Adobe

“ If you wish to draw a tall subject, such as a tree, a narrow building, an upright flower or figure, hold your sketch-book in an upright position. If you intend drawing a long-shaped subject, a reclining figure of a person or animal, a wide-spreading building, a stretch of low-lying ground, hold the book open at the full width of the page.
Fig. 63. The Well-head Beginners are prone to dash at a subject, and, finding they have drawn it on a smaller scale than they intended, add other details until the page is filled.
But why fill the whole page? An artist's sketch-book is a book of scraps. ”

“ Now, in the early days of printing, when both type and illustration were printed off a single block, the latter standpoint was adopted as a matter of course, and as the art developed and men of genuine ability applied themselves to design, this intimate relation between printer and designer produced results of inimitable beauty. Each page of a fine Aldine is a work of art in itself. The eye can run over page after page for the simple pleasure of its decoration. ”

“ To prepare a drawing that will be in every way suitable for reproduction usually requires experience of a kind not acquired in many other kinds of drafting, such as preparing engineers' or architects' drawings, because the drawings themselves or blue prints made directly from them are the things the engineer or the architect desires. Drawings prepared for reproduction are generally made larger than publication size, and it is therefore necessary to gage each line, letter, or feature for a definite reduction. ”

“ Preparing the Design—Treatment of an Ink Drawing—Chalk Drawings—Alterations—Value of Impressions—Offsets—The Lithographic Hand-roller—Proving—Registration—General Features—Transferring—A Commercial Necessity—Arrangement—Choice of Paper—Transference to Stone—Preparing the Forme.
The operations directly associated with lithographic press work are more or less of a preparatory character. The preparation of a design, in its progressive stages, from the lithographic draughtsman to the printing machine, is usually carried out in conjunction with the press. ”

“ Here, at length, the illustrator can so order his design that the drawing and the printed type form a single piece of decoration,{245} not disregarding the type, but using it as in itself a means of obtaining texture and scale and distributed effect. The type is, as it were, the technical datum of the design, which determines the scale of the line to be used with it. With a wiry type no doubt a wiry drawing is desirable, but the types of the great periods of printing are firm in outline and large and ample in distribution. ”

“ When a photo-lithograph like a pen and ink drawing is to be prepared from a coloured picture, or from a sepia or Indian ink wash drawing of a plastic object or a photograph from nature, or from an object not suitable for photographic reproduction an autotypic transfer is to be prepared, a proof of the desired object must be first prepared, and then from this the drawing is to be made. ”

“ Whatever the name may be,—Collotype, Artotype, Albertype, Phototype, or Carbon-gravure,—the principle is the same; an impression is made in printer's ink from a photo-chemically produced design on a gelatine surface, either on the hand-press or on a power cylinder press similar to that used in lithographic printing.
There is hardly any process which is more capable of producing fine works of art. It is the only true method for reproducing, in the full sense of the word, an etching, engraving, a drawing in pen and ink, an aquarelle, a painting, or objects from nature. ”

“ While the students at the art schools usually begin to get effects with light and shade, the printer will do well to master outline sooner than light and shade, for it is the most quickly executed and the most easily engraved, and, I need not add, last but not least, most easily printed. I should advise you then to take commonplace objects that are about the house and make innumerable sketches of them in the manner of this drawing. Take a derby hat for example, place it a little above the eye and endeavor to draw it as Engström did his. ”

“ An Economy of Time in the Studio.—Have a portion of your studio or work-room wall lined with thin boarding—"picture-backing" of 1/8 inch thick is enough, and this is to pin things on to. The cartoon is what you are busy upon, but you must "think in glass" all the time you are drawing it. Have therefore, pinned up, a number of slips of paper—a foolscap half-sheet divided vertically into two long strips I find best.
On these write down every direction to the cutter, or the painter, or the designer of minor ornament, the moment it comes into your mind, as you work at the charcoal drawing. ”

“ Drawing, composition,21 harmony, balance, proportion, perspective, color, tone, light-and-shade, values, etc., are qualities of graphic art that apply to printing with varying force, according to the exigencies of each particular case in hand, and particularly according to the comprehension and cultivation of the printer. It is always possible to explain the beauty and power of any piece of printing by reference to the same principles that are responsible for the excellencies of other works of graphic art. ”

“ We will suppose some book of travel or poetry be set up in type by the printer, and a proof copy be made up with broad margins under the direction of the illustrator, who then takes it in hand and decorates each page as desired; or the pages are pulled as proofs on two or three kinds of paper, smooth for pen work, rough for crayon, or medium for wash drawings—what delightful variety might be secured! When the artist has added his marginal and inter-paragraph illustrations the pages are photo-reproduced, the complete block including both letterpress and drawings. ”

“ What I do instead of drawing is use my computer to do graphics and illustrations.
As you work with computers during your school career I'll bet you'll love some of the creative things you can do with computer drawing programs. My favorite drawing software is called 'Arts & Letters'. It has a lot of pre-drawn illustrations. These are called 'clip art'. I can, for instance, call up an illustration of an airplane. Then I can do all sorts of interesting things to change how the airplane looks. It's a lot of fun. ”

“ All detail drawings were made at the drawing offices attached to the works and submitted to the engineers previous to being passed into the workshops. If necessary, full-size drawings were made on the blackened floor of the large drawing loft, and from these all templates were made in wood. The templates were carefully cut to size, all holes drilled in them, and all necessary information and description branded upon the template in clear type. In certain cases, such as bracing bars, which recur several hundred times over, some of the bars themselves were used as templates. ”

