Unquestionably your best work to date. Not sure what clicked with your bulino faces, but it did! Fantastic work, Brian!! Artfully designed and perfectly executed.
Are the delicate floral arabesque scrolls on the young lady's lingerie done in bolino dot? Regardless the results are very successful. And the wonderful gold scroll work acting as the lady's fig leaf, I like that very much. Would you say that was art nouveau?
Rod, everything is done with dots, all hand cut, no stippling. I used lines on her hair and the gold scroll work. The scroll work is art nouveau. It must be getting popular, I am getting more and more requests for it.
Andrew, the background gold is pink gold the ribbon and choker button is red gold. Due to the hardness of the material, it all had to be cut from sheet
Thanks all for the kind words. I've been getting some coaching on how to get more life out of my images, from another engraver who is arguably, the top pin up engraver out there. It's been a big help. Thanks again all for taking a look. B
when new to this forum, i once asked sam, "are you sure that's not a photographic image"? sam assured the work was real. this work brings awe to my mind-the same as that bulino work i saw a few years ago. such a degree of perfection ! just beautiful art !
Maybe you should edit the colour balance to bring out the pink gold as it tends to look yellow, but I suspect because it would have an overall effect that you would need to select each area and modify individualy which is time consuming!
Brian, as you know I've been a fan of your work from its' early days. I mostly loved your scroll work and imaginative design sense. Your early figurative works, however, always seem to be a bit "illustrative" to me. This is not a derogatory statement! I only mean that they looked more 2 dimensional than photo realistic. Now this piece, on the other hand, is far and away your best figurative work! I won't say its your best work overall, (I'm leaving that honor to your recent Reno wins), but Man this is brilliant! I'm sure your customer is very pleased with this knife. Keep 'em coming!
Hi Phil, thanks for the kind words. Yeah I had a hard time getting the color separation on this one, I think I need to adjust the white balance on my camera. When I pulled the pictures up onto the computer they all had a real yellow tint, so I adjusted the hue and saturation to grey out the steel and get some pink back into the gold but if I went to far then the yellow and grey started to get pink. So I settled on what we have here. I'd have retaken the pics, but by that time the knife was already shipped. So I had to make do.
I've always read, working with live models is the best way to go, but I haven't been able to convince my wife, or a model either, for that matter
Remember when you work from a live model......w o r k v e r y y y v e r y y y s l o w w w w
As far as color balance goes. One problem I have and i think many of us have with computer images is that what we see on our screen is not necessarily what is actually in the photo file. We have adjusted our screens one way or the other and we end up with what is called a calibration difference. They do sell a gizmo that you hang in front pf the computer screen and it calibrates the screen. One of these days i should buy one.
The kudos from your peers is well deserved Brian.. That just amazed me when I opened this thread... (I know you're just a cowboy at heart, but it's nice to know you have this second career to fall back on...) Kidding aside, you seem to up your game with each passing project.. Best, Rich
Outstanding job on this knife. Did you take photos of this project at various stages through the process. I would like to see your process as the knife progressed from start to finish.