Recent Work (1)

This is always a busy time of year for me and I have several engraving jobs in hand, as well as preparing for my Open Studio events and Art in Action in July. I photographed the various stages in the engraving of an image for the invitation to the wedding of our niece and her fiancee. Here they are.

Starting with a lovely piece of boxwood prepared by blockmaker Chris Daunt:


As always, I darkened the block slightly with diluted fountain pen ink so that I can see both drawing and cut marks:


The design was transferred to the block - making sure that I reversed the drawing:



Once happy with the drawing, I went over it with a fine ink pen and, straight away, made the first cuts - using a medium spitsticker for the lines and a round scorper to clear the sky. It is a good idea to move between two tools like this to add a bit of variety to a day of relentless engraving.


Next, I cleared more clouds, started to cut a tone for the sky and made a start on some very detailed work on the walls and windows of the Scottish castle where the wedding will take place:



I Carried on with the sky and then switched to clearing the corners with a wide square scorper. It is important to lower this wood considerably to make sure that it doesn't pick up any ink to leave nasty inky marks around the final image:


Back to working on the stone face of the building:



Nearly there:



A fine tint tool was used to lay down close lines to suggest the trees in the background:



I worked on the foreground, stippling to suggest gravel on the drive. The corners are now quite a bit lower than the face of the block. Finally, I added diagonal lines and horizontal lines to the face of the building.


The block is not finished, but this is a good stage to take the first proof. If I take too much out, I cannot put it back. The block is fixed to the bed of the smaller (1865) Albion press.



The first proof form the block shows the first state; this often shows lots of work to be done. I lightened the sky and the trees in the background and added horizontal lines to lighten the drive in the foreground. the building was pretty much there - I just needed to tidy up some small details. The various states dried on the rack above the press:



When I printed the fourth state, I knew that I had finished:



Here is a scan of the finished engraving. The image of 75 x 50 mm (about 3 x 2 inches):

And here is an enlargement to show some of the details.


It took about four days to complete the work. It's not unusual to spend a day on a square inch of detailed engraving. Between bouts of engraving, there was time for drawing, designing and even a spot of gardening.

Another Week In And Out Of The Studio

The better weather has seen me both in and out of the studio this last week. Warm sun one minute, rain the next - real April showers.

Inside, I was working on the second design for icons for a forthcoming book. The book - showing a book - has been accepted - now for a laptop:


Outside, my eye was caught by a blackbird cooling down in the pond, no doubt causing much grief for the tadpoles and newts that like this shallow area. I photographed it from my desk:



Back inside, I was checking and signing prints:


The image in question is called "Lilies-Of-The-Valley, Nimes" and it celebrates the giving of this lovely flowers as a gift of friendship in France. In the background is the cathedral in Nimes in the South of France:


Outside, the large border is coming alive - with both flowers and hens:


I love to work outdoors; These are sketches for an engraving for our niece's wedding in September:


Below the table, the hens are hopeful for falling crumbs from my biscuit:


Time for a break. A plays one of my mandolins, a 1916 Gibson. I love to play the mandolin in the garden in the warm weather -a great way to relax.



Back inside, I contemplate the largest piece of box that I have had in stock. It was made by Chris Daunt and provided by the Society of Wood Engravers. I am one of 25 members who are making an engraving for a set of prints to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the relaunching of the SWE. My print will be based on the number twenty. I will be showing all of the stages of the designing and engraving of this print in the following weeks. Watch this space.


I enjoyed my week - I hope that yours was a good one!

Back In The Swing Of Things

Spring definitely seems to have sprung. Walking out in the mornings, everything is starting to look decidedly greener:


Returning home, cowslips are there to delight the weary traveler outside the kitchen door:


The back problem mentioned in my last post turned out to be much worse than I had thought - or perhaps it was the effects of pulling 60 prints on the Albion with the bad back that did it. I have had a period during which I could neither engrave nor print - not much good when this is my source of income. Even sitting was a problem.

I could stand and trim so I did. Everything is trimmed by hand one at a time. By the time you have done 500 bookplates, you are ready for an extra large mug or steaming hot tea and no mistake!


