Wood-Block Printing Part 6

At the end of a day's printing the prints may quite safely be left standing together between the boards until the next day. For three days the damp paper comes to no harm, except in hot weather, but on the fourth day little red spots of mould begin to show and spread. It should be remembered that freshly boiled paste is to be used each day.

DRYING OF PRINTS

When the prints are finished they should be put to dry as soon as possible. If they are spread out and left exposed to the air they will soon dry, but in drying will c.o.c.kle, and cannot then be easily pressed flat. It is better to have a number of mill-boards or absorbent "pulp"

boards rather larger than the prints, and to pile the prints and boards alternately one by one, placing a weight on the top of the pile. The absorbent boards will rapidly dry the prints and keep them quite flat.

Finished prints should be numbered for reference, and should, if printed by the artist himself, also bear his signature --or some printed sign to that effect. The number of prints obtainable from a set of blocks is difficult to estimate. The j.a.panese printers are said to have made editions of several thousands from single sets of blocks. The actual wear in printing even of a fine line block is imperceptible, for the pressure is very slight. Certainly hundreds of prints can be made without any deterioration. But an artist who is both designing and producing his own work will not be inclined to print large editions.[5]

[5] Further experience on this point is given in Chapter VIII on Co-operative Printing.

CHAPTER VII

Principles and Main Considerations in designing Wood-block Prints--Their Application to Modern Colour Printing

Until one has become quite familiar with the craft of wood-block printing it is not possible to make a satisfactory design for a print, or to understand either the full resources that are available or the limits that are fixed.

In beginning it is well to undertake only a small design, so that no great amount of material or time need be consumed in gaining the first experience, but this small piece of work should be carried through to the end, however defective it may become at any stage. A small key-block and two or three colour patches may all be cut on the two sides of one plank for this purpose.

There is great diversity of opinion as to the conventions that are appropriate to the designing of colour prints. In the work of the j.a.panese masters the convention does not vary. A descriptive black or grey line is used throughout the design, outlining all forms or used as flat spots or patches. The line is not always uniform, but is developed with great subtlety to suggest the character of the form expressed, so that the subsequent flat ma.s.s of colour printed within the line appears to be modelled. This treatment of the line is one of the great resources of the work, and is special to this kind of design, in which the line has to be cut with the knife _on both sides_, and is for this reason capable of unusual development in its power of expressing form. Indeed the knife is the final instrument in the drawing of the design.

Typical examples of key-block impressions are given on pages 26 and 33: they show the variety of character and quality possible in the lines and black ma.s.ses of key-blocks.

The designing of a print depends most of all upon this development of line and black ma.s.s in the key-block. The colour pattern of the print is held together by it, and the form suggested. In the j.a.panese prints the key-block is invariably printed black or grey. Ma.s.ses intended to be dense black in the finished print are printed first a flat grey by the key-block, and are then printed a full black from a colour-block like any other patch of colour, the double printing being necessary to give the intensity of the black.

Although several modern prints have been designed on other principles, and sometimes a coloured key-block is successfully used, yet the convention adopted by the j.a.panese is the simplest and most fundamental of all. Outside its safe limitations the technical difficulties are increased, and one is led to make compromises that strain the proper resources of block printing and are of doubtful advantage.

The temptation to use colour with the key-block comes when one attempts to use the key-block for rendering light and shadow. Its use by the j.a.panese masters was generally for the descriptive expression of the contours of objects, ignoring entirely their shadows, or any effects of light and shade, unless a shadow happened occasionally to be an important part of the pattern of the design. Generally, as in nearly all the landscape prints by Hiroshige, the line is descriptive or suggestive of essential form, not of effects in light and shade.

If the key-block is used for light and shade, the question of relative tones and values of shadows arises, and these will be falsified unless a key-block is made for each separate plane or part of the design, and then there is danger of confusion or of compromises that are beyond the true scope of the work.

It is generally safest to print the key-block in a tone that blends with the general tone of the print, and not to use it as a part of the colour pattern. It serves mainly to control the form, leaving the colour-blocks to give the colour pattern. There are cases, of course, where no rule holds good, and sometimes a design may successfully omit the key-block altogether, using only a few silhouettes of colour, one of which controls the main form of the print, and serves as key-block.

Frequently, also, the key-block may be used to give the interior form or character of part of a design, leaving the shape of a colour-block to express the outside shape or contour; as in the spots suggesting foliage in the print on page 114. The shapes of the tree forms are partly left to the colour-block to complete, the key only giving the suggestion of the general broken character of the foliage, not the outside limits of the branches. The outer shape of a tree or branch is rarely expressed by an enclosing line in any of the j.a.panese prints. The key-block is often used to describe interior form when a silhouette of colour is all that is needed for the contour. The expressive rendering of the rough surface of tree trunks and of forms of rock, or the articulation of plants and the suggestion of objects in atmospheric distance or mist, should be studied in good prints by the j.a.panese masters. In printed work by modern masters--as, for example, the work of the great French designers of poster advertis.e.m.e.nts--much may be learnt in the use and development of expressive line.

The j.a.panese system of training is well described in a book by Henry P.

Bowie on "The Laws of j.a.panese Painting," in which many useful suggestions are given with reference to graphic brush drawing and the suggestive use of line and brush marks.

