This is from a sketch I’d done years ago. The background seemed boring so I kept the trees and added moon, hills & water. The title ‘The Nearness of you,’ was from a song I heard while engraving. Easiest title ever.
Early morning, early spring
This isn’t really a winter scene, in my mind at least. In the early, early spring you can’t see much evidence of snow melting in the bush, but it is melting and the water finds its way down into creeks like this and turns the snow darker.
As I write this it’s -16C outside so the image is, at this point, just wishful thinking.
The Reader
My partner loved both reading and campfires, camping gave her all the time she wanted to enjoy both :- ) This is a detail to be incorporated into a much larger print that I’m working towards.
A 3/c engraving.
Why is that barn red?
A woman came to me at a show, pointed at this engraving and asked why some barns were painted red. I was a bit embarrassed to admit I didn’t know. The search engine DuckDuckGo was most helpful.
Seems that hundreds of years ago (long, long before Home Depot) many farmers would seal the wood on their barns with linseed oil, an orange-coloured oil derived from the seeds of the flax plant. To this oil, they would add a variety of things, most often milk and lime, but also ferrous oxide, or rust. Rust was plentiful on farms and because it killed fungi and mosses that might grow on barns, it was very effective as a sealant. It turned the mixture red in colour and, Voila! a Red Barn.
Barn near Marden, Ontario
Another of Southern Ontario’s iconic Bank Barns, so named because of the earth banked up on one side as a ramp leading to the second floor. The ground level at the back leads into the stables with the second floor overhanging to give some protection to outside animals. I drive past this one often and wanted to do an engraving and now, having done this small one, I really want to do a large one with much more detail.
Silent Bay
Except for my Barn prints I don’t have many winter scenes choosing instead to sit in my warm studio and focus on summer subjects. 
Here’s a winter scene, one of Northern Ontario’s many frozen lakes. It’s a three colour engraving using only one plate.
Coming right up!
My last show of the year is at The Arts & Letters Club in Toronto, also known as a hangout for The Group of Seven. A great place to visit, the walls are loaded with art from a Who’s Who of Canadian Arts.
There will be many great engravers/printmakers there!
In for the night
To me this means that supper is done, dishes cleaned, food hauled up beyond the bears’ reach and I’m in the tent. By then the hordes of mosquitoes are making a ruckus outside and that makes being inside and horizontal even more pleasurable :-)
Spring surprise!
Both entries submitted to Insights, a juried show in Southern Ontario, were accepted. Especially nice because there was a lot of very good art in the show.
An extra treat was that one of my submissions was an ink wash painting that I’d worked up from a sketchbook. It was the first painting I’d ever submitted, anywhere….except maybe a cow drawing submitted to a Fall Fair when i was six. I’ve improved over the years :- )
Weather to order…
Seems that complaining won’t change the dull, winter weather outside so I painted this sunny afternoon on Georgian Bay. I used a close to the water, canoe perspective.
Ink Wash painting
Bit of a switch from engraving. I used walnut ink that I’d made to paint this. The colour is great but the ink is quite susceptible to moisture, including its own, so there’s not much layering of colour, the separate tones are mixed in a dish then painted on.
FALL OUTING! October 15 & 16
Enjoy a trip around Guelph with a choice of 50 Artists’ Studios to visit.
Be sure to visit Raven Press/Clive Lewis at 5436 Cty Rd 39 (That’s what Silvercreek Pkwy is named when it runs north of Woodlawn Rd..)
STUDIO TOUR THIS WEEKEND, Oct 15 & 16
50 Artists to visit. http://www.guelphstudiotour.ca
Visit my studio, Raven Press, at 5436 Cty Rd. 39 ( that’s Silvercreek Pkwy 1km north of Woodlawn.)
Shoreline with cedars
This is one of a few litho prints I’ve done.
STUDIO TOUR Oct. 15 & 16 ’22
STUDIO TOUR
Next Saturday and Sunday, October 15 & 16