Still trying to learn carving.

[gregintenn]

I printed this one off the web and traced it. Dang! This is tough!!!

[sparctek]

You are making progress for sure. Question for you: are you beveling your cut lines before you use the background tool? Or maybe beveling too lightly?

[gregintenn]

27 minutes ago, sparctek said:

You are making progress for sure. Question for you: are you beveling your cut lines before you use the background tool? Or maybe beveling too lightly?

Beveled first and did it in pretty lightly.

[Tim Schroeder]

Here's a tracing pattern and a picture to look at. Tool it as many times as it takes to get where you want. Use the same pattern every time. Eventually you will make those tools do what you want. A picture of what it should look like after beveling.

[gregintenn]

10 minutes ago, Tim Schroeder said:

Here's a tracing pattern and a picture to look at. Tool it as many times as it takes to get where you want. Use the same pattern every time. Eventually you will make those tools do what you want. A picture of what it should look like after beveling.

Many thanks! I’ll give it a whirl.

[Tim Schroeder]

Try to feather everything. Shaders, bevelers and decorative cuts. Everything starts deep and feathers to nothing. When you cut the pattern try not to let any lines touch each other. I try to cut a little less than half way thru the leather and then bevel firm not hard and not soft. You can fine detail the inside corners with the background tool and modeling spoon. Point the shaders towards the middle of the flower and the center of the leaf or whatever they are. You can walk the shaders like the bevelers. A little tap tap tap as you are moving the beveler or shader. Bevel all the lines that run into another line first then bevel the ones they run into. 

Try to make the background area as small as possible. It's a lot easier to make a small area look good with bargrounders or a regular background tool. I trace outside my lines and then by the time you cut and bevel the background area will be the size it is in the picture. 

I do use some special swivel knife blades. The blade I cut the pattern with is a Leatherwrangler that has been ground down to .040 and decorative cuts with one ground down to .025. Standard is .0625 You can still make it look good with a standard blade. 

Depending on the leather you are using the tool imprints should be darker like burnishing. Especially the beveler and shaders. Usually if it's not leaving a burnishing color the leather is still to wet. 

[Burkhardt]

9 hours ago, gregintenn said:

I printed this one off the web and traced it. Dang! This is tough!!!

Can you take a picture of the angle and size beveler you're using?

[Tim Schroeder]

Much easier practice pattern. 

[PastorBob]

1 hour ago, Tim Schroeder said:

Much easier practice pattern. 

Great advice for the novice carver.  but like @JLSleathersaid....GIT good leather.  I don't know why I struggled so much with carving on the import leather until I got some Hermann Oak.  Made a world of difference.  My method of casing leather is simply running a damp sponge over it several times, then waiting 2-3 minutes before starting.  On a larger piece, I may case it multiple times as I go, depending on how long it takes me to carve.

[gregintenn]

I just don’t think I have what it takes. Thanks again for all the encouragement and advice!

[dikman]

Don't get discouraged, Greg. I'm not particularly creative, which is why I have to rely on already published patterns, but you don't have to be creative to learn how to carve existing patterns. It's a matter of understanding how the various stamps/tools work and the effect they have on the leather. I watched lots of vids on youtube and tried to analyse the individual cuts and impressions to see just why they were there.

Forget about the scrolls for now as they're probably the hardest thing to get right, start with just the flower and practice on that. Make sure the cuts are deep enough so that you get a good impression with the beveller and make your bevels fairly narrow as this will give better definition to the edges.

[Burkhardt]

On 3/3/2023 at 12:37 PM, gregintenn said:

I just don’t think I have what it takes. Thanks again for all the encouragement and advice!

First things first whatever you're using on your pictures sucks because when you try to zoom in to see better they actually get smaller. The reason I asked for a picture of your beveler is because when I started yours look like master pieces compared to mine. Problem was my beveler. If you're using a real flat beveler your not going to be able to get any depth and smooth lines. Your carving on the one above is on point.

[Northmount]

@gregintenn  Please post your photos on this site.  Using 3rd party hosting often results in broken links and the photos disappearing off the post due to changes in the hosts' policies, photos moved or deleted from the host, etc.  Then the thread/post becomes useless to others that are trying to study and understand the thread in the future.  If your files are too large to post, then reduce the file sizes to make them fit.  800x600 pixels is adequate in most cases, 1024 pixels also works well.

[gregintenn]

 

LOL!  Looks like antiquing is another rat hole I'm going to need to go down.