Monday, July 11, 2005

Spots Away

Saturday was a disaster as far as engraving was concerned so I left it all behind and visited Sebastian at the Rampant Lions Press. Sebastian is one of Britain's finest printers and book designers and I enjoyed seeing his recent work and wandering around the presses and type. I gave up on the rest of the day.

Sunday was a different matter. The "Doves" are finished and so is the "Snail". The former is, perhaps a little larger and the latter a little smaller than I had first planned but these things do sometimes take on a life of their own. They will float between stanzas in the book. The larger prints will be a different matter as they have definite sizes. The first of these is ready to engrave with the design transferred onto the block. I always take more care with figures and the face and clothes have been broken down into separate areas for me to cut the lighter and darker tones. Faces have to be convincing and so I will proof the block at an early stage before proceeding. If I am not happy, I will move on to another block and have the first resurfaced.

I have decided to part with the evil doves (see earlier posts) and will offer them, together with a proof, on eBay. This will be the first time that I have offered an original woodblock and have no idea where to start the bidding. I think that I will start very low; someone may get a bargain!

I am conscious that I haven't posted images for a while. I need to get scanning tonight and remedy that.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold or steel are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper, which are called engravings. Engraving was a historically important method of producing images on paper, both in artistic printmaking, and also for commercial reproductions and illustrations for books and magazines. sportsbook, It has long been replaced by photography in its commercial applications and, partly because of the difficulty of learning the technique, is much less common in printmaking, where it has been largely replaced by etching and other techniques. Other terms often used for engravings are copper-plate engraving and Line engraving. These should all mean exactly the same, but especially in the past were often used very loosely to cover several printmaking techniques, so that many so-called engravings were in fact produced by totally different techniques, such as etching. http://www.enterbet.com