Vantage Point

Dave & I went to Saltspring Island last summer, and wandered around for a day. Dave took me to a private warf on Fulford Harbour, from which you can look at some of the best marine life right off the dock. We had a great time looking there, then went for a bit of a hoof around Ruckle Provincial Park. Dave stood at the edge of one of the bluffs at Ruckle, looking out over the seascape, and I had to take a photo. The photo has been sitting in the back of my mind since then, and I picked up my sketchbook and rendered it in graphite (I'll have to edit this post later and add the sketch; I've not got my computer hooked up to the scanner, and I don't have a digital version of the photo).

I decided that I wanted to do the image in black and white only. This print was done with MDF and the Dremel; carving the fine lines was a bit of a trick. I had to use my v-gouge to define them a little better at the end, but overall, the Dremel worked beautifully. I'm planning on entering this and "Being Shod" in the Federation of Canadian Artists' Human Figure exhibition. As the deadline for submission is the end of January, and I won't be here in my studio until after the deadline, I stayed up late last night getting the first part carved, then finished it off this morning and printed this afternoon. I found that it was really a challenge to print this; it's just one colour (a mix of phthalo blue and Mars black), so building up the ink layer was a little trickier than with a reduction. And I kept smudging things, or the block would slip as I lay it down; all sorts of irritating little things. I finally managed an edition of 10, so that's great. The extras will be given as gifts to various family members, I reckon.


One of the things that I'm really excited about is that I've been doing more drawing and sketching. Up until now, I've been relying a lot directly on photographs; most of my prints are traced from my photos. I don't really like drawing human figures, yet I actually managed to do the sketch and capture the proportions and look really well. I suppose that might not surprise everyone, but it sure surprised me!