My first gun engraving!!

[D. Taylor Sapergia]

Peter, what you said about the pencil guiding the graver makes perfect sense to me.  When I'm engraving a gun, in my waking minutes of the morning, I see in my mind's eye, patterns, scrolls, tendrils, leaves and vines.  It is an unconscious thing, but a blessing.  I think the more you immerse yourself into engraving, the more that will happen, and the more interesting your designs will evolve.

[davec2]

One of the things that has helped me with my own engraving is the digital camera (or now my phone camera).  For whatever reason, things that look OK to my eye in person all of a sudden don't look so good when I take a picture and look at it on the computer screen much larger than real life.  The camera's eye is unflinching when it comes to displaying errors and it has been hugely useful to me to look at a picture of the drawn design after I think it looks good and I'm ready to start cutting metal.  I almost always see something in the photo that I didn't see first hand and that needs improvement.

[BOB HILL]

Dave, this is an excellent suggestion!
Bob

[Mr. Bubbles]

That's why your stuff looks as good as it does Dave!  The same can be said for carving as far as a technique goes.  a 1" x 1" area blown up on a computer to 6" x 6" sure shows a bunch of warts you didn't know about before doesn't it?