Looking, wanting, making

You write the book you want to read. It's a truism, but one supported by experience, especially in the case of research-based writing. I really wanted a book that would survey all the intriguing developments in language in Britain during the First World War; I wanted to read it, so it seemed natural that reading and writing should coalesce. There was no book until it was created. 

I have recently annoyed myself intensely by not buying, when I could have easily done so, a copy of William Black's Dark Harbour etching, which came up on Ebay. I had it in my watch list for a while, hummed and hahed, and saw that someone else had snapped it up. It is of course the work of a moment to screen-grab it onto the computer; but that is not the thing. 

I looked at the image, not to commit it to memory, but to understand its composition and balance. I like the way Black creates space with lines which seem to be travelling on their individual trajectories regardless of each other. It is pictorial - you can see identifiable shapes - but the overall sense is one of spaces jostling like waves enclosed in a harbour. 

With an idea of how the picture was constructed I resolved the annoyance by making my own print, an etching, based on the memory of Black's work. I had to get a dark wax for the plate, not hard etching ground, which I always found tough and unforgiving; soot and beeswax, with a bit of Liberon furniture restoration wax, all melting around 100 degrees. The lines (Black uses only 8 or so) began to cross each other, the tones moving between playful and obsessive. I started with two entities rather than identities, and let the spaces develop around them. I thought I didn't want Black's picture; I think I may I have what I actually wanted, though the print from the plate will probably require to be taken further. More work.