and Shapes of Cuts Fig 1-Types of Tools Used in Wood Engraving

FIG. 1.-TYPES OF TOOLS USED IN WOOD ENGRAVING, AND SHAPES OF CUTS removed with gouges of varying widths and depths (fig. I). The method requires, as is readily seen, two or more cuts to release a single black line—two if the lines are in a parallel and close together series, four if a line is segregated, and anywhere up to eight if the lines are cross-hatched. (See A, B, and C, respectively, fig. 2.) Laborious, round-about, forced—such is the reproductive black-line method.

The white line is engraved, rather than cut, into the end-grain of very fine hard wood, usually box-wood. The box-wood blocks are about Lin. high and across the grain. Into this hard fine grain lines are gouged out with hollow V- or U-shaped parting tools or gouges, or with solid metal burins or scoopers. All these tools are shown in their varying widths, depths and shapes in fig. i. The burins, tint-tools and scoopers are held in the palm of the hand (Plate I.), and pushed forward; the threading tool cuts several lines at once. The knife in cutting is pulled toward the body and may be held as shown in Plate I., fig. 3 or grasped as one would grasp a dagger. Chisels may be pushed by the hand or hit with a wooden mallet. In the process of cutting, the block is held on a leather bag filled with sand. The left hand holds and turns the block easily against the pressure of the cutting tool in the right. (Plate I., fig. 2.) Fundamentally, the methods of the white and the black line woodcuts are the same in the actual technical process and the ultimate end achieved. In the black line cut the cutter is conscious only of the black lines he is reproducing ; in the white line engrav ing he is exploiting the white lines, at the same time being fully conscious of the blacks by which he must obtain the whites. Xylography is a general title that covers both methods.

In etching and pencil drawing (qq.v.) the point glides easily over a smooth surface, flexibility and freedom being the con sequent result. In copper-plate and wood-engraving there is re sistance to a cutting tool which must be forced through resisting material. This tends to give a certain directness and rigidity to all lines, straight and curved. A slow uniformly changing curve would be more natural than a jerky, hectic, quickly curving one. The medium, therefore, lends itself to an abstract quality peculiarly adapted to contemporary creative expression. This

adaptability, no doubt, explains the preponderance of woodcuts among the so-called "modern" works in prints.

Artists of Western civilisation, it is interesting to note, have never made use of the potentially different characteristics inherent in lines of different types as have the artists of Japan and China. In Japanese art, for instance, there are the eighteen types of lines varying from stiff wiry ones expressing the starched garments of court nobles to the jagged ones expressing the rags of beggars. Among Western woodcutters, John J. A. Murphy has probably canvassed such possibilities more thoroughly than any other artist.

Drawing on Block.—There are a number of ways of drawing on the block. For a black line cut the drawing to be reproduced can be made with India ink, or Chinese black, with corrections in Chinese white. For a white line-cut the simplest and most flexible method, in that it allows erasing as easily as on paper, is with a lead pencil. The pencil drawing can be fully developed and then translated into white lines as the cutting proceeds. When mechani cal exactness is required the subject can be photographed directly on a block prepared by the proper sensitizing of its surface. Photo graphs or wash drawings on the block have been commonly used during the latter part of the reproductive period—i.e., up to the end of the last century. Timothy Cole, for instance, so photo graphed his subjects onto his block and then proceeded to interpret the photograph into white lines.

Printing.—Woodcut printing is of two kinds, black and colour, and may be done either by hand or on a regular type-printing press. For black printing the finest obtainable quality of proving ink ground in oil is used. The ink is spread on a glass or marble slab with a special composition hand-roller (of the same type as used in printing presses). After a thorough working onto the roller in a uniform and exceedingly thin layer the ink is trans ferred to the surface of the block by several movements of the roller across the block in different directions. The paper may be India in several textures or soft hand-made Japanese such as the Gifu. Or it can be the less enduring machine-made domestic in many varieties. The India is adapted to the white line engrav ing, the harder textures to the finer lined blocks; the Japanese and domestic to the coarser lined blocks.