Chinese knockoffs hurt our art

[Andrew Biggs]

Yes.....the humble pencil and paper stops a lot of people dead in their tracks. It is the cheapest and hardest tool of them all to master.

Cutting is a mechanical exercise of technique and can be learned fairly quickly with enough practice.

It's the artistic side that breaths life into the cuts and the design................Without that, you just have a piece of junk!!!

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Southern Custom]

Beginners now want it to be a cheap fun hobby. There are times I find this insulting. That's on me though. I think of it like walking in to your dentist office and asking him what are the cheapest dental tools around and are there any YouTube videos cause you want to take up dentistry as a handy hobby. (My dentist once told me, "filling teeth is easy, what you do is the hard stuff".). Most people wouldn't dream of doing this yet they expect to learn to engrave quickly, cheaply and easily.
Andrew makes a good point. Many beginners think engraving is the art. But as I say often. Engraving is not art, just the method of putting our art on metal. Most are not ready for the years it will take to learn the artistic side of it. I do envy the natural born artist who decides to engrave.

 

[SamW]

I agree Layne. I have often said that on a project, the first 3 or 4 hours designing constitutes the art portion and the next 200 to 400 hours are pure craftsmanship.

I can remember (some 50 years ago) when I first learned of engraving. I was as "in the dark" about engraving as any newbie of today (but with far less recourses) and for quite a while looked at it as a hobby for distant future retirement. Well, those of us fortunate enough get bitten by the "bug and it becomes a serious part of our lives. Now it is not just what I do but who I am.

Those few of the current newbies so bitten will be most fortunate and will constitute the base of our art in the future. If I had not been coddled and encouraged in my early years I would have missed one of the very best parts of my life!!

Engraving is certainly not for everyone but you never know until you try!

 

[gazzman151]

I will never be great, I hope to be good.