The Old Owl House

This is a new engraving but it has had a long gestation. On my daily walks I can look out across a meadow and see an old owl house. It is tilted at a strange  angle and is falling apart but I rather like it. I have thought about making an engraving of it for years but I could never quite see it.

Earlier this year I was leaning on a gate, looking at the same meadow when I saw a barn owl hunting. I love to watch this - the quiet beauty and power of these birds is wonderful. As the bird moved around the meadow, I could clearly see the old Owl house in the trees beyond the meadow and the view started to make sense as an image. Sometimes I just see something as an engraving.

That was several months ago and it was only recently that I was able to set commissioned work aside for a week and concentrate on this project. I had a suitable woodblock in the studio:

I worked from a very rough sketch - just enough to give me the composition. I decided to do the work from memory, based on careful observation of the view on my walks.

 The only part that I planned more carefully was the owl. I have made many sketches over the years:

I decided to start by engraving the wings, building up the texture of the feathers by cutting lines over a pattern of dots:

The owl slowly took shape:

 The medieval cathedral of Ely is an essential part of the image. I started to define its characteristic shape:

 Then it was time to sketch in the owl house and the surrounding bushes:

Next, I engraved  the trees behind the meadow. Every one would have different marks to make sure that each tree had its own character. Here is a small ash:

 The tree textures are very fine and wouldn't really become visible until the block was proofed.

I gave my attention to the sky. I often feature a pair of birds; it is something of a signature of mine. In this engraving, I decided to feature swallows as I usually see them flying over the same meadow at this time of year.

I gradually built up the texture of the clouds - cutting in two different directions, which contrasted well with the quiet parallel lines of the darker clear sky:

 When I had taken the sky as far as I could, I worked on the foreground. Among the meadow grasses were Queen Anne's Lace. I decided to engrave the flowers from life:

Here is the engraved block, ready to proof:

Proofing went very smoothly and the image needed little adjustment. It was a pleasure to start the edition. The finished engraving is very much what I had in mind when I first watched the owl hunting.

Here is the finished engraving:

It will be exhibited for the first time at Guildford and available from my Open Studio (see previous post for details). It can be purchased HERE at a pre-publication price for one week.

Postscript:

This engraving has just been accepted for the 76th Society Of Wood Engraver's annual touring show. This starts at Art Jericho, Oxford (Private View at 5pm on Saturday, September 14^th).

Other venues include:

 
High Cross House, Dartington
Bankside Gallery, London
Zillah Bell Gallery, Thirsk, North Yorkshire
St Davids, Pembrokeshire

Marle Gallery, Axminster

Another Busy July: Open Studios and Guildford Exhibition

The beginning of this year has seen me concentrating on commissioned work so far but that is about to change with a couple of public events:

Open Studio

Once again, I am taking part in the Cambridge Open Studios. I will be open on the first two weekends:

11am - 6pm July 6th -7th & 13th - 14th

I will demonstrate wood engraving and at least one of the Albion Handpresses will be working. Here are some photographs from 2012:

I will have prints and books on display and on sale and it would be lovely to see you there.

Location details can be found in the Open Studio Website - email me if you need any more information.

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Guildford

I was very pleased to be invited to take part in Yvonne Arnaud Art 2013. I will be hanging a group of engravings and hope that some of you will be able to visit and see them, as well as work by the other artists.

This takes place at The Mill Studio, Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford from Wednesday 10th to Thurs 25th July. Opening times are Mon - Sat 10 - 7:30 (Note: 15, 16, 22, 25 July 10 - 6). Admission is free.

I have some invitations to the Private view on July 9th 6 - 8 pm. Email me if you would like one.

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Oxford Fine Press Fair

Looking ahead, I will be returning to the Oxford Fine Press fair on the weekend of 2nd - 3rd November. More details follow but you can put these dates in your diary for a wonderful event!

Christmas Cards and other things

I have been selling hand printed cards from my Etsy online shop. If you would like to by one then you can find it HERE.

I am posting orders out as they are received but cannot now expect them to arrive outside of Europe before Christmas. I am planning a range of hand printed cards that will be available throughout the year. I also accept commissions for your own personally designed, engraved and printed card and am now taking orders for Christmas 2013.

It has been another busy and successful year in the studio. I am currently working on my 80th bookplate and plan to display some recent ones in the New Year. I am also working on a couple of ideas for new handmade books from The Isle Handpress; one will be a nature subject and the other an episode from my childhood that influenced my eventually becoming a printmaker.

