Machu Picchu Linocut

 

I've finally come to a stopping point on this lino cut.

It's taken from a graphite drawing I did years ago, which in turn was taken from a photograph from Machu Picchu.

I don't absolutely hate it, but it's far from completely satisfactory. I could keep tinkering with it, but I doubt that I'd end up making it any better. And besides, I'm heartily sick of it now.

The image size is about A5. It's printed on Bunkoshi Select washi in Flint water-based black ink.

Wood Doodling

 

This is the wood-turning equivalent of doodling, just doing whatever with whichever bits of wood are to hand with no plan or intention.

Top to bottom: kauri, rimu, oak.

The oak platter is about 210mm in diameter, which isn't far off the largest size my little lathe will handle.

Turning Green Oak

 

I finished carving out this bowl on the lathe today. It's about 120mm in diameter, and about 80mm deep.

It's nothing much to look at, but it's my first real attempt at working with green oak, and it taught me a thing or two. One of which is that you shouldn't leave green oak on the chuck overnight, as it will start corrosion straight away. Another is that green wood sprays moisture all over the place as it's being turned, and you have to clean that off the ways or else they'll rust from it.

Dry oak can be very dusty to work on the lathe, but green oak has many issues of its own. I don't think I'm a great fan.

AI and Illustration

There are lots of people whining in outrage about the use of AI in art, complaining that it's being used to replace humans in the most human of endeavours, and should be restricted to automating more mechanistic pursuits.

I agree in principle, but the thing is that for the money men in the commercial art world, the art is just a commodity, like everything else. And artists are just peons, to be paid as little as possible, and to be replaced by robots if at all possible. The thought of being able to produce advertising graphics and illustrations without having to deal with troublesome human artists is a pure joy to them, not to mention the cost savings that allow them to keep more money instead of spreading it around.

For that reason alone, the intrusion of AI into the world of graphic art is only going to increase, and I don't see that there's anything that human artists are going to be able to do about it.

Merry Xmas.

Kerfing Saw Modifications

 

I've made some modifications to the kerfing saw I made a while ago.

I discarded the wedges, which never really worked very well, and added a pair of M6 bolts running down through threaded inserts in the body of the tool, to secure the fence arms. I inset brass plates on the top of those arms, cut down from an old door push-plate, so that the bolts don't chew up the fence arms when they're tightened up.

At the moment I've just cut screwdriver slots in the bolt heads, but one day I may get around to making some more attractive thumbscrews.

All this should make it a much more effective tool. Note: Red beech is a very bad timber for making this sort of thing out of. It works very easily, and it's a nice colour, but it suffers from terrible checking.

More Boxes

 

I've made a couple more presentation boxes for a pair of Annette's colleagues who are leaving.

The one on the left is 265mm long, and made of some reclaimed timber — I think it's Black Maire, but I cannot be sure. The one on the right is 250mm long, and is mostly the same timber, but with a lid plate of Sapele. Both have small copper plaques let in to their lids, and both are closed magnetically. They both have soft, padded floors covered with black needle-cord velvet.

Sapele is often used as a substitute for mahogany, since people started to get concerned about wantonly chopping down all the nice trees in the world. Personally, I don't think it's as attractive as mahogany, but it's certainly cheaper — and that's saying something, since a 2.4m length of 200x25mm sapele cost me a hundred and eight bucks. Jenkies!