[Ashbys]

Sounds like a plan Mark. LOL

Nice carvings. The leaf turning the tips up, really made the leaf stand out for an excellent effect. Using light lines behind the subject will also allow for increased depth.

This is what I mean, Doris your doing a stand alone flower. The idea is to bring the viewer to see the subject , so the flower being stand alone the person seeing it see all the subject at one time, So your depth becomes only what is perceived from the seeing the flower. As people are creatures of habit , we expect certain things. When we see a living flower , we do not just see the flower. We se the flower, the grass behind it and the little twigs on the ground. Our mind expects it, so we will fill it in even if it is not there.

So if we look at a carving of a flower , we see the carving , but it will always seem empty. We may love the piece admire everything about it , but it is always missing something. The thing missing is the fill in, the vase , the grass , the background. Something to give the feeling of being complete.

I always consider a relief carving as a picture, if the flower was being painted , would it be painted on a white canvas without support ? With the flower standing in the air ? Not usally , so using lines simple diagonal cuts while removing the background will add extra depth to the carving. Those little lines of motion will add direction to the subject matter and depth to lift the carving up. You can't use this effect for all carvings, but on this one it would work well .

Ash

[doris]

hi thor, yes makes sense to me :-) is what i was discussing with mark... hi mark, is not contradictory, since the proportion of depth to width is bigger when width is smaller, but depth is same. yes, i realized that, ...so mine is rather small ain width as you can see from the gouge lying near by...i am in easier situation than you with prodigal son carving... and thanks for the reference fotos, i love the bonsai carving in particular :-)

[doris]

ash, i need think about what you say, not sure if i see yet what you mean.

[mark yundt]

Possibly,,,though at times less is more. Depending on the subject,,filling in a background MIGHT make a more complete picture then again it just might make it too busy and detract from the key element of focus.
Just recently I had seen a wonderful sketch of Mother Theresa where only her face was drawn in detail,,her habit just faded out to nothing simply framing her face. Having it done this way was very dramatic and made you focus only on the expression and character in the lines on her face. Adding all the other extraneous details to make a complete drawing would only have distracted from this moving image.
In my Prodigal Son,,,I only outlined the two faces and the hands to allow the light to shine here. Focusing on just these elements tells a more important story than had I outlined everything in the effort to show a complete picture. Focus on the important elements and the rest will take care of itself.
Sort of like the photos you see where the flower is in crisp focus and the rest of the picture is slightly blurred,,,the element you wish to highlight is all you really see.
Look at how wonderful the Audobon prints are,,,they simply focus on the flower,,nothing else is needed...

[Mottles]

Doris, nice start and one of my favorites too, cactus flowers are so beautiful.
Kathy

[doris]

i thought about your suggestion, ash... .. if i do something like diagonal lines in the background, it will give extra depth, but it will break the composition, all negative spaces i created are balanced, a diagonal would cut these, i have strong leading lines, they would be disturbed ... i had in mind, to present the flower, and what i find most beautiful of it, i dont have in mind to make a realistic image, where the plant sits either in the desert with grass around, or on a window shelf in a flower pot. this is not my topic. yes, you are most probably right that many people look at a picture like you describe, that they come from a "habit of seeing" and thus want see the flower pot, or the grass in the background,,, well my carving will not fulfill this, i had other than these two options in mind ... i find it more interesting not to do what everyone expects. might be wrong choice though...
also, the diagonals would add a geometric element (if i understand correctly how you mean it), and this is contrasting to the organic flowing lines i have made. this can add interest to a carving/picture, but at the same time substracts attention from the main since it draws some of the attention to the background ...
actually, i often do make drawings, just of parts of a topic, on a white canvas without support, as with marks example of mother theresa, to me this is very dramatic and exiting, no useless detail to disctract from what i want to show. the white actually emphasis the topic, and i hope the bare background i will have here does the same... thanks for your interesting input, i love to look things from different angles :-)

hi kathy, so we do both carve relief flowers, i have seen your start too. looking forward to see more :-)

[tnartist05]

So far your relief carving is taken on a good look Doris. Will keep ckn back on this. Forrest

[Ashbys]

Mark,

I agree sometimes less is more, I also said that it depends on the piece. I also like to point to the Mona Lisa. You know the picture , but do you know the background? The Audubon prints are great examples of items done for reference. But if you look at the wildlife prints they all have background and references. And most of the flower prints are never single.

Doris, I am not talking about , what would be hard continuous lines only another way to use the background. When you did your background , you went with the wood grain, so the flow of the grain would be perceived as flat, it helps established grain flow up and down. Because a carving will always have hard lines, it is possible to soften the perceived image by clearing the background on an angle instead of with the grain. Mark achieve the same effect on his tree, by the way he lifted the edge with the angle cuts around the edges of the tree leaves.

It is one thing about carving there are many styles that can be used to achieve a perspective or to highlight a subject.

[doris]

oh, i misunderstood you ash,.... hmm, i dont know, i was thinking that marks bonsai is essentially on the same level as the background, and thus to lift it a little, mark did "dig" a tad bit around the boundary...it does not seem be an effect on the whole background, just around the borders, the relief seems extremel shallow but is wonderful to "read"...good ideas to study , i agree

[mark yundt]

You are correct Doris. Actually all the leaves on the tree are the same level as the rest of the door,,,I didn't carve them into the wood if at all. The base wood was just slightly relieved to allow the trees to appear to stand off the surface,,,which they don't.
It takes on more of an embossed look,,as if tooling on leather.

The perspective in this case since the carving is only about 1/8 inch is to handle the overlay of branches,,and to some extend make the ones that should be further away appear just a bit smaller as they really would. I really didn't lift the edges at all. It fools you into thinking that. And that's part of the trick with reliefs.