In the case of a hand print, the right sized sheet is laid over the inked block and pressed down with a sheet of cardboard. A second cardboard coated with beeswax to make it slide easily, a steel burnisher, as in fig. 1, or a Japanese baren, is then rubbed over the first with considerable pressure which will vary in different sections of the block as the nature of the work demands. Less pressure means greyer and less even blacks, more means blacker blacks. This flexible control of pressure by the printer allows a quality of varied tone and texture' in the hand-made print that can never be rivalled by any other method. In distinguished print ing of this character a single print will take from 15 minutes to 3 hours of printing time. Corners of the print may be lifted to test results during this hand process.
In the case of a machine print the block is mounted in a print ing press like any type form and the print made with uniform pressure. This pressure, however, can be varied artificially by the same overlay and underlay system used in type printing. When darker blacks are required thin sheets of paper are cut to proper size and pasted to the proper spot under the block itself or on the tympan against which the paper lies, in a registered position. The thicker these are the heavier the pressure in that spot, the darker the resulting black and the greyer the surrounding blacks.
Colour printing may be done from one block or a series of blocks. When printed from one block the colours are painted with a brush into the desired section of the uncut surface as in the case of a monotype. Each print thus becomes an original painting which is transferred by pressure to paper. If the colour is to be in spots no lines are necessary except guide lines. It facilitates the process of painting the block if these guide lines are white lines gouged out of the block around separate patches of colour. In the print the white un printed line becomes part of the decorative pattern, giving a hint of mosaic effect. This process could never be used for a realistic picture. A regular line block could of course be printed in colour instead of black, thus getting a different effect. When many blocks are used for one print we have the Japanese colour printing process undoubtedly the highest developed art of colour printing the world has so far produced. (See JAPANESE PAINTING AND PRINTS.) In this process there is a key line block to be printed in black or any desired colour. Each succeeding block, then, prints one, or sometimes two or three well-separated (so they do not overlap in painting on the black) colours onto the same key-block print. The number of blocks so printed may run all the way from two or three to a dozen or fifteen, gaining in range and subtlety as the number increases. The blocks are larger than the actual print thus including an unprinted margin in which two sunken notches are cut into the block to take one corner and one edge of the paper and thus provide accurate registration. All the blocks, of course, are printed in succession on the same piece of paper. Colour printing ink is made of any kind of finely ground dry ink colour mixed with water instead of oil. It is applied with brushes of varying widths, a separate one for each colour, which paint over the entire block high and low sections alike. The brush
charged with colour is dipped into a paste made of finely ground rice flour either before it is applied to the block or immediately after, the paste and the water-paint being thoroughly mixed by a sufficient brushing on the block. This paste changes the character of the colour from a mat finish to a more brilliant one. Also it gives adhesive quality which under the pressure of printing incorporates it thoroughly with the paper. Carefully dampened paper is laid on the block and rubbed directly on the paper with a Japanese bamboo-covered, stiff, slightly convex pad called a baren. The amount of pressure that is used determines the in tensity of the colour of the print. (See JAPANESE PAINTING AND PRINTS.) Chiaroscuro (clear-obscure).—In Europe during the 16th century another type of colour printing developed called chiaro scuro. The method comprised two prints from two blocks on one paper. One was a usual black line print, which as a line picture was complete in itself. The other was a tone block to be printed as one solid ground-colour in sepia, soft warm grey or other colours from which certain spots were gouged out to leave significant white highlights in the print. The final result resem bled the wash-drawings of the masters and undoubtedly came into use as a means of approximating their effect.
The method is said to have been invented by Jobst de Negker at Augsburg. In Germany Hans Baldung Grien
Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) and Burgkmair (1473-1531) were among the first to practice it. In Italy Ugo da Carpi who worked in Venice and whose first print was dated 1518 was its foremost exponent. After dying out it was revived in Germany at the end of the 18th century and has persisted to the present. In the United States Rudolph Ruzika, A. Allen Lewis and others are practising the method today.
"The possibilities of the wood block," says Frank Weitenkampf in his How to Appreciate Prints, "have been ex ploited to a remarkable degree. It has rendered line and tone, given the precision of the pen and ink sketch or the etching, and the free, granular irregularity of the charcoal smudge, translated paintings with the set regularity of the line engraving on copper or, abandoning the line per se, with an attention to tone and colour and texture, which often gave even the illusion of brush marks. It has been used for the rudest handbills and for the most elaborate reproductions of famous works of art ; it has served as an original art, as a direct means of expression, and, crossing the bounds of black and white, it has imitated wash drawings in two or three tints, and has entered the domain of colour printing in elaborate reproductions, as well as in the highly sensitive form of art exemplified in the Japanese chromo xylograph. It has been employed to illustrate in the rudest form the songs and ballads hawked about the streets, and in perfection of craftsmanship works such as the Dore Bible ; it has been put to the practical use of reproducing wallpaper, and it has brought forth works treasured by the collector, though so different in style as the engravings of Darer or Holbein, and those which are the work of some of the modern disciples of art in the United States."