on the block.

With regard to the design of the key block, it is a common mistake to
treat this as a drawing only of outlines of the forms of the print. Much
modern so-called decorative printing has been weak in this respect. A
flat, characterless line, with no more expression than a bent gaspipe,
is often printed round the forms of a design, followed by printings of
flat colour, the whole resulting in a travesty of "flat" decorative
treatment.

The key design should be a skeleton of all the forms of a print,
expressing much more than mere exterior boundaries. It may so suggest
form that although the colour be printed by a flat tint the result is
not flat. When one is unconscious of any flatness in the final effect,
though the result is obtained by flat printing, then the proper use of
flat treatment has been made. The affectation of flatness in inferior
colour printing and poster work is due to a misapprehension of the true
principle of flat treatment.

[Illustration: Plate V. Impression (nearly actual size) of a portion of
a Japanese wood block showing great variety in the character of the
lines and spots suggesting form.]

(_To face page 26._)

As an illustration of the great variety of form that may be expressed by
the key-block, a reproduction is given (page 33) of an impression from a
Japanese key-block. It will be seen that the lines and spots express
much more than boundaries of form. In the case of the lighter tree
foliage the boundaries are left to be determined entirely by the
subsequent colour blocks, and only the interior form or character of the
foliage is suggested. The quality or kind of line, too, varies with the
thing expressed, whether tree, rock, sea, or the little ship. The
design, too, is in itself beautiful and gives the essential form of the
entire print.

The study of the drawing of any of the key-blocks of the Japanese
masters will reveal their wonderful power and resource in the suggestion
of essential form by black lines, spots, and masses of one uniform tint
of black or grey. The development of this kind of expressive drawing is
most important to the designer of printed decoration, whether by wood
blocks, or lithography, or any other printing process.

Other good types of drawing for the purposes of key-blocks in wood are
given on Plate V facing page 26 and Plate XVI p. iii in Appendix.

When the key-block with its design pasted upon it is thoroughly dry, a
little sweet oil should