Help
I´m not so familiarized with the use of buttons and the best way to do things but I need to try Ok, sorry If I comet certain technical mistakes.
My topic is related to the importance to collect a proper visual data base as a miniature carver. On my humble opinion a miniature carver waste too much time and shows mistakes when don´t use a proper visual source to create the work itself…in the case of nature subjects the way to create a data base is simple but requires searching time of course. My advice it´s that the carver must do two different researches: first on books and second on Internet. Internet is a very good source to find many pictures of the subjects we want, except if you are trying to find a very rare animal or plant species, but illustrated old and new books are truly useful to us because in photography’s many times we found certain details but illustrated books offer most of the time a better approach to the subject details. As carvers we must draw first the subjects and illustrations are perfect to guide us into the lines and texture details, also photography suggest the textures with color tones, light and shadows, but in my personal experience illustrations of specialized books are great (ironically I´m a nature photographer).
Another important matter it´s to try as a carver to read as much as you can about the ecology, etology or behaviour, and endemic values of the animal or plant you are trying to carve, ¿Why? Because is a terrible mistake when you carve an animal that live or rocks in a tree or soil, it doesn´t mean that the animal don´t use that substratum’s but it´s very important reflect the true environment…as artists we can do wherever we want Ok, it´s our artistic escape to our mistakes many times as I saw, but animalistic and floristic art it means an approach to the subjects knowledge, and miniature art is a very difficult branch in the art world and people demands from us much more than another sculptors believe me.
You can´t carve a smoking pipe, a seashell cameo, or a Netsuke for example without knowledge of the different styles and certain rules, we must understand that visual information and knowledge are our weapons If we want to defend our work.
I spent just few months to obtain by Internet an amazing Flora and Fauna database to carve subjects for many years to come, but we spend much more time trying to seek the proper illustration books to photocopy the images we want in public friends libraries, ¡and the XIX-early XX Centuries books are truly fantastic fellows!. Also is much easier now by Internet collect thousands of amazing Fantastic Art images (Boris Vallejo, Ciruelo Cabral, Brom, Brian Froud, Chris Achileos, Darrell Sweet, Frank Frazetta, H. R. Giger, Howard David Johnson, Jim Warren, Jonathan Browser, Joseph Linsner, Julie Bell, Keith Parkinson, Ken Kelly, Larry Elmore, Luis Royo, Michael Parkes, Olivia de Berardinis, Roger Dean, Roger Garland, Sorayama Hajime, Steve Perrin, Ted Nasmith, Tim Hildebrandt, etc.). So the main line of this topic will be sharing the skills to obtain such images to help the members without the luck to had a proper visual data base.
As nature photographer I´m specialized on land snails and I like to point that If the carver wants and find the tools and subjects by itself he can afford a short project before the carving to shot the images details he need, an amazing sculptor friend of mine take like 40 different angles pictures of the subject and print in black and white the images putting all surround him in the walls of his workshop, he is surrounded by the subject…he is inside his own creation as a bubble, certainly weird but effective.
Please I need someone help me receiving my low resolution pictures to my posts and replies via personal mail because I spent too much time uploadin one single low resolution image!!! I hope to find someone could do that...thanks anyway...I tried to put here just one picture of mine and it takes too much time. I need to travel far today to cut a Cassis madagascariensis and Strombus galeatus seshells for my new cameos and I don´t have too much time to upload pictures. Let my try again with one picture...
