Colour photo. Ruined mediaeval monastery buildings around a manicured cloister lawn, in a wooded valley on a sunny day. Buildings to the left are largely low stumps of wall giving little away about their past. In front of the camera a long wall has round-arched arcades - intact on the left, broken on the right and between them an ornate round-arched doorway. In the wall above all this are three, tall windows with pointed arches.
10x10 cm block of lemonwood, polished and inked black. A section of the wall in the photo is being drawn with a very fine pencil, in preparation for engraving.
The first window has been engraved. Most of the block is covered in paper so that I don't rub out the rest of the drawing as I engrave each section.
The wall and all its details are almost finished. The doorway and window spaces have not been started and are still black and will print black. Do I leave them black, make them plain white or attempt to represent the fine detail seen in the photo? I can try all three, by making prints at different stages. But at each stage I have to make irreversible decisions.
Rievaulx Abbey, N. Yorkshire. Another Cistercian monastery founded in the early 12C and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. A one hour drive from home, it is at the centre of one of my long term ecology research sites.
Never thought I'd be engraving it […]
[Original post on mastodon.online]
