Buffalo Feathers

[Don101]

Clay that is trully amazing, i cant wait to see how you know where or how you push from the back to give it that 3d look trully a master, Don

[leatheroo]

Oh clay, soooo nice. I have tried to make a full face mask for a wall hanging, but i cant get the nose right. Everytime i try to wet stretch the leather for the nose, the surrounding leather gets all wrinkly and gets stretch marks. Do you stretch from the back or from the front and then pop the stretched area back out?

[ClayB]

Guess I better do a really good job on the how to part of this, huh? Thanks all of you for the nice comments. I'll try not to disappoint anyone. For years and years, all I did was carve other peoples patterns and finally started trying to come up with some original (or mostly original) stuff, and it has been working out pretty good. I have sort of a team of consultants that I run things past once in awhile when I get stuck. Kate, (the amazing forum fixer) Kathy (Yaklady) Charlie, and Dale have been a lot of help, and they have great imaginations.

Caroline, I stretch from the backside of the leather. Try just wetting the part you want to stretch, leaving the rest of the face dry, or at least drier than the nose. Then you might want to stretch it in steps. Stretch as far as it goes easily, then let it dry. Then re-wet it again, stretch some more. You might have to do that a few times. It also depends on your leather. Some just stretches more easily. When I have a picture I want a lot of stretch from, I choose an area closer to the belly of the hide to cut it out from. The piece I did this buffalo on was way down on the belly and really stretched easily. That part of the hide, you couldn't have used for making anything out of that required strength, but for pictures, or for your masks, I think it works really good.

Clay

[leatheroo]

thanks clay

[Bucky]

Hi I love your work, so cool! now if I could do so Good Donna

[ClayB]

I decided to put the tutorial on my photo site until it finds it's way here to the forum. You can see the step by step process of how I made this picture for now. If you click on a picture, the caption with a description of what is being done should show up. It's not the most convenient way to see it, but it should work until something better gets put up.

****Here is the link****

http://leatherworker.net/bufffeathers/index.htm

Clay, why don't you make a separate post for this so it doesn't get lost in the shuffle?

Edited March 12, 2008 by Johanna
added link

[Don101]

ERM Er What do i Say just watched the show and im lost for words of how to describe it, WOW im gonna have to try it, now i know how its done LOL theres so much detail, Don

[Tina]

I'm super impressed,

really useful tutorails (both) and I can for sure apricitae the patience it most have taken:-) As usual you do things in a way that is stunning. Thank you for sharing your knollage.

Have a great evening//Tina

[Clay]

Ernie,

Great job on the tutorial. You make that look so easy, howcome when I have tried to do this it comes out so flat looking and the tooling seems to dissapear? I think that I would do more of this kind of work if I was more satisfied with my results.

Bert

aka ClayM.

[ClayB]

Thanks you guys (and gals). I have been working at learning the extreme embossed stuff for a few years now and between all the lessons from Jan Schoonover and Robb's videos, I am getting the hang of it. I don't think there is a whole lot written about the process, so hopefully this will be a start. I see a couple of the captions are on the wrong pictures, but close enough that you should be able to follow along.

Bert, you will always lose some of the carving detail when you stretch and emboss. After the stretching is done and the cavity filled with putty and dried, you have to go back and do all the detail work again. Just wet the leather and go at it. The putty is still workable even when it's dry. If you want more shape, get agressive with pear shaders and such. But it is also firm enough that you can tool detail back in. Tooling on it once it's filled with putty is different than when it's flat, but you can do it. A lot of the detail can be just worked back in with a modeling tool too. If you have any questions, I'll try and answer them. Maybe later on this year I can come down to Rapid and do a demo or class on something like this if you want (with less feathers though or it will take a week)