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 :- )
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.’
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.
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!
It was all happening on paper inside while the cold and storm was happening outside!
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.
A friend told me that at my parents’ Fiftieth Wedding Anniversary he asked my dad what the secret was to being married that long. My dad said that it was ‘Easy, just get married and wait!’
Apparently having a cool newspaper is the same. I bought this fifty years ago (with my pre-kindergarten milk money…honest) and have moved it around all these years.
I can’t imagine thinking about 2019 when I bought it.
Here’s a great show that features engravers, small letterpress printshops, unbelievable bookbinding and many related artisans as well as printing ephemera and books.
….and us, Raven Press.
Come early, see the show then take a hike along a wooded trail on top of the nearby Niagara Escarpment!
These hay pulleys ran along a track near the peak of the barn roof. The bottom pulley clipped onto a large fork that dropped down and stuck into loose hay on the wagon just in from the field. The rope was attached to a team of horses that would pull the hay up to where it could be dropped into the loft. Hot, dusty, sweaty work.
This is a four colour print with an image area 28 x 34 cm (11×14.5 inches)
A brief respite from a slow going, very detailed engraving. A small, 2 colour engraving of a nude. It’s a closeup because I do a terrible job of faces, and hands, and feet…and other parts as well. 
We’re working like crazy getting the new studio in shape for the tour so, if you can, plan on coming around the weekend after Thanksgiving.
This is a great show if you’re interested in letterpress printing and the related arts. If you make it, be sure to drop by our booth.
This was my entry into the Tarot Lovers show, a (somewhat cynical :- ) three colour engraving.
Not sure where the graphic of the hands came from. If they gave me a really, really big bottle of wine and said ‘Draw us some hands’ I could have done that.
Mind you, in the morning I would have looked at it, thrown it out, and said ‘Hold on, I can do better.’
Here’s a great way to meet the Artists, to see the art and the studios of 43 Artists.
Please do drop by 7 Preston St. a block north of Waterloo Ave. just west of Glasgow. 
clive lewis, printmaker 