Carving the swan

[ClayB]

In another post I showed the finished carving of a swan and how to color it. Well, I was supposed to be doing a lesson on how to carve it, but hadn't taken pictures as I was going because I really had no idea what I was going to do or if it would turn out. So, now I have carved the swan again and taken pictures and notes so I can try and tell you how I did it.

I have tried to use only tools that are easily available (no custom tools) or tools that you can easily make yourself.

I started out with a piece of cased leather. For most of my projects lately I am using regular carving leather from Tandy, nothing fancy. I have found that if you case it properly, it works just fine to carve on. I wet the leather on the back side by quickly passing it under the faucet with warm water running. Make sure it is all covered with water. Then I turn it over and quickly wet the front side the same way. Then I set it down and let it sit for about an hour. If it start to dry really unevenly, I'll either spray more water onto it, or you could wipe more water on with a damp sponge.

When the moisture has evened out and the leather has almost returned to normal color, I trace the pattern onto the leather. Then it's time to start carving with the swivel knife. Start by cutting the border lines. I used a ruler to keep the straight lines straight. The circle lines were cut freehand. I finish them up to look like a piece of branch, so they dont need to be perfectly straight. If they did, I'd use some sort of a template. We aren't going to cut a lot of the parts of the swan. I started out cutting the neck and the outline of the head but not any inside details. Then I cut the straight lines of the feather on the top of the back wing, and the lines between the front and back wing. Cut the tail lines. Then cut the water line where it meets the sky and where it meets the body of the swan. Cut all the cat tails, but don't cut the lines that represent the shadow in the water.

At this point I will rubber cement the piece of leather to a piece of cardboard. This will help keep the leather from stretching as we do the tooling.

To bevel the swan, I am going to use the figure carving bevelers F895 and F891.

I started by beveling the neck and the cut lines on the feathers.

Then start beveling the cat tails.

Bevel the head and the beak. Lots of the beveling at this point is looking pretty rough. That will all be cleaned up later with a modeling tool.

Now we are going to use the F902 pointed smooth figure beveler to define the feathers. Some of these tools will have a blunt tip on them when you get them. I have taken a file and filed the tip of my 902 to a sharp point. This is quick and easy to do. The metal isn't very hard and it doesn't take any special files.

We are going to stamp a lot of impressions very close together to make the ragged, jagged edge of these feathers. It's easier to do this if you quickly move the tool along as you are tapping it, instead of moving and placing it between each tap with the mallet. This might takes some practice to get used to. We use this method to shape all the feathers on the wings. You can refer back to the pattern to see where feathers should be.

Once I have all the feathers on the back wing defined, I will draw a center vien in the larger feathers. This can be done with the tip of a stylus, modeling tool, or even the back (dull) side of a scalpel.

The next step is to add the serrations in the feathers. How you do this depends on how much detail you want in your picture. You can draw these serrations in with the tip of a modeling tool, with the point of a needle, with a hair blade, or even with a scalpel. Each method has advantages and disadvantages. The tip of the modeling tool fits into tight corners easier than using the hair blade.Here I show how they can be drawn in with a modeling tool.

Here I show them being carved in with a hair blade. With the hair blade, it goes a lot quicker as it makes several lines at a time instead of having to draw in each line. It also spaces them closer than you can probably do with other methods.

Once all the feathers on the wings are done, I start on the front wing. I cut the bottom line of the back feathers and beveled them.

Then the F902 is used to define the rest of the feathers on this wing the same as was done on the first wing. As you go lower on the wing, the feathers get smaller.

Then the line seperating the front and back wing is rebeveled to make the seperation stand out more. This can be done with the figure beveler, or for more definition, you can use an undercut beveler B892.

[ClayB]

Here's what the wing line looks like after the undercut beveler has been used.

Now we go back and add serrations to all these wing feather we have been working on.

Add a center vein and serrations to the rest of the feathers the same as we did before.

Continue working towards the back of the swan making feathers in the same manner.

Now we are ready to start on the head. Carefully cut the eye with the swivel knife. This is a very shallow cut.

