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.
I had a spatula of dark ink after cleaning up from printing and ‘painted’ this tree with it. I liked the tree so I created a background for 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!
I editioned this years ago but something about it always bugged me so it was relegated to a drawer. Two weeks ago I sliced a lot of roadway from the bottom of the plate and all of a sudden the eye was drawn to the barn, not the road!
These are printed in black with an image area of 35.5×58.5 cm (14×23″).
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. 
At last night’s show I tried to explain how the plates were printed and used. I didn’t have any sample bits there to make it easy to explain so I’m posting these pics which, hopefully, explain it all.
The bulk of my engraving is done with ‘V’ shaped knives like the one shown but on these plates I used a drimmel in order to get more organic looking shapes. The inset pic shows how everything BUT the image is cut away.
The progressive sheet shows how a three colour print comes together.
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 a print of a somewhat abstract painting I did of a storm that was moving in. A bit of random rolling out of ink in the background for a slight ‘organic’ feel.
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. 
The Luther Marsh is a large, man made lake that affords sanctuary for many, many birds, migratory and otherwise. Areas of it still have the trees that died when the area was flooded and some of these support nests like the Blue Heron nest in my print.
This barn, one of Ontario’s ubiquitous bank barns, was in the middle of a field on a sideroad way, way out in the country. It looked quite safe from developers’ bulldozers.
The print is one of a series of larger barn prints, this one is matted to 14×23. The barn was red, honest!
Most printmakers show progressive prints as a sort of educational/interest thing, I’m doing it just to get a bad pun out of my head and into the subject line.
It feels better already.
It must be February, the winter seems never ending so I haul out the sketchbooks and imagine myself doing lichen impressions on a rock in Georgian Bay or thereabouts. This is one such rock in one of my reflective moods.
clive lewis, printmaker 