PELICAN MARQUETRY BOX NO II Post I

POST NO 60: PELICAN MARQUETRY NO II

One of my earlier projects was a photo of a pelican taken by my older brother, in North Creek, Ballina, I did the marquetry for the box from that photo.

In our local paper, the Northern Star, was this picture of a pelican landing at South Ballina, It was in a competition for photo of the day. Low and behold, it turned out that the photo was taken by my niece, and she won first place  in the competition. I think it will make for a wonderful marquetry project, which I will start when the current box is completed.

To see the original project go to the (INDEX OF PROJECTS) and scroll down to project No 0003.

For the next project I am going to try and re-create this picture for the lid of a box.

First things first, I have loaded the image into the computer, this time I thought I might come into the 21st century and use photo shop. The program I've been using up until now, was a image editing program, I purchased in 1995, it came in a video editing package we first used, when digital video was just in it's infancy, probably letting on my age, but when I first started in the media industry, we were using 16 mm film. It was a product putout by Ulead, and has been one of the best bits of software I've ever used, but all good things must come to an end, The software won't run on anything later than Windows XP, so I really have no choice. Some times I just ramble, I traced around the edge of the image.

Then after playing around with different veneers I chase these two, the light for the shy and I think its Tasmanian Oak, for the water. In the photo the Pelican is landing on sand, but with some artistic licence I'm landing him on the water.

By overlapping the two pieces of veneer and cutting a squiggly line I joined the veneer together, the squiggly line is to give the impression of small waves on the horizon.

Next with the wonders of modern technology, I can see approximately how things should look.

I then printed out the pattern in several different sizes.

Taped both sides of the veneer, the back with blue tape and the front with green tape. Cut out the pattern, then with PVA glue, glued the pattern into position on the veneer.

Ready to start the Marquetry.

That's all I have time for today, all going well I should be able to finish the pelican next post.