Monthly Figure Carving Challenge

[yaklady]

That's almost as nice as my dead fish, Clay! :angel_not:

[shirleyz]

Okay guys,

I'm not sure if I'm done with this or not. I think I might play with the coloring.

I only did this because Clay called me "blonde".

ShirleyZ

[ClayB]

Well Shirley,

Flattery, begging, and trickery weren't working. It was all I had left! I'm glad it worked. I figured yours would be just a little different and that was the whole idea behind this thing. By not doing any hairing at all, it gives the pattern a different look, clean and smooth, different than most of the others, but still looks good.

I'll apologize right here in front of everyone for the blonde comment, but I am really glad you decided to play.

Clay

[shirleyz]

Clay

I'll be honest, I was going to add hair. I looked all over for the box with my various cutting tools in it. Since I moved I've lost so much stuff it's not funny. So, I couldn't find my hair blade. Hence the bald cougar, mountain lion, puma, whatever it is.

could I hair it sometime in the future if I find the box? If I took the finish off?

Just a thought.

ShirleyZ

[ClayB]

I am not sure if it would work or not. I did a project once that I sprayed a sealer on, then decided I could have done a better job of cleaning up the beveling marks on with a modeler. I wet a small area of the project, and after awhile, the water started soaking in, so I went ahead and wet the whole thing. It took some time, but the leather did take the water, and I did the modeling and it worked pretty good. Then when it dried, it was a blotchy mess. It looked awful. I decided maybe I could dye the background to hide the blotches, but spirit based dye wouldn't penetrate the finish, even though water did. When I finally thought the dye had to be dry, I went over it with antique and the dye smeared all over everything. I thought maybe I could remove everything with deglazer, but it didn't touch the spirit dye. The project has been laying around for a year now, and yesterday I thought maybe I could paint over the whole thing with acrylic paint, which looks like it might work, but not much detail of the carving will be left. The project is pretty much scrap at this point anyway so it works good to experiment on.

If you wanted to just put hair on your lion with the hair blade, you might be able to do that right over the finsih. I think the hair would cut in. But what it would do when you tried to color or finish it, I have no idea. Same with removing the finish. It would probably work, but when you go to finish it again, I have no idea how the leather would accept it. If the project is something you are happy with now, I'd leave it alone and do another. If it's just practice, then experiment and see what happens.

Clay

[gesa]

Now here ist my attempt in carving the lioness and I changed the pattern a little bit.

I will add the wiskers later...

Gesa

[freak]

I think there's alot of peeps here that are better then they think. Here's my excuses up front; i use a really nasty piece of scrap, the leather had alot of hard places in it and i did it way to fast. But for real though i need to do this one about 2 more times to find the effect i'm looking for .

And i'm just gonna throw this idea out there. I know many of beginners and ever others will like this. I'm not sure if i read that there will be a drawing for prizes again or not. But,,,would anyone be willing (Clay) to put there entry up as a prize ?? Say draw 3 names and find 3 people willing to donate there piece ? Or maybe all are up for trade like a white elephant gift trade. I was thinking of this cause seeing pictures is one thing BUT having it in your hand is a whole other level. Anyone, anyone, anyone ???

Sorry Tina for totally defacesing your beautiful lioness .

I give you THE CURSED .

[ClayB]

Geez Freak, when I said no rules, I guess I wasnt' thinking about what you might do. You owe Tina more than an apology for killing the lion. But........ there's something really neat about what you did, in a sick sort of way. Kind of funny, I was looking through a book of drawings of bears yesterday and told my wife I'd like to carve the bear skull in there. She thought it was a little sick. Now I'm here admitting that I think like Freak!!!!

Cant wait to see what you do to the poor flower pattern of Kathy's.

[Roger]

well.. i decided to make something out of mine.

did some antique and just a bit of color.

[Tina]

Freak

Keep it on...It's Cool, I love it:-)

beezachoppa

I just have to ask, on the photo it looks like you have the antiquing color I've looked for, what are you using? I seam to have all the wrong colors at home:-(