Help completing sheridan style pattern

[jstern]

Hey,

I have the interior layout done for a sheridan style tooling pattern I'm working on, but am having trouble doing the exterior fill- mostly on the bottom left corner, where I have a lot of empty space I'm not sure how to fill up. I've lightly sketched in some thoughts for the other areas- mostly scrolls and some other vines. This is my first real large sheridan style pattern, so I'm stil trying to figure it out.

Any advice?

[chuck123wapati]

I haven't done a lot of Sheridan style, but I did read the book, lol. Found it on ebay about 6 months back. The book says start with your circles and lay them out, then add the flowers inside, they take up most of the circle. then add the leaves and stumps and such using the circles as reference for your flow of the pattern. What I see in  the book is very little negative space between the circles. Sheridan is a very busy looking type of pattern with everything close, touching and overlapping. So you need to enlarge your circles and flowers to fill up that negative space, then your problem will disappear.

If it were me, I would make my flowers larger, relocate them so they fill the area a bit more randomly, they are three rows all in a straight line so kind of boring layout. Cut some circles out of paper and use them to lay out your pattern first, move them around to get a good, interesting pattern, then go for the flowers, and then lay in your leaves and such.

Hope that helps a bit.

[Tim Schroeder]

Staggering the circles definitely helps. Make them as big as possible to limit the fill.