Saturday, July 8, 2017

Sophie

Following my work on the Dugan portrait I was looking for other portraits to make when the scrollsaw magazine I subscribe to announced a contest.  The contest had a variety of categories, but one of them was for fretwork - the intricate cuts in wood, usually seen in a portrait or cuckoo clock.

I didn't have any great pictures available at the time so I took to Flickr to look for options.  After not finding anything that jumped out at me, my wife suggested looking for English Cockers.  Very expressive faces, and somewhat curly fur that shows up well in silhouette portraits.  I found a photo that I fell in love with and reached out to the photographer to get permission to use it.  The depth of field was fantastic on the photo and came out extremely well as seen below.

In talking to the owner, Sophie had been their baby who had recently passed.  

I cut the portrait, framed it and sent it on to the photographer - now her family has a reminder of Sophie in a work of art.


The photo was cut from 1/8" Baltic birch plywood with a felt backer.  The portrait was cut to 8" x 10" and framed to 11" x 13".  Lightly sanded and coated with polyurethane.

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Irish Setter Welcome Sign

Following along with the previous post: Irish Setter Leash Holder, my next project was to create a 'Welcome' sign.  For this project, I used the same pattern - but instead of leaving the bone solid, I added the word 'Welcome'.  The could also be made into a kennel sign, as the word 'Welcome' could easily be replaced with a kennel name.


Like before, I created the product out of 3/8" plywood and stained it red mahogany.  It was then coated with several coats of polyurethane.  The final product is ~11" x 9.5".

Stay tuned - this item is coming for sale on etsy soon!

Monday, July 3, 2017

An Irish Setter Leash Holder

A while back, I was looking for Irish Setter scrollsaw patterns on the internet and wasn't coming up with much. Nearly all of the patterns that I was able to find were either of very generic setters or were field setters. One of the few patterns that came up online from a scroller known as Arpop. It was a dog bone with a field setter silhouette on top. I wasn't a fan of the field setter design, so I adapted it to be a silhouette of a confirmation setter.  Within the bone, I added 4 small hooks and added a wall hanger on the back so that the design could be used as a leash holder.




I created the product out of 3/8" plywood and stained it red mahogany.  It was then coated with several coats of polyurethane.  The final product is ~11" x 9.5".

Stay tuned - this item is going to be for sale soon on etsy!

Sunday, July 2, 2017

Not Just Dogs - A Self Portrait

After several successes at doing Irish Setter portraits, I wanted to try my hand at doing people. To do so, I took a school photograph of my brother and I when I was 5 and my brother was 2. I spent days working on the pattern for this one. Working on patterns of people seemed much harder than working on patterns for the dogs.

The end result was really good, but I'm not sure if I'll do many more portraits of people -- it was a lot harder to get a pattern I was satisfied with (being a self portrait may have had something to do with it though):





Saturday, July 1, 2017

Second Portrait - Dugan

The second portrait I worked on was CH RedRidge Rollin in the Bonus (Dugan).  I had improved at using the graphics software to make the pattern, but the picture I was using to create the pattern from had a lot of background noise.  Pulling out the head shot and determining where the ears ended was difficult.  The end result came out pretty good though:




The portrait was made out of 8"x10" Baltic Birch plywood, with approximately 120 separate cuts into the wood to made the final portrait.  The finished product was then sanded down and had several coats of polyurethane applied.

Here it is framed and hung on the wall:

First Portrait - Patty

For my first attempt at dog portrait making, I used a photo my wife took of our Irish Setter Patty (CH Honeyrock Plaza Lights). Here is her picture when she was young and still attending dog shows in the midwest:


At the time I was not only new to the process of creating patterns for the scroll saw, I was also completely unfamiliar with using graphics software. Developing the pattern took multiple sessions across weeks to produce something that I was comfortable cutting.

 I had no idea how the completed pattern would look though. Everything else that I had cut out using a scroll saw was much smaller and much less detailed. I cut the 8"x10" portrait out of 1/4" Baltic birch plywood and sealed it with a thin coat of clear spray-on polyurethane. After the spray coat dried, I added a black felt backer to the portrait to make the image stand out. I was extremely happy with the end result:

Welcome to the Site!

I set up this site to show my completed scroll saw projects.

 If you have questions or comments, feel free to contact me using the Contact Me form. Thanks and enjoy!