I had Friday off this week so I spent most of the day working on finishing up the mountain lion carving. I was having a lot of trouble with the grass and the background. In the pattern, Robb had the background in between the grass colored in black and it looked pretty nice like that. I thought that to get the same effect, I'd use a checkered backgrounder for the parts between the grass blades and more of a matting backgrounder around the lion. I piddled around with the checkered background for what seemed like days and finally decided to give up on it. Instead I used the matting backgrounder (294) on the whole picture. By going over the checkered background with the other one, it left that part a couple shades darker and I like that look. If I ever do this picture again there are some things I'd probably change. I'd like the blades of grass to be a little wider and maybe fewer. I think that would make the carving go a lot quicker and also make the grass blades a lot easier to lift and shape. I didn't apply sealer to this picture yet because that would limit Kate in her options in coloring it. I am really interested to see how the grass blades look once they are shaped though. I know Kate is going to do some great stuff with this picture.
I had hoped to have a chance to work on Silva's pattern again this weekend, but other things got in the way. I ended up spending Saturday helping a neighbor work cattle until well after dark. I had promised to do a post a couple how-to's on Leatherworker.net so I worked on those today. The first was on how I did the hair on an elk I carved a few years ago. Here's the original picture I worked from, and the leather carving I created from the picture.
The second how-to was a demo on how to carve a feather. Leather feathers are a good way to use up smaller scraps of leather. They are fairly simple to make and can look quite realistic when painted. Here's the sample I made for the demo (it's not been painted yet).
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