“ No feature of early printing is more unworkmanlike than that of composition. Imitating the style of the manuscript copy, the compositor huddled together words and paragraphs in solid columns of dismal blackness, and sent his forms to press without title, running-titles, chapter-heads and paging-figures. The space for the ornamental borders and letters of the illuminator seems extravagant when contrasted with the pinched spaces between lines and words. ”

“ As the wood-engraver grew proficient in his technique, he widened his field by imitating the effect of etching or engraving on copper, in rivalry with this form of illustration. In this he succeeded so well that the other, more expensive modes of adornment were largely driven from the field of book illustration. With the advent of photography, the design could be fixed upon the wood block mechanically, accurately, without the trouble of a careful drawing. The values of tone in the photograph relieved the engraver from the work of translating color-values into black and white. ”

“ A paper having a design must, of course, be laid in the same direction as the book. Where paste-down and fly leaf are to be pasted on separately, it must be so arranged that, after [Pg 128] the pasting, one leaf forms the counterpart of the other, that is to say, the design must run through and be broken only by the joint. To effect this it is necessary that the paste-down should be first pasted on; when pasting on the fly leaf the work can be made right. ”

“ But it is a matter of practice mainly, and the pen you usually write with is apt to be the best medium for practice at first. In fact, we are particularly anxious to have our reader not worry about pen technic. Let him realize that he might wish to put his drawing upon the chalk plate, in which case he would make a tracing of a photograph, and, placing it upon the chalk, press upon it with a hard-pointed pencil, and thus transfer his outline into an indentation on the chalk. ”

“ With the use of handmade paper, again, upon which a printed book always looks best, openness of line is a necessary condition in design work to be reproduced as surface printing blocks with the type, since the quality of the paper requires considerable pressure to bring up bright impressions, and under such pressure (with the grain and rough surface of the paper, which gives the richness to the lines and blocks of type or woodcut) fine and broken lines would print up too strong, and not look well. ”

“ A firm and open quality of line, with bright black and white effects, not only has the most attractive decorative effect with type, but lends itself to the processes of reproduction for surface printing best, whether woodcut or one of the numerous forms of so-called automatic photo-engraving, as well as to the conditions of the printing press.
In all design-work which has to be subjected to processes of engraving and printing, clearness and definiteness of line is very necessary. ”

“ When quite sure that the blue marks will not photograph, the artist begins his drawing. It is not a difficult task that he has before him—he merely inks his previously drawn lines little by little. Each stroke of the pen, after it has been made, is photographed. If the ink lines are short the movement on the screen will be very slow, and if they are long the movement will be very rapid. And, again, whether the artist turns the camera handle once, twice, or three times for each pen stroke has its effect upon the speed with which the lines grow on the screen. ”

“ To the aid of the ordinary printing press came electrotyping, stenographic colour printing, engraving, and smaller job and card presses, all entirely new creations within the century, and of infinite variety, each in itself forming a new class in typographic art, and a valuable addition to the marvellous transformation. ”

“ In the printed page, design is concerned with the arrangement of masses and lines on a flat surface—the face of the sheet of paper. Hence design in printing considers two dimensions only, width and length. The third dimension, depth, which must be treated in all but flat surfaces, can only be represented on the printed page and the means of showing depth is really an illusion by which the eye sees various colors and tones which convey a pictorial impression. ”

“ While the printer has been engaged in putting the manuscript into type, the publisher has had a designer at work upon a cover sketch, and an artist upon such illustrations as the 81book requires. All this has to fall in with the publisher's general scheme for the book as a whole. The designer must know what limits are placed upon him as to the number of inks or foils, or the amount of gold-leaf which he may employ. The artist must know whether his pictures are to be drawn for full color, two-color or one-color plates. ”

“ The facts are written in their proper spaces when first ascertained, and when the work of research is finished it will be found that the work of compilation has taken care of itself! In fact, the notebook is self-compiling. The blank spaces are arranged in the order of the statements as they are to appear on the printed page, the connecting words and proper punctuation being printed in the notebook. Having filled in all the spaces which our data requires, we simply draw a pen through the rest, and our book is practically compiled, for its own leaves may be sent to the printer as manuscript! ”

“ In drawing the examples set to test a student's knowledge and skill in machine drawing, it must be remembered that only a limited time is available. It is only possible to set an example to be drawn in pencil, and the points which will receive attention are (1) accuracy of scale and projection; (2) power of reading a drawing, shown by the ability to transfer portions of the mechanism and dimensions from one view to another; (3) knowledge of machines, as shown by the ability to fill in small details, such as nuts, keys, etc., omitted in the sketches given. ”

“ Bear in mind that both sides of a line are drawn by the knife. The special power of developing the expressive form of line on both sides is a resource tending to great development of drawing in designs for wood-block prints. The line may be of varying form, changing from silhouette to pure line as may best serve to express the design. It should never be a mere diagram.
Plate VI. Reproduction of an impression (reduced) of the key-block of a Japanese print showing admirable variety in the means used to suggest form. ”

“ Paul listened attentively.
"After the words have been formed and the lines cast by the linotype, the separate lines are arranged by the compositors inside a frame the exact size of the page of the paper to be printed. This frame or form as we call it, is divided into columns and after all the lines of type, the cuts, and advertisements to be used are arranged inside it, so that there is no waste space, a cast is made of the entire form and its contents. ”