Thierry Duguet
Elite Cafe Member
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2007
- Messages
- 359
I have been reading several post about templates, I should confess that at first I did not understood what they were speaking about, then I discover that engravers were actually using premade drawing to engrave items.
I was surprise, one of the beauty and only justification of hand engraving is its uniqueness. I do not think that the purpose of engraving is too remove metal, its purpose is to create a unique piece which reflect the character of the individual which create it.
I went to school in Belgium, we never had a template to servilely follow, we were given engraved practice plates we were using as model, we had to do our own drawing, make our own mistakes or improvements. We were learning how to cut, how a given style was suppose to look. Even if we were inspire by the model the final result was ours from start to finish.
Why this posting might you ask? Because most of the ones using templates do not need them. They need to take a chance, learn the flow of things, put their own twist of this most ancient art form. You do not need a walking stick you can stand up strait on your own, you are as capable as creative as ones you imitate, no one is so good that his/her work cannot be improve on.
I have been a freelance engraver for sometime, I do not take print of what I have been engraving, I do not want to do the same thing twice, even if I inspire myself from my own work I do not want to reproduce it, I want to improve on it. What is interesting is what is yet to come, knowing my past mistakes does not give me the desire to reproduce them.
I was surprise, one of the beauty and only justification of hand engraving is its uniqueness. I do not think that the purpose of engraving is too remove metal, its purpose is to create a unique piece which reflect the character of the individual which create it.
I went to school in Belgium, we never had a template to servilely follow, we were given engraved practice plates we were using as model, we had to do our own drawing, make our own mistakes or improvements. We were learning how to cut, how a given style was suppose to look. Even if we were inspire by the model the final result was ours from start to finish.
Why this posting might you ask? Because most of the ones using templates do not need them. They need to take a chance, learn the flow of things, put their own twist of this most ancient art form. You do not need a walking stick you can stand up strait on your own, you are as capable as creative as ones you imitate, no one is so good that his/her work cannot be improve on.
I have been a freelance engraver for sometime, I do not take print of what I have been engraving, I do not want to do the same thing twice, even if I inspire myself from my own work I do not want to reproduce it, I want to improve on it. What is interesting is what is yet to come, knowing my past mistakes does not give me the desire to reproduce them.
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