Carving Horses

[techniques]

Sorry for the slow reply, Gisela. I look forward to seeing what you do. I'm looking forward to yours, too, Hilly!

Dear Kathy,

here is what I made. I'm not satisfied with them and would appreciate if you could take a hard look on it. Please let me know what I can do to improve it.

I would also like to ask if you could make a challenge with horse carving. Maybe you could give us a carving pattern and leave us 1 or 2 months to finish them. I'm not sure if you have the time for it, but maybe you could show us the carving step-by-step? Please, please do this, if you have time for it.

I'm so far distanted and can't visit your workshop. So this would be a great help.

Greetings

Gisela

[yaklady]

Dear Kathy,

here is what I made. I'm not satisfied with them and would appreciate if you could take a hard look on it. Please let me know what I can do to improve it.

I would also like to ask if you could make a challenge with horse carving. Maybe you could give us a carving pattern and leave us 1 or 2 months to finish them. I'm not sure if you have the time for it, but maybe you could show us the carving step-by-step? Please, please do this, if you have time for it.

I'm so far distanted and can't visit your workshop. So this would be a great help.

Greetings

Gisela

Hi Gisela,

Yes, I think Germany is a little too far for you to come visit me for an afternoon of fun carving together! It sure would be fun, though. Let's talk about the eye you did. Not bad! The eyeball itself is bevelled correctly and nice and smooth. The eyelashes could use a little work. If you have a hairblade, go over the lashes with it, to give a more hairy look. Use a fine-point stylus whether you use the hairblade or not. The lashes are rough looking, so make some of your impressions deeper than others, and not too straight.

The pear shader can be used at the back of the eye, like you did in the front. The lower eyelids could be smoothed out a bit. The one right by the eye looks good, and the rest can be shallow.

I would be delighted to post a pattern and show you how to do it. Give me a few days at least to put something together, and figure out how to post the pattern. You can take all the time you need to carve the horse. I wish you could come to Sheridan. I'll be teaching a class there and would love to have you in it!

Kathy

[yaklady]

Kathy

Outstanding OUTstanding OUTSTanding OUTSTANding OUTSTANDING

thanks

Josh

Thank you, Josh! It's all these nice comments that encourage me to do stuff on here. I'm happy to help out anyone who wants it.

Kathy

[techniques]

Hi Gisela,

Yes, I think Germany is a little too far for you to come visit me for an afternoon of fun carving together! It sure would be fun, though. Let's talk about the eye you did. Not bad! The eyeball itself is bevelled correctly and nice and smooth. The eyelashes could use a little work. If you have a hairblade, go over the lashes with it, to give a more hairy look. Use a fine-point stylus whether you use the hairblade or not. The lashes are rough looking, so make some of your impressions deeper than others, and not too straight.

The pear shader can be used at the back of the eye, like you did in the front. The lower eyelids could be smoothed out a bit. The one right by the eye looks good, and the rest can be shallow.

I would be delighted to post a pattern and show you how to do it. Give me a few days at least to put something together, and figure out how to post the pattern. You can take all the time you need to carve the horse. I wish you could come to Sheridan. I'll be teaching a class there and would love to have you in it!

Kathy

Hello Kathy,

thank you very much for taking a hard look on my horse-eye carving. I will make some other samples and will show them again here at the forum.

It would be great if you could post a pattern. Take you time with it. I'm happy if you could do that. When it continues a little longer it doesn't matter.

I hope I can someday come to the United States again. In May 1989 I had the pleasure to travel to the USA and joined the Jamboree at Prairie State Leather Guilds. There I had the pleasure to met many leather carvers like Robb Barr, Paul Burnett, Kat Kuszak, Darwin Ohlerking, Charles Heschke and many others which names I not all knew. There were several demonstrations which people could watch, but I didn't remember that there were also workshops. However it was very interesting to watch thesedemonstrations and I remember very often at this show.

Greetings

Gisela

Edited February 4, 2010 by techniques

[yaklady]

My scanner won't work, so I took a picture of the pattern. I hope it works for you!

I also started working on step-by-step instructions and will post that when it's done.

Kathy

[techniques]

My scanner won't work, so I took a picture of the pattern. I hope it works for you!

I also started working on step-by-step instructions and will post that when it's done.

Kathy

Hi Kathy,

thank you very much for the pattern. I think this works fine for me. I'm looking forward to your step-by-step instructions.

Could you please tell me how much I should enlarge the pattern?

