Sheridan Pickguard Finished!

[Cyberthrasher]

Well, here goes my first shot at the classics on it's way out the door.

[Basically Bob]

Awesome work, Cyberthrasher!

[Rohn]

That is fabulous. Very nice work.

[Bob Blea]

That looks very cool.

Bob

[Cyberthrasher]

Thanks Guys. I'm quite proud of it. I never expected to really do any kind of western design, so this was quite the little trip for me to design and tool with no prior experience in the style. The more I look at it, the more I realize it actually has a lot of Victorian styling to it as well. We can tell what I've spent a lot of time looking at

[Macca]

Being a Euro, the US western style isn't exactly my cuppa

but, as always, I can't help but be impressed with the quality of your work !

[Cyberthrasher]

Being a Euro, the US western style isn't exactly my cuppa

but, as always, I can't help but be impressed with the quality of your work !

Thanks Macca! It's not really my cup either.....where's the skulls????

Seriously though, I'm always pushing people to embrace ART in what we do and to not be afraid to move outside our comfort zones. Even if something's not personally my style, I do try to embrace it and show myself and the world that I'm up for the challenge. I've always tried to think past what I like personally and enable myself to provide art to those I'm working for. Taking that approach, it allows me to develop a piece that I like because it's my design, while also providing the customer with subject matter that they enjoy.

Designing this from scratch, I gained a lot more respect for the Sheridan style that's done well. It also helped me to be able to view it all differently now and see more of the intricacies that the masters put in their stuff. That's actually the primary reason I push people to draw their work, and trace it to the transfer paper by hand. When you KNOW your design, it really shows. Designing it yourself, you know what goes where and why which allows you to accurately represent it in your tooling. The kind of stuff that's a lot harder to grasp when using a craftaid or copying somebody else's patterns. But, I still want some skulls in it, with more classic Victorian stuff!!!! THAT'S my real goal and the kind of thing I really love

Edited May 20, 2014 by Cyberthrasher

[Macca]

Your passion comes though in every piece

I bet your customers are delighted when they see the end results !

I bought an old French book of art nouveau designs for leather work last year, not anywhere skilled enough to do it justice yet

have you looked at that style ? Would be interesting to see what you could turn out !

(no skulls in that though !)

[Cyberthrasher]

I'm not all about skulls, which is why I enjoyed doing this one to prove that to people who may think that's all I can do and may have been holding off on ordering. I'll have to take a look at the French stuff. A lot of the things I've been studying have been Victorian scroll work and renaissance anatomy. Just haven't had time to apply it to leather as of yet. I'm actually planning on doing a series of DaVinci pieces down the line.

[texback]

Very nice work.

[Wild Bill46]

In my humble opinion, such as it is ? You are one of those super Artists who rise to whatever challenge is put in front of you.

And further, you are a Inspiration to many of us here on this great LWN site.

[Cyberthrasher]

In my humble opinion, such as it is ? You are one of those super Artists who rise to whatever challenge is put in front of you.

And further, you are a Inspiration to many of us here on this great LWN site.

Thanks Bill! That rise really does take a lot of climbing sometimes. I probably spend more time studying new techniques and design elements then I do actually working on leather. But it's all worth it in the end when I get responses like these. It reminds me why I had a passion for art growing up, and why I'm glad that I've managed to rekindle that passion after so many years away.