No, I haven’t given up
Whoa! My recent abandonment of this here blog is worse than I thought. I’ve been kind of on a semi-voluntary hiatus from inlay. It started because I was not particularly happy with my hand-traced design drawing last time. The lines were too thick. I coveted Athena’s beautifully computer-rendered patterns, but not being well versed in the graphics-fu, I subcontracted the work out to the hubby, who lives to play with drawings on his Wacom pad and Corel Draw program, figuring I could spend years learning the software well enough to get what I wanted out of it.
And while he readily agreed to my little project, it seems my sub wasn’t terribly keen on getting started on the work, and the weeks wore on. Eventually, I just gave up hope, got out my light table and asked him for the hardest pencil he had, and went to work on creating my design in the low-tech way. I don’t have a terribly steady hand, though, and I’m convinced that a good pattern goes a long way to creating a good inlay, so I traced and erased and traced some more. However, I discovered when I went to make photocopies that the lead had smudged from the erasures as well as dragging my hand through it. I ended up having to do it several more times prior to it being acceptable, although I still think the lines are too thick. The problem is that a pen would give me a thinner line, but my tracing skills aren’t pen-worthy. It’s hard to keep a sharp line with a pencil, though. But I need to get back into the shop. I miss it.
My next design is one based on the Northwestern Native American hummingbird below that I found via a Google image search. I’m only doing the bird at this point. It’s only 40 some pieces, but they are very tiny and some of them are very thin. It’s definitely going to be a challenge for me, a significant one. But I need to practice working on that scale if I ever hope to be able to work on guitar fingerboards, so now is as good a time as any.
Shell selection will be key, as well, and I need to spend some time on that and start gluing patterns to shell. I hope to at least get that much done this weekend, with sawing to start the weekend after.
