Hey, thank you everbody. It's really hard to capture the depth and pattern with a photo....(I suck at photography despite having a pretty decent camera). You find yourself just zoning out staring at the ins and out of the patterns and like a nice burl or a worthless wood you never know what kind of pattern is going to appear.
Absolutely gorgeous! That's the kind of work that really inspires me to try harder.
And those are the kind of words that inspire me to try harder:wink:...thank you.
Extremely beautiful. How do you make the blank?
OK...You asked for it...:biggrin:
The blank material is hard Sakura. The reasons I use this are because I have a bunch of it, it's tight grained like maple, easy to turn, lightweight, and stable. But you can use any material. Urushi sticks to ANYTHING!!
There are two base coats of black urushi. On that, thick.. REALLY goopy black urushi is "splotched" haphazardly using a Loufa (sp?) sponge creating lots of valleys and hills. Once that cures a bit but still sticky pure gold powder is lightly brushed on. That is set to cure for a few days. Then a thin coat of clear is wiped on and set away to cure. Then using charcoal lubricated with olive oil some of the the high spots are knocked down. Then a thin layer of the black followed by red and red again. Between each layer you are keeping the high spots knocked down and building up the lowspots. On this pen it's about a 3 week process which is pretty quick on an Urushi timeline.
and we are still waiting on the Urushi Tutorial!!!!!!!!
:biggrin:
Great looking pen.
I promise sir...I will get one done.:wink: