Colour Woodcuts - A Book of Reproductions and a Handbook of Method

By John Platt

This instructive book is complete in its unabridged, original form, extensively illustrated and full of instruction that is as useful and practical today as it was when originally published. This work would prove very useful to anyone who wishes to further their ability or improve their knowledge in this form. Contents include - Woodcut Blocks And Tools - Cutting The Block - Printing Materials - Printing A Batch Of Colour Woodcuts - Colour Woodcut Design. Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Read Books Ltd.
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781447488866

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COLOUR WOODCUTS

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTORY—NEED FOR ARTIST’S COLOUR PRINT MEDIUM—COLOUR WOODCUT COMPARED WITH OTHER PRINTING MEDIA USED BY ARTISTS

OWING, no doubt, to the changing conditions of our time—the smaller houses, the tendency to mobility in the middle-class world, the spread of education and of artistic appreciation—there has been for some years an increasing demand for fine prints, such as etchings or wood-engravings. The output has been considerable, and the best of it has attained a very high standard. But these are monochrome media, and both artists and the discerning public have felt, increasingly, the need for a medium in which the artist can produce prints in colour.

Appreciation of the value of colour is a marked feature of the present time, and the modern room calls for fresh and telling colour in pictures to enrich it and yet be in accord with the simplicity and severity of its decoration.

The artist’s public, that is those who can appreciate and wish to possess personal works of art, has much increased of late years. There is now a greater demand for forms of art capable of duplication by the artist himself, and so saleable at a lower figure than the highly priced individual painting, yet possessing æsthetic qualities setting them entirely apart from mere machine-made reproductions.

Several media for producing prints in colour have been tried, but none so far has been the corresponding success in its way that monochrome prints have been in theirs. A serious handicap to these colour media is that they are printed in oily printing-inks, which give very little beauty of surface. The colour-woodcut produced from wood blocks in the Japanese method is an exception. Here the fine powder colours are mixed with rice paste (a water medium) and so remain transparent, and are absorbed into the fabric of the soft fibrous paper, instead of remaining on the surface like a varnish, as does printing-ink. This in itself gives a vibration and a greater beauty to the actual colours; moreover the surface of the paper is unobscured and actually enhanced. The decorative value and pictorial power of Japanese colour-prints are unquestioned. They undoubtedly had a great influence on French art of the latter part of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the æsthetic principles they state so freshly and clearly have now become part of our Western artistic heritage. Of late years the growing need for a colour-print medium has led to a widespread interest in their technique. All essential investigation has now been made, and the materials and tools may be readily