would like pattern design assistance

[ClayB]

Earlier this week I tried to do a quick carving project. I have never been very good at drawing patterns, so what I usually do it try and find parts of other patterns that fit in the space I need to fill. When I finished carving this, I was fairly happy with how it looked. But, the more I looked at it, the more it looks like I just tried to fill in space (which is what I did) So I am wondering if any of you out there that actually CAN draw patterns could give me some pointers. What I see here is 3 seperate elements and a set of intitials. I would like it to be one continous pattern without breaks in between. My first idea to try and fix this pattern was to try and join the 3 seperate pieces with a vine in sort of an "S" shape to connect the pieces which I think will help, but not sure if it is the real solution. I would appreciate any ideas.

Clay

[Clay]

Earlier this week I tried to do a quick carving project. I have never been very good at drawing patterns, so what I usually do it try and find parts of other patterns that fit in the space I need to fill. When I finished carving this, I was fairly happy with how it looked. But, the more I looked at it, the more it looks like I just tried to fill in space (which is what I did) So I am wondering if any of you out there that actually CAN draw patterns could give me some pointers. What I see here is 3 seperate elements and a set of intitials. I would like it to be one continous pattern without breaks in between. My first idea to try and fix this pattern was to try and join the 3 seperate pieces with a vine in sort of an "S" shape to connect the pieces which I think will help, but not sure if it is the real solution. I would appreciate any ideas.

Clay

Clay,

The thing that stands out the most to me is that you have elements in your pattern that are working against each other. I feel that leaves and flowers that are "growing" from the same source should point in the same general direction as the flow. The other thing is the background. I was taught that the background should be minimal and equal to the rest of the piece. What I mean by this is that on the top of your piece you have several leaves and on the bottom you do not have as many, so there is an empty space under the S that could have a leaf in it. The carving itself is great, the leaves are done well and the flowers are too. You mentioned adding vines to the pattern and in my opinion they don't have to be there if you can get the flow right.

Clay M.

[Regis]

QUOTE: "I feel that leaves and flowers that are "growing" from the same source should point in the same general direction as the flow. "

Clay - May I jump in here with a question?

Clay M. Would you elaborate just a little more on flow? Should flow normally be toward or away from main object (focal point)? Or should flow normally be across a scene in one direction? Or, any of those as long as each item ties into an adjacent one??

When you mentioned "flow" it just clicked as what is wrong when I look at my carvings. I am at a point where I can carve 'recognizable' objects but, creating a scene is a different story (unless it's basic hills with trees & grass around an animal). How do you look at the orientation of the flow in a carving like ClayB has shown?

Thanks,

Regis

[Clay]

QUOTE: "I feel that leaves and flowers that are "growing" from the same source should point in the same general direction as the flow. "

Clay - May I jump in here with a question?

Clay M. Would you elaborate just a little more on flow? Should flow normally be toward or away from main object (focal point)? Or should flow normally be across a scene in one direction? Or, any of those as long as each item ties into an adjacent one??

When you mentioned "flow" it just clicked as what is wrong when I look at my carvings. I am at a point where I can carve 'recognizable' objects but, creating a scene is a different story (unless it's basic hills with trees & grass around an animal). How do you look at the orientation of the flow in a carving like ClayB has shown?

Thanks,

Regis

Regis,

The queststion is a good one and I will do my best to answer it. I am not sure that I have the best answer..

The flow of a floral pattern will vary between styles, makers and tools used. In Sheridan style the flow is going in the same motion but not the same direction, or in other words the flow is not necessarily left to right. In bigger patterns you will see vines and such that do point to each other but they are growing from the same point of convergence. Clay B. mentioned S curves, these are huge part of the flow of Sheridan style patterns. Take a look at a typicall sheridan patern, if you put your finger on the vines and folow them across the pattern you will see that it will go in S curves that go in different directions but it is still flowing in the same "growth" as it goes across the piece. As for the focal point, the flowers are the first componet of the pattern. That is what you want to see first when you look at a piece. The vines and stems and leaves are secondary. They should not become more prominent than the flower. On Clay B's pattern the flow starts at the top left corner and curves around the flower to the right. It continues under the middle flower at a diagonal towards the left lower corner and back around the botom flower to the right again. So by recognizing this flow it becomes easier to see that some of his leaves should be turned around.

I hope that is is helpful and that I have made sense.

