Can of worms

[Frodo]

A can of worms has been opened and it is a subject that needs to be discussed

carving leather vs stamping leather

 basically my question is 

Are they artistically equal in skills ?

 

 

[Garyak]

4 minutes ago, Frodo said:

A can of worms has been opened and it is a subject that needs to be discussed

carving leather vs stamping leather

 basically my question is 

Are they artistically equal in skills ?

 

 

Man brother, every time I’m carving leather there’s a lot of stamping going down too. So it’s all the same too me. 

[AlZilla]

24 minutes ago, Frodo said:

A can of worms has been opened and it is a subject that needs to be discussed

carving leather vs stamping leather

 basically my question is 

Are they artistically equal in skills ?

 

 

Not to me. You can stamp w/o carving, but not the other way around. Carving takes more hand/eye coordination.

[Handstitched]

When it comes to carving or stamping, the sky is the limit .  You can be artistic with either. You can incorporate both if you wish. I often doodle with tools  on scraps with designs( either carved or stamped)  that I thought of. If they look good , I go with it.  Theres certainly a sense of individuality when you come up with your own designs. Its yours, and no one elses 

HS

[PastorBob]

1 hour ago, Handstitched said:

When it comes to carving or stamping, the sky is the limit .  You can be artistic with either. You can incorporate both if you wish. I often doodle with tools  on scraps with designs( either carved or stamped)  that I thought of. If they look good , I go with it.  Theres certainly a sense of individuality when you come up with your own designs. Its yours, and no one elses 

HS

I have to agree.  Keep in mind, folks outside of leather are not familiar with the tasks required to get the intended results.  i have seen folks go gaa gaa over an embossed belt.  I just recently finished a dog leash with a simple meander pattern.  Lots of folks really liked it.  On the other hand, I have spent quite a bit of time with a scrap piece of leather either carving patterns or stamping patterns trying to come up with one I haven't done before.  

[Gosut]

6 hours ago, Frodo said:

A can of worms has been opened and it is a subject that needs to be discussed

carving leather vs stamping leather

 basically my question is 

Are they artistically equal in skills ?

 

 

As someone who likely could do neither, would think so. You have to know how to apply stamps in a visually pleasing way.

[Gosut]

6 hours ago, AlZilla said:

Not to me. You can stamp w/o carving, but not the other way around. Carving takes more hand/eye coordination.

Eye/hand coordination is a skill and a part of artistic expression, but maybe isn't art in of itself. One could cut a curve or maybe under something freehand, but still not know how to make a visually pleasing carving. The visually pleasing aspect is the art.

[PastorBob]

6 minutes ago, Gosut said:

Eye/hand coordination is a skill and a part of artistic expression, but maybe isn't art in of itself. One could cut a curve or maybe under something freehand, but still not know how to make a visually pleasing carving. The visually pleasing aspect is the art.

That's a great point.

[chuck123wapati]

 

Pretty easy to tell carve something then stamp something  and see which is easier to make look good.

Learning to tool a flower  compared to grabing a stamp of a flower and whacking it. 

design concepts are obviously needed for both to look good but they don't compare in ability.

 I can stamp a design in a few minutes however carving and tooling a design takes more time and skill.

Think of it this way Don Gonzales makes a bill fold hand tooled exactly as the one i did, which would be worth more. it takes skill eye hand coordination, experience and about a dozen other thing s to make your tooling look good it is an ART.  Stamping is stamping its more of a craft that's why Tandy calls them crafttools lol.

 

[Frodo]

I disagree with my brother from another mother

you can not make a flower by simply wracking a stamp. You have to design the flower using various tools

the art of it Is eye hand coordination. you use both of those to keep the stamp lined up and centered

I think carving is just a different avenue than stamping neither are more or less important than the other

[chuck123wapati]

1 hour ago, Gosut said:

Eye/hand coordination is a skill and a part of artistic expression, but maybe isn't art in of itself. One could cut a curve or maybe under something freehand, but still not know how to make a visually pleasing carving. The visually pleasing aspect is the art.

I agree somewhat however take a stamped belt for example any average person can with very little experience duplicate any design very closely with very little training or skill.

Now take a belt hand carved and hand tooled I don't have to tell anyone here how hard that would be to duplicate for the average guy with very little training or skill.

That is why stamps were invented they are simply easier. that's why people invent stuff , to make it easier.

And that's why i charge more for a tooled belt than a stamped belt. 

 

[doubleh]

I agree with chuck.. No need for me to elaborate more on the subject.

