Black leaf

Sketch of a a black leaf.
What are your thoughts?

So simple, so beautiful. Like the nature. Congrats

Shawn
Black leaf is one of my favorite styles.
Rod

very nice indeed

Looking at it now I think I need to lower the right hand side.

Looks good Shawn. You will find black leaf or arabesque style one of the most challenging styles to design, and no one does it better than Churchill.

Thanks Sam
You are correct... Arabesque is damn hard for me to draw.
I like looking at it and try to study and learn from the examples that I find.

This kind of ornamental design and style comes from the Renaissance period. In Italian Renaissance style leaves are often somewhat thin more pointed and a bit "dry". The German Renaissance style has leaves that generally are more beefy; seem to be full of sap, strongly growing, round shaped. One artist that has engraved about 100 small copper plates for printing such ornaments was Heinrich Aldegrever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Aldegrever
Although not as famous as Dürer, his work is of high artistic quality. He is counted in the group of the "Little masters" which seems underestimating his art. But compared to Dürer, other artist´s work mostly look weaker.
I think that the quality of his engravings is not consistent, but there are some real gems to find. I suggest to go to http://lj.rossia.org/users/marinni/416035.html and download all of these nice high resolution pictures.
The best panel for a thorough study is the long vertical panel with the two putti named AN00125860_001_l.jpg It shows the basic leaf in a wide variety of variants of shape and use. Basically Aldegrever composes this panel using just a few variations. Maybe you do not like them, but these are well worth to study!! Shading is simple, but effective and cannot be employed this way on a fine gun. Maybe it is strange to find all the other motifs in these panels, Insects humans, fantasy figures etc. But these are element that could be employed enriching all too boring layouts. Actually one could build a layout around these! Godd are also AN00085096_001_l.jpg and AN00125537_001_l.jpg. Not to speak of the more complicated panels. Also study them for the layout and look where the “plantâ€￾ (main stem of the ornament) grows from.

P.S. "Blackleaf" is a stange term to my ears.... I think this word was used first in the former Eastern Germany, Suhl. In books one also can read "Schwarzlaub", -so far the translation is correct. Roger C. Bleile explained it correct in his glossary. http://www.engravingglossary.com/Hand Engraving Glossary A.htm Arabesque is a fully wrong name for this style. Again Roger states it correct.

All the best,
Martin

I forgot to mention that this would a good place start from in order to get the right insights about the basic shape and layout. The ornament you actually head for is a derived form which you can do it as you like. But I suggest starting with the more simple Aldegrever leaf types. It is important to later have a good ensemble of shapes in mind to be able to work with without relying on given patterns.

Thank you Martin
http://www.britishmuseum.org/collectionimages/AN00125/AN00125860_001_l.jpg

Martin,

Thanks for the link to Aldegrever's works. This is exactly what I have been trying to find for studies.

Brant

Thank you Martin, very interesting.

Todd

i like it but i would put more black inside

Martin Strolz said:

This kind of ornamental design and style comes from the Renaissance period. In Italian Renaissance style leaves are often somewhat thin more pointed and a bit "dry". The German Renaissance style has leaves that generally are more beefy; seem to be full of sap, strongly growing, round shaped. One artist that has engraved about 100 small copper plates for printing such ornaments was Heinrich Aldegrever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Aldegrever
Although not as famous as Dürer, his work is of high artistic quality. He is counted in the group of the "Little masters" which seems underestimating his art. But compared to Dürer, other artist´s work mostly look weaker.
I think that the quality of his engravings is not consistent, but there are some real gems to find. I suggest to go to http://lj.rossia.org/users/marinni/416035.html and download all of these nice high resolution pictures.
The best panel for a thorough study is the long vertical panel with the two putti named AN00125860_001_l.jpg It shows the basic leaf in a wide variety of variants of shape and use. Basically Aldegrever composes this panel using just a few variations. Maybe you do not like them, but these are well worth to study!! Shading is simple, but effective and cannot be employed this way on a fine gun. Maybe it is strange to find all the other motifs in these panels, Insects humans, fantasy figures etc. But these are element that could be employed enriching all too boring layouts. Actually one could build a layout around these! Godd are also AN00085096_001_l.jpg and AN00125537_001_l.jpg. Not to speak of the more complicated panels. Also study them for the layout and look where the “plantâ€￾ (main stem of the ornament) grows from.