Clay M.

[Johanna]

What are the odds of having two impressive leatherworkers named "Clay" on a forum?

Clay M.

You explained the Sheridan "flow" very well. I remember Little Jon running his finger along the scrolls and swirls of a new pattern, and he was checking, like you described, the direction everything needed to go. The "flow" is really easy to see on woodwork designs that use the Greek and Roman acanthus designs, too. Clay, do you have a rule of thumb about backgrounding in proportion to the design? I remember being told it should be minimal, but I couldn't tell you why.

Clay B.

I really like the initials.

Johanna

[Regis]

Regis,

The queststion is a good one and I will do my best to answer it. I am not sure that I have the best answer..

The flow of a floral pattern will vary between styles, makers and tools used. In Sheridan style the flow is going in the same motion but not the same direction, or in other words the flow is not necessarily left to right. In bigger patterns you will see vines and such that do point to each other but they are growing from the same point of convergence. Clay B. mentioned S curves, these are huge part of the flow of Sheridan style patterns. Take a look at a typicall sheridan patern, if you put your finger on the vines and folow them across the pattern you will see that it will go in S curves that go in different directions but it is still flowing in the same "growth" as it goes across the piece. As for the focal point, the flowers are the first componet of the pattern. That is what you want to see first when you look at a piece. The vines and stems and leaves are secondary. They should not become more prominent than the flower. On Clay B's pattern the flow starts at the top left corner and curves around the flower to the right. It continues under the middle flower at a diagonal towards the left lower corner and back around the botom flower to the right again. So by recognizing this flow it becomes easier to see that some of his leaves should be turned around.

I hope that is is helpful and that I have made sense.

Clay M.

Clay M. Yes, as I read your last couple sentences and look at Clay B's carving it is clear. I think I'll have to sketch a few patterns and try to make sure I understand weaving an S through the design with leaves trailing off.

Thank you very much for the lesson...... even though Clay B's carving itself is so perfect (one day one day,,,practice,,,practice)

Regis

Edited April 15, 2007 by Regis

[David Genadek]

Clay,

I think this is a really nice piece. The carving is stunning. Personally I don't think you should try to apply the rules of traditional connected stem floral carveing to this piece. What I think you are picking up on is not what is wrong with the flow but rather what is off with the proportions. This is the number one problem people have with drawing thier designs. There is a set of design rules that should be followed they are the same ones God uses and if you learn them it is pretty hard to make things look bad. A really good book on the subject is the Power of Limits by Gyorgy Doczi any one that designs anything should study this book.

Flow is important but when laying out a design you should think proportion first by laying out the stem first then adding the flowers. To do other wise would be like putting down all the punctuation in a story before you wrote the sentences. Here is a link that has some info on my teacher Bob Brown. In the pdf you will find an instruction booklet that has a few pages called pattern creation it is a great technique that can free you in ways that you couldn't imagine. I will be doing a class on how to draw using Bobs methods at the federation show.

David Genadek

[ClayB]

Thanks to all of you for your responses. I did some work on the pattern this afternoon (before I read the reply from David) and tried to get some flow into the design. Here is what I came up with. I'll wait to carve it this time to see if there are any more suggestions for changes.

Clay

[Johanna]

Hmmm...The initials should be more prominent than the floral. Right?

Johanna

[Clay]

Clay, do you have a rule of thumb about backgrounding in proportion to the design? I remember being told it should be minimal, but I couldn't tell you why.

Johanna

Johanna,

I don't have a rule to follow but when I asked this question to the saddle maker that I learned floral carving from he said that the background should be minimal because it takes up time and the shops paid the carvers by the piece instead of by the hour so they would design simple but elegant patterns to put on the saddles that would not take long to carve.

Clay M.

[Clay]

Thanks to all of you for your responses. I did some work on the pattern this afternoon (before I read the reply from David) and tried to get some flow into the design. Here is what I came up with. I'll wait to carve it this time to see if there are any more suggestions for changes.

Clay

Clay,

Very big improvement. Good Job!! Now the eye can comfortably look at this patern, and follow the flow from the top flower to the initials. On the previous pattern the eye was stopped and lead off of the piece. One more suggestion and I will leave you alone. Try putting one more petal into your flowers. This will help get rid of a lot of the backgrounding. It will also help you get depth and movement in the flower and your pattern.

Clay M.

