Louisklein
Member
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2018
- Messages
- 34
Ideas for a silver bracelet
Attachments
-
4A8B571F-1B42-44E1-BFC8-FD2AC6F45AEB.jpeg
Sketch for a bracelet
- Thread starter Louisklein
- Start date
That's a nice beginning sketch. It starts off well at the circle cartouch where the initials will go. But it seems to get overly complicated the farther west it goes. Silver can be annoying to cut the background away and what you have sketched is a lot of work for a silver bracelet. When I taught my apprentices I always forced them to do more and more, really pile it on with the design until they reached the point of excess. The point was to give them experience knowing when to stop. Its a hard thing to learn. To me there's just way too much going on there.
Here's is a drawing and an engraving from Sam Alfano -
The first one may be my favorite scrolls to look at and study from. Its just plain beautiful. Its complexity is masked by it balance. And that's one of the things about his work and why I study what he does. Its the balance he achieves no matter the complexity of the design. Incredibly hard to do.
The second one is a silver bracelet from his website. It looks like a simple design and in a way it is. But take a closer look at the shading. The leaves that fall below either side of the bottom of the fleur di lise. Look closely at the shading, how he conveys the shape of the leaves even as it drops to the bottom border. That darker center line that goes from thin to thick as it goes uphill gets me every time I look at it. Then check the folded over leaf to the right. Look how you can see the white of the foldover go all the way back to the v shape. Little simple design that's not at all that simple.
I'm just moving over from jewelry work into scrollwork and I've been working very hard at it. But I've discovered there is a lot of carryover between the two in the design elements. I would go back over the drawing and start making it less. The less you have the more it can start to flow. The more it can flow without getting in its own way the better it will look.
Allan
Here's is a drawing and an engraving from Sam Alfano -
The first one may be my favorite scrolls to look at and study from. Its just plain beautiful. Its complexity is masked by it balance. And that's one of the things about his work and why I study what he does. Its the balance he achieves no matter the complexity of the design. Incredibly hard to do.
The second one is a silver bracelet from his website. It looks like a simple design and in a way it is. But take a closer look at the shading. The leaves that fall below either side of the bottom of the fleur di lise. Look closely at the shading, how he conveys the shape of the leaves even as it drops to the bottom border. That darker center line that goes from thin to thick as it goes uphill gets me every time I look at it. Then check the folded over leaf to the right. Look how you can see the white of the foldover go all the way back to the v shape. Little simple design that's not at all that simple.
I'm just moving over from jewelry work into scrollwork and I've been working very hard at it. But I've discovered there is a lot of carryover between the two in the design elements. I would go back over the drawing and start making it less. The less you have the more it can start to flow. The more it can flow without getting in its own way the better it will look.
Allan
Attachments
-
crownroyalscroll.jpg -
abigail_bracelet.jpg
Louisklein
Member
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2018
- Messages
- 34
Allan thank you I really appreciate the feedback!!! I felt like I was starting to get a little much there in the end! Great thing about a drawing! Those examples by Sam are incredible looking at that kind of work is what drives me to get better.
not being jerk, but one should request feedback or critique. that way, there's no doubt in a viewers' mind that you want such.
Louis
There are a lot of great engravers here to follow and I look and sketch the work of a lot of them. But for me Sam is in a category all his own. The first week I got a computer I went on line looking for engravers. Sam had a page where he was engraving humidors with a hammer and chisel. . At least I think it was humidors with a hammer and chisels. It was a lot of internet years ago.
And when I had a chance a little bit later, I drove out to Emporia from the East coast for a class with Sam. Also a long time ago. GRS hadn't built their training center yet and they used a room in a building near the factory. And there wasn't anything to do after the class was over. Emporia for visitors , from what I remember was basically GRS, a dogfood factory and a sonic drive in. So Sam made the training room open after the class was over and after we had dinner. He was there answering questions and letting us practice what we learned during the day. And even though I was the one in the class with the most engraving experience ( I had been engraving full time for 15 years at that point ) I had the worst engraving experience. Couldn't use the GRS graver. But even so, because of Sam, it was one of the most productive weeks of training I had.
So all these years later I still collect Sam's scrollwork. I have it in a photo file. I used to pull it up and try and figure out what was happening in the scroll. You have to train your eyes to actually make sense of what you see. It took me a lot of looking. And it was in a practical sense pointless. The work I was doing was not scrollwork, it was lettering and ring carving. But a few months ago when I decided to get into scrollwork I made a plan to train myself to do decent scroll work. Every other day I play Sam's DVDs on drawing scrolls and engraving scrolls. And every day I pull up the photo file of Sam's scrolls but now I do it with a sketch pad in front of me.
Allan
There are a lot of great engravers here to follow and I look and sketch the work of a lot of them. But for me Sam is in a category all his own. The first week I got a computer I went on line looking for engravers. Sam had a page where he was engraving humidors with a hammer and chisel. . At least I think it was humidors with a hammer and chisels. It was a lot of internet years ago.
And when I had a chance a little bit later, I drove out to Emporia from the East coast for a class with Sam. Also a long time ago. GRS hadn't built their training center yet and they used a room in a building near the factory. And there wasn't anything to do after the class was over. Emporia for visitors , from what I remember was basically GRS, a dogfood factory and a sonic drive in. So Sam made the training room open after the class was over and after we had dinner. He was there answering questions and letting us practice what we learned during the day. And even though I was the one in the class with the most engraving experience ( I had been engraving full time for 15 years at that point ) I had the worst engraving experience. Couldn't use the GRS graver. But even so, because of Sam, it was one of the most productive weeks of training I had.
So all these years later I still collect Sam's scrollwork. I have it in a photo file. I used to pull it up and try and figure out what was happening in the scroll. You have to train your eyes to actually make sense of what you see. It took me a lot of looking. And it was in a practical sense pointless. The work I was doing was not scrollwork, it was lettering and ring carving. But a few months ago when I decided to get into scrollwork I made a plan to train myself to do decent scroll work. Every other day I play Sam's DVDs on drawing scrolls and engraving scrolls. And every day I pull up the photo file of Sam's scrolls but now I do it with a sketch pad in front of me.
Allan
Louisklein
Member
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2018
- Messages
- 34
Sorry I’m new at this I need to be a. It more thoughtful before posting.
apology not needed. some folks kinda get real cranky about that sort of thing.
Sponsors