As part of the training of a designer for modern decorative printing, the experience and sense of economy that are to be gained from the study of wood-block printing are very great. Perhaps no work goes so directly to the essentials of the art of decorative designing for printed work of all kinds. The wood blocks not only compel economy of design, but also lead one to it.

Even as a means of general training in the elements of decorative pictorial composition the wood blocks have great possibilities as an adjunct to the courses of work followed by art students. The same problems that arise in all decoration may be dealt with by their means on a small scale, but under conditions that are essentially instructive.

Colour schemes may be studied and worked out with entire freedom by printing and reprinting until a problem is thoroughly solved. A colour design may be studied and worked out as fully by means of a small set of blocks, and with more freedom for experiment and alteration than is possible by the usual methods of study, such as painting and repainting on paper or canvas or wall; for the form being once established by the blocks, the colour may be reconstructed again and again without limit.

The craft has thus not only its special interest as a means of personal expression, but also a more general use as a means of training and preparation for the wider scope and almost unlimited resources of modern printing. The best use of those resources will be made by artists who have been trained under simpler conditions, and have found their way gradually to an understanding of the secrets of aesthetic economy in printing. One of the many paths to that experience is by way of the craft of the wood-block printer.

CHAPTER VIII

Co-operative Printing

A print is shown at the end of this book (page 95) as an example of a first experiment in co-operative printing. An actual print was needed to ill.u.s.trate the method of block printing, and the number required was too great for a single printer to undertake. So the work was divided between four printers (of whom the writer was one), working together. Each of us had been accustomed to print our own prints in small batches of a dozen or two at a time, giving individual care to each print. The printing of 2000 prints to a fixed type was a very different matter, and proved an instructive and valuable experience. It was found that the printing of a large number of successive impressions gave one an increasingly delicate control of a block, and a high percentage of perfect impressions. After the initial experiments and practice, the failures in the later batches of the print were reduced to only 4 or 5 per cent. of the completed prints. The work was done in batches of 250 prints, each print receiving eight impressions, as shown on pages 98 to 109. Each of the four printers took charge of a particular series of the blocks, which were printed in a regular order. It was found most convenient to print the key-block last of all, as the heavy blacks in it were inclined to offset under the pressure of the baren and slightly soil the colour-blocks, if the key-block was printed first, as is usually the practice.

The colour-blocks were printed in the order in which they are placed in the Appendix.

The best quality of work was done on nearly dry paper. The damping sheets were placed among the new paper at the end of the day's work and removed after ten or fifteen minutes, the printing paper then was left standing over night between boards, ready for work in the morning, and was not damped again until after receiving several impressions. Then it was very slightly damped again by means of a damping sheet to every ten or twelve prints placed there for a very few minutes.

As one printer finished the impressions from one of his blocks, the batch of papers was pa.s.sed on to the others, each in turn. In this way three batches of 250 were printed without haste in one week, working eight hours a day for five and a half days.

The chief difficulty experienced was in keeping to the exact colour and quality of the type print, each printer being inclined to vary according to individual preferences. To counteract this tendency, it is necessary for one individual to watch and control the others in these respects.

Otherwise the work proceeded easily and made very clear the possibilities of the craft for the printing of large numbers of prints for special purposes where the qualities required are not obtainable by machine printing. Obviously the best results will always be obtained by the individual printing of his own work by an artist. This can only be done, however, in comparatively small numbers, yet the blocks are capable of printing very large quant.i.ties without deterioration. The set of blocks used for the example given here showed very little deterioration after 4000 impressions had been taken. The key-block was less worn than any, the pressure being very slight for this block, and the ink perfectly smooth. The impression of which a reproduction is given on page 109 was taken after 4000 had been printed from the key-block. Block No. 2 was much more worn by the gritty nature of the burnt sienna used in its printing. It would be an easy matter, however, to replace any particular colour-block that might show signs of wear in a long course of printing.

Other examples given in the Appendix show qualities and methods of treatment that are instructive or suggestive.

No. 6 is the key impression of a j.a.panese print in which an admirable variety of resource is shown by its design; the character of each kind of form being rendered by such simple yet so expressive indications. It is instructive to study the means by which this is done, and to notice how interior form is sometimes suggested by groups of spots or black marks of varied shape while the indication of the external form is left entirely to the shape of the colour-block subsequently to be printed.

Plate XVI is a reproduction of a print by Hiroshige and shows the suggestive use of the key-block in rendering tree forms. Plates XVII and XVIII show in greater detail this kind of treatment.

Plates XXIII-XXIV are key-blocks of modern print designs.

APPENDIX

An original print in colour, designed and cut by the author and printed by hand on j.a.panese paper, followed by collotype reproductions showing the separate impressions of the colour blocks used for this print, and other collotype reproductions of various examples of printing and design.

+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ |The particulars given in Chapter VIII on co-operative printing refer | |specially to the original print included in the first edition. In this | |edition an entirely new print is shown, and only 1,000 copies of it are| |being published. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate VIII.--An original Print designed and cut by the Author, printed by hand on j.a.panese paper.]

Plates originally printed in collotype are now produced in half-tone

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate IX.--First printing. Key block. Black.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate X.--Second printing. Dull Red. Printed lightly at the top.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate XI.--Third printing. Deep Blue. Strong at the bottom, paler at the top.]