This blog about the Rosette will start with two pictures, taken at the same time with my iPhone but at slightly different angles to illustrate the way the light hits the carving. I’m super happy with the “fruits of my labor” and since my blog is all about sharing my woodworking journey with you, hopefully you’ll not find all of this boring! The purpose of our Scottsdale Adventure for Diane is to focus on her painting and really get involved with the Scottsdale Artists School. Mine is to become a better carver, concentrating primarily on picture frames — that’s where I have a slight quandary! I love the modeling and the effect of the light illustrated by these pictures but realistically that would probably not be found on a gilded picture frame. With gilding, much of the detail would be obscured by the gesso applied prior to the gold leaf. Even at that, my perfectionism drives me to get the cleanest, sharpest carving I possibly can and after the third Rosette feel it’s time to move on. Those of you that know me personally know of my obsessiveness and difficulitng in knowing when to say “enough is enough”.
Okay, I’ll say it now, it’s enough! The next carve I want to tackle is one that can also be done on one of the frames I brought along with us. One area of the Rosette that really gave me lots of trouble was scooping out the insides of the main petals, can you see the progression of that area in these pictures?
Using Chris Pye’s video workshop is a real benefit and I’ve watched him doing that scoop section over and over. Finally (after the umpteenth time) I grasped onto what he was doing with the gouge and now it won’t be forgotten. It was all about the slicing motion up and out of the hollow when he reached the center point. Almost as if he used the gouge to create a faint vein line there. Maybe this will explain it better:
It’s like so many things we learn, seems really daunting at first but after several attempts you have that ah-ha moment and you wonder why that didn’t happen sooner! Like Diane says, if it was easy everybody would do it!
Enough work and blogs about this project though The over-all goal for me is to keep learning these small steps and strife to incorporate them into larger projects. My focus will be teaching myself to become more proficient at carving plus improving my sharpening techniques to make it somewhat easier. Invested in some DMT continuous diamond stones today since they are very highly rated and not as messy as oil stones — want to make sure we get our cleaning deposit back for the apartment. Shavings are easy enough to get off the carpet, sharpening oil and sharpening residue would be a different story! Besides, Woodcraft gave me a 10% off coupon for my upcoming birthday that just had to be used.
Woodworks by John 
Very nice indeed John! Rosettes are some of my favorite carving forms and every variation is a new wonder. Progress is always great. Thanks for showing yours.
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