Where Every Line Earns Its Place: From Sketch to Steel
There is something honest about a simple thick line. Not a crowd of marks fighting each other, just a single confident stroke that knows what it is doing. Lately I have been spending a lot of time chasing that feeling across a sketchpad, turning rough ideas into clean line drawings that eventually end up burned into steel.
Everything starts as a loose field sketch. deer posture, fish shape, the bend of a ridgeline, the curve of a feather. I sketch until the clutter falls away and the story is still there. When the drawing feels true, I move it into vectors and strip it down even more. One single color, single lines, no shortcuts, no filler. If the illustration still holds up at that point, it is worth engraving.
That is where the laser gets involved. The engraver is a lot like a good tracker. It sees everything. Every small wobble, every moment of hesitation, every sharp turn in the line. It cuts exactly what you tell it to cut, and because of that, the work has to be clean before it ever touches a blade.
Once the laser hits the steel, the line becomes something that can live a hard life. It becomes part of a tool that gets thrown in a pack, sits in a pocket through bad weather, and helps field dress an animal at the end of a long day. That is the part I like most. These engravings are not delicate. They are meant to be out there, covered in dust or fish slime or pine needles, earning a story of their own.
The new series for Grit Knives is built around that idea. Line drawings art that captures the essence of the wild without trying to overpower the knife. Elk in full bugle, redfish sliding through flats, topographic lines that feel like they came off a map folded too many times. There is a simplicity to it, but it is not simple work. It is clarity. It is the kind of design that has to stand on its own because there is nothing extra to lean on.
A knife has always been one of the most useful objects a person can carry. When you pair that usefulness with an engraving that means something, it becomes more than gear. It becomes personal. It becomes a reminder of places you have been or animals you respect or ground you walked alone at first light.
These new engravings are the first of many. I will keep sketching, keep refining, keep chasing the kind of clean line that says more than a full painting ever could. The process is simple, but the intention is not. Pencil to vector to laser to steel, and then the real story begins once someone carries it.
More designs are coming. More line drawing. More moments translated into marks that hold up in the field. And a few of them, honestly, should be shirts.