P.S. "Blackleaf" is a stange term to my ears.... I think this word was used first in the former Eastern Germany, Suhl. In books one also can read "Schwarzlaub", -so far the translation is correct. Roger C. Bleile explained it correct in his glossary. http://www.engravingglossary.com/Hand Engraving Glossary A.htm Arabesque is a fully wrong name for this style. Again Roger states it correct.

All the best,
Martin

Click to expand...

Thanks, the link to Rogers term did not work on my end.

GunEngraver.com Guns, Knives & More

Carlos, the Glossary is on the other forum.
http://www.engravingglossary.com/
http://www.engravingforum.com/

In case more than one engraver wants to study this more intensely, I felt that it would be good to tell how to do it properly and I have written a small curriculum. Use a print of file AN00125860_001_l.jpg.
Just use a soft and sharp pencil and white paper and keep all your drawings –otherwise you won´t see your improvements…which is the pleasure, by the way! Underlay a cardboard or something similar. Draw a few leafs near the center of your sheet of paper. Always draw good sized leafs, so you have no trouble from that. One to two inches for a single leaf may be good. Strictly stick to the outlines and the lines that are necessary to depict where outlines cross inner parts. No shading! Sketch the rough outline that encompasses the leaf and then form its parts in detail. You should also draw a thin line where the centerline of the leaf is, indicating its flow and direction. It may be helpful to not erase the thin all-encompassing outlines so your leaf won´t get wrong proportions. Again, no shading, just nice outlines! If you draw 3 (of course good and nice) leaves a day, you will be better and know a lot more in just two weeks! You have to study on your own; I will not do correction work.

1.
Study and draw the basic leaf with a slightly curved centerline. Then study and draw the basic leaf with a centerline curved to the opposite side.
You now should be able to draw the leaf maintaining relations/ proportions of the whole leaf and it´s parts correct. Take care that the cuts which divide the leaf in its parts are not off the flow of the stem.

2.
Draw variations where one or two small parts along the outline are folded over slightly.
Repeat with leaves that flow to the other side.

3.
Look for the leaves with the main tip folded over and study these. Again draw leafs that flow to the other side too.

4.
Now you can move on to the really folded leaf. This is the style where leaves are folded near the centerline. These are mostly heavily curved and can look to be leaves with two tips, but very often rear side tip is visible also. You will notice that there is a type that is flowing in one direction only, and another one that featured a counter flow. Of this type of leaf there are simple ones and more complicated variations existing. e.g. showing more elaborate rolled over tips etc. Draw all of these in the same manner.
This now would complete the basic leaf exercises.

5.
There are another two leaf types which are interesting and worth studying. An interesting spot is where the stem is splitting. Locate these parts in the panel and study the design. Sometimes it is visible, but often hidden by a leaf. These leaves are those for your next drawing session.

6. Finally you can move on and collect the best center leaves from this and other similar panels. These you can find where the stem is ending. Aside of depicting green leaves, often these mimic blossoms or rosettes.

7.
Now, as you know all the shapes pretty well you could move on to compose you own designs.
The basic leaf can now be altered and embellished or made more complex. You can now start to intertwine the stems in a complicated way and should be able to fill even the oddest shape with nice flowing ornaments. Shading may also create some trouble, but once you have fine and well composed leaves, it is actually not as difficult as it seems in the beginning.

8. Further studies would be needed to get an idea of all the small and big additional elements that can be nicely combined with leaves.

There are bits and pieces of this style in the works of our friend JM Bergling. In fact I think he did it extremely well, and possibly influenced Churchill and perhaps Kornbrath. Or maybe Kornbrath influenced Bergling?

I think Churchill referred to the style as "arabesque" which probably had something to do with that name being associated.

"black leaf" seems more appropriate based on Roger's definition. Of course Americans are guilty of butchering names and word. For instance the Italian word "bulino" means graver. In the US it refers to fine-line (or dot) engraved scenes and portraits. The Italians are probably wondering what kind of knuckleheads we are.

Oh, and restaurants in the US refer to an Italian sandwich as a "panini". [buzzer sound] A single sandwich is panino. Many sandwiches are panini.

So it's no surprise that names get used incorrectly and probably stay that way forever!

Sam, you are right.
And I better should not act like a teacher, I am on holiday

Martin Strolz said:

Sam, you are right.
And I better should not act like a teacher, I am on holiday

Click to expand...

You should always be the teacher!! You're the best! :bow:

And enjoy your holiday

Thanks for taking your time while on Holiday to teach. Very informative as to a work study of the various elements in engraving as well as the pointed study of "Swartzlaub".