It has been so nice to get back into scraping and burnishing a copper mezzotint, and as Spring has settled in, I have been absorbed in studying flora and fauna.
I really wanted to completely absorb myself in sketching tulips and bluebells, however I kept getting distracted by my last plate of a wren. There is definitely something wrong with it and the more I studied my sketches, the more I began to wonder if I’d had my eyes closed as I transferred my sketches to the plate!
This plate lacks the sharpness of any of my previous plates, the eyes of the wren are not as bright and there is not the detail on the feathers that I usually have.
Wrens are always the bird that I turn to when I’m floundering and starting to develop new work. I use them to reset my brain and I normally feel that as I study them so much, I capture their likeness quickly. Not this one though and the more I look at it, the more I wonder what on earth I had done.
The tiny wren, that sings outside my studio, keeps hopping along the fence on legs that are far longer, and in more proportion than the wren that looks up at me with doleful eyes from my copper plate. It’s definitely not the Thumpers fault either – I’ve nailed the pressure and finally stopped fighting with it to make it hard on myself.
I look mournfully at wren 1, push it aside and accept defeat before starting afresh.
There’s actually something quite liberating about admitting that you’ve made a pig’s ear out of something and as Wren 2 begins to take shape, with lovely long, in proportion legs and the glint in its eye that I’m looking for, my shoulders go down and I start to enjoy the process again. Isn’t that what we’re meant to do? It’s so easy to get caught up in perfection that I think we get carried away and forget that mistakes are ok to make.
This one is still not quite where I want it to be, but it’s getting there. I’m obsessed with the Green Black Ironbridge Intaglio ink and I think I’ll run a fair few of these wrens through the Little Thumper to see if I should stick to this simple colour. It is utterly gorgeous – a rich velvety ink that makes me wonder if I need to play with any other colours after all. We’ll see! This week, I’m giving myself permission to make mistakes and play.
Stefanie Smith
Painter & Printmaker
You will find me in the woods, listening for birds and looking for the tiny details that each season has to offer, often with a sketchbook in hand.
Born in London and raised in Hertfordshire, I graduated from the University of Hertfordshire in 2000 with a degree in Applied & Media Art and the following year trained to be an Art and Design teacher, specialising in printmaking.
Now settled in Surrey, my work, inspired by beautiful local surroundings, often starts in paint but finishes in various printmaking techniques – particularly mezzotint and collagraph.
I exhibit with Surrey Artists and have been included in the V&A, London ‘Inspired By’ exhibition and New Designers in Islington, London. More recently, I have exhibited with Ironbridge Fine Arts as part of their Printmakers exhibition 2023.
