Bottle Opener

Hi all,
In my younger days I used to be able to sup some stuff. In fact, if you put all the beer into one container there would probably have been enough liquid to extinguish the fire of London. Sadly those days are gone and I now drink much less in a week than I did in a night. Having said, that I still enjoy one or two bottles of beer during the course of a week. Anyway, I have on the table at the side of my chair one of the ugliest bottle openers you ever did see. How I've put up with it for so long I don't know, but it's days are numbered.

I have started turning a new one out of wood. I got it off line and it was only when it arrived that I realised I didn't particularly like the design as far as the turning is concerned. Here is a picture of it.

The problem is that the piece of wood that goes in the middle needs to be concave at each end to accommodate the ball designs on the opener. Perhaps it is because I'm new to woodturning but I could work out how I could hold the work in a chuck and turn each end concave. One end was not a problem, but two concave ends had me stumped.

My solution was to make it in two pieces and join it together because I couldn't think of anything else. That meant a joint and you can see it below.

Not ideal, but what else could I do. If you have another solution I'd be very pleased to hear about it. In the meanwhile, I will have to use my pyrography iron to disguise the joint and make it look acceptable. I will show you the finished product in my next post.

By the way, "A Staffordshire Boy,"  one of my books is free to download from Amazon until Saturday, so if you want a copy please click on the books tab at the top of the page and then on the book's cover.

I have also been busy on the ipad doing a bit of art and uploading it to my channel, "The Armchair Artist" on Youtube.

 If you would like to see episode 8, please click on this Link.
Thanks for watching.

Toothpick Pot

Hi all,
What a fantastic week of weather we have just had. I have never known it so warm for so long in February. The garden was full of butterflies and bees and I was sitting there in my tee shirt enjoying the sunshine and doing a bit of pyrography. It doesn't get much better than that at my age because I have given up almost everything I enjoyed that ends with "ing."  Smoking and fishing I missed the most but it's no good moaning you just have to get on with.

Anyway, the weather was most welcome and it took away any excuses about being too cold to go into the workshop. I even managed to finish the toothpick pot that I started a couple of weeks ago. I made this pot because I was fed up with loosing my toothpick. I wanted something that was both practical and looked good on the shelf within reaching distance of my chair.

The pyrograhy decoration was one of my favourite designs and it was all done with a spoon tip. I do like the smaller woodturning projects and I'm about to start turning a bottle opener which I hope to show you in my next post.

Besides the woodturning and pyrography, I have managed to spend a few hours in the evenings on my ipad doing some more art. Towards the end of 2018 I did group of pencil sketches that revolved around flowers growing on a trellis. Here is a couple of them to give you the idea.

These turned out very nice, they were realistic but they lacked a bit of colour. So, armed with the ipad I got at Christmas, I thought I try something similar on my ipad. I wasn't bothered about it coming out very realistic, I just wanted to create an image that is pleasing to the eye.
Anyway, I had a go and even taught myself to make some stamp brushes to make the process easier and quicker.

I use the stamp brushes to allow me to make adjustments to the composition and to make sure I am consistent in shape and size of object. If you are interested in finding out more, I have uploaded the first part of the painting to my channel on youtube. If you would like to see it please  click on the video below and it will take you to "the Armchair Artist" channel.

Thanks for watching. If you enjoyed it please consider subscribing, I only have one at the moment and they are probably very lonely.

Egg and box

Hi All,
Goods news, my wife is now recovering after a stint in hospital and the weather has warmed up nicely. This means that I will have a bit more time to do creative things and it will be warm enough to go into the workshop.

Last week, I showed you a drawing of a tooth pick pot I said I was going to make, well here is the lid. It is still on the lathe but at least it's a start.

I have turned it out of a piece of lime which takes pyrography very well. In my next post I hope to be able to show you the finished box.

The sun really has been shining in our back garden, so I set up my pyrography iron outside and finished the wooden egg that I'd started last year. It really was nice to catch the warm rays of the sun whilst doing a bit of pyrography. Another advantage of doing pyrography in the garden is that the fumes from the burning wood are taken away on the breeze; it feels much healthier than doing it inside despite the fact that I always use extraction.

So there is the egg, finished with 3 coats of melamine lacquer. I did think of painting the flowers but I thought they look good with just the pyrography. Once the melamine was dry I put the egg in the bowl with the ones I done previously and I now have quite a collection.

I find that decorating these eggs is quite therapeutic. The eggs are also cheap so it makes for a good pastime. I get my eggs off Amazon the delivery is quick and the price is right. The secret to doing good egg decoration is like with any woodwork. They will only ever be as good as the finish, and to get a good finish the wood needs to be prepared. Before decorating an egg I always sand it down with several grades of sandpaper. I start at 150 grit and work my way through the grits to 600, it really does make a difference.

Besides the woodturning and pyrography I have also been busy doing another digital painting, this time of some irises. I have done a video of it and it can be found on my channel at The Armchair Artist.

The eagle eyed may also have spotted that I have added a video link on the righthand side of the page. If you click on that, you will be able to see all 7 episodes of the videos I've done so far. I think I'm getting better, so if you like what you see please consider subscribing and then you'll be able to see how I progress. It doesn't cost anything so you have nothing to lose. I'm not in it to make money, I just like doing the paintings and sharing them.

All comments and questions are welcome.