Gisela

Edited February 7, 2010 by techniques

[PPounder]

Kathy,

Outstanding work!! And thanks for the tutorial.

Chris

[yaklady]

The pattern is 8" x 10", but you can make it any size you like! I should have the horse tutorial up pretty soon. Gotta go shovel some snow first. )

[yaklady]

Here it is, Gisela! I took a picture after each step so you could see what I'm doing. I did not make the little dotted lines that are in the pattern because I hate doing dotted lines! You don't really have to dot them all, anyway. Just remember that you don't cut anything inside, except the eyes, around the ears and the top third of the nostril. Oh, and the forelock. That goes for any horse pattern, not just this one.

This one shows which lines to cut with your swivel knife.

Bevel around the outside with a checkered beveller. Never use the checkers on the horse itself.

With a smooth beveller, do the ear, forelock and under side of the mouth.

Do the eye like I described before.

Bevel the inside of the cut line on the nostril.

Flatten the inside of the nostril with a large, flat, smooth pear shader.

Using a propetal, pick the horse's nose. Cut above the top of the nostril to give it a 3-D effect.

It will look like this.

Bevel the lines indicating where the muscles are with a figure carving beveller. Avoid using a sharp beveller here.

Smooth all those lines with a modeling spoon. Round out the outer edges so that your horse does not have sharp edges.

This will be continued in the following post. It seems I can't put too many pictures in one post.

[ClayB]

Kathy,

You need to stop hanging out with Freak. He want's to pick his friend's noses, you want to pick your horse's nose. It's a little disturbing having all these nose picking friends!!!!

I'm really glad to see you doing demos on here. Your horses are always great and so are you tutorials!!!

[yaklady]

Flatten the inside of the ears with a smooth beveller.

With a pointed beveller like F902, create hairs along the outer edge of the inside of the ears.

Use a hair blade on the forelock and the roached mane.

Use the pointed beveller to define the ends of the forelock.

A fine-point stylus makes the hair look more life-like. Use it, your spoon, and even the swivel knife to create individual hairs and depth between them.

Matt around the horse with a checkered beveller.

Texture around any portrait sets the carving off. Don't leave the leather smooth!

If any part of this is unclear, let me know and I will try harder to explain it. I look forward to seeing what you, Gisela, and anyone else who cares to do it, come up with.

Happy tooling!

Kathy

[yaklady]

Hey, Clay, when did you sneak in there? Can't you see I'm trying to pick noses here? Hmmm . . . that bring a though to mind (that rarely happens, you know) I need a picture of Freak's nose so I can pick it! On leather, that is!

[techniques]

Hi Kathy,

wow, what a great tutorial! It is so kind of you to do that for me. Thousand thanks for them.

I hope I can finish the carving on weekend and if it is not too bad I will post a picture here.

Greetings and again many thanks

Gisela

[techniques]

it seems as if I have troubles, with editing my posts. Here comes a scan of my horse head carving.

Edited February 13, 2010 by techniques

[techniques]

Hello Kathy,

the picture in the last post is a scan from the carving, which I scanned with 300dpi so that you can better see the mistakes. In the next post I will show 6 photographed pictures of the carving. I'm not satisfied with the carving. Especially the forehead made me troubles. And the muscles and contours of the head didn't work as I wanted. I have tried to make yet some changes, but I feel that the more I change, the more I destroye the carving.

On this carving it was the first time, that I have used a Pro Petal Tool. I have two sizes from Tandy in my collection, but have never used them before. I would more prefered if I had pushed the Pro Petal longer into the leather, but it seems as if the leather would then break and therefore I have stopped.

Could you please again critize them? I would also welcome if anybody at the forum let me know how I can improve.

I will also put my hands on some other tries of your horse eye tutorial in the next days and will show them here, probable next week.

Thank you again very much for the tutorial. You had so much effort and I hope I havn't disappointed you.

Greetings

Gisela

Edited February 13, 2010 by techniques

[techniques]

it seems as if I have troubles, with editing my posts. Here comes a scan of my horse head carving.

I hope I'm now able to post the other photos.

I'm sorry it didn't work. I will try again tomorrow.

Gisela

[techniques]

Luckily now uploading has worked. Here are some photos from the horsehead carving.

Greetings

Gisela

[yaklady]

Gisela, you're doing a wonderful job! You have all the right shading in all the right places. If you could smooth the shading out a little more so that none of the lines show, the muscles would be perfect. I can't get the right look with just any modeling spoon, I have to use Peter Main's spoon. Any other spoon I've used isn't smooth enough to make a smooth impression. The pointed beveller you have is larger than it should be. I will take pictures of the ones I use so you can see the difference. A smaller one will help you a lot. On the mane and forelock, try using a fine point stylus to break up the hair blade impressions to make it look more real. I'll take close-ups of that, too.

