Month: May 2018

Needs more work, but a lovely wood to carve.

White Trees: woodblock print by Fumio Fujita

White Trees

From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy three, I began to grasp the structure of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty of more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.

Hokusai

Many years ago I submitted an online bid, believing the case was hopeless, and subsequently found myself proud owner of an original Hokusai Manga Woodblock print.

The print, on tissue-thin paper, is about 160 years old. It cost $35.

I recently treated myself to the purchase of three natural sharpening stones.

In the photo above you can see, from the left, coarse grit 300, medium grit 1,200 and fine grit 6000. The stones need to be soaked in water for half an hour before use. They can be stored permanently in water, but I prefer to store them dry.

The original purchase was a sort of retail therapy, but the stones quickly became necessary luxuries.

Now, I think of them in abbreviation as: necessary.

Incidentally, the smaller object to the right is a strop, and the yellow stick in front is rubbed onto the strop to provide a polish. In my humble view, the strop is superfluous: I was persuaded of its importance by an excellent salesman.

I have been trying my hand at carving a simple spoon from a piece of Myall: Acacia pendula.

That upright section of Myall in the photos weighs half a ton, was extraordinarily difficult to cut with a handsaw -and should respond sweetly to the carving chisels (as long as they are sharp).

I have been asked a number of times why I carve spoons. My answer, in brief, is that I enjoy carving spoons.

It is a fine discipline; a useful way to sharpen skills.

And they remind me of boats….