What's A Leather Artist?

[DoubleC]

Chris, I have been thinking about this thread a lot. I have art, I mean actual pictures I free hand drew looking at another picture, and either painted them or dyed them and used antique. Antique is a leather medium just like any other and has it's time and place. I disagree with JLS that just because he doesn't use it, it ain't worth using. I understand how he feels because I feel a certain type of snobbery toward people who only do Sheridan carving. If you can't get good at placing a mules foot in the right spot of a flower, vine or leaf after doing the exact same thing over and over maybe leather isn't your medium. I think there's nothing wrong with using the 'paint by number' method of learning a craft if you move beyond it. I was in Sheridan and you sure don't see any roses, leaves and vines there. So I think a lot of people started this craft with kits. I wasn't fortunate enough to be able to do that, work at a Farmers Market where if you don't make it, bake it or grow it you don't bring it. So all of my things were designed by me, good or bad to begin with. I don't carve everything. I have a lot of custom orders and do one offs where I never really get to learn a certain technique that's used in the order. I have used inlay, overlay, paint, dye, antique, stamps, the basic 7, and a few other things. I have drawn art and braided art. I have some superb failures too. I use those I think the enemy of art is complacency. If you are always satisfied with whatever you churn out then I don't think you can be an artist. Can a craft person strive to be better each time? I don't know. Probably. I'm not sure being good at a craft isn't art. I don't know when we started seeing masons or contractors as less than artists. They have great items....they have superb failures. I live in Vermont which used to be a big marble industry state. I defy anyone to look at some of these churches and buildings around here and say they aren't art. Below are some of my art pieces. I apologize for the crappy pictures. Cheryl

[leatherwytch]

To me a crafter is someone who sits and makes coasters with letters on them or as JLS said a painted bracelet with snaps. An artist is someone who does actual artwork on it or makes it a piece of art. People who design shirts, jackets, bowls, clock etc., are artists. I am doing some designs where the pictures take a great deal of work. I work for hours drawing them until I get it just right then I will trace it onto leather because they are intricate. I believe there are so many different forms of art but it has to appeal to someone to be considered artwork. Therefore if the buyer believes it to be art then the person who did it is an artist.

[rawcustom]

I have to pass along one of my favorite similar sayings about the definition of a knife maker, 'someone with a well employed spouse'.

But yeah I get your point that simply throwing leather together is quite different than adding time to tooling, and finish work. Not sure how you get paid for it without simply working and gaining a name. There is a couple bigger "handmade" knife makers near where I live, and they are producing garbage compared to the majority of most of us others around here, yet somehow people know their name and don't notice the crude craftsmanship, the lack of detail work or the overpriced nature in comparison.

Only way I know for name recognition is time and money in advertising.

[chriscraft]

Cheryl, were these photos taken by you? This is another subject that also perplexed me on using reference photos. There is another Art in taking photographs, by simply aiming the camera in he right angle and using the right light/exposure, anyone can be an Artist so to speak.

I grew up looking at magazine photos and began drawing images off these free hand. I would spend hours rendering the image and when I was done I would sign my work. I did this when I was 5-6 years old and would share them with friends and family. Everyone thought I was an Artist and soon I began to believe it. By the time I was 10 y/o I enjoyed rendering muscle cars on paper as every boy likes cars, again from Hot Rod magazines. Every decal and car name badge detail was included. The local car enthusiast could tell the exact make , model and year of the cars I had drawn. This was my first time I began accepting cash ($5-$10)for drawings and I was hooked. Later during the school year one teacher requested if I could draw his muscle car that was parked in the teachers parking lot. He even provided me with a good quality sketch pad by the end of the week as I had been using plain copy machine thin weight paper. This was the first time I felt like an Artist, now armed with nice pencils and pad. I sat on the grass beside the 1968 Mercury Cougar Friday after school and began my sketch. It took me two sessions to complete the drawing and I finished the front end grill detail from photos he provided. It was then that my teacher called me an real Artist and told me to stop copying other photographer's magazine photos. To keep drawing directly from real life instead of pictures. That reference photos were fine to fill in detail as I had done. I was too young to understand and the coolest cars to draw were still in magazines so I continued. This helped me refine my eye for taking my own pictures later in life by copying hundreds of magazine images during my childhood.

Cheryl, thanks for posting your work. I will upload some of my leather craft pictures soon.

[DoubleC]

Good Chris, I am looking forward to seeing them. Yes unfortunately the pics were taken by me, but with my 8YO digital camera. The choker set was taken with my new one. I thought it was me that kept taking the bad pictures until I found out it didn't have enough MP to take a good picture. Oh well 8 years of frustration is good for you right? LOL. I can just about free hand any picture by looking at it but have no memory anymore for creating my own. I come up with an idea then go google searching for a piece I like. I am currently working on a pair of sandals with a dragon fly as the subject, but I am not gonna brag about that right now, LOL> Glad my foot will cover most of it. Maybe the second one will be better.......

[chriscraft]

Some of my cartoon style auto drawings. Excuse the glare as I just took these picture while the drawings were still in my portfolio. One is a pencil detailed sketch that I began drawing while looking at the truck at a car show then changed the layout making it climbing over boulders. So this drawing isn't real, its made up. All my classic muscle cars have been given away to friends and family throughout the years since age 10. I still get to see them when I visit but I don't own them anymore. I wish I would have hung on to those but I was such a push over back then. Its been about 8 years since I've drawn another automobile. Some day I will start drawing cars again. Chris

[DoubleC]

I'm a pushover with strangers, LOL much less family and friends. That's really nice work Chris. Cheryl

[chriscraft]

Being able to sketch cars doesn't make me an artist either. The common untrained eye wouldn't be able to see that I wasn't producing anything great. It was a great past time growing up and helped me develope artistic skills that I can use today. Besides I was far from getting paid generous amounts for my auto drawings so it would of placed me in the "starving artist" category. Later as an adult rather than accepting the small $25 amount I would prefer to just give them away as this would make me feel better.

Just like JLS's old McDonald comparison, my hand drawings are the same. Just basic shading with lines here and there. Arrange them a certain way to resemble something and it may even look nice. Finished by placing it in a nice frame with mat and the drawing looks sharp.

So many different opinions on what one considers Art. Thanks for everyone's comments to help clarify this subject.

[DoubleC]

If Dali hadn't known where to place a line or where to shade I doubt he would have been so successful. I don't 'get' his art and daddy issuse but his art makes my eyes happy, LOL.

[oldhat]

Hey double c , you just reminded me of when i was a teenager i used to have some salvador Dali posters on my bedroom wall, come to think about it now i might have been a wierd teenager as all my mates had pin up girls on their walls, oh well nothing wrong with being a bit wierd i guess. In fact most artists are a bit wierd so what the hell.