Sunday, May 29, 2011

Swivel Knife Cuts

I have been practising my swivel knife work.   I do not like decorative cuts on floral carving, but I really like cuts just to decorate the leather without any tooling involved.  This piece was some leather lying around where I had illustrated to someone the difference embossing can make to a frame, here a frame made by swivel knife cuts.  The immitation wood on the right was just bevelled and cut on flat leather, while the frame on the left also had a plug behind it to give a more 3-D look to the frame.     

This left enough open leather for swivel knife cut exercises.

Next month the guild is going to have a fun share project of covering cans in leather, so I decided to get the first two leather 'jackets' ready for two small cans.

The one at the top of this picture will just be swivel knife cuts, inspired by Jim Linnell.   My rope effect will form a border at the top of the can.

In the second design, I decided to explore the possibility of slightly beveling the basic decorative swivel knife cuts.   It appears on this photo at the top.

Here is a bit more of a close-up.

...and even more detail to show you how I just let the beveling fade to nothing so that the design did not lose its light clean feeling.

Finally I decided to fill in a but just with knife cuts and I think it worked....

More on the covered can project later!

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