Search

So there's this heron I've been working on for about three weeks. Big fella, landing pose, wings up, the whole bit. Carved the whole thing. Proofed it. And it was just... dead. Technically fine, lines were clean, composition held up, but there was nothing in it. No weight to the landing, no sense of the bird actually coming down onto something. Just a heron-shaped object hovering in space. Stuck it in a drawer. Left it there a full week. Every time I opened the drawer I'd see it and feel a bit sick. Last night I got the block back out, printed it dark to see what I had, and went at it again with the gouges. Cut the whole background away differently. Dropped the waterline lower. Gave the legs some actual bend, some tension. It's a completely different print now, same heron, same block, but there's air around him and he's actually landing somewhere. I don't know why it took me a week to admit the first pass was banjaxed. Pride maybe. Or just not wanting to face another three evenings of carving. But the block didn't punish me for it. That's the mad thing, lino doesn't hold a grudge. You can keep cutting into it till you get it right or till there's nothing left. Anyone else ever finished something, knew it was wrong, and just sat on it for ages before fixing it?

Had a young guy at the booth this weekend, looked at my price tag, nodded like he'd figured something out. Said he could probably do the same thing himself with a Dremel and some YouTube tutorials. I said maybe he could. But I'd been thinking about it all evening and it still bothers me. Not the disrespect, I don't care about that. What bothers me is the assumption that the tool is what matters. Like the only difference between me and him is I own bigger equipment. I've got a 50lb tungsten chisel that I dressed myself because nothing on the market was right for the cut I needed. I spent three months learning to sharpen it right. A Dremel wont teach you how to read grain or when to walk away or what to do when you're 40 hours in and the stone decides to split wrong. Anyway. He walked off with a print. Probably gonna try to carve it this weekend. I hope he does. That's how you learn the difference between wanting to make something and wanting to have made something.

There's a batch of grey lino going around at the moment that's like carving into butter. Not in a nice way. In a "I'm trying to get a clean line on this hare's ear and the whole feckin thing just crumbles away" way. Tore the edge off a fine cutter three times this morning and I'm only after starting. Anyone else finding the lino quality hit and miss lately? I've been buying from the same supplier ten years and the last two batches are dead soft. Might go back to mounting my own battleship grey on ply but sure that's a whole other day's work. Anyway. Just needed to say it to people who'd understand. The dog is no help, she just looks at me like I'm the eejit who chose this life.

Been on the same block of granite for three weeks now. Blue Pearl, dense as it comes, and every pass with the bushing tool is a negotiation. You can't rush granite. You think you've got the form in your head and the stone just says no, not like that. I've stopped fighting it and started listening, which sounds soft but it's just practical. The piece I meant to make and the piece that's actually in there are two different things. That's how it always goes when you do it right. This one's teaching me to wait. My hands know the shape before my eyes do, that's the only honest way I can say it. Some afternoons I get maybe six inches of good work. Six inches. And I'm fine with that now. Took thirty years to get here.

Young guy at the open studio last weekend. Watched me work a piece of limestone for maybe thirty seconds. Then he tells me he could program a CNC router to cut the same shape in twenty minutes and walk away while it ran. I asked him when was the last time he chipped a tooth on a tool grit he didn't see. When he had to look at a piece of stone for three hours before he knew what was in it. When he ruined a week of work because he hit a fissure nobody could see. He said he didn't need to do any of that because the machine did it for him. I'm not against the machines. I've used them for roughing out when it makes sense. But the way he said it, like the whole point was to not be there. Like the work was an inconvenience between him and having something to sell. Twenty minutes. I wanted to hand him the chisel and a block of granite and see how that twenty minutes felt on hour three.

