Swan

[Hilly]

Clay, I really like this piece! Your attention to detail really makes the difference!

I especially like the texture of the cattail! It looks so soft. Thanks for sharing.

Hilly

[pete]

Clay- great work as usual!!

Did you try rough sandpaper to get a fuzzy effect. I have done that tin the past ( once by mistake) and did a piece later of a dandelion.

turned out great!

pete

Edited March 12, 2009 by pete

[CitizenKate]

I had seen that pattern on her web site, along with many others, and thought that would look great in leather. After having tried my hand at wildlife carving for the first time, I can really appreciate artists who can bring together perspective, proportion, and textures to make such a believable rendering of a live critter.

I am looking forward to seeing how you went about shaping those feathers before (I presume) using the hair blade to texture them. I just tried a hair blade tool for the first time, and my first attempts to use it really looked horrible! Ha! I haven't given up, though, I just need more time to experiment with it. (Maybe some tips on that would be appreciated, too.)

Kate

[CitizenKate]

I really wanted to create the velvety fuzzy look of the cat tail. Couldn't figure out how to do that with a tool of any kind and then thought it's a lot like really tiny hair. So, the multi blade hair knife! Jab the tips of the blade into the leather and pull up. Repeat this about 100,000,000 times, in several different directions. Looks kind of neat! Then for the part where the thing explodes and seeds go flying out. I tried beveling in texture, the hair knife again, then Stacy said how about leather putty? Well, neat idea, but it has to be fluffy, not smooth. So I decided to just put some rubber cement on the spot with a paint brush, and then sprinkle on some leather dust. It gave it a fluffy look, just what I was hoping for. I added a couple layers to get it higher than the rest of the cat tail.

Now, that's what I call thinking outside the box. Those are some great effects, and that shredding you did with the hair blade looks just like cattail fuzz. Very cool!

I am not sure how well it will hold up, or what it will look like after sealer and paint, but it's looking kind of neat so far.

This might be a good time to consider spraying both the colors and the sealer, yes? Looks like the least little bit of rubbing would probably destroy that delicate texture you created.

Kate

[ClayB]

Thanks Hilly, Pete and Kate!

Pete, I've used sand paper to give texture to things like land, but by rubbing the back of the sandpaper. (trick learned from Bob Beard). I never thought of actually rubbing the leather with it. That sounds interesting. I'll have to try that out.

Kate, maybe we're going to have to put feathers and cat tails on the list of things to play with when we get together. You'll have to bring your air brush with too. When I finsih up the practice piece, I'll do another one and take some pictures to show you how I did it. It probably wont turn out nearly as well!

[Rawhide]

ClayB,

Another thing you can try is some tape. Adhere the tape to the area and then pull it off, this usually lifts the grain a bit.

[ClayB]

Hey Marlon, that's another good idea I didn't think of. I used to tape tracing film to my leather so I know exactly what your talking about. I was always trying to figure out how to get rid of that fuzzy look it left, now maybe there is a use for it!

[ClayB]

I've pretty much finished up the carving on this and decided to jump right in to coloring it. I started with what I figure will be the easiest part. I decided to take some pictures here as I go, and depending on how it goes, I'll post them

I started out by painting the background with medium brown Fiebings spirit dye. I like spirit dye in the background because I can get it to flow right up to the cut lines easier than trying to push acrylic paint in that close. For the leaves on the cat tails, I decided to use Eco Flow dyes. I started by mixing some Sunshine yellow about half and half with water. I like to dilute it down, and then build up the colors if I want it darker/brighter. I just paint this over all the leaves fairly heavily with a brush. I make sure to go over the edges and into the cut lines. If you missed any area of the background right close to the cut lines, this will help cover that up.

Then for the next step, I mixed some Tan canyon half and half with water. I use this to start putting in the shadows. I put it in all the lower spots, and the edges of the leaves where there would be a shadow, and under the turned over parts.

Next I added a couple drops of Dark Cocoa Brown to the tan mix, and darkened up some of the areas of heavy shadow. You can go over these areas several times if you want until it gets as dark as you want it. When I was fairly happy with the shading, I added a drop of this brown mixture back into the yellow I started with, and went over all the leaves again. It seems to help blend everything together a little better.

Then to add some green. I mixed Emerald Green half and half with water, then added a few drops of yellow to it to dilute it down some. I put this over the whole area of the leaves, but fairly lightly over the areas that are yellow. In the areas of heavy shadow, I went over them a few times with the green to get it to show some over the browns. At this point I'll quit, let everything dry and see how it looks. More to come later.

[CitizenKate]

This is looking great, so far. Are you planning to do any antiquing, or is all the color coming from the dyes? That looks like an ungodly amount of back-grounding. Looking forward to the next episode!

Kate

[ClayB]

Hi Kate,

You think I actually have a plan????? You should know better than that by now. I really like the look you get when you antique over your paint/dye. I think Tina does something like that too. It seems like it helps with the blending, and after this had set awhile, the blending doesn't look as good as it did when everything was still wet. My problem with antique would be that I think it would really "gum up" in all the cut and raised texture areas like the cat tail or the feathers on the swan. Not sure if you can apply antique in certain areas and not in others???

On the cat tail, my thoughts are to seal it with X-1, then probably paint it with acrylics. If I use the eco flow dyes on it, I wonder if it would flatten out the "fuzzy". If I apply the X-1 and lift the fuzzies while it is wet, it will dry that way and seal the fuzzies in that position. Not sure if the eco flows would do if applies over the X-1. I dont think they penetrate it, and dont know if they'd stay where I put them either. I know how acrylics will react there so that's my safe alternative. Mostly I'm just thinking out loud here (so to speak) but I always enjoy hearing your thoughts on coloring.

I have a bunch of things I should be doing today, but I really want to work on this some more, so maybe I'll have more to show later.