Teaching myself leather floral design

[SamHarper]

You are already drawing pretty cool designs. Nice pic showing your design AND the tooled leather next to it. Good luck with this, you have talent doing this for sure.

The picture with the drawing right next to the tooling is actually a Don Gonzales design. But I have been tooling my own designs lately on scrap leather. Yesterday, I was practicing using my swivel knife, and I did this free hand.

I do think I'm making some progress, but it's slow. It is probably optimistic of me to think I can make significant progress in 30 days, but I'm going to try.

[argel55]

You can get some help over on leatherworker.net. There is some very good people there.,

[dogcatcher]

You have to be your own critic but at the same time you cannot be your own WORST CRITIC.

[austinRecurve]

Check out the book Sheridan Style Carving by Bob Likewise with Bill Gardner and Clinton Faye.

[SamHarper]

Check out the book Sheridan Style Carving by Bob Likewise with Bill Gardner and Clinton Faye.

Does that book have stuff about drawing and design lay out, or is it all about carving and tooling?

[austinRecurve]

Does that book have stuff about drawing and design lay out, or is it all about carving and tooling?

Yeah, it's got a little bit of everything. Lots of pictures.

[Hills of Texas]

For me, the quality of leather and proper casing helps more than anything. Some leather will tool like butter and others are just tougher than anything.

[SamHarper]

It's been 11 days since I started. Here's my latest drawing and tooling. I also drew the one that I tooled. Progress is slow, but I don't think I've plateaued.

[SamHarper]

Since there are so few tutorials on how to draw Sheridan style patters on line, I thought I'd try to keep track of all the ones I could find. Here's what I've come up with so far:

Joe Meling has two on his YouTube channel:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xGpbP7T5wzQ"]Sketching the start of a custom tooled belt pattern - YouTube[/ame]

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hsv3ETkT2DU"]Tips for practicing drawing floral tooling patterns + a bonus lesson at the end - YouTube[/ame]

Joe Meling also has an on line course that costs $50.

https://twentythreeplus.com/collections/on-line-courses/products/635196

Don Gonzales has this one on doing transitions:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fl2zaNQfpdo"]Leather Floral Design: Transitions - YouTube[/ame]

Don Gonzales also has an on line course that costs $125.

https://dgsaddlerycourses.teachable.com/p/drawleatherpatterns

Leroy Gibbons has this one:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PSzPZXMqVM"]How To Draw A Leather Pattern By Leroy Gibbons - YouTube[/ame]

There'a YouTube channel called Attack Line Leather that has this one:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ue_zPNp9rgw"]Drawing Patterns for Leather Craft - YouTube[/ame]

And this one:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PppXcK-Omvk"]Leather Knife Sheath Art - YouTube[/ame]

Dustin Loftis has this one for doing belts:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p42qFqyRnnE"]Designing floral patterns for belts - YouTube[/ame]

Bruce Cheney has a few with simple drawings and some free style swivel knife stuff. Here's one of them:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzg3F1mtu2M"]How to draw - leather tooling designs - how to draw for beginners - pencil drawing - YouTube[/ame]

Jan Hendrik Viljoen, who does some engraving has two:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nH-2m9aLLAo"]How to draw scroll designs: The basics - YouTube[/ame]

and. . .

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqInlQxM8eU"]How to draw scroll designs: Leaf sheaths - YouTube[/ame]

Here are some honorable mentions:

This guy has four videos of him drawing patterns. They're not tutorials, but at least you get to seem him draw:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdTYJ7wjLClGduBZSI1L7ng/videos

This guy does engraving, but he has several drawing videos, and he explains in some of them the logic behind scroll work, and if you scroll through is videos, he has a few on drawing.

https://www.youtube.com/c/express375/videos

I especially found this one helpful:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRdAfwaugzc"]Drawing Practice for Hand Engraving. Improving your Scrollwork Spirals - YouTube[/ame]

Here's another engraver video on drawing.

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G09XhzDEUhc"]How to draw Scroll work for metal engraving - YouTube[/ame]

Here's another one I found really helpful:

[ame="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2XhQD2O_Oc"]Ornamental Design: Acanthus Leaves (Step-by-step) | Tri Le - YouTube[/ame]

[Beardedbuck]

Looks like you're doing just fine to me!

[Bjankowski]

Good job Sam, of course everything you partake in you do well. I used to do some back in the day when I didn't sell so many knives. My time restricts me from spending so much time on my sheaths. I'm selling over 300 knives a year now and I just don't have time to spend on leather. The last thing I made that spent more time on than I wanted was a guitar strap. I'm helping out a band that lost their bass player and not sure how many more gigs I'll do with them. Again, it's all about time for me.

[SamHarper]

I can imagine a guitar strap taking a long time. I'm working on a dog collar right now--my first real project since I started this quest to improve my leather game. It took me about three and a half hours just to stitch it. I can't see ever selling belts and dog collars unless I get a sewing machine which doesn't seem likely right now. Do you have a leather sewing machine? I think your sheaths look great.

[SamHarper]

My thirty days are over. I did my last drawing last night. I didn't make near as much progress as I hoped to make, but I did make some improvements. I guess I'll just keep drawing until I figure it out. Here's my last drawing that I finished yesterday.

[SamHarper]

Here are a few project I did a long the way (I was practicing tooling, too).

[centrallabucks]

I know alot of guys that pay good money for quality work like this on tally books. Looks great!