The bright day is done…

…and we are for the dark.

I don’t know if it’s the end of summer approaching, the various events that are not very good in my life and more generally in the world, but this quote has been imposed on me recently.

It is based on Shakespeare’s play Antony & Cleopatra.

I covered a white watercolour paper with iron gall ink, which I then embossed. And part of the text has been engraved on zinc to have both brilliance and darkness.

The script used is an approximative copy of a gothic script by Rudolf Koch that I have to keep working on to really make it my own.

The soul of the cellos

Back to old studies.
Here is a fragment of a text by Villiers de l’Isle Adam.
One translation could be : “Is the soul of the cellos carried away by the cry of a broken string?”

I found a dead leaf already damaged whose shape reminded me of the instrument and the text came back to my mind.
So I acid-etched the text on a zinc plate and transferred the picture of the leaf using acrylic binder to accompany the quotation.
It is not totally finished, the author’s name and signature are missing, but, as usual, I will try to make them invisible ; so you can consider that you are looking at the final version of the work.

Your are still here

This weekend, we celebrated a friend’s birthday. For the occasion, I engraved a small zinc brooch reminding her of her year of birth.

And also some slate triangles to put in her garden.

And as I offered her the engraving of “you are here”, I made another one for my garden.

For those who would still wonder how it is done, here is a little video where I am engraving the slate with my homemade tools

Etched vine

At last, I’ve finished the vine pattern on my steel plate !

I could then etch it, one hour and 60W in salted water.
A short blowtorch passage to burn the paint and reveal the etching and here we are :

Still have to sand the plate a little bit to remove the paint remnants but I already find it quite nice. I hope I’ll be able to keep the blue shade of the etched parts.

I’m back

Long time since I posted here, my apologies.
Now that I feel a little bit less lazy, I’ll try to keep you updated on what’s going on in the workshop 🙂

And today, I finished the calligraphy of a song, Alligator 427, from the french singer Hubert Félix Thiéfaine.
I’ve been thinking about it for years (the first drafts are from 2011 !!) and it’s done !
And, as far as I can say, quite well done (I really like it).

I transferred a photograph (paint marks on a sidewalk) on an old zinc plate, etched the title using acid and ended by writing the text in NEULAND script.

DIY

I had a few easels, wooden and small ones. They didn’t stay right, were fragile, kind of bulls**t.
As I had an exhibition coming fast, I decided that I needed something more resistant so … here is the result :


It doesn’t resemble to anything but it’s not a problem. 80cm of electric wire, carefully bent and here I am, perfectly stable, solid and almost invisible easels. The only problem may be the color but I had some red wire and no time to go and buy some other.

And, as I’m a very gentle guy, here is another cadel letter, this time it’s an L.


weekend report

An ill apple tree cut, 20 m² of ground digged, 5 rose bush and an orange tree transplanted, lots of other maintenance works in the garden… To make it short, I spent all my weekend in the garden.
But, as I woke up early, I found time to etch a new cadel initial, inspired by the same manuscript as the previous one (Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, AN II 3).



It’s quite different from the cadel initials I already made & I like it.
I think I’ll made other ones inspired by the same manuscript but the priority now is the maintenance of the garden 🙂