Wash drawings for reproduction by half-tone process should be made upon smooth or finely grained cardboards. Reeves’ London board is very good for the purpose, and so is a French board they keep, stamped in the corner of each sheet with the initials A. L. in a circle. Wash drawings should be made in different gradations of the same colour if a good result is to be expected: thus a wash drawing in lampblack should be executed only in shades of lampblack, and not varied by the use of sepia in some parts, or of Payne’s grey in others. Lampblack is a favourite material, and excellent from the photographic point of view. Payne’s grey, or neutral tint, at one time had a great vogue, but it is too blue in all its shades for altogether satisfactory reproduction, although the illustration, The Houses of Parliament, shown on p. 122, has come well with its use. Chinese white was freely used in the drawing, and its value is shown in putting in the swirls of fog.

Indian ink is capable of producing the greatest range of tone from light to dark, and successive washes with it are quite indelible. But it may be said at once that this great range is not necessary—nay, is not advisable in drawing for half-tone reproduction. In view of the unavoidable defects of the half-tone processes which tend to flatten out the picture, artists should not attempt many and delicate gradations. Half a dozen tones from black to white will generally suffice. Any attempt to secure the thousand-and-one gradations of a photograph will be at once needless and harmful.

Pure transparent water-colour washes do not give such good effects in reproduction as work in body-colour. Chinese white mixed with lampblack comes beautifully. Charcoal-grey, of recent introduction, is not so well adapted to the admixture of body-colour. Altogether, charcoal-grey, although a very admirable colour, is a difficult material unless you know exactly at starting a drawing what you intend to do. The illustration, Victoria Embankment: a Foggy Night, was made in it on rough paper. The nature of the subject rendered the execution of the drawing easy, but in a drawing which runs the whole gamut of tone, its unstable qualities forbid its use by the novice.

The drawings made in wash by Myrbach and Rossi have set the fashion for much recent illustration. Vignettes made with a full brush and reduced to infinitesimal proportions have abounded since the illustrated editions of Tartarin of Tarascon first charmed the eye; but now, reduced to the common denominator of the sixpenny magazines, they have lost all the qualities and retained all the defects the fashion ever had. The drawing of Corfe Railway Station was made in washes of Indian ink with a full brush, each successive wash left to dry thoroughly before the next was laid on. Parts are reinforced with pencil strokes: these can readily be identified in the print. The block was then vignetted.

Another method is used for half-tone work. A photograph is mounted upon cardboard, and may be worked upon in brushwork with body-colour to any extent, either for lightening the picture or for making it darker. For working upon the ordinary silver-print an admixture of ox-gall must be used or the pigments will not “take” upon the sensitized paper.[1] The illustration, The Ambulatory, Dore Abbey, is from a photograph, worked upon in this manner. The photo was so dark and indefinite that something was necessary to be done to show the springing of the arches and the relation of one pier to another. Chinese white was used in the manner described above, and the arches outlined in places by scratching with the sharp point of a penknife.

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.

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,” “? 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.

It will readily be seen that large copies of small sketches can be made in exact proportions by a further application of the diagonal, but care should be taken to have all these lines drawn scrupulously accurate, because the slightest deviation throws the proportions all out.