Critique Request some quick scroll work for critique, comments, and advice. Thanks

[JAT]

Hello, the name's Josh. This was a quick scroll drawing that I should have spent more time on but that wasn't my intention. I did this as a quick sketch using elements I use in many of my engravings and to try some new things. Basically this shows my habits, good or bad, lol. I can spot several mistakes when I take a step back and look at it but these are mistakes that I am trying to train myself away from and am asking for help with. I am wanting to put more folds and more depth into my engravings so I did the sketch and then engraved it to get a better idea of what I need to improve on. By the way, I used a piece of brass with holes in it to give myself a design challenge so that is why it has the holes.

(Deep breath) This is the first time I've posted a picture for critique and you all have my permission to tear it to pieces! I can take it and I appreciate it greatly!!

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi JAT

Like all things there are some good and not so good things happening in your design. Very nice cutting and shading with a nice balance between the scroll and leaves.

However it is your leaves that let you down a bit.

The first thing is that they follow the backbone of the scroll instead of curving into the head of the scroll which gives it a bit of a flat look. Think of a hurricane with everything swirling inwards to the eye which will be the head of the scroll.

The second is your actual leaf shape. They are boring with both sides of the leaf being smooth and uninterrupted. Try and add more pizzazz to them to give them life and vibrancy.

I've given you something to think about in the attachment below. It's rough but should show you what I mean.

As usual, this is the way I think and others may think differently.

Cheers
Andrew

 

[monk]

i feel the leaves on both ends sort of detract from the visual effect of the scroll.

 

[JAT]

Andrew, you rock!! Thank you so much for your advice and critique. I see what you mean about the leaves being flat and their direction, I will start working on that tonight. I really appreciate you taking the time to make the drawing, it is a tremendous help.
Monk, thank you for your critique, very helpful. This is something I do quite a bit of and I need to break that habit. Should I have toned it down and not made such a large area of leaves and maybe put some smaller scrolls to fill an area like that? Or, would this be a case of less is better?
As a note.. I will probably be getting Sam's new dvd on designing scrolls soon. Seems like this would help me in my design work.

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi JAT

Yes, the leaves on the outside of the end scrolls are a bit over size. They should be a bit smaller and more in proportion with all the other leaves.

But Rome wasn't built in a day.......so don't fry your brain over it as you can't deal to everything all at once

Concentrate on one thing at a time like leaf shape, get that as good as you can, then move onto proportion and so on. Think of it as building blocks and stepping stones.

You are doing just fine and the fact that you can actually see your own mistakes is a very good start. Just keep at it and above all else learn to see what good engraving looks like and that will put you well ahead of the game. Looking and seeing are two different things

Cheers
Andrew

 

[monk]

well, less can be more. i don't know if there's a rule that every square mm must be crammed with engraving. fixing the leaves will come with practice. it's really a matter of working out with the pencil, then the graver.

 

[JAT]

Back to the drawing board, literally. I have been redrawing my scrolls over the past several days. I am bringing the leaves in more and I am trying to keep the outside leaves in better proportion. My designs seem to be more pleasing now, but I'm still in the rough stages of hammering this into my head. I will post a picture or two here in the next day or so of some of my new sketches. Again, you guys rock!! Big thanks!

 

[mitch]

hi Josh-

everything Andrew said is true, but............... his suggestions will tend to make your leaves look like a lot of other engravers' work. overall, this isn't bad (there are a lot of sound reasons good scroll is built the way it is), but one thing i liked about your work is that it's a little different. at the risk of confusing you, my advice would be to continue to explore your own style while trying to observe some/most of the 'rules'. time will tell whether your own style evolves into anything useful, but please keep experimenting.

on a broader note, i've been troubled in recent years about how derivative so many peoples' work has become. with the advent of more readily available instruction, there are definitely more & more engravers doing solid work, but it seems to be increasingly common to be able to identify their instructors far more readily than the actual engraver. will art historians some day be asking, "Was this piece done by the master, or one of his many students?" just my $0.02....

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi Mitch

Yes, it's a tough one alright and a bit of a chicken and egg situation. Learning from others and still trying to find your own design path somewhere along the road. That is one of the dangers in critiquing other peoples work when they ask for it. Trying to balance what their ideas are and not turning their work into your own.

I've always believed in getting the basics right and from there you get a good foundation to launch into other areas. One of the biggest problems in the area of decorative design in any felid is learning the difference between good and bad design and then somehow assimilating that into your own work. Some of it's subjective and some of it's technical with some tried and true principles.

One of the nice things about scroll in general is that its and excellent medium and once you get the basic structure correct you can pretty much do anything within it. In principle it sounds simple enough but takes a long time to achieve and the understanding has to go a lot deeper than the surface level. This is where I would encourage anyone to get as many books on the subject and read them and learn what the artists think and their thought processes involved in their work, don't just look at the pictures. And I don't mean just engraving books but art and design in general. That way you go below the surface of the designs and begin to see how the artists think and see the world.

One of the best bits of advise I've ever received was from Kim Pember at GRS when I first met her at Reno a few years ago. She told me "not to do what everyone else was doing...........simply because everyone else was doing it"

Just how you go about that is entirely another matter

Cheers
Andrew

 

[Sam]

As a designer gains more experience his/her style begins to take on its own distinctive appearance. Churchill's engraving was clearly influenced by Kornbrath and his work today is unmistakably his own. McKenzie's early engravings were rather generic in nature compared to his trademark style that eventually blossomed. While Mr. X's engraving might look more like his instructors', I'm guessing it'll be different each and every year to follow. What do you think?

 

[Andrew Biggs]

Hi Sam

Yes, I'd agree with that.

It was more than evident when I did my sign apprenticeship. By the end of it you were pretty much doing your own thing. There was a time, back in the bad old days when everyone was hand lettering, that I could drive around Christchurch and recognize everyone's work, especially their freehand lettering. Computers changed that and now it's hard to recognize anything as it all looks pretty much the same with very little individual style.

You only have to look at Rogers original American Engravers book and the latest version to see how individual style has developed and changed in just the last 30 years.

The words "evolution" and "natural selection" come to mind ..............and Darwin wasn't even an engraver

Cheers
Andrew

 

[JAT]

Mitch and Andrew, I started sketching the design Andrew sent me and trying to bring in some of my own leaves. After a couple of minutes my leaves started to look more and more like Andrew's so I stopped, turned the paper upside down and started drawing my own leaves some more, but bending them inwards and adding a little more. Basically trying to teach myself the rules and not so much the design. I'm taking steps to learn the understanding of a good scroll while adding my own flavor.

Sam, I can agree with you. A lot of my early art looked a lot like my Dad's but over the years I have taken techniques learned from others and infused them into my own designs. Every year I have been engraving, I can see a big difference in my work. Not just because I get better at engraving, but because I learn better ways of designing.