Scrimshaw: Scrimshaw on MOP

Ron Jr. · Aug 22, 2016

There's a lot of pearl handled knives out there so I took my first shot at working with mother of pearl (yes it's real MOP, not the plastic/resin reconstituted stuff). Depending on the angle you view this stuff at the scrimshaw either looks really good or kinda faint. Tried to take pictures showing it at its absolute best and worst in different lighting conditions. In the end I'm pretty happy with the results for a first try. Hope you enjoy.

Dave London · Aug 22, 2016

Humm
To bad the flash reflection ruined the photos

Donny · Aug 22, 2016

UFO Un Fair Obstruction

Donny

mitch · Aug 23, 2016

hi, Ron, i've done some bulino on pearl and found it leaves a frothy white dot/scratch, instead of a dark mark (as i'm sure you've noticed, too). i experimented with Prismacolor art markers in the neutral grey range to make a fairly natural looking dot/line without being unnaturally opaque, like ink or paint would be. it allowed the color, figure and depth of the pearl to show thru.

iirc, Katherine Plumer has done some scrim on pearl, too. a swan, perhaps?

monk · Aug 23, 2016

i tried taking pics a couple weeks ago of a piece of mop i inlayed on a pendant. after about 10 different attempts, i gave up.
i found that cursing doen't improve foto quality. neither does a pocket camera, even if it's a nilon. did you find the material difficult to scrim ?

Ron Jr. · Aug 24, 2016

Thanks everyone and yes Mitch, Katherine and Darrell Morris have done some very nice work on MOP lately so I had to see what it was all about. Using the materials natural nuances in color and shade is the way you should go but I wanted to see what it'd look like if I put what I wanted where I wanted on it. I tried just about every ink and paint I had on hand (don't even ask how many or how much has been spent there over the years!) I ended up using oil based Speedball block printing ink and was pretty happy with it.

Monk, Yes taking pics was a major PITA! The camera just doesn't want to focus on the stuff correctly. I didn't really find it hard to scrim as long as you kept your "touch" light and if you keep your scribe at 90 degrees chipping wasn't really a big problem. In the end it wasn't as hard or as brittle as I had imagined it would be. I used a carbide scribe and didn't have to resharpen it for this scrim.

JJ Roberts · Aug 24, 2016

Ron,When you show the nude ladys on Lindsay's forum there's no flash reflections?

J.J.

Dani Girl · Aug 24, 2016

Thank you ufo. Nice scrim. Keen to try that too. Thanks for the ink tips.

monk · Aug 24, 2016

Ron Jr. said:
Thanks everyone and yes Mitch, Katherine and Darrell Morris have done some very nice work on MOP lately so I had to see what it was all about. Using the materials natural nuances in color and shade is the way you should go but I wanted to see what it'd look like if I put what I wanted where I wanted on it. I tried just about every ink and paint I had on hand (don't even ask how many or how much has been spent there over the years!) I ended up using oil based Speedball block printing ink and was pretty happy with it.

Monk, Yes taking pics was a major PITA! The camera just doesn't want to focus on the stuff correctly. I didn't really find it hard to scrim as long as you kept your "touch" light and if you keep your scribe at 90 degrees chipping wasn't really a big problem. In the end it wasn't as hard or as brittle as I had imagined it would be. I used a carbide scribe and didn't have to resharpen it for this scrim.

thanks for that. i like the wispy look you did on the piece.

Scrimshaw: Scrimshaw on MOP

Ron Jr.

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