floral fender

[hidepounder]

Hi Alan,

Jay is right, it is easier to use flower tap offs and fill in the blanks..........after you've had years and years of experience tooling!!!! I don't think it's the way to learn to draw. When you're starting out I think you should draw on paper or acetate and work on the pattern until you're satisfied. Like Greg and Ben, I also shade in the background whenever I draw a pattern.

One of the things I find helpful is to make circles on file folders, cut them out and lay them out on your pattern. The circle should reperesent that which surrounds your flower, so you will want to make several of them. I like to draw a flower on the circle cutout just to help visualize the pattern. Orient the flower in the opposite direction on the opposite side of the cutout. Ounce you have several of these circles cut out, you can spread them around within the outline of your pattern. It shows you immediately where you will have odd shapes to fill in, whether or not a flower element will fit or not, get everything evenly spaced, define the flow of the pattern, identify areas to place leaves/acnathas/swirls, etc., etc. When it looks pretty good, trace round the cardboard circles, mark the direction of flow and then fill it all in. Draw your flowers in the center of your circles and draw in the vines and petals based on the circles you drew! This is probably an archaeic method but it works.

In my opinion, one of the most helpful books a tooler can own is Sheridan Style Carving by Bob Likewise. In that book Bill Gardner explains drawing patterns and there's lots of photo's in the tutorial and a lot of pictures of work by several master toolers. He explains how to space elements out when drawing and how to keep a continuous flow. The fundamentals apply to all tooling, not just Sheridan style work. Good stuff!

I'll bet it was fun watching Jay. It's amazing what toolers like he can do. Did he push his swivel knife instead of turning the piece around? That's always amazing to watch! Anyway, I hope this is helpful.

Bob

Edited February 20, 2009 by hidepounder

[Alan Bell]

Thanks for the help Bob, I do have Likewise book and I can see it in my mind but am having trouble translating it to paper or leather. And yes it was great to watch Jay and he does push the swivel a lot. He told me that when he started with Billy Cook for at least a year he just beveled the design in an assembly line and then he was the back grounder and so on until he had eventually done it all! That is years and years of experience right there!! I took a picture of the original drawing next to the tooled fender and I can see a few things; my flower template is bigger than my actual flower (I cut a cardboard template for the drawing and used a tap off for the leather), ;the second flower inside the vine should have the vine swirl all the way around it and should be growing off towards the upper left not towards the upper right.; my flowers shooting out should have more leaves or swirls maybe even going past the flower a bit to fill the spaces; my middle leaf should be curved the other way and not the same as the other two leaves. These things I see now and I guess I need to do as suggested and shade the back ground on the drawing and spend a little more time looking or REALLY looking at the drawing BEFORE committing to leather! Thank a million!!

Vaya Con Dios, Alan Bell

[mulefool]

I can't really add anything to what been said, but I just wanted to mention for some reason by the time I transfer my carving to the leather and finish it, the negative space always seems bigger, and I shade in the background on the paper to get a sense of that. I did want to say I think it's great you got some inspiration from the Thai restuarant. Sometimes we get stuck thinking the carving has to be a certain way, but there is so much inspiration out there from other sources. Now I'm hungry for some Phad Thai. chris

[flathat4life]

I can't really add anything to what been said, but I just wanted to mention for some reason by the time I transfer my carving to the leather and finish it, the negative space always seems bigger, and I shade in the background on the paper to get a sense of that. I did want to say I think it's great you got some inspiration from the Thai restuarant. Sometimes we get stuck thinking the carving has to be a certain way, but there is so much inspiration out there from other sources. Now I'm hungry for some Phad Thai. chris

Mulefoot,

I agree with you. If i recall theirs a short video clip on the web where somones doing a documentry on Dale Harwood. He said he liked going to the local gift shop and looking thrue thier Halmark cards to find flowers and leafs he thought looked realistic. Then for a couple quarters he had alot of ideas to put together and make somthing out of.

Jed