Sketching & Transferring Bird Image to Woodblock
Carving Bird
Dampening Paper & Printing Bird
Journey or Destination?
I constantly remind myself that the journey is more important than the destination but I still haven't learnt the lesson to slow down and really be in the present, with each moment. A distraction and a slip of the knife changes the direction of a cut resulting in a mis-shaped ridge on the body of the bird. The more simple the shape, the harder it is to hide the mistakes. To understand the contours of the bird, I need to focus, slow down, breathe and stop rushing to get to my destination.
Original netsuke 'Bird' from the V&A museum. Unsigned. Made 18th or 19th century - Japan.
“A craftsperson’s job is half meditation, half creation. It takes creativity to design whatever you are working on, but it takes meditation to do it right.”
“According to Democritus, we have learned many of our abilities from animals: the spider to weave and sew, the swallow bird to build, the swan and the nightingale to sing (one genuinely wonders if birds had not existed, man would never imagined that he could fly.)”