Red. I’ve been using Eco-Flo for dying the leather–they’re water-based colors (dyes and highlighters) for leather sold by Tandy–and their Scarlet is a nice, rich red. Their All-In-One stain and finish is awful but the dye and highlighters are pretty nice, although getting a really even spread on the dyes isn’t always easy unless you’re using a darker color. For me, they’re perfect, though, because I much prefer the less even look anyway.

These designs always start out simple and then grow into rather complex and involved projects that have me researching something online and spending more time than I ought on detailing a piece. On the upside, I find a lot of really fascinating websites that I never knew existed. For instance, e-Leo, which is an online archive of da Vinci’s diaries and papers (you have to register with this site for access–I imagine they’re protecting copyrights with that–but it’s well worth it).

Although da Vinci is well before the Victorian era, where most Steampunk seems to live, the inventions and ideas he came up with fit rather neatly with the “feel.” And, considering that the mechanical clock was invented in the 13th or 14th century (at least a century before Leonardo), it doesn’t seem too much of a stretch for me to land on da Vinci at least once while working on one of these.

Truthfully, though, the idea came because I had some stray black marks show up on the inside of the journal and I didn’t want to dye the inside covers this time, so I started thinking about what kind of design I could do on the inside to incorporate my mistakes rather than cover them up. It started me thinking about some of da Vinci’s journal pages with the sketches and mirror writing, so I decided to do something along those lines.

I’m not going to show the whole of the inside covers yet…once I’ve sold the book and the customer has a chance to look them over and “decipher” them, I’ll post them on my blog.

As for the rest of the book, black is such a nice complement to red, so I went with black velvet for the spine and black suede for the strap. The clasp/closure is part of the watch band from the watch cover I used on the front (the bottom cover with the clockwork gears). It makes an interesting closure and works surprisingly well.

The molded decorations that help hold the watch face  and watch cover in place are made with Apoxie Sculpt (a two-part epoxy clay), then painted with blackened bronzer. I used molds for part of the decoration, a leather stamp for part of it and did the rest by hand.

The paper is a mix of ivory and beige pastel paper, tea-stained watercolor paper and some naturally aged Arches watercolor paper that I got at an estate sale. The clockwork design, this time, is simpler than usual. If I’m not careful, I can spend literally days laying out a good clockwork design, so I opted for simple to reduce the time spent. Which turned out to be a good idea after I added the da Vinci aspect.

As usual, these journals give me a chance to practice my storytelling. They always seem to have some kind of “history” behind them, which is part of the appeal for me, personally. I enjoy coming up with the background to explain what their purpose is and what kind of person might have owned them. For the background on this one or if you think you can’t live without it, check my Etsy shop.

And, finally, a picture of the book “in action.” I know the listing says that the sellers have never tried it out but how can anyone resist having a couple of “extra” hours to get some things done?

Looking for something you can buy to get your name into the BEST drawing this holiday season? I’ve just added some new personalized journals to my shop.

I’m also working on another Steampunk journal–this one a little larger than the last. It’s coming along nicely and I’m hoping to be able to list it sometime this weekend. Here’s a teaser:

The spine wasn’t as difficult as you might think. Truthfully, I hate doing limp bindings where the text block is sewn directly onto the cover/spine and there are no boards to stiffen the covers. I find it very difficult to sew the signatures in place along the spine that way, for some reason. I much prefer sewing onto tapes or simply sewing the text block together with a simple stitching pattern and then attaching the tapes or the spine reinforcement to the boards/covers as a whole. Much easier for me. But I really wanted to use copper mesh for the spine so I decided to do a rather simple sewing pattern to attach the signatures to the spine. I added the center embellishments separately from the text block sewing. The rivets came much later. The overall sewing wasn’t too difficult with no limp covers to get in the way.

Once I had the text block complete, including the spine, I worked on the covers. I already had a vague idea of making some kind of hinge to attach the covers to the spine/text block and was thinking I’d use rivets, copper tubing and, perhaps, leather hinges. Serendipity struck. A polymer clay group I’m on (CITY-o-Clay) sent through a couple of posts about making your own wire hinges and I knew that’s what I wanted to use for this book. I figured it wouldn’t be much problem to make the wire hinges and then use rivets to secure them to the covers and spine (ah, so naive).

