Wood Engraving

This in-depth guide to the art and craft of wood engraving, from a recognised expert in the field, offers a fount of information, advice and top tips into working effectively in this medium. Aimed both at beginners and at those with experience, Anne Desmet RA generously shares her extensive knowledge explaining traditional techniques in clear step-by-step stages. She also introduces new, unexpected, never-before-published ideas, possibilities and directions based on her own creative experiments with wood engraving over four decades.
Wood Engraving - A Personal Approach invites both beginners and more experienced practitioners to engage with the processes and possibilities - orthodox and otherwise - of the art and craft of engraving on end-grain woodblocks to produce original, handmade prints of amazing diversity and finesse. Exploring, in particular, the medium's great potential for creating images in light, the reader is supported on their own creative path with plenty of step-by-step guidance, top tips and user-friendly ideas and advice.
Enriched with a wealth of inspiring images by the author herself, spanning her 40 years as a wood engraver, alongside excellent examples by other leading practitioners, the book extends well beyond the scope of other engraving manuals. While advocating and imparting traditional processes, the author actively encourages the breaking of the medium's traditional boundaries using modern methods and technical innovations. The book facilitates a lively personal engagement by the reader who will be empowered to take up this historic medium and make it their own.
This book explains how to prepare blocks, handle and sharpen tools, scale and prepare imagery for engraving using traditional approaches and the latest digital aids. Shares ideas to combine wood engraving with linocut, stencils and other mixed-media methods, as well as innovative collage-making on unusual surfaces. Features inspiring examples of prints using hand-printing and press-printing, in black and white and in blended colours, and new abstract compositions printed digitally. Offers a new perspective on a medium with extraordinary capacity for expressing light, shade and precision-cut detail

ANNE DESMET RA is a professional artist and experienced wood engraving teacher whose works have won over 40 international awards and feature in public and private collections worldwide. Over 50 solo shows include museum exhibitions in Britain at the Ashmolean, Whitworth, Holburne, Gainsborough's House, Pallant House, Guildhall Art Gallery and, internationally, in Russia, Brazil, Italy and The Netherlands where she is considered 'the British Escher'. Commissions include engravings for the British Museum, National Gallery, British Library, V&A, Sotheby's and Royal Mint. Desmet is only the third wood engraver ever elected to the Royal Academy of Arts (RA) and curated an exhibition celebrating 100 years of modern wood engraving for the Ashmolean (2020). She has written seven books on printmaking and drawing and was editor of Printmaking Today from 1998-2013. In 2018 she was elected Honorary Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford University, for 'distinction in the world of art'. She lives and works in London.