Charles van Sandwyk: Illustrator, Writer, Wanderer

You are invited to peek into the whimsical, magical world of Charles van Sandwyk, sitting down by the fire to be inspired by his …

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I love stories that have Beginnings middles and ends and I’ve been drawing all my life when I was about 7 or 8 years old we lived in South Africa every year we’d go to the game reserve and I loved drawing the little ground horn bills and they would sometimes walk along with their little babies on their back and I thought this was the most beautiful thing to draw so it was there I realized that Whimsy in nature was very appealing to me and I think that need for Whimsy and Delight comes from a very very deep love for Humanity it’s been a single course all along there wasn’t a beginning a middle and an end to it it’s just it’s in there and I’ve been trying to get this stuff out on paper through words through poetry through drawings if I’m writing and illustrating a book it could begin with preliminary sketches trying to Quest in my mind to find what it’s going to be about then I’ll start to work on the story line and then from there start to draw the pictures bit more clearly ink them in color them in and then Begins the whole publishing process the line medium is my favorite I love the gracefulness and fluid it of line work I think it’s a very ancient form it speaks to me but also it can be what you want it to be I mean how long is a line a line is as long as you make it it can curve backwards and forwards over itself or it could be just a simple thread and then my waterc color is to enhance that the whole thing with watercolors is finding the right colors that can layer successfully over each other look see what happens when you add Prussian Blue to the yellow it gets rich but not overpowering and then can I blend it with a bit of water the thing with water color is to give it some variety and then when we do red We Make It Count also when you’re actually working in real life this thing might be red but it’s also has all the reflected colors of the things that are around it right see now this even though it’s the same red it looks different from that because that was pure the color is just dropped in almost like you’re doing Jewel work you know you’re putting the little precious stones into the setting then we have the books printed both printed at home here and at a commercial press in North Vancouver we print on high quality papers and we print slowly so that we can have the best saturation of ink we use metallic inks as well and foil stamping those we don’t do in-house whyi and I do the very grass Roots part of it and our friend John helps out with the printing as well so basically everything that you look at generally is hand drawn the lettering is hand done some of the paper is handmade The Binding is all hand done most of it most of and all hand done here rebron perfected it it had already been etching was already a process was used to decorate um solders plated armor but the etching process was perfected by Durer and rebron so the 1500s and then they would take a piece of leather and ink it all up and press the ink into it to have a record of the armor that they had just made and that was that’s when they realized it could be a printing process etching starts with a sheet of copper plate coated with bitchman coating which is like tar and then with a very sharp needle or stylus you scratch your design through the tar wherever you’ve scratched you expose the copper all of the grooves and crevices that you’ve etched can hold ink so the wet paper goes onto the plate and goes into an Etching Press which is something like an old-fashioned washing mangle the blanket squeezes the paper so tightly against the plate that the paper bends into into the grooves it’s actually more detail in etching than there is in doing pen and ink I’m trying to tap into a vein that is part of our ancient Collective conscious old old old old themes that are common to all of us whether it be fairy tales with a moral lesson or an immoral lesson you reframe things through stories you make a really crummy situation bearable a good poem or a good story will Journey with you it’s very important that what your skills are with your hands this is your servant right here it’s got to reproduce what’s in here and whatever you however you do it be true to your message that will make this skill valuable I had a dream in dark of night before the the hills were kissed with light the wind it called the trees they spoke to stir my soul before I woke mystery in the wooded Hill branches smooth the stars are still and so begin the rights of old Leaf by Leaf the Tails unfold carpeting the scripted floor the woods are filled with ancient lore I long for treescapes deep and wide quiet centuries side by side bending bow and creaking limb rustling when the light is dim movement on the wooded Hill turn to look then all is still but do you hear beneath the bark Whispers as it’s growing dark tendril fingers in the ground under Tusk over Mound Roots hold dear the bosom Earth roots to feed the mighty girth it’s not the might which awe inspires nor the scars of distant fires nay trees take root by God’s good grace that they may hold the world in place

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