Usually my prints are made from recently drawn sketches and fresh ideas. Sometimes though a sketch may have laid unused for years. This latest print evolved from one such drawing. Looking at my range of subject matter it's all a bit haphazard and I thought it might be a good idea to create a body of more unified work. Something that I haven't done since a solo exhibition I held at Doncaster Art Gallery 8 years ago. With that in mind I started thinking about some of the memorable encounters that I've had over the years; Pine Marten in Scotland, Golden Eagle in the Lake District and Otters in Wales, Leighton Moss in Lancashire and also in Scotland. Thinking along these lines I realised that it was a long time since I had last seen an Otter. It's even longer since I last saw a Pine Marten but going back to the subject of Otters I turned up the drawings of the last sighting I had. Twelve years ago my wife and I happened to be in Dumfries in Southern Scotland. We had parked in a carpark beside the river and on returning noticed a large crowd of people leaning against the railings looking at something in the water. Naturally we went over to be nosey, assuming they were just watching kids playing around in the water. What we saw was an Otter fishing below the weir just underneath the footpath. Fortunately I had a small A6 notebook in my pocket and a stubby bit of pencil and managed a few scribbled sketches, more as a record of the encounter than with any expectation of them being the basis of anything further. I splashed the watercolour on later to fix the pencil and stop it smudging any further than it already had.
Looking at these sketches recently I began to think that maybe something could be made of them and I doodled up the design below in black biro.
It had possibilities so I drew a more refined design in pen and ink to the size of a spare wood block that I had.
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After a couple of days engraving I had this
The Fisher King
Wood Engraving on Maple Wood
100mm x 75mm
