Hey guys, thanks a lot the nice comments and suggestions are much appreciated. Dave , thank you! I have a practice piece I did of the rose and I’ll play with it and include your suggestions.
I had a lot of nice comments about my carving. A lot of credit goes to Mark Silver. Many here know him as one of the best gunmakers in the country. I was fortunate enough to take a weeks class with him when he was teaching at WKU In Kentucky along with Jim Kibler. More than anything they both emphasized the importance of design. Someone said “a poor design perfectly executed is ugly to look at” or words to that affect. Mark had me draw, redraw , redesign, redraw until it almost became ad nauseam. A pencil and paper is your best friend! In a nutshell the way I do it is start with an idea or photos, free hand it on a piece of white printer paper. Be loose with your lines and when you are done some of those lines will ‘flow’ better than others. Take a piece of tracing paper over your drawing and trace the best looking lines. Keep doing that process until you can’t find any faults in the drawing…and put the drawing away for a few days. After you revisit that drawing and it still looks good do a final check that all the lines flow, you may want to add or remove some lines at this time. Now, scan that images and scale it down and transfer that design to the stock or metal and hack away.
So thanks Mark & Jim!
Cheers Richard