My plan was to use leather on both covers and dye it a mellow tan color. I decided to do my corners a little different than normal. Usually I’ll trim off a triangle of leather at each corner so the leather is “mitred” together as evenly as possible on the inside corners. You get a slimmer corner that way. This time, I thought it would look better to simply fold the leather over on itself. I wanted the corners to look a little bulkier. The basic leatherwork was pretty straightforward. I had actually sketched out a design of the book earlier (see above photo) and had an idea of how I wanted to attach the clockwork embellishments but once I had the leather completed and stamped (but not dyed), I started laying out the parts to make sure the design would work. It did with just a bit of tweaking.

My biggest challenge with this piece was the clockwork designs. My problem is that I’m too anal to just take a bunch of gears and watch parts and glue them together in a somewhat artistic pile. I want the pieces to look like they work together, the clockwork to look like it just needs a bit of winding before it gears up and and you find yourself being transported back in time to meet Jules Verne. Which means that I spent a heck of a lot of time finding just the right gear or part to place next to the last one that was attached. It took quite awhile to find all the pieces that “fit” together properly.

I was very happy with the final piece. The book itself lies flat so sketching, journaling, drawing, painting (watercolor or acrylic should work) are all easy enough to do in this journal. The next one is definitely going to be larger.

This journal can be found in my Etsy shop along with the fun story I came up to explain its history.

Originally produced by a small, unknown manufacturer in southern Illinois called Stughmeier & Sons, this Temporal Displacement Book (TDB) is only one of seven TDB’s purchased from the company between 1842 and 1845. The day following the sale of the seventh TDB, the whole factory completely disappeared without a trace.

Each book was purchased by a separate individual in a private sales meeting made available by invitation only. The buyers were all chosen carefully for their adventurous spirits, interest in the unusual and fantastical, and, of course, for their obscene wealth.

This particular TDB that’s currently for sale is believed to be the first one made. It was purchased by Maximillian von Zeit, a close friend of the company owner, in June of 1842. Although von Zeit disappeared in the Fall of 1842, this book was recovered from his family’s estate earlier this year.

Unfortunately, the Time Displacement Unit (TDU) built into the book, is not currently functioning. But a resourceful individual may be able to restore it to working order. Seller is NOT responsible for personal, temporal or financial damage that may be caused by tampering with the TDU without sufficient knowledge or understanding of its workings.

Whether the TDU works or not, this is an excellent book to use as a personal or art journal. Apparently von Zeit used his TDB regularly to go back to 1842 and “erase” his journal entries, leaving plenty of space for someone else to chronicle their own adventures. Although his only living descendant, Joshua von Zeit, believes that it’s more likely his great-great-great-grandfather Maximillian actually went back to 1842 and stole a second book.

At the present time, the locations of the other six (seven?) TDB’s are unknown.

On a side note, the pictures of my journal also show off the small photo set I made using builder’s foam, scrapbook paper, and glue.

And boy was it a doozie. Definitely the biggest journal I’ve ever made before but I love the heft so I’ll probably do more this large at some indeterminate time in the future. I’ve been calling this journal the DAG journal because the person who commissioned it is in the Dark Artists Guild and she wanted an art journal to use for her guild-related pieces. The customer is one of may favorite dollmakers and all-around wonderful person, Michelle of The Studio at Crowhaven Farm.

She wanted a journal that “fit” the DAG feel–something that looked old, full leather cover with a skull (see the DAG website for the original picture) and the guild name on the cover. Plus the guild name on the spine. She also wanted straps and she wanted it BIG. Did I say “BIG?” I meant to say GINORMOUS. Seriously, she wanted 400 pages and she wanted paper that could be used for various art media plus adding embellishments, mementos, bits of fabric, inspirational things. In other words, paper that was heavy enough to handle gluing and attaching things to it, not just for drawing and painting. Did I mention that this is a THICK book?

