Critique Request English scroll knife

[vilts]

English style scrollwork is what has always fascinated me and I wanted to try it for a long time. This is my first real project using it and I'd like to welcome all and every critique on this. Simon Lytton was kind enough at Engrave-In to show how it is done on paper and explain the cuts, but I never got a good chance to try it out there.

This is a Spyderbug knife, a rather small one, as you can see. I think I should have started with a bigger scroll to learn the proper cuts and shading. Couldn't really do all this on such small scale, but this was a gift that I needed to finish by tomorrow, so I had to work with this

All in all I must say, that in real life the knife looks actually quite nice. But what do you 'in the know' people say about this?

 

[Doc Mark]

Vilts,

I've recently been experimenting with English Small Scroll and I'm very impressed with your design and execution on such a tiny canvas. I'm still working with larger scrolls and have enough difficult executing them properly! We can leave the expert critique to Marcus, but I would certainly be proud to call this work my own.

Mark

 

[Gemsetterchris]

Vilts, the knife looks great :thumbs up:

The english scroll i am also trying to learn about if you see my "critique" post..

There is some "wrong" in the details, same thing i have been doing, but no doubt the customer loves it.

Little bit of studying detail will make big difference next time, but overall idea is not bad at all i think.

I would try to keep the main scrolls a consistent size 5-10mm , just abit of detail to the leaves direction & the "outside" stuff..

 

[McAhron]

Looks great!

 

[jetta77]

Vilts, knife looks great. The problem I have w english scrolls is filling the space nice and evenly w the scroll pattern, cutting is no prob.:thumbs up:

 

[ken dixon]

Looks very nice to me. Those are small knives.
Ken

 

[vilts]

Simon was kind enough to critique my work. With his permission I'll post it here, so maybe others can learn from my mistakes too.

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"Congratulations, you have done an excellent job on this spyderco knife. You have the basics of English scroll done very well.

I am know going to point out anything that I think needs to be done differently. You have some simple mistakes that will be easy for you to correct or change next time. English scroll is not a difficult thing to learn but there are many little things which can make it much better.

# 1. You have cut the scroll very close to the edge so there is no room to put the outside work. This is the little scrolls or flicks that come off the edge of the scroll. Around the out side of the scroll you should have either, cut a line border & engraved the scroll right up to the line or cut outside work. I have enclosed 2 photo's of some English scroll, the first is a small photo frame & this has both a line border & on the inside there is the outside work. The next photo is a sword stick handle & the scroll is cut right up to the border.

# 2. On a lot of the scrolls you have left a large white area in the centre of each scroll, this can be easily delt with by cutting another "head" on the last fine cut. As in example #2.

#3. The scroll need to be shaded, you have done some shading but only on some of the scrolls. Example #3

There is one other point that doesn't work properly, & that is point #4. The scrolls on this line should grow out from a line or other scrolls, not on top of each other."

 

[Bama]

Thanks for sharing

Vilts thanks so much for sharing your work and Simons critique. This information is so valuable to those of us that are learning. I thought your work looked very well done but when you see Simons comments it made me realize the true difference between a master and a aprentice. I am very much the aprentice. Great job and again thanks.

 

[Gemsetterchris]

Thanks for posting that Vilts, very helpful :thumbs up: