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Me and my boys last
February 2006
Scrimshaw
is something I have been doing for about 20 years. I took to it
right off and have always loved it. It is a wonderful old art,
better known in this country as art done by the Whalers to pass the
time. Originally those men scratched their design with their
canvas repair needles and pushed coal into the scratches.
Today artists have refined their tools, still much like the needle
though. Some use an ex-acto knife instead. And we use mostly
India ink to make visible our scratches, even adding a little
color from time to time . In my case I make mostly dots
which is a form of art known as stippling. |
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This
AWESOME piece is my absolute favorite. I wear it
frequently. The detail here is so fine, even I am amazed each time
I look at it. It was just the perfect piece of ivory. The
finer the ivory , the finer the work. Some pieces just don't work
well at all. And of course I used the powerful eyeglass on this
one. |
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This
was the first one I used the powerful eyeglass on, trying a little
something different. An engraver friend of mine helped me
understand I could get even more detail if I used a powerful eye
glass or something like the jewelers visor. It works great.
(I am a nut about detail). |
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I
actually never really finished this one, but nobody ever knows
that. This piece is about 2"X1 1/4". |
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This
is really a quite large piece (about 2" wide) on the
"flower" or base portion of an Elk Antler. I probably
did this one about 10 or so years ago. |
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This
one is a work in progress. Doing some light carving on an
Emu Egg. The neat thing about an Emu egg is that it has three
different layers. First the outer layer is a Dark green color,
then the layer in the middle is a light bluish green (which is perfect
for doing this picture) and then to white on the inner layer of the
egg. This is so much fun! |
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This
Ivory Eagle sits in Buffalo Horn and is adorned on an Indian style
choker made of turquoise beads and freshwater pearls. |
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Here
is a good example of how beautiful a piece can be when color is used.
This I scrimmed on a false Ivory known also as macarta. A small
piece of material left over from one of the knives I used to make. |
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