I used three different kinds of paper: Fabriano Tiziano pastel paper, Canson Mi Teintes pastel paper and some Strathmore 400 series, cold-pressed watercolor paper. I started by tea staining all the paper (see my earlier post about the tea staining bonanza) followed by sewing the text block (sewn on tapes) and then started trying to figure out the cover.

My biggest concern was the straps. I’ve done straps and closures before on books, but never anything like this. We’d discussed options and I suggested using straps with buckles rather than having wrap-arounds. I thought buckles would look pretty cool with the overall style of the book and we could fit the skull on the cover without hiding it every time she used her straps to secure the book. Of course, I’m good at coming up with ideas that I then have to try and figure out the how-to of later. I went through several books I have on bookbinding, glanced through a few pictures online and tried to mentally engineer the straps while staring at the book boards and leather.

I actually seriously considered partially burying the end of each strap into the book board under the leather and leaving a slit in the leather to feed the length of strap through. I had a few concerns about doing this, though, like dying/coloring the straps, finishing the edges on them and pressing the book once the cover was attached without causing major indentations in the cover from the straps. I finally decided to go with the most straightforward method I could think of which was to use rivets and bury the underside of the rivet enough in the book board to make it flush with the surface so there wouldn’t be any “unsightly” bumps in the endpapers.

The first step was to prepare the straps and the cover, including carving the skull and lettering, punching the proper holes in the straps, cover, and boards and dying/coloring the leather. It was definitely a new experience for me carving a piece from a photograph. Coupled with the fact that the design was a bit more complex than my normal designs, and I found myself challenged quite nicely with this piece. I’m also rather happy with how the carving turned out.

Next step–varnish the cover. Some of the stain I use is water-based and, although “books + water” is never a good idea, it would be even worse to have the dye start wiping off if you got a little water on the cover (i.e., the mad dash through the rain to a meeting or your house), so I use a spray sealer for protecting the color on the cover.

After it was all dry and ready to go, I cut out indents on the inside of the book boards near the spine to match my tapes. I don’t always do this, sometimes sticking with the more basic method of casing in where the tapes are cut short and glued down to the text block and the endpapers are used by themselves to attach the text block to the cover. But, did I mention how THICK this book is? It’s pretty hefty and I figure it’ll need extra support so I decided to attach the tapes into indentations in the book board (so they don’t show as bumps under the endpapers) and then paste down the endpapers.

Normally I would paste the endpapers in right after gluing in the tapes but I still needed to attach the straps and I wanted to partially bury the rivet head on the inside of the book board, so I decided to put the book in the book press for a few hours first. I wanted to press the book before adding the straps because I wouldn’t be able to press it after without making some rather ugly impressions on the leather cover from the straps. I ended up pressing it for over 24 hours.

Next job was to add the straps. Putting the strap on the front cover was pretty easy. Single rivet, dig out a bit of board on the inside of the cover so the rivets are inset and put it all together. The back cover was almost as easy although I ended up adding a second rivet so the straps wouldn’t swivel around when they weren’t buckled. I put it all together, attached the endpapers and had myself a LARGE leather bound journal.

Pierre with the suitcase base--a miniature mint tin

One idea I had for Pierre’s accessories was a suitcase. Mainly because I have these little tins (I don’t remember where I got them from) that were the perfect size for a little suitcase for someone Pierre’s height. I believe they were probably promotional mints/tins at some point in their lives but I, of course, won’t be using any of them for that.

Side of tin to show size and design

The size of the tin is about 2″ tall, closed. The first thing I did was take the tin apart, thinking it would be easier to cover if the tin were separated (I’ve covered tin before with polymer clay but it wasn’t one of my favorite pc projects so I didn’t do them very often, but we always took the tins apart to cover them with clay). In retrospect, the whole thing probably would’ve worked better if I’d left it together and just covered over it, as is. I used leather for the case (the same skiver I mentioned in an earlier post that I got from Rio Rondo).

The tin, separated and ready for covering.

