two big bull elk fighting in the middle of a shallow river

[ClayB]

Seeing Gesa's cool picture yesterday inspired me to try something I have been thinking about for a while. About a year ago, someone emailed me a series of pictures of two big bull elk fighting in the middle of a shallow river. I think it would make a neat carving, but the water spray is giving me troubles. In the Pictoral Carving Finesse book, Al shows a few examples of how to do this but it isn't as easy to do as it looks (actually it doesn't even look easy) I'll attach the photo I am working on and my first practice attempt. I would appreciate anyone's comments or suggestions on how to make this better.

Clay

[Regis]

What a great scene and your elks are amazing. I noticed that one of the 1st things Al said in Figure Carving Finesse is to study the rain pages in Pictorial Carving Finesse (which I don't have). It looks like he used a small matting tool a lot more in the water background and the pointed tool scattered and mostly at the top of the water sprays. Your elk scene looks like the bear in Al's book and he shows no carving in the water, only the bear. All the water area seems to me to be done with stamping.

Regis

[Dale]

Clay,

Your challenge intrigued me so I thought I'd try it myself. I have done water spray before, but I had the same challenges you had (and haven't really done it since), so I thought I'd try something a little different. The problem I see with Stohlman's method is that he tools spray as a (primarily) single object as opposed to many little objects. You can see "through" a collection of many little objects, but not through a single large object. The answer, as I saw it, was to not bevel the water spray. You can do all the beveling you need with the backgrounder. In the samples below, I really just roughed it out and I took no great pains to put the right textures on the elk or in the actual design of the water, so you won't see a final product by any stretch of the imagination. I started by lightly beveling the object in the background (elk). Then I LIGHTLY put in some water texture with the backgrounder to establish a direction and simulate actual water. After that, I tried to graduate the spray...heavier at the bottom and lighter at the top. Toward the bottom, form some points as Stohlman does to indicate heavier concentrations of water/spray and a direction of flow. Keep in mind that you want to see some indication of the object in the background, so I left the water in the top areas rather sparse. I'm realizing it's tough to explain, but maybe the second picture helps. My apologies for the large photo size, but I wanted to be sure the detail came through.

Dale

[ClayB]

Dale, What you are saying makes sense and I can't wait to see the pictures. For some reason, when the pictures are too big, they wont open on my computer (Help Johanna!!!!)

I re-did my picture a couple times, and came up with something I liked a lot better. I ended up using the pebble background tool instead of a checkered background tool. I think it looked a little more like water drops that way. I also did a lot less beveling. I like the idea of scattered drops instead of one big mass of water.

Here is how latest one turned out. Hope I don't have to do it all over after seeing what you did.

Clay

[Regis]

Dale,

I sure see what you mean by seeing "through" the water on that 2nd example. I can see some of the leg and face with splashing going up. Really good touch of realism.

Regis

[ClayB]

Dale,

Thanks for taking the time to do this example for me (and for emailing me pictures I could see!)

I like the idea of the elk showing through the water spray. I tried to do that too, but my tooling was a little too heavy handed. There are about 4 more pictures in the series of the elk fighting in the river and most of the rest of them have a lot more spray and the only way they might work on leather is if you could do them with the animals showing through the spray. I might give another one of them a try sometime.

Thanks again Dale, I always appreciate your input!

Clay

[Oscar B]

The carving is great. I learn something new each day and will keep this tip in mind the next time.

I have used white glue in drops for rain drops.

[The Major]

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QUOTE(Oscar B @ Mar 6 2007, 05:43 PM)

I have used white glue in drops for rain drops.

Now that's a good idea. Whoda thunk it. I'll have to try it.