Take the spoon end of a modeling tool and place it on the cut line of the eye. We will form the eye by pressing the tip of the modeling tool down against the line. Be very careful to hold the almost upright so you aren't mashing down center part of the eyeball.

Start to shape the head of the swan with a modeling tool. Press in the line at the bottom of the head. Work it smooth with the modeling tool.

Work in the lines behind the eye and in front of the beak with the modeling tool.

With the tip of the modeling tool, press in the nostril. Shape the beak.

On the first swan I did, I put the texture on the neck with the multi blade hair knife. I did this my pushing the tips of the blade into the leather and pulling it up, making very short hair structures. Not everyone has one of these tools, so I decided to try something different on this one. Someone suggested that a piece of tape placed on the leather and pulled off creates a fuzzy texture. I tried that, and it does make a neat texture that might work here. The only problem I had is that if you rub your finger over it, it will flatten back out. I think it might help to spray a sealer over it, but I am not ready to do that yet at this point. I'm going to show a couple pictures of how it looks, even if that isn't the way I decide to leave it on this project.

Now we are pretty much finished carving the swan. At this point I do the background.

Then we will start cleaning up the carving and add detail with the modeling tool. On this carving that mostly involves the cat tails. More shape can be added to the long cat tail leaves with the modeling tool. The edges of the leaves are also smoothed out and rounded.

[jbird]

Thanks a lot Clay just fantastic.

Josh

[McJeep]

That is so sharp Thanks much for that - learnt quite a few things from your detailed description

[Crystal]

Thank you, Clay! Great write up.

I liked the texture you got with the tape. Any trouble with residual tape stickiness on that? Would that texture technique would work for the cat-o-nine tails? And - the usual question - what weight leather are you using? 6-7 oz? You've done such a nice job on this tutorial - I actually think I can do it.

Crystal

[CitizenKate]

Great ideas! And I have a much better idea how to use my hairblade tool, now. Thanks so much for posting that, I'll be referring back to it on future projects.

Kate

[ClayB]

Thanks all of you again for the nice words. I hope that these tutorials can give you some ideas. One thing Jan Schoonover always tried to get across, and I am FINALLY getting it, is that this shouldn't be a lesson on how to carve a swan, but a lesson on different techniques. The techniques can be used on all sorts of projects with feathers, and maybe some without. For me, so many times when I would go to a class, what I'd take home was "you use this tool to make this mark in this spot" instead of "here's a technique that you can use to make this texture in a spot like this, but it will also work in lots of other places".

Crystal, I didn't get any residue from the tape. It actually gives the coolest almost suede-like feel to the leather. It worked best if you always use a fresh spot on the tape when you put it in a new area. I tried regular tape and a couple different kinds of carpet tape to see if stronger tape would do more, but it didn't really seem to. I'm going to play with the tape more sometime to see what kind of uses for the texture I might be able to find. I used around 6 oz. leather on this project, but you could use anything from 3-4 on up.

The swan could be finished at the point it is here in the lesson, but if you want it to be where I started the coloring in the other post, you need to go a couple steps farther. I ran out of room in the second post yesterday, decided to take a break, and never finished it up.

The next step is to take a scalpel and cut the edges of the feathers loose. To do this, hold the scalpel at a very shallow angle and stick the tip into the leather about an 1/8th inch. On these feathers, I started on the bottom front of the feather and then follow the edge of the featjer to the tip. You can go around the tip and up to the top side, unless there is a feather overlapping it on top. Then just do the bottom portion of the feather.

j

Then if you want even more definition in the feathers, take the scalpel and cut the serrations. When I do that, I make a lot cuts really close together. When you add the sealer (explained in the coloring lesson) feathers finished up with these last to steps can be shaped because they are loose from the background leather.

[miel zaphia]

Wow! What an informative tutorial. Thanks for taking so much time to put it together and share it with us.

[Youri]

Omg. Beautiful work and great tutorial. I just need 4 years to pratcite to make something like that.. (or 40years:D)