Wood Engraved Doodles

I’d forgotten to put up a shot of the reverse of the Lincoln block, where the artist has doodled and practiced his technique. I got rid of most of the grunge on the surface, and you can see some interesting things, like the name “Geo. H. Weagant” which corresponds to the lead block in the [...]

Revisiting, Rethinking and Re-doing

By the end of printing all the blocks in the portfolio, I looked back at the earlier work I had done and found it wanting. Four blocks in all went for reprinting, three of which are illustrated below. In all cases, the rework involved printing the block with less ink and more detail.
In this case, [...]

How much for just the harness?

Here’s the latest effort hot off the press today. I started the make-ready for this one yesterday, finished it this morning and printed in the afternoon. It’s all very time consuming.
I’m thinking this rather robust horse might be a bit of a handful for this little old fellow. The old man, the horse trader and [...]

The Reliable Mr. Kilburn

As a break, I took on a block that I suspected would be less of a challenge, and I was right. Samuel Smith Kilburn’s change of address block proved to be a stroll on the beach compared to, well, most of the blocks from this collection. Very little make-ready (on the lettering only) and a [...]

Make-ready, set, go.

We had our artist friend Laura Starkey in the studio with us yesterday working on some of the commercial projects going through the studio. while she worked, she had a view of me pulling proofs, furrowing my brow over prints, peering through a variety of different lenses of varying degrees of magnification, cutting little bits [...]

The best of times, the worst of times…

That pretty much describes this year, but with a month of cold and flu behind me, I have inked up the press and begun work again on the wood engravings. I began work on the block I titled ‘School Days’ showing a boy on his way to or from the local school house. Or perhaps [...]

CBBAG Swap

I said in the last post that the Merrickville Artist Guild invitation would not be my swan-song for this year, and I meant it. Three days before the fall studio tour and in the midst of production on a massive order, I inked up the press to print a lino cut and a poem that [...]

No Time

Time. I wish I had more of it. Earlier in the year, our business was quiet and we filled our time and rode out the recession developing new products. I put aside press projects since I didn’t even have the cash to buy paper. Now, when I most need to work on artistic pursuits, the [...]

Printing 19th century wood engravings

Work has begun on printing the collection of 19th century wood engraving blocks loaned to me about a year and a half back. I’ve already taken proofs of the blocks, and will illustrate results in this blog as they come up.
I started out with the first block I proofed, a large engraving of a mouse [...]

Kilburn & company

Work progresses on what I have been calling the ‘Kilburn Portfolio’. More proofs of the blocks have yielded more signatures, proving that the collection of blocks really is a mixed bag of work by different hands. The engravers that I have identified, or at least assigned attribution, seem to be from Boston or New England. [...]