The Lion Knives!

I have to say a word about these photos... and apologize for the fact that they don't show the engraving on the bolsters well at all. I have major stuggles when it comes to photographing that darn shiny metal stuff. I can arrange and light things to show the ivory well, or the metal well, but I can't for the life of me figure out yet how to photograph the WHOLE THING well. (That's why there are professionals who do this, right?) So, apologies to the engraving, but I'm giving the scrimshaw priority when it comes to the picture! Actually, they're not really photos, they're scans. My photos were pretty bad. I don't know who did the engraving.

The black and white knife is 4-3/8 inches long (the whole knife, not just the scrimmed area), and the color one is 5 inches in length. This was a custom commissioned project, so they are both sold.



I am pretty much thrilled with how they turned out. When I get a chance to update the website, I'll put some closer-up images on there.

July 6 work in progress

This is from earlier today:

It's actually quite a lot farther along right now. In fact, it's just about finished, just needs my signature and a few finishing touches, and it looks a lot different than it did earlier, but since it's sooooo close to done I'll just keep you in suspense a bit and show you the finished knives when I get a chance to take some good photographs!

Ah, speaking of photos, over there in the right sidebar I've put a permanent link to my picasa albums. All two of them... If I ever find myself with a bunch of spare time (ha!) maybe I'll put some of my old adventures into a picasa album (like the trip to London and the trip to Idaho/Wyoming). That stuff is all on the blog, but I know it's easier for people to see in an album. Don't hold your breath though, I have a zillion things to do.

July 5 work in progress

This is not all from today!

Almost everything I've ever done goes through an ugly stage. I hate to admit that, but it's true, whether it's scrimshaw or drawing, there's a window of time in there where I look at it and think "that looks awful." It always works out, and I'm so used to it that it doesn't worry me much when I'm part way through something and think it looks terrible. This one had a bad ugly stage. There were three colors on it at this point, but because the brown had ended up drying so dark, it almost looked like a b/w scrim, and that was soooo not what I wanted.

I had a hunch that when I added the gold colored ink that would solve the problem and revitalize the browns, and it sure did! Ah, now that's more like it!

I still need to do all the foreground. This is going to look a LOT different by the time I finish. It still looks super weird to me right now because I know how much it's going to change.

In case anyone's wondering, the weird lines going across at the ends of the ivory scales are just the lines where the tape is covering the bolsters (the metal parts).

stinkin' hot

I would be perfectly happy if we could go straight from spring to fall. Like, let's have spring through July and fall starting in August, and just skip all this silly hot weather. And yet somehow all the fruit could magically get ripe anyway even if it never went over 80 degrees?

Sigh. I HATE the heat. It was 107 today. Even the cats melted.

As everyone likes to say here, "at least it's a dry heat" and having recently been to the part of the country where I stepped out of the gloriously air-conditioned 75 degree car long enough to gasp the moist 90-something degrees air and say "eww" I agree, thank goodness it's not humid here. I don't ever in a million years want to live in a hot and humid climate.

I finished the first lion knife tonight (the one I showed in progress last time). I will attempt to shoot some good pics when both are done, so I think I'll just leave you in suspense until then. I'll start the second one tomorrow. It'll be in color.

June 24 work in progress

Okay, the fact that I just wrote June 24 kind of freaks me out, because it doesn't feel like it ought to be late June. It feels like early June. Because I went away in late May, so it should now be early June. The 16 days of time warp kinda messed with my internal calendar. That also freaks me out because when I stop to consider the major out-of-town family things that happen before my next show, I have TWO MONTHS to get ready for Jackson Hole. And that means I need to be cranking stuff out in addition to commissioned work. Egads.

Right now I am working on two knives. These came in right before Blade Show. They are admittedly not "high end" knives, but they more than make up for that in sentimental value for their owner, and often times that seems to be what matters most anyway. Both knives are already scrimmed with the owners initials on the opposite side. Since that was done by someone else, I won't show it to you. These blank sides were done by someone else too, but not to the client's satisfaction, and they were sanded off and now are in my hands. They are both to be scrimmed with African Lions, and minimal backgrounds. I really took some time to figure out the best composition for each knife. One will be in color, one in b/w. One will have a whole lion, the other will only have part of a face.


Having done a bunch of color stuff just before Blade, I decided to do the b/w knife first for a change of pace.

Slowly the beast emerges. Geesh I love doing scrimshaw! Oh, and this is more than one day's progress!