It does look like you got close to breaking through with the pro petal. How heavy is your leather? The heavier it is, the deeper you can go with that.

I'm certainly not disappointed! In fact, I'm impressed at how well you're doing. You'll have it down in no time.

Kathy

[yaklady]

I got side tracked for a bit. Jim Linnell is in town, so I had to go bother him for a while. I love him to death, he's my hero and my mentor when it comes to leather craft. He's the reason I have come to enjoy teaching like I do. I wish he would come more often.

Anyway, I took some close-ups of how I do the mane.

This shows the different tools. F902 Is a good one to use. F941 is the one you used. It's realy too broad, but if you tip it way up on the point, it can be done. F910 can be ground down to make a tool similar to F902, but with a hair simulation, which is good in some applications, but not necessary here.

This shows the different tools used on the ends of the hair.

Cut a few hairs with the swivel knife.

Simulate hairs with a hair blade.

Create depth with a modeling spoon.

Break up the hairs with a stylus.

Of course, bevel around the hair.

With the muscles, one thing most people seem to miss is smoothing them out. Tense up the muscles in your arm or leg and take a close look. If you're a body builder, it might be different, but most of the time, there is a gradual transition from low to high. Avoid having a "ditch" where the muscles are. (Pardon my country hick language) Make a ditch at first, then smooth them to both sides, rounding them to make them look like your own muscles.

I'm having a lot of fun doing this! I just hope it makes sense to you.

Kathy

[joet]

I'm having a lot of fun doing this! I just hope it makes sense to you.

Kathy

Kathy, you make it so clear that even I could do it. Wish you would do a lesson on the human face.

[yaklady]

Kathy, you make it so clear that even I could do it. Wish you would do a lesson on the human face.

Of course you could do it, Joe! If you want a real lesson on a human face, I could do that at Tandy's in Colorado Springs. If you want one on here, I could do that, too!

Kathy

[joet]

Of course you could do it, Joe! If you want a real lesson on a human face, I could do that at Tandy's in Colorado Springs. If you want one on here, I could do that, too!

Kathy

That sounds like a winner. I know you are setting up at least three classes there for this year, maybe you could either add a fourth class and make that faces, or change one of the other classes that are scheduled. Then again, maybe a lesson here on line could be in order, but it might be better if the class was in person.

[techniques]

It does look like you got close to breaking through with the pro petal. How heavy is your leather? The heavier it is, the deeper you can go with that.

I'm certainly not disappointed! In fact, I'm impressed at how well you're doing. You'll have it down in no time.

Kathy

Hi Kathy,

thank you very much for your critique. I have taken the heaviest leather which I have and it is 3,8 mm thick that is between 9 and 10 oz. Maybe I have not cut deep enough into the leather? I have always problems to cut deep into the leather. Maybe this is the reason? However I will try the use of the Pro Petal tool and will make some horse noses on scrap leather.

Gisela

Edited February 19, 2010 by techniques

[techniques]

Hi Kathy,

thank you very much for the tutorial for the horse forehead. I hope the next horse carving will become now better.

Sometimes I’m a very stupid woman. I own Peter Main’s Modelling Tool and haven’t used them. I have put all my tools at the closet as I stopped leather work and have taken only a few out from the closet as I stared again with carving. Now I have looked through my collection and brought them all back into my room where I do leather carving. I have also a modified F910 and also 2 stamps from Bob Beard which look like modified F910. One is small and the other is a little bit larger. Am I not crazy? Having some very good tools and didn’t use them? I can’t understand myself!!

This weekend I will look through my stamp collection and will choose the ones which I will use more often. I will put them directly against my working table.

I have also looked through my Doodle Page collection and found a Palomino Horse Carving from you. Yesterday I have started with carving them and I hope it will become ready this weekend so that I can show it here at the forum.

Thank you again very much for your help.

Gisela

[techniques]

I got side tracked for a bit. Jim Linnell is in town, so I had to go bother him for a while. I love him to death, he's my hero and my mentor when it comes to leather craft. He's the reason I have come to enjoy teaching like I do. I wish he would come more often.

Kathy

Hello Kathy,

Oh, I envy you for the change to met Jim Linnell. I love his work also very much and looking very often at his web site. Enjoy the time.

Greetings

Gisela