How would you bevel/ shade this?

[azrider]

I am doing a gift for a friend's wedding that includes his family Coat of Arms. The full picture is below. The part I am not sure about is the helmet. How would you trace, shade and bevel this to get the right effect?

(I have to have the piece done by Tuesday, so will be working on it today. Any help is appriciated.)

[TwinOaks]

One of my preferred methods for adding shading to a piece is with an old t-shirt. Cover a finger and rub-a-way. This gives a nice surface burnish, but be careful, remoistening once it's done it might remove it.

Tracing- I almost always convert to black and white for tracing/transfer.

Tooling- for the visor I suggest one of your matting tools, then dye the interior...maybe use a fine brush to get near the edges.

You could also go the route of embossing. Just lightly push the leather out at the front of the helm. That will help it pick up natural shadows from whatever light sources you have.

Will you be adding color to this, or just leave it natural?

[azrider]

Because of the time constraint, and my previous history of really screwing things up when I try to dye them, I am going to simply antique this piece. The wedding is next Saturday, and this has to be done by Tuesday. How difficult would it be to emboss just the helmet? It is 8-9oz leather.

[TwinOaks]

My suggestion was for light embossing, not full embossing- that could take weeks. By light embossing, all you need to do is press the leather from the back just enough to make it raise above the "level" of the rest of the piece. We're not talking about making the helm stand out from the page, like ClayB's buffalo did. Only pushing it out enough to give some definition to the 'front' of the piece. For example, (once cased, traced, and carved) you want the front of the frogmouth helm to stand out as the front, without having to rely heavily on tooling and coloring- press the corner of something (got any modeling tools?)into the back of the leather and push/rub. You'll be able to see where it is on the front b/c the leather will be lightly stretching. Just rub the tool on the backside, following the line at the front of the helm. You can, of course, apply this method to the whole thing, and this should give you a nice 3-d effect on the helm.

[azrider]

Thanks for the help Twin Oaks! I am going to do a little light embossing, just on the helmet once I get the rest of the piece finished. Here is what I have so far.

I just realized as I was looking at this picture that I beveled the wrong side of the line on the knight's sholder. If I carefully cut a second line there, and beveled to the other side to give it a raised ridge look, would that help?

[TwinOaks]

That might look okay, but I'm having a hard time envisioning it. I'm thinking it would look like a small ridge of armor. Actually, not a bad idea! Remember, it isn't "not making mistakes", it's "how well you hide it". And quoth the architects: "If you can't hide it, make it a feature!"

Something else you could try (scrap piece first!!!) is to bevel both sides of the same line of the shoulder. That would have the effect of rounding the shoulder off a bit. Just flatten the bevel out a little more on the outside of the shoulder.