Wood n' Art

About Wood n' Art

I admit it, I am a frustrated artist who was kidnapped and forced into a computer software career. I have always liked working with wood, drawing and painting. Despite having being involved in Computer Software most of my working life it is only after retiring that I started to dabble with website development using raw HTML coding and found it fascinating and simpler than I expected. There are many packaged website development suites which make it even easier. My wife has extensive eBay experience with thousands of buyer/seller feedbacks at 100% positive demonstrating a great knack for working well with buyers and sellers over the internet. Consequently we had the main constituents of a working team to create this Wood n'Art  venture to publicise my work on a website and by selling items through galleries, fairs and exhibitions. My wife was also a car boot sale enthusiast so we just had to have the occasional stall at craft fairs. Our experience of selling wooden items on eBay demonstrated that people need to see and feel the pieces before they commit. At our first stall in Hamble I was amazed at the interest shown in the displayed pieces and that just everyone wanted to feel the wood's smooth warmth and texture. It is not the same as a drawing or painting, 3 dimensional art needs to be touched because the feel is a key part of experience and wood is such a tactile medium. So the internet shop was really a non-starter.

Brief Background
I am a keen sailor and love working with wood as well as sketching in pencil, ink and watercolour. Although not formally trained, I have practiced with these media for many years as a hobby that had always been secondary to family and career. My appreciation for wood and art (drawing and painting) began at school. Despite enjoying and doing very well in Woodwork and Art classes I was forced to drop them prior to O-Levels to focus on those subjects that would provide a foundation for a “real” career. Consequently my “real” career after gaining a degree in Chemical Engineering was in the then formative Computer Aided Design (CAD) industry. The application of computers to do design calculations and graphical representation as well as providing machine tools with the instructions to make the designed part.

As a software engineer I developed software to create engineering drawings in 2D and 3D besides working with customers to make most productive use of these CAD tools. This association with computers and design / graphics constituted the bulk of my career and kept my hand in the artistic side of engineering. Nowadays computer grahic art is now a seamlessly integral part of many films produced today and the imagery generated in computer games is just amazingly exquisite.

I have had fun creating “art” or non functional graphics with computers, however I still prefer the hand crafted form. My engineering grounding still drives me to combine functionality with elegant form; reality with artistic flourish and the application of sound woodworking construction without the need for screws and other fixings. The food platters, cutting boards and presentation planks are simple but practical examples being sympathetic to the grain of the wood to make them attractive and tactile functional items. My interest in sailing led to the creation of the Windward series of wooden yachts that are stylised in variety of hardwoods to illustrate realistic motion whilst utilising the grains of the different woods to visually illustrate the textures of sails, hull and waves.

Yachts have been my main focus for the past few years although I had been making seasoned hardwood cutting boards, platters and planks for sale. Nowadays these are only made occasionally for family and friends.

Another traditional technique for shaping wood is turning. I purchased a lathe a few years ago and have had great fun experimenting with this traditional piece of woodworking machinery. I have accrued basic lathe skills making tools, tool handles and simple ornaments but now apply these skills to turning the buoys and lighthouses in my most recent Windward Series.

So I am perhaps more of an Engineer than an Artist with woodworking and painting being an enjoyable hobby and a great distraction from the rigours of working life for many years. I am sure everyone with a consuming hobby would consider that to be their ideal fall back career in the event of the loss of the "real" job, with the ultimate goal of making that transition a reality. I am fortunate to say that it is now my reality.

Sketching and Painting

I love to doodle, sketch and paint. It started from an early age with my only formal "tuition" at school art lessons before I had to give that up ( as well as woodwork) to focus on those O-Level subjects that would provide me with a "real" career. I did like Maths and Science so I was destined for the more practical career of Engineering. I have continued to draw and paint but only recently spent more time developing my skills and stretching my self in realistic expression rather than the modern expressionist styles. Despite many trips to the Tate Modern Gallery I still come away underwelmed and sad at the wasted effort to acheive so little. The walk back along the Thames provides me with more vivid imagery and poignancy than Tate Modern can ever provide.

