Wednesday 24 April 2019

Back in the swing, almost

Hi all,
I've been trying to keep up with my wife's requests for improvements in the garden, one of which included relaying 9 wonky slabs. It isn't the sort of work I enjoy at my age and it has left me a bit on the wrong side of knackered. Anyway, the worst is over now so I'm hoping to get back to a bit of crafting.

The weather is warming up and last year I enjoyed doing a bit of wod carving cum whittling whilst enjoying the sun in our back garden. My wife said she wouldn't mind another shelfie, so whilst have a tea break during the slab laying process I drew one that I would like to make. The following day I even managed to make a rough model of it out of Plastacine.
If you are thinking of taking up woodcarving it really is worth making a model  from Plastacine before you start cutting wood and making mistakes.

You can see that this shelfie is going to be an old chap from years gon by. I can imagine him sitting on the dock of the bay waiting for relatives coming over to America to live the dream with him.

I like big hats on my shelfies and the long tailed coat at the back will help with the stability and and balance when it is sitting on the shelf. I am looking forward to carving it over the next few weeks.

I have also got a lump of wood on my lathe that I'm going to turn into a vase with a turquoise inlay; so that should be fun.

Other than that I'm still painting on the ipad and need to catch up with a couple of videos. I my last Blog I posted the wrong picture of the video I had uploaded so I have corrected that. If you want to take a look here it is. In it you will see how I created a painting of some harebells and a butterfly.




Sunday 7 April 2019

Trellis

Hi all,
I'm afraid I haven't done any woodturning or carving this week because my wife has had me busy in the garden. Our neighbours cut down a lovely big hedge that gave us a lot of privacy.  Despite us putting up a new tall fence we still had a view of other people's washing and trampolines.

Here is picture that shows the hedge on the right.
To get some privacy back we decided that I would build a free standing trellis a couple of feet from the fence. This would be covered by growing the very rampant Belvedere rose over it.
Here is the trellis.
.

You can see how this will work, even without the rose it feels a lot better to not be overlooked. Digging the holes for the posts was the hardest bit of the job. I enjoyed cutting all the lathes because it gave me a chance to use the cheap chopsaw I got recently from screwfix. Very good it was too.
Anyway, I've had little time for anything creative except for a bit more digital art that I do in the evenings.
Here is my latest painting of some harebells and a blue butterfly that I have done for my youtube channel, "The Armchair Artist."
I hope you enjoy watching it. If you do please consider subscribing because I want to share them with as many people as possible.