Another in my series of ‘falling’ objects. Not sure if the Accident Prevention folks would approve, hopefully the Bricklayers Union would.
The Brick
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Category Archives: printmaker
BOOKARTS SHOW / Printing Museum
It’s worth the drive to Oakville, Ontario to see The Howard Ironworks Book Arts Show this next weekend, Sept 28, ’24. There will be Engravers, Papermakers, Bookbinders as well as Demos, Museum Tours and Workshops. The Museum itself is a treat.
CHANGES
Shortly the trees of Southern Ontario will burst into reds and oranges and yellows. This print is an attempt to capture the beauty of a spot the pooch and I frequent for our daily hike.
TWILIGHT
A nice time of the evening, the mosquitoes and black-flies are gone, the fireplace is glowing and the islands are disappearing into the darkness. Shortly everything it will be so dark there will be no islands, just one big, black shape.
The Nearness of you
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.
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.
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 :- )
Black
I love the incredible solids that engraving allows and I have a ‘thing’ about prints showing falling objects. With this print I indulged myself on both accounts. I named it ‘Night Fall.’
Shoreline
Something new for me. Rather than an engraving, a lithoprint using a ‘Pronto-plate’.
This was a 2 colour trial print titled ‘Shoreline’. Still lots and lots and lots to learn.
CHRISTMAS GREETINGS!!!!
A favourite Christmas print, my youngest daughter’s first limited edition. She drew, dad engraved and we pulled a proof. She coloured it in, dad engraved plates for the colours then we printed.
Santa has grown chubbier since then; dad, not quite as much. She’s still quite cute!
My Kinda storm…
It was all happening on paper inside while the cold and storm was happening outside!
Misty morning
One morning I canoed out into a thick fog and down a wide channel towards open water. When I left the channel and headed towards the shore islands slowly began to appear out of the fog. It was quite magical.
This is a 27×14.5 cm, five colour reduction print.
clive lewis, printmaker 