Blog – Campbell Raw Press

Heron feet!

I’ve been drawing a lot this week, in an effort to stave off the grey weather, in between putting together some custom albums and working on lots of new journals (there are always books in the works around here!). I’ve been using a lot of nineteenth century natural history illustrations as inspiration and have to say that I am pretty thrilled with the results so far.

Sneak peeks of columbine, wasp, and orchid drawings!

Drawing and creating images and laying out text is the first step in the process of creating a new card design. These have a ways to go, as far as refinement and actually being converted in to plates for printing, but they’re something I’ve had in mind for a long time and am now getting together…that’s always a good feeling. I’ll keep you posted as these get closer to existing in their finished state!

It was at about this same point in her own life that my mom created an incredibly beautiful series of flower etchings (that people still love and buy to this day) and the parallels are not lost on me now. I find myself pulling a lot of very personal references and memories in to my work whenever I can, whether with imagery that has a tender spot in my own heart, or by using fine materials that remind me of work I’ve seen and loved.

“The approach of a man’s life out of the past is history, and the approach of time out of the future is mystery. Their meeting is the present, and it is consciousness, the only time life is alive. The endless wonder of this meeting is what causes the mind, in its inward liberty of a frozen morning, to turn back and question and remember. The world is full of places. Why is it that I am here?”
- from Wendell Berry’s The Long-Legged House, quoted at the beginning of William Meredith’s “Accidents of Birth”.