Notice the leather strip above the tin pieces with the brass brads on either end. That’s the handle. I took a strip of 2 oz leather and wrapped it with some of the skiver with the underside out so it looks like suede. I used brown leather which is a bit darker than I like (it’s almost as dark as the black leather) but all of the skiver from Rio Rondo is veg tanned so it can still be worked.

Checking how the handle looks on the case.

Here’s a better picture of the handle. I did a little test run with it on the case to make sure it would fit and look in proportion. I think it ended up looking pretty good.

Top of suitcase, ready for covering

Next part of the project was to cover the two sides of the suitcase with the leather. I debated trimming and cutting the leather so that it would fit very neatly on the cover but kind of liked the idea of the corners being a little bunched as part of the design. This is probably another thing that I’ll do differently if I attempt this a second time. It was too difficult making the overlapping areas consistent so it all ended up a bit too haphazard looking to me.

The sides after covering them.

This all from the same leather. The dark brown is the leather side of the skiver and the light brown is the underside, which has a suede look, of course. I can’t remember why I decided to add the brown suede, I think just as a design element, to make it match the handle. Of course, covering it is one thing. Expecting the tin to go back together with an extra layer of leather on it was a whole other matter. I actually realized, while covering the two sides, that I would probably have a problem getting the tin to cooperate with added thickness on the sides. It definitely didn’t work–the hinge portion didn’t move properly and the front edge couldn’t overlap like it had before (big surprise).

I tried a couple of different hinge options, none of which worked. The miniature hinges I have were either too small or too large. I made holes in the leather and metal and inserted brads but they made the suitcase too flimsy/loose at the hinge. I finally decided that leather would make a great hinge and added yet another layer of leather to the case at the bottom.

Leather hinge at the base of the suitcase.

Works like a charm and it definitely reinforced for me the idea that keeping the tin in one piece and just covering with leather would be a better mechanical design for these miniature suitcases. I used another strip of leather on the inside to strengthen the hinge (it’s hard to see in this picture because of the hot spot).

Inner hinge and inside of suitcase

As you can see, it’s not finished yet. I have some silk from a decorative pillow I used to own. It’s a creamy yellow color and I think it will be perfect to line the inside of the case. That’s my next step. You can also see the handle attached here.

Suitcase from the back.

My mother wrote up a nice little blog post about Pierre and the miniature journal I made for him on her blog, Artists & Crafters Supply Community (July 23, I can’t find a permanent link for the post). Also, don’t forget to check out the ADO Traveling Doll Project Blog, with posts by all the participants of the project sharing on their experiences working on these dolls.

Here's the little guy "holding" a book that I digitally added to the pic.

Except my ability to eyeball and estimate size is sadly wanting. I thought I’d be working a little larger, you know, a couple of inches maybe (hey, track with me here…I already mentioned that my ability to judge sizes is lacking). Two inches is small but not miniscule. And I figure I could hand carve something on a cover that size.

Until I started actually preparing to make the book and measuring little Pierre to see what would be in scale. Did I mention that Pierre is tiny? Yep. The size that looks most appropriate for a travel journal? It measures 3/4″ x 1″ which is small. I’m not clear at all how I’m going to do hand carving on a book this small or what kind of design I can do that would even be discernable at such a size. But, I confess I’m thinking of something that looks like an old style world map. Yep, I’m definitely nuts.

The length is right at 1 inch. I used some tea stained Arches Text Wove scraps from another regular size journal project I did previously.

The width is about 3/4" so the size of the book is actually going to be just under 1" x just over 1"

So, I’m making two books (just in case, plus I can do a different design on the second book and drop it in my Etsy store). I have quite a few lengths of scrap paper, tea-stained Arches Text Wove, from a human-sized journal I did before. These measure at around 1 1/2″ x 19″ so one strip made almost six signatures. I ended up using another quarter of a strip to finish up the last signature and prep some end papers. Each book has three signatures of 16 pages each giving them a total of 48 pages each.

See the pencil at the bottom?

The top four papers are the endsheets. The gold/brown bits are the “boards” and below them are the two text blocks. The boards are made from a thick, acid-free gold cardstock that I have. I laminated two pieces together so it would be stiffer and then cut it down to size (slightly larger than the size of the text block). I have enough laminated cardstock to do several dozen more, I guess.

