Mike_Morgan
Elite Cafe Member
A little preface... I've been engraving a few months, with absolutely no previous experience. I made the money clip out of full-hard Phosphor Bronze and I free-handed the backbone of the scroll about two months ago. It's not great, I get that... but it was a first shot at cutting something that wasn't a practice plate made of copper.
The leaves and leaf structure was added a month later, when I was feeling more confident in my cutting abilities... it's pretty obvious that I had absolutely no clue that there are rules to scroll design... I was oblivious to that fact until I started reading more about scroll design in some of the threads here on the forum. Some (OK, MOST) of them don't follow the growth from the point of origin... who knew?
So I used the money clip with just the outlines until today, and I was feeling pretty good about how my practice plates were doing, and I decided that TODAY is the day I will do the shading. It sort of "evolved" as the day progressed... finally I tried my hand at some stippling in the negative space.
YES... I know the border, which I cut in over a month ago is about as straight as the cast of La Cage aux Folles, and if I had cut it today it would be better, but I feel comfortable saying "I did my best, at the time"... It's a starting point.
Basically, I guess it's just "time" to actually show proof of life, that I'm actually making an effort to engrave, and not just buying expensive tools.
The leaves and leaf structure was added a month later, when I was feeling more confident in my cutting abilities... it's pretty obvious that I had absolutely no clue that there are rules to scroll design... I was oblivious to that fact until I started reading more about scroll design in some of the threads here on the forum. Some (OK, MOST) of them don't follow the growth from the point of origin... who knew?
So I used the money clip with just the outlines until today, and I was feeling pretty good about how my practice plates were doing, and I decided that TODAY is the day I will do the shading. It sort of "evolved" as the day progressed... finally I tried my hand at some stippling in the negative space.
YES... I know the border, which I cut in over a month ago is about as straight as the cast of La Cage aux Folles, and if I had cut it today it would be better, but I feel comfortable saying "I did my best, at the time"... It's a starting point.
Basically, I guess it's just "time" to actually show proof of life, that I'm actually making an effort to engrave, and not just buying expensive tools.