[David Genadek]

Clay,

The second one is fine but in my mind it is a step backward. In the first one you are reaching for some higher levels of design in the second your going with same ole same ole. One of the things I saw in the first one was your use of the design over lapping the border. I think you need to be more deliberate with that so it clearly establisheses a pattern. Alternating the over lap from side to side is a cool idea. That creates a battle for position betwen the flowers and the border. Niether quite wins. If you were to make the initials larger and overlap the border on both sides the intials would become the winner and the most prominate part of the design.

I have drawn the flow line as I see it in this space with what you are trying to do. Note that I drew scrolls because they contain the golden proportions so it will give the elements a natural proportion and be pleasing to the eye. The end of a scroll is where you place the flower. Scrolls will form S's but S's don't necesarilly form scrolls. Now it doesn't matter how much fill you put in as long as everything moves the eye to along that line one way or another.

David Genadek

[ClayB]

Once again I want to thank you all for your replies.

Johanna, maybe the initials KD would show up better?

Clay, I really appreciate your help with this. Pattern drawing is something that I just don't spend enough time with so it hasn't become any easier to do. I'll try your suggestion about adding a petal to the flower to see what effect it has, but it's supposed to be a dogwood flower, and almost all the pictures I found of them show only four petals. In a conversation with Verlane once before, she told me that there is a difference between reality and art, and that art doesn't necessarily have to be exactly like reality. I do a lot of figure carving and strive for realism, and I guess that is following over into my floral carving now. Trying to add a petal will go against what I think is right, but I'll try it anyway.

David, I appreciate your comments too. I am having a little trouble grasping what you say sometime, but I would like to persue your suggestions too. Quite often when I carve oak leaves, I intentionally make them go over the edges of the border and I have had a lot of people comment that they like the look. I do too. So that might also be something to try here. I also don't have a problem with going against all the rules and doing something different. So I might just try a couple variations on this pattern just to see what I can come up with. Then I'll decide what I want to carve.

Clay

[Johanna]

KD? She can do her own stuff. I can't do nuthin'.

But a wall hanging with "JAMS" on it the next time you get bored...that would be cool. How many animals can you put in one picture? I like leaves, but maple better than oak. I don't mind scrolls and stuff, but I have more acanthus cabbage than I'm proud of. I don't have a lot of figure carving, and hey, who cares about initials anyway?

Oh, shoot, I'd be happy with an oakleaf on a keychain as long as it had the magic ClayB signature. (Please let Clay get bored. Please let Clay get bored!)

Johanna

(you better not be tossing these in the scrap bin to pound holes on or something!)

[David Genadek]

Clay,

What I am saying will become clear in time but it is a different way of looking at it all so it will seem foriegn at first. It can be a tough emotional transition you have to let go of what you think you know and de tandinize yourself.

In regard to adding a petel Clay M is well intended and is correct for the Sheridan style. I have attached a picture of the essence of the sheridan style. When propely done the sheridan style should be properly proprotioned scrolls ending in a five ponted star that shoud fit inside a pentagon. When you look at Chester Hapes work you will see this. The dog wood has a different proportional base which is an octogon. If you draw a rectangle around the one of the petals you will find that if you divide one side of the rectangle by the other it will come up .6. This is Gods Rule follow it and your work will look great.

The below pictures are not perfect they are fast examples to demonstrate a point.

David Genadek

[pete]

David, You know that I greatly appreciate the time that you have spent with me already but might you have time to do, say a 4-5 panel set of drawings to show a simple layout from start to finish? I KNOW that there are dozens if not hundreds of folks here that would love to see the progression of a 2-3 flower pattern using what you have shwn to me previously and most recently in Clay's example.

Sincerely

pete

[David Genadek]

Pete,

I would love to do that but now I'm 40 saddles behind and it is getting nice out and people are screaming.

I'm not haveing much luck finding help so right now I would feel guilty if I took the time to do something fun.

David Genadek

[ClayB]

Well, I carved this again trying to incorporate several of the suggestions that were made on the pattern. I am not sure what I think of it. I think the new pattern fixed some of the things I thought were wrong with the first pattern, but I am not sure it is what I was looking for. So I guess it's back to the drawing board once again. I have a couple ideas for doing something different that I would like to try. If anyone has any comments on this attempt, I'd like to hear them.

