Edmond, welcome as this is your first post in the Cafe. I can't see much of the engraving design except the silver inlay. Sure it is a nice Belgium pistol
Welcome to the cafe, Edmond. And thanks for your courage in posting your work for evaluation. You have done some good work on this gun. I do have a couple of questions for you, though. Why didn't you engrave inside of the inlaid areas, and why did you not engrave the area behind the slide serrations on the left side? Also, why didn't you inlay borders on the slide to match the frame? Doing these things would have given you a more harmonious overall look. IMHO.
i fail to understand. you don't want to decorate. just a different word, i think, we all "decorate" at a variety of skill levels. we call it engraving. that's the cutting away certain design areas- removing metal from the material surface. done in a very controlled way, producing a nice design.this produces what we know as engraving
One thing I'd suggest is to study scroll design by getting some of the available books and DVDs on scroll design.
Your cutting is good. You've obviously got good graver control. But there are quite a few design errors when it comes to your scrolls and the leaves that fill them.
First thing I noticed is the leaves look like the are pasted on the backbone. They need to flow off the stem with the appropriate angle. One element should lead to the next creating a harmony.
The other major problem is related to flow as well. The backbones of the scroll are "jointed". There are kinks where one joins the next. Think of a sine wave how it flows in a metered way. Your scroll should do so as well with no kinks where one scroll diverges from the previous. Look at you running scroll on the side of the pistol. You should see what I'm talking about.
I hope you don't take this criticism the wrong way. I think your engraving shows a lot of skill and potential. But the design work needs some improvement. The hardest part of engraving is know what to engrave and how to make it work with the space you have. The actual engraving part is really the easier part of the equation.