I will, of course, be continuing to blog about my work here and also show work in progress on my Facebook artist page, which you can follow without having to become my "friend".

I wish you all well as the Christmas season approaches and thank you for your continued interest and support.

For The Benefit Of Mister Kite

Earlier this year I was contacted about a very singular project - to recreate the engravings from a Victorian circus poster. This in itself wasn't all that interesting. I am an engraver for hire and am offered a wide variety of work. What made this fascinating was the fact that this was the poster that inspired John Lennon to write the song "For The Benefit of Mister Kite" that was on the Beatles' "Sergeant Pepper" album.

Available images of the illustrations on the poster were of a very poor quality:

 

These images would have been printed from "stock" blocks in the printer's workshop. They probably didn't even belong together and may have been trimmed to match. One way or another there was a lot of "noise" in the images that we had. The blocks would have been old, possible mistreated, inked and printed hastily and then we were looking at copies of copies of the original.

 

I spent a long time looking at the images, comparing them with other Victorian circus illustrations that I could find. I started to make drawings and comparing notes with Peter, who had commissioned the work:

After much discussion and many drawings, I started to mark out the designs on to two lemonwood engrain woodblocks, pick up my tools and start to engrave the images.

I made a short animation of the process using scans taken from the blocks and proofs:







Here are the finished blocks after I had proofed them and and made all the adjustments that I wanted to:

Here is the final proof from the blocks:

A very interesting aspect of this project was that it was filmed:

 

 

Nick and Joe made a wonderful short film about the whole story:

 

 

Lennon's Poster from Make Productions on Vimeo.


Finally, the whole story is told and the finished poster can be seen HERE.

The View From Swift Cottage

I do enjoy portraying wildlife into an appropriate setting and staying at Swift Cottage in Derbyshire gave me a chance to engrave a rather different landscape from my native Fenlands. The swifts were certainly there. They are a favourite bird of mine.

Originally, I was going to show two swifts in the foreground as this rough sketch shows.
At this point, I decided to use a naturally round piece of boxwood and shaded the sketch in pencil to explore this idea:

 

 

Here is the block, darkened with diluted pen ink and ready to start to mark up the design in reverse:

 

 

 

I decided to make a record of the engraving of this block and so can show how it developed from the first ink drawing to the point that I could pull the first proof in the press:

 

 

I felt that the second swift was pulling the image apart and so replaced it with three smaller swifts in the distance, flying in the opposite direction:

I proofed the block in the smaller 1865 Albion handpress:

I was very pleased with the first proof (State I) and went about making small adjustments and taking further proofs. Here I am checking State III and making the final changes

I was very pleased with State IV and decided that nothing else needed to be done.

Here is the finished engraving which will be published in an edition of 125, printed from the original block. It is available HERE. During the month of October 2012, it will be offered for a special price.

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Print - And A Coloured Engraving

I have enjoyed my collaborations with The Jericho Press and so I was very pleased when another was proposed. I was intrigued when this commission proved to be not only a map but also a coloured map. I do not make multi-block coloured engravings but I do enjoy a challenge and so I decided to have a go.

The map features parts of Lake Urmia whic is in itself a very interesting lake.

I drew out the agreed map outline in reverse onto a boxwood block and started to engrave around the lines and text to make the black key block.

I printed a proof from the block and hand coloured it in watercolour. I then used this to make three separate colour blocks. I used "Resingrave", an artificial engraving medium to make these.

All of the blocks required a great deal of clearing which is time consuming and often gives me blisters after several hours wielding the same tool.

I delivered the blocks to The Jericho Press and Chip Coakley did a wonderful job of printing them. I love his choice of colours:

The book is a delight; I love the binding which was carried out by Chip at the press:

"Easter In Ula, Salmas" with the only multi-block coloured engraving I intend ever to do is available from The Jericho Press at a very modest price.

And now, something completely different.

When the film of "The Woman In Black" was released, I was contacted by a couple of Horror magazines who were planning special issues:

Both illustrated their issues with images from my fine press portfolio edition of the engravings published the the Profile Books hardback.



"Little Shoppe Of Horrors" feathered an interview with me about this project:

My exhibition at The Old Fire Engine House in Ely has been extremely successful. Although it is officially finished, it will continue to be shown throughout August.

I did complete some new work in the weeks leading up to the opening of the exhibition and I will feature some of those in coming weeks.