Tabula Rasa

I am currently working on a print in my series ‘The Happy Tree’, and have been sketching ideas for the concept ‘Before happy’. The pencil drawing above is one of the many sketches that I have made so far and one that I particularly like. I had planned to develop the drawing further, but a point came when the eye said ‘stop’ and I stopped. The eye, more often than not, knows when to stop and as a drawing, to me this feels complete.

Having stopped here, and not where I had intended, the question becomes ‘what now?’ Is this sketch my ‘print’? Should it remain a pencil sketch? Should I work it again in lino, in wood, as a drypoint? All these things? Moreover, having realised an idea, do I now have the heart to repeat what (albeit in another medium) I have already done?

The advantage to relief printmaking over the brush or pencil is one of replication. The engraved or cut surface can be used to produce as many prints as the block allows before the block itself becomes worn. In this way, the work becomes more affordable — both to produce and to buy. The downside is that engraving (when it is as an act of translation — the rendering of an image made in one medium into another) can all to easily be experienced by the artist as a chore: not so much a creative act, but the manufaturing of its product.

In general, the process of creating a relief print starts with a drawing. The drawing is then transferred to the block and the block is cut or engraved such that mutliple impressions can be pressed from it. Some artists produce very detailed tonal or line drawings and transfer these onto the block, following which the act of engraving is less a creative act than the pursuit of technique in the attempt to ‘reproduce’ the drawing. Other artists, in contrast, work from loose sketches which they then develop on the block. I count myself amongst the latter, partly in that I believe that the act of cutting reveals things that the pencil cannot, and partly also in that I have a dread of mechanical process. At the moment, this dread is stilling my hand.

One way around the dread would be to sketch directly onto the block and therein remove the need to transfer any previously worked image. Such a process would make the work on the block feel more immediate and less resolved. Another approach would be to cut or engrave without the aid of any drawing at all — in effect, to use the gouge as a brush or pencil. I am drawn to both of these approaches and, but for the cost of discarding expensive blocks, excited by the latter: tabula rasa — not so much the philosophical concept, but quite literally the blank slate.

I’m off to find some.