Luckily A was available to step into the breach. We switched production over to "Red", the larger Albion" and, with me inking and checking, we finished the job in hand. Subsequently, A has printed another edition of bookplates by himself, including the inkling, checking and troubleshooting, and I was very pleased with the results. Here he is in action:


Things have slowly eased in the back department. Current work includes a final drawing for the TC bookplate, preparatory sketches for the P&T J bookplate and a couple of small illustration spots, including a book:



Another sunny morning and so I shall take my tea out into the garden before returning back to my desk and my sketchbook.

What A Difference A Day Makes

What A Difference A Day Makes; well a few days, anyway. After the snow last week, we woke up to a lovely sunny spring morning. After a lazy breakfast we walked out across the fields with Bella and back to the garden where I leapt into action and dug up a Mulberry tree. The job is done but at the expense of lower back pains that threaten some days of printing that I have scheduled for the first part of the week.

The Hares bookplate is finished and here it is:


Thanks to Evan for agreeing to let me show the finished item - I'm very pleased with it. Despite my aching back, I managed to pull 60 copies so far.

Here is another recent project - two tiny woodlice. the block will eventually be separated into two.



The clocks went forward last night so the evening is much lighter - I can still see sun across the fields towards Ely. The first blossom is out on the cherry and the cowslips are in flower outside the kitchen door. This has been the first day of the year where we have been able to sit out and take lunch - hens pecking around our feet.

We have a double sided painting by Peter Cummings - a small oil on panel. We change it round every six months with the changing of the clock. This was the winter face, painted in the late 1940s and showing a red door in a student hang-out near the Royal College of Art:



The reverse - the summer face - was painted in the 1960s. the boy outside the window always remends me of A as a child:


Spring is here - Hoorah!

Deep, Deep Snow

With such an early Easter, it was not surprising to find chilly weather. I watched the deteriorating weather through the window while I made the finishing touches to a commissioned block of a tortoise:


The snow, when it came, was the heaviest that we have had here for quite a while. We live in one of the driest parts for Britain. The garden was slowly veiled:



Out for a walk through the fields with J and Bella:



The cathedral was partly hidden:


On Tuesday, J and I attended a performance of Bach's St Matthew's Passion in the magnificent Kings College Chapel in Cambridge. the music was sublime and the setting unsurpassed. We sat in the carved oak choir stalls. In front of me, a prayer book printed by John Baskerville in the 18th Century. His name is very familiar to typographers and most of you will have read books printed in Baskerville font.

Back home, I was working on a commissioned bookplate. A trio of hares and a Celtic knotwork border:

Between them, a wreath of wild strawberries emerges from the wood:


Add young fern fronds and a field of stars in the centre, as well as some uncial script and the block is nearly complete:



This morning I printed the tortoise block in an edition of 50 copies and proofed the hare bookplate. The snow has given way to rain. All is well with the world.

Match It For Pratchett

Our son O works for the Alzheimer's Research Trust and he is being kept very busy dealing with the donations coming in as a result of the publicity surrounding Terry Pratchett's wonderful donation of a million dollars to support the work of the trust. This is my only non-art related post in the blog but I hope that you will take a moment to read it.

Here is Mr Pratchett's speech where he explains his reasons for the donation.

"Match it for Pratchett" has grown up among the blogging community to try to match the donation with a further million dollars.

You can make a donation directly here.

My grandmother and J's father both suffered from Dementia and fighting the disease is a cause close to our hearts.

I am donating 100% of the proceeds of the auction of my large engraving "Walking on Water".

Here is the Ebay Listing.

Here is the engraving. A is the figure on the right; O is on the left.


Thank you very much for taking the trouble to read this.

Engraving, Printing, Drawing and Packing

This week has been a typical week of engraving, printing, drawing and packing. As usual, I am working on a series of bookplates but I took a break to work on a couple of illustrations. The first was of a waterfall - I will not show the whole image as it is a commercial commission but here is a detail:

The spray at the base of the falls was a challenge but I am happy with the way it turned out. I also worked on a smaller image of an oil jar from biblical times - the one that I sketched at the Fitzwilliam museum. Here is the boxwood block with the outline inked on - not a great photo, I'm afraid:
This was a bit of a struggle as the block did not cut well - Please note that this was not supplied by my blockmaker Chris Daunt. Luckily, it did print well and the illustrations were duly dispatched.

