Scroll Drawing Attempt

After much consideration and helpful responses from the engraver community I decided to give drawing a scroll or whatever these are a chance. So hopefully they're somewhat good. All criticism is accepted, so have at it.

I think you are off to a good start. Now just keep drawing and and observing others work and you will get better at it.
One way to make learning faster is to buy Sam Alfanos video "The essential guide to drawing scrolls" from here .
Thats what i did and i think after watching this video few times i got the idea how those scrolls should go. Now i just need to draw few thousand more to be good at it.
Keep drawing and engraving!

The scroll in your first drawing is not working. Scrap that one. The 2nd and 3rd drawings show some progress. I would advise practicing the backbone line by itself until you can draw it with perfect proportion. THEN start filling the insides of the scroll.

Beginner scroll designers have about 500 bad scrolls in them they need to be drawn out before things start looking good. You're well on your way.

Dirtdigger said:

Now i just need to draw few thousand more to be good at it.
Keep drawing and engraving!

Click to expand...

Ain't that the truth brother! Your doing way better than my first attempts. A great exercise that will help you (actually suggestion from the experienced members of this forum when I started) is to just draw the scroll spines until your doing that fairly well, then add leaves, then add your shading last. Keep a notebook / pencil with you everywhere you go / draw. I even drew on napkins / my wife pulled notepaper out of her purse for me when I became distressed at running out of things to draw on more than once when out to dinner! I knew I was getting pretty good when after dinner a waitress came running out to the parking lot excitedly with a napkin. She said I forgot my artwork, that it was beautiful and looked really important. She wanted to know what type of art it was called? Point is, one day you'll look back at your first attempt and be amazed at how much you have progressed So keep drawing and cutting when you can, and draw and draw some more, when you can't cut!:hammer:

as mentioned-- the spine or backbone is the foundation for all that will follow. go to google images and type in "scroll" designs or clipart. there's bound to be a spine or 2 with nothing on it. send this to a printer. make a copy with several sizes. this will give you a good visual reference to look at when doing your initial drawing. a way to really look at your drawings to really "see" what you've done--- go to toys "r" us, and buy a cheap art projector. usually less than 20 bucks. blow your drawings to maybe 10 or 20 x. at such magnifications you will have a far better understanding of what you have drawn, as well as areas that need improvement.

As Monk and Sam mentioned, the perfect spiral, or scroll backbone is the basis of all good scrollwork. Go to this link and scroll down about three quarters of the page and you will find FREE PDF Scroll backbone drawing outlines by Steve Shepard. They will help for a start. http://www.airgraver.com/Hand_Engraving_Tools_Overview.htm

Also many beginners try to draw overly complex patterns like some you might see from the masters on this forum. Keep it simple at first. A pair of well formed, simple scrolls will always look better than a hot mess of ill conceived complexity. Study the scrolls that David has engraved on this Spyderco for a good example to emulate. http://www.engraverscafe.com/showthread.php?18046-Spyderco-Byrd