I’ve seen the promised land
I have made the pilgrimage to Mecca, aka the Woodcraft store. I haven’t been up until now because I knew I’d be overwhelmed and probably spend too much, and did I really need to be messing about with wood when I was still feeling my way with shell? But Saturday I made the trek across town to see about getting some wood to do multimedia inlays.
I daresay I did all right on that count.
So what do we have here? Top to bottom, and then moving to the right, we have, if memory serves (and if it doesn’t, I’ll slip out to the garage and refresh it): padauk, mahogany, cherry, maple, zebrawood, bubinga (the same wood Stella’s made of), yellowheart, Brazilian rosewood, maple again (but with a different figure), purpleheart, and bloodwood. Whew. And I didn’t even have to get up from my chair. The purpleheart and the padauk might be a mistake, in the sense that the guy told me that they turn brown, rather than staying orange and purple. I realized I’d read that about the purpleheart, that it turns a dried blood color. Wish I’d remembered it sooner. Most of the wood is 1/8” thick, with a few at 1/16”. My book recommended 1/8”, even though it was significantly thicker than any shell I use, because it holds up better to sawing, and the author said it sands down faster than shell. And that’s mostly what they had, so that’s what I got. But the maple and the mahogany was available in 1/16”, which is pretty close to what my shell is, so I thought I’d give it a try. And the vast sections of ungrained maple in the piece furthest right in the pictures will make great skin color, I think, which is why I picked it. I stood in front of the display for a good long time, comparing pieces. I was, not too surprisingly, the only woman in the store.
The pieces are big enough that they’ll last me a long time. I picked pieces with a variety of figure and grain patterns, sometimes within one piece, that’ll come in handy. Used mindfully, you can add to the texture of the piece. Like on that art deco piece I want to do, I am going to use single pieces for her scarf, which if I used shell wouldn’t drape all that much. But if I use wood, it’ll look like it’s draped if I choose well with the wood grain.
Other than these pieces of wood, I was very good. I bought some abrasive cord for sanding in little corners and nooks of pieces, and a new ruler. I don’t have a good metal ruler in that size, and this one has metric/standard conversions on the backside, which is nice.
When I got home, I decided to clean up my work area, and then work on my drawings for the next projects. Here’s the first one, a geometric pattern.
On the bottom left is the original, blown up on a copier from a small piece of clipart. It’s all pixilated, and it wouldn’t do on its own, so I started tracing. The first tracing is above it, the next is on the tracing light. There were others started during the process that were aborted due to irretrievable mistakes. I even used my little carpenter’s square to make sure all the square bits stayed that way. I really spent more time on these tracings than on any previous, I think. A good drawing is a good start, and on a symmetrical geometric pattern, if you’re off, it’s going to show; the eye will catch it.
Here’s the final drawing, ready for shrinking and copying. At the size I’m going to do this, some pieces were able to be combined, which will make the piece flow better. I also think the fewer the putzy pieces, the more likely I will get them all to fit together and get the cavity routed properly. We’ll see how that little hypothesis plays out.
I also started work on the next drawing, which is the art deco design, and got the first tracing done. One more to clean it up ought to do it.
I could conceivably do the whole thing out of wood, but we’ll see. My plan at this point is the maple for her skin, some darker wood for her scarf, reconstituted obsidian (which I’ve yet to order) for her hair and facial features, and alternating MOP and gold MOP for the stylized sun she’s holding. But no plan survives contact with the enemy, so we’ll see.
The third video in the set arrived this week, so I need to find time to watch it, too. I’m hoping he’ll talk about using wood in his inlays.
