Lcsj Article - Decorative Cuts - Advice Wanted

[FlHobbyist]

When my subscription to LCSJ started, I opened it up and saw a pattern that I want to use on a case for an Fire tablet. As a challenge I decided to start carving it now, as I continue to make progress with tooling and carving. I'm somewhat pleased with the results, with the exception of the decorative cuts. I think I've figured out how to do the leaves, but the flower petals are a complete mystery to me. You can see various ideas I tried on each petal, but none of them were ideal.

So, here are my questions and observations:

1) Decorative cuts on the Leaves

I've labeled the leaves in the order I did them. I think that by the time I was doing leaf F that they were starting to look pretty good. Any advice on how to make the cuts or tooling on the leaves look better would be welcome.

2) Decorative cuts on the Petals

As you can see, I'm at a loss what to do here. I tried various ideas, and didn't like the results with the exception of the one that I didn't do any extra cuts.

3) Decorative cuts on the Bulbs

The original from what I could glean, had spirals and circles. My skill isn't quite there, and worse I really couldn't make out what he had done.

A reasonable question would be, why don't I follow the photo in the journal? The answer is the only photo is a very small 1x1.5 inch photo and my eyes were straining to get any useful info off of the picture. Though I am pretty happy I figured out how to do the petals.

Any other tips, comment, advice or questions are welcome.

Thanks,

Bob

[Bob Blea]

Hi Bob,

I don't have that copy of the LC&SJ handy, but I think I can explain the leaves. I'm just going by how that kind of leaf is typically tooled, and normally those marks would be made with a veiner, not by a swivel knife. Not that you couldn't do it that way, and I do see it done that way, but normally it would be a thin veiner running up the center of the stem with the deepest part of the impression right at the stem center line and the impression fading out towards the edge of the leaf. Then often the same veiner is used along the edge of the leaf creating short impressions along the edge to give the leaf a serrated look. The leaf 'F' is your best example, just imagine using the veiner at the same points you did the cuts at, with the same kind of curvature. Hope that makes sense.

Decorative cuts on the flower petal, that's an art to itself. They can be very personalized and it seems to me that everyone does theirs a little differently. I basically look at what other people do and try to find things I like and practice those. There was a Tandy Doodle Page that was done by Rob Barr where he showed how he does them, and he claimed there were really only seven (I think it was) basic cuts and everything was derived from those. You can find it in Tandy's Leather Craft library and it might be a good place to start. Or you can look through the galleries and show off section here and find different examples of how people do them and pick something you like and practice it. I find I need to warm up with the swivel knife and carve them into scrap before doing the actual project in order for mine to turn out good. There are some tips I can give you. Start by pushing your swivel knife in deep and then fade the cut out towards the end so it fades away into a very light cut. Also, I've been shown to start the cut off at almost a right angle to the direction you are going to cut and while making that initial cut into the leather, you twist the knife to open up the beginning of the cut more. I've never quite got the hang of doing this part of it, but I've seen it done well and it does make that initial part of the cut open up well.

On the flower pods, I often use a veiner along the edges like I described with the leaves, but I also learned to make cuts in the pods to look like the green petals that surround a rose bud and open up to release the flower. That's just the way I learned. In Sheridan style you often see a special veiner called a wriggler (because it just looks like a wavy line) used on the pod to give it texture. That might be what they did here.

Wish I had the article in front of me. I could say more clearly what tools they used. But hope this helps.

Bob

[FlHobbyist]

Thank you so much. I now remember seeing an illustration somewhere of the wigglers on the side of the bud, though I forget where. And, I also remember I have both of Stohlman's books on figure carving, I should have checked there first before getting frustrated and panicking ~sigh

Thanks,

Bob

[Bob Blea]

No problem, and remember there are lots of different ways to do things so it's perfectly OK to find what you like and do it that way. There really isn't an absolute right or wrong way when it comes to using carving tools, as long as you are satisfied with the result!

Bob

[VonTannin]

It might be a little off-topic but I thought I would throw my 2 cents in here.

A) It looks like your leather is too wet when you're carving/stamping. That's why the lines and tool marks look "mushy".

Practice fading everything you do. If you look at all of the really good toolings out there you really won't find a single cut or bevel or anything that is the same width and depth throughout the line if that makes sense. So just to make it clear for cuts, each cut you make starts of deep and wide, then as you pull the knife towards you you should start letting off the pressure and fading the cut out until you're just kissing the leather when your cut ends.

The same principal I mentioned in B applies to decorative cuts. They all start deep and taper out to nothing, and they all angle towards a mutual point, almost like the rays of a sun. Your petals on F2 are a good example. Your decorative cuts go in all sorts of directions, but they should be headed towards the center of the flower.

There are some really good YouTube videos about decorative cuts, especially by Bruce Cheaney.

Don't be discouraged it looks like you're off to a good start. My first tooling looked very similar. Keep searching through these forums and asking questions!

[FlHobbyist]

I've continued to work with this pattern and come up with a scheme for the leaves that sort of look like philodendrons which is the effect I wanted. Still need to think about what to do with the rest of it.

Close up of the philodendron pattern:

Close up of a traditional round, I'm not totally happy with the way this came out, but it is indicative of my skill level after 1 years modern leathercraft experience.

The completed tablet project front and back

As always comments and advice are welcome.

Edited May 10, 2014 by FlHobbyist