EngravingArts - Glossary of Engraving, Part 3 Digital Graphic Design

Glossary of Engraving Part 3 - Digital Design
Basic design overview
Much can be said in regards to art design from a creative stand point, however the engraver must be fully aware that creativity is not enough as often times an engraving artist must be fully versed in the appropriate fundamental styles traditionally sought after for engraving.
Different mediums allow more or less flexibility, e.g. gun engraving designs appear to be somewhat more rigidly tied to tradition whereas knife engraving designs are more open to free from expression.
What this means is that firearm enthusiasts tend to request more traditional formats in their designs such as standard scroll work or vine and leaf ornamentation, traditional borders, floral clusters such as rosettes and all other typical embellishments that can be found on most classic guns.

At times this may appear to be conservative from the designers view point however firearms, particularly classic shotguns and doubles have maintained a level of continuity and respect for a very long time thus the standards are firmly set in place. This does not mean that more diverse and interesting subject matter has not or should not be engraved on firearms as it always has been and always will be but it is on a very small percentage of firearms by comparison to the standards often seen. Knife engravings tend to carry a broader design range catering to every conceivable idea largely dependent upon the fancy of the knife enthusiast and for this reason the artist's concepts are easier to accept when deviating from classic standards.

With considerable experience a well versed engraving artist is fully capable of creating directly onto the medium. This works particularly well if the engraver's style is well known and the client is commissioning the engraving based on that artists own style characteristics. But it is always wonderful to have all ones designs in the artists own portfolio. Understanding & appreciating the Digital Medium When adopting the'Digital Art' format we are not replacing an artist's drawing skills with computer generated imagery, hand drawing is still taking place as it did before, the pencil becomes a digital pen and the paper a digital tablet. It is simply a progressive process much in the same way in which the horse drawn carriage has been abandoned in favor of the internal combustion engine. The concept remains the same and paper to digital is merely a transition within the art medium, the necessity to understand design and at the very least drawing skills are a fundamental basic requirement.

Digital tools in the hands of experienced designers only serve to enhance the artistic palette and therefore by consequence increases flexibility allowing for more choices in manipulating the artwork, therefore broadening the scope of the creative process.

Lets view a typical scenario
A client requests an engraving of a deer and the artists painstaking works the image until it is believed the desired results are achieved. The art is presented to the client and the client requests minor alterations. Perhaps a simple tilting of an animals head or modifying ornamental scrolls... Whatever the requests may be the original pencil and paper art that once was final would be ruined but using the digital format erasing, cutting, reversing, stretching, inverting, duplicating, and overlaying of images are just a small number of options that are part of digital editing. In digital design changes are made without ever destroying the original or re-drawing it it in its entirety.

Hand painted coat of arms using Photoshop

With the digital medium one can also draw traditionally on paper then scan and import the rendering into any image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or other equivalent programs. If the artist so chooses and is equipped with a digital drawing tablet (the most popular being those manufactured by Wacom) then they may draw directly to screen fully bypassing the pencil and paper medium in favor of a graphic digital tablet and pen. Editing becomes as endless as one now chooses and the original remains intact so long as the design file is saved.

The basic advantages of digital design is that any given segment of a design may stand free on its own separate transparent layer allowing it to be edited and moved freely about without interfering with any other portions of the design. Think of it as drawing on clear panes of glass so that all images are visible regardless of how many panes are stacked one onto the other. e.g. scrolls on one layer, borders on another, wildlife scene on yet another as well as breaking that down further into sub layers, head body grass, trees...

The Above Coat of Arms was completely designed and painted using Photoshop No special effects were generated, Wacom Tablet was used and the image was entirely air-brushed by hand. The original was painted at 3 times this size and took approx. 35 hours to complete. The initial step was to draw a clean final key line of this design and use it as a guide for air-brushing and blending for boundary purposes. The next step was to begin the painting procedure for solid colors such as the green leaves.
Shadow and highlight tones of green were then selected and roughly brushed in place, then manual blending and smoothing until the desired result was achieved. All main elements were generated on separate layers. The final steps were to change or adjust colors then discard all unwanted layers and finally shutting down the main line drawing layer. Additional steps were taken to reduce and compress the image for web display at 1/3 its original size. Due to this reduction the estimated quality loss is approx. 40%

Is there a down side to digital? As with most things 'Yes of course'!
1) The assumption that digital art speeds the design process, it does not! in fact it does just the opposite it slows one down, with more flexibility comes more decision making and more variations an artist wishes to see, therefore the artist has a tendency to do 3 to 4 times the creative work attempting to achieve better artistic results.

2) Drawing on paper is easier and faster than drawing directly to screen however the digital results are cleaner in the end and editing is endless. Alternative is to draw to paper, scan and edit digitally.

3) Learning to use professional graphics software such as Photoshop will be time consuming and is very much step oriented, you will not be able to simply startup the software for the first time and begin drawing an engraving project. You will learn over time step by step like learning anything else and it will take you a lot of time, assume 6 months of a learning curve at least several hours per week practice in familiarizing yourself with the software. One week of serious study and hands on practice should afford you the ability to at least scan images and do minor design and editing.

4) To be fully flexible you will need a scanner, laser printer preferable, a graphics tablet is a must as you will not be able to draw and edit easily using a mouse. Tablet of choice is the 'Wacom tablets'.

5) Professional software is expensive and there will be times you will instinctively wish to abandon the new ways and fall back to older methods expelling your monetary investment and your time. With perseverance you will wonder how you ever worked without it.

So what's available in graphic software?
Complete configurable tools / brushes pens / rulers / grids / line tools / pressure sensitivities / hard edges soft feathered edges / color palette's / erasers / blending tools / Lasso's and Marquee editing tools that will allow you to select and cut or move or modify any segment of the artwork / layers and as many duplications as u desire / History palette's for what you have done during your drawing editing sessions and ability to revert back to any step and re-edit / undue what you have just done with a simple click / rotate / size / distort / add perspective / skew / scan and edit a photos and crop unwanted areas / zoom in and out of your images / masks...
The list literally goes on and on.

Flexibility is the key benefit, it can however require a fair learning curve to take advantage of the many feature digital design and editing offers. The one good thing about all this is that for engraving design purposes we are dealing mainly in black an white and generally as line work, this reduces the the learning curve needed in order to create good artwork.