Drawing right on the piece

[KevinCunningham]

Howdy engravers!

I’m just dropping in to chat with like minded folks. I’m still wet behind the ears and constantly discovering basically everything.

Today’s topic is drawing right on the piece. Pencil on china white, sharpie marker, scribed dychem, whatever the method you like. Of course I am constantly drawing on paper and ipad and learning, studying, trying to improve my scroll work. I’m finding that drawing right on the piece has the advantage of fitting perfectly, unlike fiddly transfers. Also you get a chance to visualize the result and it’s a lot less cavalier than just trusting your vision and your vice hand and letting backbones rip with no prep which I dunno if I’ll ever get that comfortable!

The interesting thing I’m finding is that whatever shapes and scroll vocabulary I’ve been drawing and working on, warts and all, are the ones that are showing up. For me right now some of it is limited vocabulary, like someone in a foreign country that only knows how to say please, thanks, and where is the bathroom?

I’m sure as I progress I will have more options and hopefully weed out the losers and bad choices.

In any case, I’m really enjoying doing this style of immediate design, based on a few sketches in sharpie first to figure out a plan, then letting it rip with a scribe. I will still have firearms projects that get weeks of drawing before I touch metal but it’s interesting to see my current evolution of style (or slow refinement of doo-doo) frozen in time by the immediacy of drawing-on the design.

I’d love to hear about y’alls relationship with ‘drawing on’!

Kevin

 

[papart1]

very nice............

 

[KevinCunningham]

Thanks. I appreciate the support but I’m struggling to move past beginner doofy shapes to natural stylized acanthus and finally getting a little more range of value even though the shading is messy.

 

[monk]

you got the right attitude for sure. there's lotsa things that are very difficult to do transfers on. the colt recoil shield is a good example. transfers can be useful on some things such as a cylinder. either way, drawing skill is probably more important than total graver control. your design is pretty good. you might want to slightly round the tip of your scriber. they are tricky when xtremely sharp. jmho

 

[KevinCunningham]

you got the right attitude for sure. there's lotsa things that are very difficult to do transfers on. the colt recoil shield is a good example. transfers can be useful on some things such as a cylinder. either way, drawing skill is probably more important than total graver control. your design is pretty good. you might want to slightly round the tip of your scriber. they are tricky when xtremely sharp. jmho

Monk your content here is always spot on. Thanks for dropping a comment.