Knife bolster design

Drawn with the iPad and Procreate app. Everything works really well except that the borders look they were drawn by a 2 year old! It's great for everything else, but I've not figured out clean, even lines for borders. If it was critical, I could could always import the pic into Illustrator and do them there.

interesting use of two main scrolls with independent origins. this is the sort of thing we tell beginners not to do, but after 30-40 years we're allowed to get away with it.

mitch said:

interesting use of two main scrolls with independent origins. this is the sort of thing we tell beginners not to do, but after 30-40 years we're allowed to get away with it.

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I've been doing it for years Adds interest and can be a good solution for awkward areas, especially if the only other solution is to have a large scroll growing from a smaller one, which usually doesn't look good.

I really get a lot from looking at your work.
one thing that I have trouble with is being able to achieve a look like these that I have circled.
steve Lindsay and yourself really pull off these areas of shade.
can you share your thoughts about how you do this or what goes thru your mind while engraving an area like these?


I understand that mine are different in structure , but I would like to create a much better illusion of a shadow being cast.

I haven't looked at Steve's work in awhile, but I doubt either one of us is doing anything you're not doing. My thoughts on intertwining and overlapping elements are darken the areas where the overlap occurs, which is first done by shading and then crosshatching. My crosshatches start nearly invisible and gradually grow darker (thicker) as they progress. The spacing is consistent, but the line thickness increases. Not sure if I'm answering your question or not.

This doesn't pertain to you Shawn, but I see many engravers rush though crosshatching and treat it like it's something they have to do before the job is complete. There's much more to it than that, and each line should be executed with the same care and precision as every other line that's cut. When done right, it should add shade without being noticed. When done poorly, it sticks out like a sore thumb. Only engravers and artists will notice crosshatching. To normal people it will simply be a shaded area.

I took a class form Sam and I was amazed at how well he does shading and at how easy he makes it look to do. WRONG! Sam I find myself rushing through it as you mentioned but it's not because I am in a hurry. It's that the strokes are so light to start with that it seems to take no time to do and you are onto the next line. I have to really concentrate on slowing down when I try to shade and be consistent. I am not anywhere close to being halfway decent at shading but I am slowly sneaking up on it.

i gotta say, Sam, at a glance that drawing could pass for an inked white plastic casting.

Please correct me if I am wrong Sam, but i have studied cross hatching a bit and to my eye at least it seems that cross hatching consisting of curved lines gives a much better effect than straight lines. And the cross hatch lines looks better if they are somewhat angled to the main shading lines and not at a 90 degree angle to them in most cases.