I recently made some knife sheaths. I wanted to do one with a western floral design. Since the shape of sheaths are kind of particular, you can't just copy a pattern you find on the internet. You have to be able to draw them.
But I spent three days working on a drawing for my sheath, and still wasn't happy with the result. Here's a picture of the sheath. This was after watching a bunch of YouTube videos, reading stuff on line, and looking at pictures. I still struggled with it.
I've been making leather stuff for five years or so now. I even took a leather carving class at Tandy that introduced me to western floral carving. I've taken several stabs at it without much success.
So I was frustrated with it and decided I needed to finally conquer this difficulty. I bought a copy of _Creating Western Floral Designs_ by Bob Park, and I've already read it and started practicing. I decided I'm going to do at least one drawing every day for 30 days as well as practice my swivel knife skills and tooling patterns.
These pictures are (1) Sheath of Frustration that took me three days just to design, (2) my first drawing after reading the Bob Park book, (3) a belt pattern I tooled and dyed that I got from Don Gonzales (whose YouTube channels I've been haunting a lot lately), and (4) my fourth drawing that I did last night.
There's a lot of stuff on the internet about tooling leather but very little about drawing designs. Don Gonzales has a little bit, and I also found this guy named Joe Meling on YouTube who has some good stuff.
Maybe when my 30 days are up, I'll come back to this thread and post my latest drawing and tooling efforts. It'll be interesting to see if I've made any improvement.
Wish me luck!
But I spent three days working on a drawing for my sheath, and still wasn't happy with the result. Here's a picture of the sheath. This was after watching a bunch of YouTube videos, reading stuff on line, and looking at pictures. I still struggled with it.
I've been making leather stuff for five years or so now. I even took a leather carving class at Tandy that introduced me to western floral carving. I've taken several stabs at it without much success.
So I was frustrated with it and decided I needed to finally conquer this difficulty. I bought a copy of _Creating Western Floral Designs_ by Bob Park, and I've already read it and started practicing. I decided I'm going to do at least one drawing every day for 30 days as well as practice my swivel knife skills and tooling patterns.
These pictures are (1) Sheath of Frustration that took me three days just to design, (2) my first drawing after reading the Bob Park book, (3) a belt pattern I tooled and dyed that I got from Don Gonzales (whose YouTube channels I've been haunting a lot lately), and (4) my fourth drawing that I did last night.
There's a lot of stuff on the internet about tooling leather but very little about drawing designs. Don Gonzales has a little bit, and I also found this guy named Joe Meling on YouTube who has some good stuff.
Maybe when my 30 days are up, I'll come back to this thread and post my latest drawing and tooling efforts. It'll be interesting to see if I've made any improvement.
Wish me luck!
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