Clay

[Don101]

I couldnt fault the work its superbly carved, im no expert on rules for sheridan carving, your first desighn i liked i t was very clean and simple and pleasing to the eye and you could clearly see the letters which is important and to my opinion should be the main focal point, as now you have brought a lot more action in to the desighn and the lettering gets sort of lost and seems a bit bottom heavy but im no expert, have you tried the desighn with the letters central and maybe a smaller flower coming of the letters as not to make it to cluttered. Don

[Don101]

Hope you dont get affended clay but i took your desighn and played with it on the PC its only rough and maybe needs a ranking vine coming through the center between the leters it seems more balenced and you can clearly see the letters as a central focall point which i was trying to put over in my last post its probbably broken all the rules in the book as to this type of carving but im no expert, hope it helps or maybe brings up a nother idea for you.Don

[David Genadek]

Both the above designs are fine but I am deeply troubled by what I have seen happen here. A dogwood has four petals not five. Creation is an individual thing it should not be ruled by the mass hysteria of a mob. In this case we have a disease spreading through the world of leather called Sheridan. If you want Sheridan do Sheridan if you want Dogwood do Dogwood. Learn the rules of design so you create from your own innner depths

Don't just follow the blind!

David Genadek

[Blake]

Both the above designs are fine but I am deeply troubled by what I have seen happen here. A dogwood has four petals not five. Creation is an individual thing it should not be ruled by the mass hysteria of a mob. In this case we have a disease spreading through the world of leather called Sheridan. If you want Sheridan do Sheridan if you want Dogwood do Dogwood. Learn the rules of design so you create from your own innner depths

Don't just follow the blind!

David Genadek

Hello David

How about taking some time and show us how it should be done? Its a small project and shouldn't take you too long with your experiance. It would be educational and help everyone understand exactly what you are saying. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Blake

[ClayB]

Hi Don,

I am definately not offended. I appreciate any input I get on this. I am just playing around with the pattern and hoping to learn something while I am doing it. This piece is intended to be the padded part of a shoulder strap and if the intitials were in the center, they would probably end up being on the top of the shoulder and nobody could see them unless they were about 8 feet tall looking down

I agree that this pattern looks kind of busy. I think that with the right coloring, the intitials could still stand out fairly well, but the person this is for prefers natural colors, so not sure if I will color it or not. I do have at least one more idea to try so I will probably carve another one.

Can I ask how you changed the picture on the computer? What program did you use?

Thank you for taking the time to do that, and for your comments.

Clay

[ClayB]

Both the above designs are fine but I am deeply troubled by what I have seen happen here. A dogwood has four petals not five. Creation is an individual thing it should not be ruled by the mass hysteria of a mob. In this case we have a disease spreading through the world of leather called Sheridan. If you want Sheridan do Sheridan if you want Dogwood do Dogwood. Learn the rules of design so you create from your own innner depths

Don't just follow the blind!

David Genadek

Hi David,

The book I got the original design idea from was one of Al Stohlman's. I went back and looked at some more of his patterns, and he did both 4 and 5 petal dogwood style flowers. I figured if he could get away with it, so could I. Like I told Don, I am just playing around here and that is just one thing I tried. I am not necessarily trying to make it look like Sheridan, I just wanted some flow in my pattern. The other idea I have to try is competely differnt and maybe you will like it better. I have the carving part down a lot better than the pattern drawing part so I am open to any ideas and will try any of them that sound interesting.

I appreciate your input too. I am going to have to check out the book you suggested.

Clay

[David Genadek]

Ok I did a fast example to demonstrate the point. First we need to discuss intent. This is the first step in designing anything. What is your intent in your design. The only one that can really understand that is the one that did the design.

When I first saw Clay's design I saw his intent as in the drawing #1 My suggestions were to try to improve the proportions like in drawing 2. 3 is a rough sketch trying to preserve the original intent . I still contend the original intent was great ! What has happened here is that Clay let others shape his intent instead of building on it from the original. Now it is possible that the original was just a really bad connected stem pattern and he in fact wanted it competely different. However,I find that hard to beleave because the first go had too many great elements for me to think that his intent was other than what was there. Now I would take #3 and refine it further as I have done on the guitar pattern. A is rough B I would take to the leather and do my final refinement with the swival knife.

This is not to say that the other designs are bad. They are fine but are they what Clay was seeing in his mind to begin with.

David Genadek