Back to wood engraving

Portraiture is my thing. Most of my prints have people in them, usually in a portraity way, so I thought I’d continue along those lines for my initial wood engravings. The ones I’ve made so far seem rather too ‘white line-ish’; not something I’m hugely keen on. Hence my next experiment which was an attempt to achieve a more ‘black line’ appearance.

Having drawn the image on the block, I cut both sides of the lines to leave a black line in the middle. At this stage, I proofed it to see what the lines would look like (see right); an interesting image itself.

After that, I continued to cut away until something that looked reasonable emerged (see below left). I think one is supposed to plan the images more carefully – I tend to just get the outline down, then cut in an instinctive way, making it up as I go along. I don’t think that’s how it’s meant to be done...