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Dead of Winter • Engraving in the Glow of a Computer Screen

8 January, 2010 • Dead of Winter

I am getting down to the hard business of sifting through specimens, deciding what goes into the first installment of the book, and hammering out rough physical details: page size, paper, contents, cadence, fold-outs,  etc.

The initial cutting and proofing of the pelican blocks is completed. At least two of them will require reduction cutting while printing: the block is printed in one color, then cut further and printed again, with a second color. This process cannibalizes the block making it impossible to reprint it. I plan to sell prints of some images as I go along, and I’m working out how many sheets will be needed, both for the separate prints and for the book itself. I must make the best possible use of the very expensive vintage English Tovil handmade paper bought for the project last year, and I plan to use at least two other papers in the book: Zerkal 7625, a German mould made paper that I use a lot, and Wookey Hole, a vintage English mould-made. I have decided to print the images on Zerkal, and 1,000 sheets have been ordered. I have 800 sheets of the Tovil, and 500 of the Wookey Hole, on which to print the text.

All specimens will be printed actual size. The 6 fish are fairly straight forward, though the Northern Pike will require separate printings and the splicing together of two parts as it’s length exceeds the maximum printing length of the press, about 23 inches. The 45 mussel specimens also present challenges. I am finding, I think, significant variation in individuals within a species, reflecting to some extent changes in the shell as an individual ages. I believe I have representatives of about ten different species, but having gone through the cleaned and recorded specimens, I find 22 individuals of interest for one reason or another. Of course all conclusions that I am making at this point are pretty speculative. I hope to meet an expert soon, possibly Mike Davis of the Minnesota DNR, or Professor Cummings of Illinois, co-author of the field guide which I have been using (Field Guide to Freshwater Mussels of the Midwest, Illinois Natural History Survey, 1992).

16 January, 2010 • Engraving in the Glow of a Computer Screen

I found the Coreon used for the pelican plates difficult to work with and hard on tools. It does hold a fine line more easily than maple, and has less of a tendency to chip out while clearing than does Resingrave (used for the Ink on the Elbow panorama [click it]). I find working with plastic, however, unpleasant. I have a good supply of end grain maple rounds, and I will go back to wood for the rest of the project. It is a lot of work taking rough sawn half rounds of maple (from the colophon tree in Sylvæ), and making them into smooth and stable type high blocks. The larger the image, the more difficult it becomes to make a flat and stable block, which is essential to fine printing. Given the size of the fish specimens, I am using small strips of wood and glue to join the chunks of maple, a method of joinery typical of end grain wood engraving blocks from the 19th century.

A central problem in the illustration of mussels is presenting views of both the inside and outside of the shells. I am thinking of backing up the inside and outside views of a shell recto-verso: the inside is viewed on one side of a page, and the page is turned to find the outside of the shell printed directly on the back side of the inside view. This will require twice as many mussel images. It is becoming clear that 3 pelicans, 6 fish, and 12 mussels are plenty to deal with this first year.

Sheepshead (Aplodinotus grunniens), is underway. I am engraving in front of the computer, something I have never done before. The photograph is easily manipulated (zooming in, brightening, flipping the image, etc.). I google the species as I work. I am finding interesting articles in scientific journals, but full articles, it seems, can only be viewed for a price. Fair enough.

Never Say Never • Nuclear Warming • A Fractured Bi-valve

Never Say Never

People often ask how long it takes to engrave an image. There is a luxury in not keeping track, and I normally don’t, but I have photographed progress in cutting the key block of the pelicans every couple of days, and can report that it has taken 90 hours engraving time to bring the block to the proofing stage. The block is Corian counter top material. This is my first time using Corian, the material of choice for engraver Abigail Rohrer, who does beautiful work. The material holds detail well, but is a bit difficult to clear. It does offer superior stability over wood, which makes for a much easier time on the press, especially with a block as large as this.

The plan is to print, every two years or so, by hand with ink on beautiful paper, a record of my journey in book form . I also plan to issue editioned prints of some of the images along the way. The pelicans will be the first of the individual images available. Look for it in the spring. The edition size, and price, are yet to be determined.