Haven’t started on the leather yet but I have some skiver that I bought from an online miniature tack company (Rio Rondo Enterprises) and it’s really nice. All veg-tanned, I got a few pieces of natural, a couple of browns and a couple of blacks. I’m looking forward to working with it and may see about ordering a larger piece of the natural next time. The brown is a bit dark for my taste but I know I’ll find something I can use it for.

A collage of the dolls I've worked on to date.

I signed up to participate in ADO’s Traveling Doll Project. Art Dolls Only is a team that I help start on Etsy–we wanted a place for those of us who make dolls for art rather than toys or children’s dolls. The team has grown by leaps and bounds…so much, in fact, that we finally had to limit our membership because it was becoming more than we could really cope with. We wanted a team that’s close-knit where most of us know each other and we feel comfortable working together. And, even more important, we wanted a team that we could promote and advertise for easily. People with a likeminded goal of promoting our dolls, our Etsy shops, and our team.

So far, I’ve participated in a couple of challenges/projects on the team but the Traveling Doll Project is a long-term one, making it a lot more consistant on my to-do list than anything else I’ve been working on (or not working on, as the case may be). Hmm, now that I think about, I never completel my doll for the first project (the Shakespeare Challenge). I have a half-finished Hamlet (who may turn into Romeo) sitting on one of my work tables. Destined to be another blog post in the future….

All the dolls shown in the collage above are the ones that I’ve worked on so far (or are currently at home with me). Pierre, the little guy in the bottom right corner, is presently sitting on my desk waiting for me to make him some accessories for his travels. I did a blog post today on the dolls I’ve worked on over on the Traveling Doll Project Blog so you can read through that for more details: Traveling Doll Project: Dolls to Date.

What else am I not working on that I should be? Well, I’ve got a commission for Michelle of Studio at Crowhaven Farm that I need to actually get into. Michelle is on a team called the Dark Arts Guild that focuses on art of a darker nature and she wants a large art journal for herself with a skull on the cover. This will definitely be a challenge to carve the skull design well, but I’m really looking forward to getting into it. The current design idea:

This is the current design idea. The journal will have two straps with buckles.

I also need to make three miniature books. One for Pierre Heart, of course (a journal–he may have to do a bit of sketching and writing in it before he heads off to his next destination). One for a friend who traded me a bunch of eyes in exchange for a journal for her 24″ wizard. This one will be a spell book of some sort with all kinds of esoteric designs on the cover. The final book is for another friend who collects ball-jointed dolls. She made one of my bjds a lovely elvish, woodland type outfit and I told her I’d make her something in exchange. Well, her doll is musical so I’ll be making him a large music portfolio for holding sheet music. With a Celtic design on the cover. All of them leather and I better cracking on them soon.

Aerwyn wearing the outfit made for her by Nikki

UFO’s–I have entirely too many of them at this point. More than three journals that I started and haven’t finished, and around 10 (yes, that’s right, I said TEN) dolls that I’ve started and haven’t finished. I’m really going to have to prioritize and start figuring out what to get finished.

And finally…

So, if you wandered by my blog last week (any of the five of you who might actually do so) and noticed that it was unavailable, it’s back up. And will hopefully stay that way permanently now. Perhaps someday I’ll be able to speak about the situation but, for now, I’m just happy to have my site (including my blog) back up and available.

Travelling Doll Journal Detail

Got a couple of commissions from a lovely, fellow dollmaker named Michelle Schafer of The Studio at Crow Haven Farm. We’re both pariticipating in a Travelling Doll Project that ADO (Art Dolls Only) is hosting. Since I also make handbound journals and someone on the ADO team outed me to the Travelling Doll people, Michelle contacted me for a journal (that turned into two journals).

The Traveling Doll Project is a team event where each artist begins a doll, keeping a journal as they go. Once they’ve gotten their doll to a stopping point (keeping in mind that there will be five other people working on the doll), they send the doll with the journal onto the next person on their team. Each artist adds a bit of themselves, adding their own spin on the personality of the doll before sending it on to the next person and sharing their insights, thoughts or inspiration in the accompanying art journal as they go.  Once the doll has been through all six team mates, it will come back to the original dollmaker, complete.