After printing the illustrations, I had some ink left on the slab and, since I had run out of my "thank you" slips, I printed some. Printing always surprises me. This little block is often awkward to print from but all of the impressions I took this time were fine. Have I shown you this? Some of you may have received them with orders. You can just make out Ely Cathedral on the horizon, between the "K" and "Y":

Drawing always features in my week. Over the last few days, I have worked on nudes with books, hares, Celtic knot work and a Russian tortoise:



Finally, the packing department has been busy. Here are a selection of garden and wildlife engravings, ready for packing:


Turn them over, and you casn see my newly created information sheet, with collaged business card:

J is visiting her sister this weekend so I am going to work through the weekend, catching up with some of my backlog of work.

Finally, my "blog" received its 10,000th visitor recently. I hope you continue to enjoy your visits to my studio.

Moving Into The House Plus a New Block

For the last year and a half, I have engraved out in the studio where I print. Increasingly, I have found it an uninspiring space to sit and engrave, facing the wall. Printing is different - it is well suited to that. At the beginning of the week, I moved my engraving kit indoors and set up on the large desk from which I write:


At first, I struggled to find the right height to engrave. After a day of backache yesterday, I settled on Three books and two sandbags. This raises the block up to chest level so I can keep a straight back while I work:


And what is on the sandbag? A an engraved bookplate which follows in the long tradition of Alpine subjects - in this case the Jungfrau with a range of Alpine flowers in the foreground:



One of my preparatory sketches - My final design had been approved by my client but two elements were reworked - this sheet just shows the reworked elements:


Tonight, I will proof this block and an illustration of a waterfall. Tomorrow I will take the blocks through the various states towards completion, engrave a small illustration and work on final designs for two more bookplates and an image for a wedding illustration - quite a day.

Out Of The Studio

It is a rare thing for me to take time out of the studio but I spent yesterday afternoon in the nearby city of Cambridge, and a pleasant afternoon it turned out to be.

My first stop was the Fitzwilliam Museum, which has been a favourite haunt of mine since childhood. In fact I still walk round to visit my old childhood favourites, such as this magnificent painting by Salvator Rosa that always filled me with both awe and horror:

My main reason for visiting was to sketch near eastern pots for a small illustration that I am working from. It is possible to search for online images but I learned an early lesson from my old colleague, the engraver Pat Townsend who told me that if I wanted to engrave a tree, then I should go out and look at a tree. This has proved good advice to me and I follow it whenever time and opportunity allows. I sketched several pots and I will use them to submit a drawing to my client tomorrow.

An unexpected pleasure - I hadn't seen it on the website - was a lovely exhibition of English portrait prints - mainly engravings on metal - in the Charrington Print Room. Such fine work by many artists, including one Josias English, who was active between 1649 and 1705. No relation, as far as I can tell.

My next stop was the excellent Cambridge Book and Print Gallery to deliver some prints. The gallery always holds some of my engravings and is a real "treasure heap" of art and books. My
eye was caught by a lovely yunomi by Trevor Corser that I could not resist:

Trevor's Beautiful pots are very modestly priced - dash over to the gallery and get one before they have all gone!

Back into the centre of Cambridge to haunt my favourite bookshops, including the marvellous Davids Bookshop in St Edwards Passage. This has an excellent rare and antiquarian section which is very "old school" with drawers of prints and maps. Eventually, it was time to meet J and A and drive back for a family evening.

So much work to do at the moment. Apart from the illustration, I am working on various stages of three bookplates, as well as trying to organise other aspects of work, such as dealing withj several prospective outlets for my things.

Tomorrow:

1. Lots of emails to send.
2. PD bookplate final drawing
3. HM bookplate final drawing
4. ER bookplate - final initial drawing

Its going to be an early start and a long day. Fingers crossed!