[chuck123wapati]

4 minutes ago, Frodo said:

I disagree with my brother from another mother

you can not make a flower by simply wracking a stamp. You have to design the flower using various tools

the art of it Is eye hand coordination. you use both of those to keep the stamp lined up and centered

I think carving is just a different avenue than stamping neither are more or less important than the other

lol Ok then simple test, carve and tool that same design you made with stamps on your cig case and let me know which was easier and which took more of your time and which looked better in the end.

your question "Are they artistically equal in skills" ? the answer is no, it takes much more "skill" to learn to carve and tool correctly and artistically than to learn to stamp correctly and artistically.

 

[Gezzer]

8 hours ago, Frodo said:

 

Are they artistically equal in skills ?

 

 

Kind of a loaded question I think . There is no doubt  in my mind that it takes more " skill " to carve . Now for the  " art " part ........ what is art to you , what is art to me ? How long is a piece of rope ? 

[Handstitched]

Can't you be artistic with stamping tools as well?   The stamping took a good few hours to do, and the design is my own  .  The sky really is the limit . 

HS

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by Handstitched

[Doc Reaper]

I’m pretty sure both methods have their advantages. But I’m also pretty certain that a stamp helped some but a razor did most of this work 

[Tugadude]

Seems to me we're talking about different things here and lumping them all together.

Reminds me of the old saying "you can paint a thousand walls, but it doesn't make you an artist".  It makes you very good at painting walls.  That's all.  

Stamping properly does take skill and it begins with the skill of properly casing leather, something a lot of people continue to struggle with.  

Carving and tooling, to me, is light years more difficult than stamping.  Not even close.  Anyone who disagrees, and they're welcome to, just needs to grab a swivel knife and begin to fashion shapes with it.  I think they'll learn pretty quickly that it takes lots of practice just to even hold it properly, so as to not cut too deeply, undercut, etc.  And then you have to learn to make your lines smooth, and that ain't easy.  But again, that's the mechanical aspect of the process.  The artistic, I argue, is a horse of a different color.  

You can be good at carving with a swivel knife and learn to follow patterns and such, but does that qualify you as artistic?  I'm not sure that it does.  

I have a daughter who can look at something and copy it onto a piece of paper.  It is uncanny how she can do it and retain the symmetry and other aspects.  Give her a blank page and ask her to draw something without an example in front of her and she's lost.  She cannot compose it in her mind and transfer it to the paper.  I refer to her as a "copy artist". 

The belt that Handstitched posted is a good example of being artistic with stamps.  What was created was a vision and not something where an existing pattern was replicated.  To me, that's art.  Being able to duplicate or replicate something isn't.  

That's the way I see it.  

Stamping is difficult, more difficult than most probably think.  But carving and tooling is on another level.  And being able to be artistic in either medium is something yet again.

 

[chuck123wapati]

2 minutes ago, Handstitched said:

Can't you be artistic with stamping tools as well?   The stamping took a good few hours to do.  The sky really is the limit . 

HS

 

Of course you can you can also do things that carving cant replicate.

 

[Frodo]

So here are

if stamps were invented to make the task easier and by being easier it lessens the value of that product then apples to apples when using a sewing machine as opposed to hand stitching

It clearly takes more skill to hand stitch than using a machine so in that regard hand stitched items are worth more 

[PastorBob]

All I know is there are some fine examples of both here.  Artists all around.  Love any excuse to see some of your work.  Thanks for asking the question, @Frodo

[Frodo]

29 minutes ago, chuck123wapati said:

Of course you can you can also do things that carving cant replicate.

 

That is a really pretty belt

[Handstitched]

Thank you to you both. 

@Frodo You really have opened up a can of worms  

HS

[Frodo]

3 minutes ago, PastorBob said:

All I know is there are some fine examples of both here.  Artists all around.  Love any excuse to see some of your work.  Thanks for asking the question, @Frodo

 No problem,  jus feeling ornery this morning and decided we needed to have a good discussiOn

[Handstitched]

6 minutes ago, Frodo said:

It clearly takes more skill to hand stitch than using a machine

and thats a discussion we've all had before, one of the many reasons why  I love this site  

[Tugadude]

8 minutes ago, Frodo said:

So here are

if stamps were invented to make the task easier and by being easier it lessens the value of that product then apples to apples when using a sewing machine as opposed to hand stitching

It clearly takes more skill to hand stitch than using a machine so in that regard hand stitched items are worth more 

Some do argue that saddle stitched goods are worth more.  And if they get more, what's the problem?