There's a Saturday market in Galway I've been doing on and off for maybe twelve years. Rain, hail, the odd glorious day where everyone's in great form. And I used to think the point of it was to shift prints, which it is, but the real thing it taught me is how to talk to people about what you make without sounding like you're selling. You get all sorts at a stall. The tourist who wants something that says Ireland without being a leprechaun on a toilet. The local who stops because they recognise the pier or the mountain. The person who clearly loves the work but hasn't got thirty quid and stands there turning a card over in their hands. And you learn, quick, that the ones who buy aren't the ones you try to convince. They're the ones you just talk to, normally, about the carving or the ink or the hare that lives in the field behind your house and won't let you get near it. The thing that stuck with me is this: I've never sold a print by telling someone how good it is. I've sold plenty by telling them the story of the night I carved it and nearly took the tip of my finger off, or how the block got dropped in a puddle and the crack became part of the print. People want the thing behind the thing. They don't want a pitch. Anyway. The market's grand for that. But online, I still catch myself trying to sound like a proper business instead of just a fella in a jumper with ink under his nails. And the minute I do that, engagement drops off a cliff. The posts that work are always the ones where I forget I'm supposed to be marketing and just talk about what happened today. Sure I don't know where I'm going with this except that the best marketing advice I ever got was from a woman buying a print of a heron who said "just tell me why you made it" and walked away with two.

There's a fella in the market who sharpens things for a living. Kitchen knives, secateurs, shears, he's there every Saturday with his stones and his strops and a little whetstone wheel rigged up to a bicycle chain somehow, and sure it's an education to watch him. I brought him my best carving gouge last week because I'd nicked the edge on something stupid, a staple I'd missed in a bit of lino, was raging with myself, and he handed it back and just said "whoever taught you to sharpen taught you right." And I thought about that more than I expected to. I learned from an old printer up in Sligo, man who could carve a heron's wing feather in a single cut and make it look like breathing. He taught me to sharpen dry, no oil, on a fine arkansas stone, and to feel the burr with your thumb rather than look for it. He'd say "you're not grinding metal, you're coaxing an edge out of it" and I used to think that was gas altogether till I realised he meant it. Anyway it got me thinking about how much of how we make things is just passed hand to hand like that. Little rituals. The way you hold your knife. The angle you trust without measuring. Someone showed you once and you've been doing it their way ever since, maybe without even knowing. I still sharpen dry. I check with my thumb. And I think of him every time.

I carved a granite bench a few years back for a public garden. Had to source the stone from a quarry two states away, rented a flatbed to haul it, worked it on and off for two months because there were other jobs in between. Sold it for $1,200. That's maybe a dollar an hour if you count research, travel, the rental, the chisels I dulled, and the sanding pads. I knew it at the time and I still said yes. I told myself it was a "public installation" and that was worth something. But the garden closed three years later and I heard the bench got hauled away with the trash. I don't know what the right number was. Double maybe. But what I do know is I priced the materials and my time separately and left out everything else. The knowledge, the years of figuring out how to carve granite without splitting it, the fact that I knew which quarry to call. That all went for free. I still do it. Not as bad, but I still leave money on the table somewhere. Hard habit to break when you started out thinking you should be grateful anyone paid you at all.

I do the Saturday market in town maybe twice a month, rest of the time it's online. And every time I come back from the market I look at the Instagram numbers and just laugh. At the stall, I can put out ten different prints, hares, herons, the round tower at Kilmacduagh, a new linocut of the Claddagh at low tide, and watch people pick things up and put them down. And what sells is never what I think will sell. Never. The one I carved in two hours on a whim because I was bored? Gone in the first hour. The one I spent three weeks on, re-carved twice, perfect registration? Sits there like a nun at a wedding. Last month a woman bought the scrappy little print of a jackdaw I nearly didn't bring. She said it looked like the ones that raid her bins at home. And I'm sitting there thinking, I can't algorithmically optimise for "reminds you of a bin-raiding jackdaw." The real numbers I trust are: did someone laugh, did someone say "that's himself exactly," did someone pull out a crumpled twenty from their back pocket. The rest of it feels like astrology for people who make things.

my youngest, three years old, got in here last week while I was making tea. found my good carving tool, the Pfeil No. 11, the one I've had about twelve years, the handle's worn to fit my hand. took it out to the garden and carved his name into the concrete path. just scratched it in there, lovely and deep, like a little viking. I was raging for about thirty seconds before I realised that's the most permanent mark I've ever seen that gouge make. sure I'll never move house now, there's a signature on the place. the worst of it though is I spent the next hour hunting for the gouge I was actually using before he came in, the 5mm V-tool, I'd only put it down for a second, and I still haven't found it. it's gone. the kids have their own dimension where tools go. I'll find it in a welly boot in three years. anyway the path has beautiful lettering now, fair play to him. kid's got a steady hand.