Tooth pick box

Hi all,
This year is turning out to be pretty grim so far. My wife has had the paramedics out 5 times and has had 2 stays in hospital. She had the trots for 3 weeks and has lost 2stone in weight. She was actually in hospital for most of this last week so, what with visiting her and looking after her mum who has heart failure, diabetes and Altzhiemers, I haven't had much time for creativity. I hate making excuses but there you go. My wife came out of hospital on Friday and I got a horrible cold on Saturday. I'm begining to think somebody has it in for me.

I did manage a couple of things. Firstly, I firmed up my next woodturning and pyrography project which I hope to start this week. It is only simple, but I think it will be pretty and it is much needed.
Here it is, a tooth pick box.

I don't know what it is about getting older but I seem to need a tooth pick after every meal, yet when I was younger I never used one ever. Must be something to do with the gaps between ones teeth, what's left of them, getting wider as one get older.

The second thing I managed to do was to finish and upload episoide 4 of The Armchair Artist to Youtube. In episode 3 I digitally painted a rose. And, while the rose was okay the background was

crap. So in episode 4 I get rid of the background and paint in some leaves and a bud. You can see how I go about it by clicking here. Hope you enjoy the video, I do hope to get better.

Walking Stick

Hi all,
I've just had the week from hell so not much achieved regarding creative projects in the workshop. I did start carving some flowers on a walking stick.

However I'm not sure if I should continue with it. The stick is made from chestnut and it is very hard to carve. I've tried the knife and various burrs in my dremel but it is hard work. I guess there was a couple of hours work in what I've done so far so to do a whole stick might not be the best way to spend my time. Perhaps I will do it gradually in the summer when I can sit in the garden and whittle await like a good old boy on a veranda in Oklahoma. I've got a lazy old dog so all I need is the weather.

In between events of a domestic nature, I did manage to do a bit more art on my ipad. This time I thought I'd paint a rose.

If you ignore the crass background I think it is pretty good considering I haven't got a bloody clue what I'm doing with the software. I was experimenting with several brushes to see how I could achieve the effects that I wanted. The problem is I used so many brushes I'm not sure which one had what effect. I guess it is just a matter of practise. Anyway, my foray into digital art all seems to be going in the right direction and will serve me well as and when my legs curtail my activity at the lathe.  I did a short video of the painting and it can be found on my Youtube channel The Armchair Artist .
This is my first video with a taking part so it isn't the best, but like the painting I'm hoping that the videos improve as well.
It is my intention to chart my digital art progress on this channel so if you are interested pleased keep watching.
In my next video I am going to do another rose with a better background and hopefully the flower will be an improvement too.

2019 a poor start

HI All,
Creating something out of wood is on my to do list but I can't get around to it. 2019 has started very badly for us. Although we are both retired we are full time carers for my mother in law who lives with us. She is in her mid eighties and amongst other things suffers from heart failure and diabetes. Now she has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's which is making things very difficult for us. If that wasn't bad enough, I have had the paramedics out twice to my wife, one of which resulted in a visit to the hospital. This happened on the same day I had to take our dog, Daisy to the vets to have an operation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not moaning, I'm just trying to explain why I haven't had much time for creative woodwork. Having said that, I have been messing around with my new ipad and doing a bit of artwork whenever I get a couple of minutes in my chair. Learning how to use the ipad, and the "Procreate" art app have been a welcome distraction from the other stuff. Here is my latest digital painting of some birch trees.

 It wasn't meant to be too realistic because I was just trying to see how digital art could cope with creating depth in a painting. The answer is quite easily, it is done by creating layers and altering the opacity of the brush.

I have also been teaching myself to use "imovie" to edit videos for Youtube. I have now created a new Youtube channel called "The Armchair Artist," on there you can see a small clip of how I went about doing the birches painting. Here is a link 
to the video, which is very basic but I hope to get better at the painting and making videos. If you have any questions or comments, both are welcome.

I will get back to the wood soon, I'm sure of it.

Digital Art

Hi all,
Happy new year to you all.

I'm afraid I'm letting the side down when it comes to creative woodwork, I haven't even managed to turn a pen. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, we have been engulfed in the season of over optimistic expectations, which is just another way of saying Christmas can be a bit of a disappointment. The weather has also been a bit cold for a nesh old soul like me, so I haven't been frequenting the workshop at all.

So to answer the question about what I have been doing I will give you the answer. To cheer myself up at Christmas I coughed up a load of money and bought myself an ipad pro. I know this is difficult to understand given my usual miserly way, but all I can say is I must have had a rush of blood.

Anyway, I've always wanted to have a go at digital art so a I thought Id have a bash. Here is the first image I painted digitally.

It only took me a couple of minutes and I was so impressed I thought I do another, this time of a cherry.

Again, this was only a quick study to see if digital art was viable for me. The next thing I did was to take a photo of a cyclamen leaf from my garden. I then imported that into the ipad to use as a reference on the same screen that I was working on. The image on the top left is the photo.

This enabled me to copy it very easily. Again, it was only quick to see what could be done and I'd have to say it has huge potential. If I had taken my time I think I could have rendered a very close copy.

Anyway, I have been so impressed with the ipad and the app that I used for the painting that I have created a new youtube channel called "The Armchair Artist."  Please click on this  link To see my introductory video and my first real go at a digital painting. It is only short but well worth a look.

Some creative woodwork and pyrography will be on the way soon, but I just thought I share my move to digital art with you. Any comments or questions welcome.