employed to remedy the imperfections of the photograph and the mistakes of the etcher. That is, whites may be cut, blacks toned down, lines thinned, or large spaces on the block may be left for the engraver to work upon: most remarkable results may be seen in the better American magazines.
There are many qualities in a drawing which that senseless machine, the camera, will never reproduce. There are also a few points which it is very difficult (in tone work) for an engraver to render, but they may both combine and obtain most interesting effects.
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.