Had this block sitting in the drawer since February. A grey heron I started last winter and just couldn't get right, the line of the neck was off, the wing shape was doing my head in, and I'd carved half of it badly and walked away. Swore at it plenty. Pulled it out this morning because I was between things and the kids were at school and the house was quiet for once. Thought I'd just have a look at it fresh, maybe salvage something. Ended up carving the whole bottom half off and re-cutting it. Re-inked it twice. Third proof came off the press and I just sat there looking at it. It's not perfect, the registration is a bit squint and there's a cut I shouldn't have made, but it's alive in a way it wasn't before. The dog came over and sniffed the ink and sneezed all over the print and honestly that felt right too. Sometimes you just need to walk away and come back when you're not trying so hard.

Three weeks without the press. Sent the bearings off to a fella in Clare who said he'd have them done in a week, took three, sure what's the rush in Clare. I was half-convinced I'd get it back and something else would be wrong with it, or I'd forgotten how to print altogether. Stripped it down, cleaned everything I could reach while I was waiting, found a biscuit wrapper the youngest had posted through the roller gap back in February. Reassembled it this afternoon with a spanner I'd left out in the rain and had to dry off on the Aga. Pulled the first proof an hour ago. An old block, a hare I've carved so many times I could do it in my sleep. And it just... worked. Clean. Even pressure. The ink laid down like it was glad to be there. I stood there staring at it for longer than I'd admit. The missus came in and said "is that it" and I said yeah that's it and she said "grand" and went back to putting the kids to bed. Which is exactly the right amount of fuss. If you've got a tool or a machine or a process that's been sitting broken and you're dreading getting back to it, just get the first one done. The second one's easy after that.

Kid couldn't have been older than twenty. Points at a piece I'm loading out, thirty pound chunk of basalt I spent three weeks on. Asks if I found it like that. I said no, I carved it. He says yeah but did you make the rock or did you find the rock. I told him I found the rock. Four hundred million years old, I didn't make it. But I sure as hell made what's inside it. He nodded like I was humoring him and walked off. Not his fault. Nobody teaches looking anymore. They think if it didn't come out of a machine it must have washed up on a beach fully formed.

Right so, I'm thinking back to the early days, before I knew hide nor hair about anything really. I had this batch of prints, right, proper proud of them too, and I decided this one gallery in the city was the only place they'd ever live. So I marched in, all a-flutter with nerves and hope, and I'd got this portfolio under my arm, thinking I was the next big thing. The gallerist, a fella with a stare that could curdle milk, took one look at my stuff, barely flicked a page, and then just said, 'We don't do this here.' Didn't say what this was, didn't offer a shred of advice, just shut me down cold. Took me a good few weeks to even pick up a carving tool again after that. What's your worst gallery rejection story, the one that still makes you wince?

I've done this three times now and I keep doing it. A client says they want the best, gold leaf, a hand-carved frame, the real thing, and I nod along because yes, that is what I want to make too. Then I order the frame from a specialist in Avignon who does nothing else, and I'm already €700 in before I've touched a brush to linen. The portrait itself took about six weeks, off and on, between teaching and the daughter's schedule. When I calculated my hourly rate after the frame, the stretcher, the materials, the varnish, it came to about €11.50 an hour. My daughter makes more babysitting. I know I should charge separately for the frame. I know I should quote the whole thing upfront with a deposit that covers materials. But there's something in me that wants the final price to just be the price, like the frame is part of the painting, not a line item. Stupid, probably. The client would never know the difference. Anyone else just bad at separating what you make from what you need to make it?