Michelle wanted something that would reflect her style. She wanted a journal that would incorporate her logo (seen on her blog) and use the pink and brown colors that also fit her personality so well.

I “stole” a copy of her blog header and trimmed out everything but the crow and some of the swirlies it was sitting on. I opted for Black Adder as the font because she didn’t know what font was used on her blog header but Black Adder seemed like a really good match to me.

ADO Doll Journal front cover

Next step was to find pink dye for the cover. The guys at the Tandy shop are used to my rather odd questions and requests but they didn’t know of any pink dye (ok, so these are the guys that make gauntlets for ren faires and gun holsters; I don’t imagine you see a lot of pink gun holsters around…). I searched through the shelves in back and finally found something by Eco-Flo called “all-in-one” primrose red (looked pink to me). The Tandy guy said it was thicker than regular dye and it includes the finish in the dye but that it should still take a stain over it for highlighting the lettering and designs. I figured I could work with it.

Wrong–what a mess. Thankfully, I had the foresight to do some preliminary testing on a piece of scrap leather. The all-in-one was horribly thick and sticky, not easy to work with at all. Highly concentrated color, though. Unfortunately, it just didn’t do what I wanted and the feel of the leather with the all-in-one on it wasn’t very pleasant. I stuck it in my dyes drawer and haven’t looked at it since.

Detail of the Travelling Doll Journal

Surprisingly, I found some pink dye in my combo pack of Eco-Flo hi-liters (I bought a combo pack of the hi-liters and a combo pack of the dyes by Eco-Flo during the holidays)* and it was perfect. I played around with several different brown dyes, as well, and ended up using the mahogany colored stain.

Travelling Art Doll Journal

Carving the design was a bit challenging since there are so many swirls in it. And I basically used the modelling tool to sculpt everything since most of the lines were too think to use a beveler on them.

The insides were a variety of pink papers (Michelle wanted a few different colors of pink in the text block) with some decorative brown paper for the end pages. The brown was a lovely text-weight brown paper with some geometric designs printed on it in gold.

Travelling Doll Journal, open pages

Journal number 2 was supposed to be similar but a lot thicker at 250 pages (compared to 96 pages for the first one). I started with the same design idea using Michelle’s logo of the raven with the swirls and simply wrote out “Art Doll Journal” on this one. This time, we decided to also put “Art Doll Journal” down the spine so it would be easy to recognize on the shelf (next to the other one).

Spine for the second journal

I had to use the same method of sculpting with the modeling spoon to get the design embossed out properly on the leather. Used the same pink dye but I didn’t use quite as much of antique gel this time overall so the pink is slightly pinker.

On both of them, I had to paint in the lettering and the design with a small brush using the brown stain so they would stand out enough.

Art Doll Journal, the second

I used similar paper for the second book but I didn’t have enough of the brown decorative paper so I had to substitute with something else that would work. I opted for some Lokta paper (one of my favorite papers–Creative Papers Online is one of the best paper stores out there) that worked really well with this book.

Endsheets, second journal

These were definitely fun projects and she’s asked me to do one more (so far) for the Dark Artists Guild of which she’s a member–which means I get to do a cover with a skeleton on it. I’m looking forward to figuring that one out!

Headband, second journal

*Note regarding the hi-liters and the dyes. The dyes are mostly browns, black, earthtones and they soak into the leather pretty deeply. The hi-liters tend to have a wider variety of colors and they’re a bit more transparent. They also settle into your tooled designs and stay there, so you can use one color (blue, for instance) and cover your tooled leather a few times and the dye will be all over the cover with a darker shade in the impressed areas, highlighting them, as it were. Example here.

Figure Carving Finesse by Al Stohlman

Maya Codex I

Since I had to give up polymer clay (mostly) because of the allergic reaction I had to it, I was looking for something to “replace” that medium in my bookbinding. Frankly, my polymer clay books were the most popular ones I made because of the uniqueness. I could get texture, designs, and relief images in polymer clay that was missing in just using fabric and paper. I’ve been meaning to play around with a different type of clay (Apoxie Sculpt, a two-part epoxy clay) but the techniques for working with it are so much different than polymer that I haven’t even started trying to figure out how to use it for bookbinding.