17 December, 2009 • Nuclear Warming

A strong storm system swept through last week, and the lake froze suddenly. I drove to the Prairie Island Nuclear plant in search of open water and found it, along with a flock of mergansers, a few straggling swans, and a two determined fishermen.

I found open water as far down stream as the Red Wing bridge. Is it possible that the plant is solely responsible for the open water, or might some other factor come into play? Current seems unlikely, as the river was frozen over beneath the Wabasha Bridge to the south, where I know the current is pretty fast.

A Fractured Bi-valve

In 2009 I collected about fifty mussel specimens, representing a dozen different species–to get into the book, I must find both shells of an individual animal. I’m in the process of cleaning, identifying, and cataloging them. A large (18.5 cm) specimen with substantial fractures in both valves raises questions: what caused the fractures? How did the specimen come to be ten feet from the water’s edge? How long had it been there? It occurs to me that most of the shells I find beach combing must have been carried by a predator. Perhaps the large mussel with the fractured valves had been carried and eaten by an eagle. Speculation is likely to become a central element in this shell game…

I am looking at photos taken of plates from Georg Wolfgang Knoor’s Les Delices des Yeux et de L’Esprit, a la Representation d’une Collection Universelle des Coquilles, 1764, and J. C. Chenu’s Illustrations Conchyliologiques, 1842-53, from the library of the Natural History Museum in New York, compliments of Bill Logan. Also a book borrowed recently from Robert Rulon-Miller: Captain Thomas Brown’s Illustrations of the land and fresh water conchology of Great Britian and Ireland, fith figures, descriptions, and locatlities of all the species, 1845. Captain Brown’s drawings were “engraved” by W. H. Lizars, who also engraved the first few images for Audubon’s Birds of America in the 1820’s. Though I believe the mussel engravings are in metal, the technique lends itself to wood engraving, and provides a starting point in thinking about how to approach engraving the bi-valves.

Engraving of the first image for the book began on Black Friday, 2009. None of us seem to know where the term”Black Friday” has come from. Perhaps we don’t watch enough television.

The Last Waltz (on returning from Rome) • A Return to Drury Island, & the Studio

Crossing-Ponte-Sisto_Roma

20 November, 2009 • The Last Waltz

Today the boat was launched the 13th and final time in 2009. For the first time, all was still…

17 November, 2009 • A Return to Drury Island & the Studio

On returning to the river after two weeks abroad, the trees were bare, and the birds gone except for eight soaring eagles, a handful of gulls, ever distant crows, two blue jays, and one lone pelican swimming in the middle of the lake. Fred and I combed the beach of Drury Island, adding three to the mussel species to the list: Pimpleback, Black sandshell, and Wabash pigtoe.

With the boating season drawing to a close, the time has come to get on with work in the studio. While some organizing of data remains to be done, a basic outline of what I have to work with, gathered from this first abbreviated boating season, is taking shape. There will be a section on pelicans, one on mussel shells collected (aproximately a dozen species to date), and one of fish caught (six species to date).

With paper for the first book in hand, the determination of edition and page size are dependent upon the quantity and dimensions of the paper: 800 sheets of hand made Tovil, 15.5 x 20.5 inches. My initial notion of folding the parent sheet down twice, for a page size of 7.75 x 10.25, has come into question. While I appreciate the intimacy of the smaller page size (espescially as it relates to field journals), and the practicality of getting twice as many pages, I am considering folding the sheets a single time for a larger page size of 10.25 x 15.5. Closer examination of the paper reveals that it would be most comfortable folded once, given grain direction, laid lines, and watermarks. Also, the expansive nature of the landscape of the river, as well as the size of actual specimens involved, seems to call for a larger format. While it had been my hope to scale back from the immensity of scale encountered with Sylvæ, I am beginning to think that forcing the river into a smaller package is not, perhaps, the best approach. At any rate, a decision regarding page size must be made before I can begin engraving images.