Looking for some critique

[Rockinjlw]

Hello, I’m practicing sunflowers and looking to improve my tooling skills. Please let me know your thoughts and where I can improve. Thanks!

 

[suzelle]

Since it does not look finished yet, I'll only comment on what I see so far - Beautiful work! Love your tooling work! Also, I have a question: How many hours do you think you have spent on this so far? I'm just curious and want to know what kind of tiime it takes to do that kind of work!

Edited May 29, 2022 by suzelle

[Rockinjlw]

Thank you for the compliments. I think I had 4-5 hours into the tooling. I don’t tend to watch the clock very much when I get into tooling mode lol sometimes I lose days. 

[suzelle]

Okay, that give me an idea on time as I'm interested in doing this type of work eventually. Yes, it is very easy to lose track of time when you are enjoying the moments. Hours and days can fly by. I don't have that kind of time right now, but when I do!!!! Keep it up, love to see this kind of work.

[chuck123wapati]

your tooling looks pretty darn good. whats you idea for coloring it?

[Rockinjlw]

4 minutes ago, chuck123wapati said:

your tooling looks pretty darn good. whats you idea for coloring it?

I’m thinking about doing some darker dye in the flower centers. Then resist and some brown antique.  I have been using olive oil before dye, it looks like the brow band went pretty dark on me with only one coat.  I’ll post some more pics when i get further along. 

[Rockinjlw]

Here’s a pic with the flower center dyed. 

[Bert03241]

very nice work I'm Jealous

[Leescustomleather]

You do beautiful work, but if you look at a sunflower the seeds spiral in toward the center in an organized pattern rather than randomly. The only reason I mentioned it is because you asked for a critique of your work. 

[doubleh]

Looks good to me although the backgrounding could be smoothed out some.

[spacedog]

I think you are doing really good work on the sun flowers. Since you want critiques I think you are working with one of the more difficult background tools. They don’t look bad, but that tool works better when you don’t have a lot of space to fill. If you have a big space to fill, you might want to either change to a bigger tool, or just fill it with another flower. Here is an example, not my work, of that specific tool used in small areas. They manage to make the small circles, or dimples, look part of the pattern. I do like what you’ve got and encourage you to keep at it.