>I'm still learning to carve so I threw this one together this week. What do you charge for something like this? Since I don't carve often I'm slow. This took about 5 yours total from start to finish. It's about 5" across and 4 inches tall.
It had some dark red areas and quite a few lighter red areas that didn't stand out much. I took the airbrush and deepened the color in some areas and added some color in others. I'll call it enhancing reality. I tried to make it look as natural as possible.
Sorry about the photo. I shot this on my living room couch with a mirror to bounce light back in the shadow. Color balance is off a little but pretty close. I don't have time to shoot this properly before it goes to the Gallery with a bunch of other stuff.
>John, you really should call it "Enhanced Reality". No one will have a clue what you're talking about, they'll figure it to be way above their heads, some "artsy" thing or something. It'll be worth way more than you think you should charge.
I like it, and hope my carving is half as good after 5 years.
You caught me typing again. One of these days my fingers will work, or was it my brain that failed. I haven't decided what to charge for this one yet. The Gallery it is going in doesn't sell much high dollar stuff so I'm playing the ole " how much do I think I can get by with" game. I'll probaby wait until I'm filling out the paper work and take a deep breath and put something down hoping I don't get that "you gotta be kidding me" look from the director. Ain't it fun figuring out pricing.
I've been collecting the cheaper carving tools over the last 3 or 4 years and I used most of them for this.
I started the outside with a Ryobi reciprocating carver. Mostly because I wanted to learn more about using that tool. I've tried rotary carvers but they want to run up the curve and round over the edges. I wanted pretty crisp outside edges. After I got them carved I used a cheap 10,000 rpm flex shaft carver I got at the flea mkt and used a 1" x 3" sanding drum to clean up the carving marks and "fair" the curves more.
I started the inside with the Ryobi and a V gouge but I was cutting uphill on the grain so it was tearing out. I switched to my dremel with a small Typhoon burr. This let me shape everything pretty well but left big scratches. I sanded most of the scratches with the Dremel and a small sanding drum but had to sand out the inside of the small diameters by hand.
The bottom was done with the Dremel and the typhoon followed by the small sanding drum.
I'm going to have to get a new Dremel. I've done so much work with this in the last 2 years I've worn out the bearings. I've also brocken the shaft on my flex shaft machine twice but was able to fix it with silver solder. If I keep up the carving I will probably invest in a Foredom machine and maybe some air tools.
I do like the Ryobi reciprocating tool but they don't sell it anymore. You can get reciprocating handpieces for the Foredom and for air tools.
I'm learning to use hand tools but don't have very many. There expensive. I never have quite the one I need but my collection is slowly growing.
