Clay Stewart
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 4, 2008
- Messages
- 4
Hello the Café!
I'm a fledgling engraver with more interest than talent, and wanted to share my first work with you. I became interested in engraving a couple of years ago after seeing some of the exceptional work done by my good friend Roger Bleile as well as the passion with which he approached the art. I was fortunate enough to work at the same company as Roger until his recent retirement and through that connection have formed a relationship that has allowed me to tap into the immense amounts of knowledge that Roger has on engraving, firearms, and life in general. His initial instructions on learning to engrave were to pick up pencil and paper and the exceptional works of Ron Smith and to draw, draw, draw. More specifically, to make certain that I can understand the composition of a scroll and how to recognize the components of an aesthetically pleasing design before ever thinking about putting graver to metal. After nearly a year or better of doing just that (when possible between raising a young family, work, activates, etc.), I'm just beginning to cut something resembling a scroll.
The practice plate below is my poor attempt at cutting a copy of one of Ron Smith's scroll patterns. It came about while re-reading Ron's first book on scroll where I ran across what I consider to be a great example of some amazing leaf structure. My thinking was that spending the time tracing Ron's design, scanning, resizing, printing, and transferring it onto metal (much thanks to Mike Cirelli and Powderhorn on the tips that lead me to finally be able to do that) would greatly help me understand the composition of the piece in a way far beyond anything else I could do with the pattern. My apologies to Ron up front for the poor copy of his great work, and if this causes any type of copyright or infringement concerns, please let me know and I'll remove this post immediately!
I've included a not so great pic of my practice plate, but hopefully you get the idea. I've also included a pencil drawing that I scratch together today using a similar leaf structures to the best of my memory. I appologize for the copy as it's in pencil and very light, but hopefully you get the idea. Please take a look and I'd love to hear your feedback on what I missed and where I went wrong.
I'd also like to take a quick second to thank you all for making up such an amazing forum, and for allowing me to participate. I've been on a lot of forums for a lot of topics over the past 15 years but none like this. It's amazing to me to see such masters in the field frequenting a forum and so readily sharing their knowledge and experience with everything from a newbie just beginning to scratch metal to someone making the transition to going full time in the trade. What you have here is special, and I hope you recognize that.
Thanks,
Clay Stewart
I'm a fledgling engraver with more interest than talent, and wanted to share my first work with you. I became interested in engraving a couple of years ago after seeing some of the exceptional work done by my good friend Roger Bleile as well as the passion with which he approached the art. I was fortunate enough to work at the same company as Roger until his recent retirement and through that connection have formed a relationship that has allowed me to tap into the immense amounts of knowledge that Roger has on engraving, firearms, and life in general. His initial instructions on learning to engrave were to pick up pencil and paper and the exceptional works of Ron Smith and to draw, draw, draw. More specifically, to make certain that I can understand the composition of a scroll and how to recognize the components of an aesthetically pleasing design before ever thinking about putting graver to metal. After nearly a year or better of doing just that (when possible between raising a young family, work, activates, etc.), I'm just beginning to cut something resembling a scroll.
The practice plate below is my poor attempt at cutting a copy of one of Ron Smith's scroll patterns. It came about while re-reading Ron's first book on scroll where I ran across what I consider to be a great example of some amazing leaf structure. My thinking was that spending the time tracing Ron's design, scanning, resizing, printing, and transferring it onto metal (much thanks to Mike Cirelli and Powderhorn on the tips that lead me to finally be able to do that) would greatly help me understand the composition of the piece in a way far beyond anything else I could do with the pattern. My apologies to Ron up front for the poor copy of his great work, and if this causes any type of copyright or infringement concerns, please let me know and I'll remove this post immediately!
I've included a not so great pic of my practice plate, but hopefully you get the idea. I've also included a pencil drawing that I scratch together today using a similar leaf structures to the best of my memory. I appologize for the copy as it's in pencil and very light, but hopefully you get the idea. Please take a look and I'd love to hear your feedback on what I missed and where I went wrong.
I'd also like to take a quick second to thank you all for making up such an amazing forum, and for allowing me to participate. I've been on a lot of forums for a lot of topics over the past 15 years but none like this. It's amazing to me to see such masters in the field frequenting a forum and so readily sharing their knowledge and experience with everything from a newbie just beginning to scratch metal to someone making the transition to going full time in the trade. What you have here is special, and I hope you recognize that.
Thanks,
Clay Stewart