Critique please

Morning forum,
Just finished this buckle. I would really appreciate your suggestions. I can see several areas for improvement, but was honestly stumped as to how to alter the design. Also I would appreciate your suggestion on shading. I am stuck on this style, better than my older work, but again don't know to how advance from here.
What would be great is if you could draw the design after you engraved it, errors stick out like a sore thumb. Haha

From what I see in a quick look, you really just need more practice. You seem to have the basics down, but you are still getting elbows in your backbones, and some to the locations of your crosshatching are slightly wrong. Just be a bit more careful when cutting the backbones and they will smooth out.

Thanks for your suggestions, I learn a little every time.
Jenny

I'd probably keep the border going all the way around the outside edge (it stops where the end of the belt tucks under the buckle), and aim to keep the border's width as uniform as possible. You'd likely be able to re-set your calipers and lightly scribe a new border (a whisker narrower). When you re-cut to the new scribe line, you can clean up some of the tiny wobbles along the long, straight edges, and that crisper look will make your work stand out for the right reasons.

Nothing wrong with perfecting one style (other than getting tired of looking at only one design). As to Bruce's inferred point about more practice, when you get better and have more confidence in the flow of the lines, style variations will appear as you are ready to absorb them. Everyone says the pencil is your friend and the more time you spend with it the better, and I don't disagree. Additionally, tracing paper overlays will speed the process. Trace over a section that looks OK to the tracing paper and try something new in another area.

For example, the sideways V-shape in your buckle; try to reverse its orientation and see how the shape change forces a new consideration of scroll possibilities. You might try breaking up the space in an asymmetrical way. Not that anything is wrong or "off" with what you've done, but deliberately changing a specific thing will easily lead you to another option. Benefit: sometimes none of the changes "work", and that tells you that the original design was very powerful and reinforces the notion that it's the best one and you should use it.

Best regards,
Doug

something that may help. make a smokeprint of the buckle. use wide , clear packaging tape. adhere the print onto a piece of cardstock. borrow an opaque projector and enlarge the image to giant size. early on, this was a help to me. even a cheap kids projector, such as from toys r us will do. optically, these are lousy, but will allow you to see aspects of your work that otherwise may go unnoticed. as for the buckle, i agree that all you really need is to hone and refine the skills you already have.

Thanks for all the help, I will give all these ideas a try.
I will try the projector soon, I bet It will really make the flaws stand out.
thanks again,
Jenny

jbrayout said:

Thanks for all the help, I will give all these ideas a try.
I will try the projector soon, I bet It will really make the flaws stand out.
thanks again,
Jenny

Click to expand...

some become sort of blind to what they are really doing. looking intensely at tiny little areas, sometimes the big picture just gets lost in the process. when doing oil paintings, i began to look at my work in a mirror. in a flash the bad areas became visible. and so it was using a projector and smoke prints. the smoke print, by the way, is an excellent way to create permanent records of your work.

I will give you the tip I have been given to improve mine. Study what Lynton mackenzie and Sam Alfano do on scroll heads,... they're the only piece you haven't shaded at all.

Your crosshatching is excellent, I started out way too heavy and am still struggling.

I like the overall design especially the flower.

My tip would be to make the scrolls and leaves if anything bigger than the space you want to fill... don't cut almost to a border because you'll eat out background and then you'll have a big black space where you would have rathered not have any. (I'll admit you've done that well) ... now take that same principal to the leaves. Make the leaves bigger and take up more of the background with them... even if some imaginary part of the leaf has to slip under the scroll head... having them not get all the way to the centre of the scroll doesn't look as good. Sometimes instead of leaves I'll draw another scroll where the leaf would have been and I might even overlap it through the main scroll.

You have good tool control shading, background work seems to be giving you issues, or was it the original cutting the design.

In any case cool buckle. Keep at it, keep posting, thanks for sharing.

Thanks again. I see a lot of my errors, but I didn't notice the background issue. Can you explain a little more please?

Background issue. I thought you may have been having trouble with removing the background by which I meant maybe you were hitting your scrolls with your background removal tools. Causing flats and elbows in what were near spirals

Or are you having more trouble cutting the backbone spirals.

What gear are you using. Is your holding setup fee of vibration and wobble.