Sketchbook_Confidential

I've never really considered myself an artist; I'm just a guy who likes to draw. I think it's fun to sit down and let the pen wander around the page until some character reveals himself. The wonderful thing about drawing in a sketchbook is that it turns the act of drawing into a process of discovery. In a sketchbook, you can start a drawing with one thing in mind, but as you draw, you can discover new ideas along the way and you end up somewhere completely different than where you thought you were going.

Drawing has a magic about it. From simple lines, shapes and forms are created that carve space from the flat page. The lines disappear when something we recognize emerges. The sketchbook is such a great place to explore because there doesn't have to

be an end result — it can be whatever you want it to be, and no one is there to pass judgment.

Sketchbooks are pieces of art in and of themselves. Sometimes a sketchbook can be a personal journal filled with notes and sketches of the artist's experiences; other times it can be a place to practice techniques or study a new subject. I've seen sketchbooks that are wild assemblages of drawings and clippings pasted together, and I've seen very neat books filled with exquisite drawings and watercolors. The sketchbook reveals the artist's thoughts, methods, skills and personality more than a finished work does because it shows his or her process, and it often captures the development of an idea or the moment of discovery.

Drawing in a sketchbook is one of the many things I enjoy doing. It's so convenient when inspiration strikes to sweep up my sketchbook, Namiki fountain pen, a watercolor brush, and a couple of Prismacolor Col-Erase pencils and sit down at my desk or some other location and just draw. The time spent may end up being productive or it may just be a pleasant waste of time. The whole point is to enjoy the process and see where it goes.

In a sketchbook, you can start a drawing with one thing in mind, but as you draw, you can discover new ideas along the way and you end up somewhere completely different than where you thought you were going.

Ed Morgan

Morgan's unique, finely detailed embossed impressions of Native Americans, animals, birds and flowers are the result of a highly involved, incredibly painstaking and unforgiving production process that has singled him out among master engravers. Thinking “backwards and in reverse” — essential when handcarving his designs into metal plates, which may total up to nine for a single piece — has made his lifelong dyslexia a significant advantage in his art. Watercolors and intricately handcut silk complete his works, which typically take many months to finish in his New Mexico studio.

I don't “sketch” anything. My artwork is very technical. In engraving, there is no sketchiness; you don't have two lines. You've got a single line, and that's it. If you're carving backwards and in reverse, your finished drawing is the template for the engraving plate. Once you take the metal away, you can't put it back, or erase a line and put in a new one. Once it's cut into the metal, that's it.

I don't carry a sketchbook with me; I walk around and look at everything. I capture images in my mind and I take photographs. I use models, too; all my figures are live models. I don't have them sit there for me because it takes so long to engrave, but I photograph them in fifty different positions so I can see their hands, the back of their ears, or whatever I need to. My whole house is full of artifacts, and I have my garden outside, and I look and read and scan through books in my library. If that causes me to think of an idea, then I just build that idea in my mind, and I go over and over it. Once I've got that down in my head and I can see it, then I start to draw it.

After I draw out an idea, I start working with all the problems I'm going to have when trying to do the engraving. For example, I can only make up to a certainsize plate (no bigger than 10" × 15" [25cm × 38cm]). If I'm creating a person that's, say, 12 inches (31cm) tall, I have to do two different plates and splice them together, and figure out how the splicing goes. It's this constant thing of, “Well, is that gonna work?”

In engraving, there is no sketchiness; you don't have two lines. You've got a single line, and that's it.

I don't consider the problems when I draw out an idea; I just consider what I want to do. When I start to do the tracing and then the carving, that's when I work out the problems. There are times when I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing. When I first sit down to draw, it's kind of “sketchy” when I do it. Then it cleans itself up when I sit down to ink, and I “erase” all the scraggly stuff that wasn't the final line I decided on. The piece of paper that you see in these drawings is the one I started out with.

After I've got the idea and have drawn it out, it's usually on the drawing board up in my library for at least a month or two, because I'm often working on finishing another piece. So, I'll go up there and look at that every day and think, “Well, that's not gonna work.” I won't make changes on the drawing itself; I make all my corrections when I do my tracing on Mylar. I draw first with a pencil, then I go over it and clean up the drawing with an ink pen. That way, I've got precise lines. The drawings have on them the size of the plates, how those fit together, and all of those kinds of things, but they're not “sketchy.” When I sit down to trace the idea, that's when I clean everything up and see if I've made any mistakes, and when I go over what I'm going to have to do when I carve it backwards and in reverse into metal.

After I've got all of the sculpting done for the plate, I push modeling clay onto the plate and see what I'm doing. Then, after I run it on the press, and I get to look at the image for the first time to see if I can actually pull it off as a whole, I deal with colors and all of the other stuff that goes into it. It might take me a year and a half to do one design that has four or five plates. So, while I'm doing that, I'm thinking about what my next project's going to be.

There have been times when I draw things out and I don't end up doing that piece. I go on to something else. I've got drawings laying around that I did not take further (that's very few). I have a safe that I use for storing the layers of my drawings. I've sold maybe two or three of those over the years, and how I sold them was not as individual drawings, but when some of my hard-core collectors bought a piece from me and wanted the plates and drawings — everything for the piece, which I ended up framing for them to keep (not to use, just to have). You can see the entire process and have the engraved plate there next to each piece, which is pretty cool for people to look at.

In my drawings, I don't put in every bead and every hair, but I do that in the engraving. Engraving lends itself to detail. You could be a minimalist in engraving, too, but I never wanted to. The people that have my pieces love detail. They actually look at them with magnifying glasses.