Line engraving is a term for engraved images printed on paper to be used as prints or illustrations. The term is now much less used and when is, it is mainly in connection with 18th or 19th century commercial illustrations for magazines and books, or reproductions of paintings.
Steel engraving is the same technique, and is mostly used for banknotes or illustrations for books, magazines and reproductive prints from about 1790 to the early 20th century, when the technique became less used. Copperplate engraving is another somewhat outdated term for engravings. With photography long established, engravings made today are nearly all artistic ones in printmaking, but the technique is not as common as it used to be; more than other printmaking techniques, engraving requires great skill and much practise, even for an experienced artist.
Read more about Line Engraving: Technique, Early History, A Flourishing Art Form: 17th and 18th Centuries, A Technological Foe: The 19th Century, Tools of The Trade
Famous quotes containing the words line and/or engraving:
“The line of separation was very distinct, and the Indian immediately remarked, “I guess you and I go there,—I guess there’s room for my canoe there.” This was his common expression instead of saying “we.” He never addressed us by our names, though curious to know how they were spelled and what they meant, while we called him Polis. He had already guessed very accurately at our ages, and said that he was forty-eight.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“For I so truly thee bemoane,
That I shall weep though I be Stone:
Until my Tears, still drooping, wear
My breast, themselves engraving there.
There at me feet shalt thou be laid,
Of purest Alabaster made:
For I would have thine Image be
White as I can, though not as Thee.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)