Critique Request Practice Lindsay like scrollwork drawing

Marcus Hunt

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Nice drawing Dani. Like Sam says, cross hatching gives depth and texture to the shading. My only criticism is to beware of over shading. It's something that happens a lot nowadays in stuff I see. It's very easy to do when drawing and even easier to do when using a microscope to cut. The engravings look fabulous when photographed and the detail can be amazing BUT most engraving is looked at with the naked eye by the owner of the piece and those lines which look great and well spaced at 15x magnification can end up looking like a black blob at actual size to the naked eye. I've seen it on engraved watches, especially when the scrolls are fairly small. More does not always equate to better. Sometimes, less is more. Something to bear in mind.
 

Sam

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Nice drawing Dani. Like Sam says, cross hatching gives depth and texture to the shading. My only criticism is to beware of over shading. It's something that happens a lot nowadays in stuff I see. It's very easy to do when drawing and even easier to do when using a microscope to cut. The engravings look fabulous when photographed and the detail can be amazing BUT most engraving is looked at with the naked eye by the owner of the piece and those lines which look great and well spaced at 15x magnification can end up looking like a black blob at actual size to the naked eye. I've seen it on engraved watches, especially when the scrolls are fairly small. More does not always equate to better. Sometimes, less is more. Something to bear in mind.

Thank you Marcus. It took me a lot of years and a lot of engraving to get to the point where I wasn't overshading my work. That's one of the drawbacks of microscope engraving. It's not what you engrave, but what you don't engrave that can be the difference between sterile, overshaded work and organic ornaments that are full of life.
 

Mike_Morgan

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IMG_20160627_114648.jpg

So, I'm nobody to talk... but... when I look at it my eye is drawn IMMEDIATELY to the thin section, NOT because it's thin, but because it just "feels" like the flow of it isn't there, like in nature it would never grow that way, it feels "forced" and "pinched".

So I grabbed the photo, and superimposed a line on it where I feel (in my novice opinion) that the lower section of that loop should be... if it was down lower, it would open up and just realax... breathe a little easier.
 
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