would like pattern design assistance

[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

[MatthewD]

I like how you blocked out the parts for the main design on those David, I will have to remember that the next time I am about to do carving

[Don101]

sigh of relief... i wasnt sure how you would react as to beeing new and words from a page can be some times missunderstood when read from a nother person .... anyway the program i used is microsoft picture it premium 9 its not to complicated and works well to my needs... you can copy and paste a part of the pic as i did for your background and even resize as i did from your flowers, you can turn and flip and reverse items or even merge different pics hope that explained the program a little for you Don

[David Genadek]

I like how you blocked out the parts for the main design on those David, I will have to remember that the next time I am about to do carving

After you do it a few times you will be able to skip that step and just do it in your mind. To beigin with it is a good way to solidify your intent. Note how I divided the the space in thirds to place the octagons and also how the rectangle contains the golden proportions so if you divide the small side by the long side you will get .66

David Genadek

[Dink]

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

I got a video on pattern drawing by Chan Geer, that is very helpful and comes with a pattern pack that can be used to mix and match. I got this from Hide Crafters.

Dink