I have stubbornly stuck to traditional pencil, pen and watercolour since these are much more spontaneous and simple media. Watercolour is a challenge because you cannot keep tinkering with it but can capture marvelously vibrant spontaneity as well as frequent disastrous messes. Simple is sweet.

I have a fascination and deep respect for street portrait artists who capture the look of a complete stranger in minutes. Even when making charactures they seem to emphasize the key features to retain the person's overridding character. It was this experience and spending many lunchtimes (when I worked in London) in the National Portrait Gallery that motivated me to draw and paint portraits.

My first experience of portraits was when I was in primary school and could draw a mean Fred Flintstone. I have dabbled with other cartoon characters and faces of close family for many years with mixed results. The gallery below has a wide selection of my attempts to-date. I do prefer the simple watercolour style when just a few strokes can catpture the subject as in Michael Frith's watercolour portraits - some of which I have tried to replicate in the selection below.

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Turning

Pruning the apple tree can have many benefits besides a better crop of apples. Great practice can be had by turning an apple tree branch into a number of file handles or log of apple wood into a mallet or a set of marine buoys to be used as maritime themed wedding reception table ornaments. You suddenly appreciate the difference between green and seasoned wood and the aesthetic result of leaving a little bark on the branches by not cutting too deep into the oval cross section. The wood grain takes on a wonderful 3-dimensional quality with an incredible variety of patterns observed from different aspects.

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Making ornaments from all sorts of wood is fun since the turning process perfectly highlights the grain. I remember being mesmerized in the souks of Marrakesh by a young artisan creating a small spindle ornament on his foot powered lathe and forming a captive ring in the middle. It looked so simple. I have tried this with the traditional turned mushrooms and toadstools - another useful practical lesson. With only basic lathe tools I had to fabricate the tool needed to free the wood disc into a captive ring.

Turning the Windward Buoys and Lighthouses

The buoys and lighthouses are turned on my wood lathe. I sometimes use different woods to depict the colour scheme of the appropriate buoy type. In the example below I am making Cardinal buoys which mark the safe passage extremities of underwater dangers such as reefs and are coloured with yellow and black bands in such a way as to indicate the general compass direction that the buoy should be passed. Either North, South, East or West. The direction of the 2 cones at the top indicate this in silhouette as well and at night time flashing white light sequences identify the appropriate cardinal mark. In this example I am making a westerly and northerly at the same time mainly because it is easier to work on longer pieces on my lathe.The darker wood is a portion of an oak table leg and the ligher wood is maple.




Making the lighthouses follows the same process as the buoys in that contrasting wood types are glued together using pegs to add a little more strength. The example is a Beachy Head styled lighthouse employing Spalted Beech and Iroko to represent the red and white striping. I am aiming for contrasts rather than colour replication. Cherry and Maple are also good combinations to get that distinctive contrast.



Board Gallery

The design is all important. I examine each piece of wood to determine how best to shape it to achieve that compromise of functionality and sympathy with the grain stucture. I included curves and holes not only to provide handles but to highlight the natural grain geometry. Rounding the hard edges simply enhances the wood grain and make the boards much more tactile. It was fascinating just watching people approach our stalls and how keen they are to feel the wood. The silky smooth finish is quite irresistable.  The double handed planks are used on the table in an elevated position, using cans or blocks, to provide a 3 dimensional space on the table top to serve meats, cheeses or side dishes. The other boards can be used as food platters or cutting boards.

The boards ranged in size from the small lemon-slicing boards and upto 20x80cm for the planks. Typical wood thickness is about 20mm.   Available wood types were Beech, Oak, Cherry, Sycamore and Walnut.

All the planks, boards, platters are made with local seasoned hardwood and simply finished with coats of mineral oil.

In the gallery below is a selection of board designs including an extensive set of my display blocks, platters and cutting boards used in the 3 venues of Spicer+Cole coffee+ shops in Bristol. Spicer+Cole display food on oak and sycamore blocks and platters, using handled boards for serving some of their dishes.

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