Native American Portrait Lesson is now available

Lesson #6 in the Sculptured Leather Art lesson series is now available for purchase at Badlands Leather Art.
This lesson focuses on carving the features of a human face. The lesson does not contain coloring instructions. The picture is finished with a sealer that brings out the natural color of the leather.

The subject of the next lesson in the series will be a horse head and should be available in May.

My new knife

I  got my Christmas present from my son Jake this week, a new  round knife from Paul Zalesak of Leather Wranglers.  Paul got slammed with orders right before Christmas  so there was a wait but it was well worth it.   I've  got 2 of Paul's swivel knives and since getting them, they are the only ones I use. I'm sure that will be the same with this new round knife.  Paul's tools come SHARP and stay that way. They are also really purty!! This round knife has a custom rosewood burl handle and I used my birthday money to order a skiving knife to match. Paul and Rosa are a couple of the nicest people you are ever going to meet and if you're looking for some of the best leather tools you're ever going to use, check out Leatherwranglers.com

Lesson #7 in the Sculptured Leather lesson series

I've been planning to go to Billings to work on the next lesson in our series for several weeks now, but the weather and other things have kept it from working out. I finally made it down there this past weekend and Jan and I worked on an embossed horse portrait. This will also be the subject for one of the classes I'll be teaching at Dimensions in Leather in Australia in July. I've done this project once before, in a class at the Rocky Mountain Leather Trade Show in Sheridan, WY a  few years ago.  We did this one a little different than Jan usually does, leaving the nose attached to the background instead of cutting the entire horse head loose. I think this will make the lesson (and the class) a lot easier.  When the whole head is cut loose, it takes a lot more time and work to finish up the backside of the picture.  Here are pictures of Jan's and my completed projects.