It has been the strangest of summers, just so so wet, I had made the decision to put more effort into my turning so to take longer to make anything by exploring decorations.
This decision came about in a number of ways firstly I can now turn out a round and brown in a short time but what to do with them then, I had started to sell at the markets as a way of having less of them in boxes but it is not easy to sell and has become a frustration packing and unpacking and not selling anything, It was the right time to stop given that we have had such a wet summer and a lot of markets were canceled.
Sitting out in my man cave either carving or wood burning is something I can do no matter what the weather, I have jumped about from one design to another wanting to try all sorts of ideas I see and putting my twist on them, each one teaches me something or most likely more than one thing the possibilities are endless, time or maybe the cost of the equipment I use are the only limitations other than my imagination.
In order for the embellishment to be seen the bowl needs to be high sided so some of my recent bowls have been large, I had picked up this piece of pohutukawa that finished at 200mm wide and just suited having the inside embellished, the pyrography on all these pieces is a fairly clean thing to be doing this is in contrast to the carving that I have been doing, I thing the carving is more of a challenge as it is more 3D however I have carved away plan A a few times now and started on plan B so that is an advantage to the carving.
This piece started off by just showing the growth rings and carving the soft wood away between the winter growth then I wanted to explore what I could do between on those flat areas, paint is another medium that needs a lot of exploring and again the possibilities are endless.
One last piece that I have spent a lot of time on, the wood had a lot of cracks in it that I worked glue into for fear that it could fly apart as I was turning it, being such a deep piece of wood and having cracks around the base gave me reason to form 4 feet on it the same applied to the 2 handles they were the only bits of good wood around the top, the whole of this is carved and painted.