So there's a new place opened down near the docks, lovely spot, they wanted a big linocut for the main wall, something of Galway Bay, rough sea, the whole bit. I was delighted with myself. Gave them the friends-and-family rate because they're sound and I wanted the work up somewhere people'd see it. €600, I said. Frame included. Generous, I thought. What I didn't do was keep a proper tally of the hours. Carving that thing, it's a big block, 60x40cm, all that water and sky and the little light breaking through, took me the guts of three weeks on and off. Proofing it, pulling the final edition, stretching the paper, framing it myself. Did the maths this morning. Roughly 40 hours all in. That's €15 an hour, and that's before materials, before the frame cost me sixty quid, before the petrol driving it down there. I'm not even angry about it, I'm just looking at the number and thinking, I'd have been better paid stacking shelves. But I'd also have been bored out of my skull, so there you go. Anyway the print looks savage up on the wall. I'll put the price up next time and see do I survive it.

had this little brass sharpener, must've been twenty years with me. came from some market stall in ennis, cost a euro maybe. kept it in the same tin as my carving tools. and the blade's been gone off it for about three years now, I knew it, I knew it was just chewing the pencils instead of sharpening them, but I couldn't bring myself to throw it out. it'd been everywhere with me. first studio, second studio, the shed phase, the kitchen table phase. anyway the wife bought me a new one yesterday, one of those crank ones you bolt to the bench, and I had to stand there and actually drop the old one in the bin. felt daft, felt like I was putting down a dog or something. the new one's fierce good though. grand twist on it. might name it.<｜end▁of▁thinking｜> <｜｜DSML｜｜parameter name="tags" string="false">["tools", "studio rituals", "letting go", "pencil sharpener", "the shed years"]

Spent the morning on a piece of Indiana limestone I've been working for two weeks. Block was clean, good color, no veins. I kept pushing on it. Refining a curve that didn't need refining. At noon I stepped back and saw what I'd done to it. Took that curve too far. Now I'm chasing it back. Thirty years in and I still do this. The stone tells you when you're done and I keep going anyway because stopping feels like I'm being lazy. Had a mentor who'd slap his hands on his thighs and walk away mid-afternoon. I thought he was slacking. He wasn't. He just knew. Now I spend half my time carving and the other half wishing I'd walked away an hour earlier. If you're at the point where you're just fiddling, put the tool down. The work is already done. Fiddling is how you ruin it.

Twenty-two years. Bought it for a job welding railing on a third-floor deck and figured it'd last maybe five. Today it started smoking and the bearing noise went from bad to wrong. I took it apart and the armature is cooked. Nothing to do but retire it. I'm annoyed at myself for being sentimental about a power tool. But that thing carved every piece of steel I've made for two decades. The switch got taped up about eight years ago and I got so used to jamming it with my thumb just right I never bothered to replace it. New one's already ordered. Same model. I'll probably hate it for a year until it breaks in.

There's a block on the bench has me nearly whipped this week. Cherry lino, about A4, and every single cut's gone against me. The knife's skipping where it should glide, I've got a pull that's too shallow where I wanted deep, and I've already nicked a section I'd spent an hour on. Twice. And here's the thing. I'm actually enjoying it. There's a perverse pleasure in a block that won't behave. When it all goes easy I start wondering where the craft went. You're not carving, you're just confirming. But when the material fights back, you have to actually think your way out of it, and that's where the good stuff shows up. I remember a fella told me years ago, when I was labouring, that a wall that went up too smooth was a wall he didn't trust. He was talking about plaster, but sure he might as well have been talking about lino. Anyway. The damned hare's looking at me with one eye half done and I can't tell if he's judging the work or just tired of my excuses. I'll win in the end. They always give in eventually, even the stubborn ones. Anyone else got a piece on the go that's being a prick this week, or is it just me?😅