Enter leather. I don’t even remember what got me thinking about leather carving. I

Like a glove mini journal 3" x 2"

think the leather idea came up when I found a pair of vintage leather gloves at a garage sale for practically nothing. Way too small for anyone but a child or teenager to wear, even though they were ladies gloves. And since I didn’t know anyone they would fit, I cut them up and made a miniature book out of them using most of the leather and one buckle for the book. I’m not sure how I went from recycling leather to using veg tanned leather and carving/stamping it but I did.

Of course, being a bibliophile means I need to buy how-to books on the subject. I actually did pretty good, though, and held out for quite awhile. I first checked out various websites for info on types of leather to use and then, finally, ended up at Tandy Leather talking to the manager of our local shop. He’d actually studied the history of leather carving and leather use, including aspects of bookbinding, so we had some really good discussions. He also showed me, in between helping other customers, how to do a little stamping, carving and beveling and shared some suggestions on which tools I would need and which ones I could wait on.

Tilting at Windmills

My first attempt at a full leather binding, hardcover, with a hand-carved design was a simple, original design of a windmill on the front cover and lances on the back cover. It was a “Cervantes” sketchbook I did for a BEST (Bookbinders of Etsy Street Team) challenge last year. I never submitted it because I made some mistakes on it and didn’t want to put it up for sale. But I am proud of it–it was one of my first hardcover books, my first hand-carved design (on a book, I did actually practice the windmill a couple of times), and the first book I did with a fold-over closure that snapped closed.

But you actually came here for a book review rather than my rambling walk down memory lane. Which brings me to the book, Figure Carving Finess by Al Stohlman. I did pick it up mainly for some detailed instructions on leather carving and the book is full of that. I also had this notion that it might prove beneficial for me as a sculptor and, I absolutely believe this is true. This book provides some amazing instructions in determining musculature on both animals and people, hairing, scaling, and texturing techniques, and a lot of the information really can be put to good use by sculptors and/or for doing sculpted relief work.

So what do you get in this book? Frankly, a little bit of everything and a lot of excellent techniques and specific information on actual carving techniques including what tool to use (by Craftool #, of course), where to use it (with enough information for you to extrapolate where to use it on whatever figure you’re carving), and whether you might need to grind the tool down in half so it will work better. He gives you information on tracing a pattern or on taking a photo and converting it to a usable pattern for your carving. Including how to reduce or enlarge the pattern, if needed. Stohlman wastes absolutely no space whatsoever in this book. Every inch is covered with techniques, tips, tools, steps for carving from cutting through dying/coloring and finishing information, and everything in between. It is truly a wealth of information and an excellent resource for leather carvers. Even those like me who have no intentions of doing a lot of human or animal forms specifically.

But, for me, the added benefit is the wealth of information that I can use in my sculpting. Everything from hairing techniques that could easily translate to sculpting (even if I’m using different tools, I’m confident that the methods he used for making close-knit fur or shaggy hair, for instance, would work on a sculpture). He includes some basic details of how the muscle formations will differ depending on their position and whether they are stretched or bunched. He shares some facial characteristics for different races of people. He gives details of his observations on how animals walk so that when you carve (or sculpt, even) an animal walking, trotting, or racing, you position the legs properly for different types of animals.

The only downside, which really isn’t a downside, is that he doesn’t waste space in this book covering things that he’s already covered in other books he’s written. He consistently refers to his Pictorial Carving Finesse book and has a list at the very beginning of the various instructional books he’s done, explaining that he won’t be duplicating much of the information found in the other books because why waste the space. Normally, I might find this frustrating because I’d like all the information I need right in this book. But, to be honest, if his Pictorial Carving Finesse and other books are as loaded with information, it’s not going to be a chore to own copies.

Overall, I would say this book is a “must have” for any leather carver and a excellent resource for the artist in general.