Enhance Your Work
By Gordon Langer
I am often envious of woodturners that live near an abundance of exotic figured wood and who produce true pieces of art with their turning skills and with the help of nature. Unfortunately, where we live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, the woods are filled mainly with spruce and poplar and the wood we often use for turning - birch and maple. A challenge of using relatively plain looking wood now turns into an opportunity for us as we use other techniques to enhance our work. Brian McEvoy and I have released an embellishment DVD where we show techniques in airbrushing, texturing and woodburning. But Brian and I wanted to take embellishment to the next level by adding artwork to our turnings. Have you ever considered painting a tiger or a portrait on your woodturning? If so, read on as I share our experience in developing and enhancing our skills in embellishing our work with the use of the airbrush. Our goal is to photo-realistically paint this tiger on a deep vessel vase that we had turned.
Both Brian and I had previously taken a course from a famous airbrush artist named Dru Blair ( http://airbrushworkshops.com/ or www.drublair.com ) and decided to take another one entitled "Big Cats". This workshop catered to both the novice and experienced airbrush artist alike and featured step by step instruction on how to render fur, eyes, teeth and claws. It showed us how to paint an animal portrait with the greatest accuracy. I hope you will agree that we achieved a realistic resemblance of the tiger we were painting.
The workshop was held in Blair, South Carolina and Brian and I would highly recommend going to this unique new facility should you wish to learn about using the airbrush and enhancing your skills. The facility is in the country and offers on-site accommodation and excellent home cooked meals prepared by Dru's wife Christine. The instructors Dru, Mel, and Krystina are all very skilled and offer help throughout the day's classes which are long but very interesting and fun. Each day starts with breakfast at 8:15 am and classes go as late as you like. Brian and I called it a day at about 11:00 pm each day and wondered where the time had gone. While the instructors were always available to provide hands-on help throughout the day, the main instruction came from Dru from a central location in the studio with cameras projecting detailed images on the high resolution TVs located above our workstations, as seen in this photo.
The first step in tackling a painting like this is to have the correct color of paint for virtually every color in the reference (original photo). While paint manufacturers have many colors of paint available, none will be exactly what is required to match the colors in the reference photo. The first day we learned how to mix different paint colors to exactly match the many colors we needed to paint our tigers. Here we see Mel helping Brian mix different colors to match the target color. While this seemed difficult at first, we soon learned that any color can be achieved by mixing different colors. Once we had the colors mixed for our painting, it was off to the next step.
While the rest of the students in our class were working on a flat canvas, Dru allowed us to paint our tigers on vases that we had previously turned in Edmonton and took with us to the class. This meant that we needed to transfer our outline onto our vases. We attached a line art photocopy of our tiger along with carbon paper to our vases and then simply traced the outline to our vases. I should note that we also sealed the vase with lacquer. Here you see me using a mechanical pencil to transfer the image onto the vase. These lines would be our reference locations of the tiger's features to help us with the painting. Remember, our goal was to paint an exact copy of the photograph using the airbrush.
Once we transferred the drawing on to our "canvas" (in our case a lacquer-sealed birch deep vessel vase) we cut out sections of our paper photocopy of the dark or black sections of the picture. Here you see Brian using a cutting mat and an exacto knife. Once this was done the "real" instruction from Dru began.
From his raised central location in the studio he began his instruction using a very conversational style of teaching. While Dru is likely among the best in the world at his craft, he and his instructors are very down-to-earth and willing to teach all comers. I was comparatively a very inexperienced airbrush artist where Brian had considerably more experience, but we were treated equally and both produced a quality piece.
Using his camera, he projected each step and technique of the process on large high definition TV monitors, depicting the slightest detail of each step. Here we were starting the painting by attaching our cut out photocopy and lightly dusting the canvas with paint from the airbrush and then adding additional black color to paint the dark areas of the painting. This was clearly shown on the TV monitors.
Now it was our turn to apply this step to our own work piece. Here you see Brian's vase on the right and mine on the left. We had both now attached our photocopies and painted black paint on the vases. You will note that as my vase was a bit smaller, I chose to only paint the head of the tiger where Brian chose to paint part of the tiger's body.
This process of Dru teaching the next step from his central location and the students applying the technique to their own canvas was very effective. The instructors were always available throughout this process to provide advice or clarity to those who needed it. Our class was small with only two other students, Val and Al, both talented artists.
The next step included adding the background color to the piece.
We then started a technique that was surprisingly challenging. Using an eraser? Yup, you would think that using an eraser would be easy; I think I learned this in kindergarten. But using an eraser along with dusting light colors of paint to the canvas provided the texture required to make the piece look realistic. Once we used this process for a while it became clear and proved to be an important part of the entire painting. This process was repeated many times through various sections of the painting.
At this point we were adding detail to our painting. You might notice the pieces of paper taped to the side of our vases. These were actually slices of the photo of the tiger that we continually flipped back and forth to try to exactly replicate the photo. This became easier and the outcome more true to the original as the week progressed and as we became more proficient in what we were being taught. However this was early in the week.
The eraser process continued here as we added a dusting of color and then erased parts of the paint. This process was repeated several times to give texture and better replicate the fur. We also added detail to the eyes in this process.
At this stage we spent considerable time working on the nose of our tiger. While I think Brian and I achieve a realistic outcome of replicating the nose, I was amazed at Dru's work and attention to detail where he tried to achieve an exact duplicate of the reference photo onto his painting. This was done using our friend the eraser, an electric eraser and even an exacto knife. Using these tools allowed us to achieve a realistic look.
Here is the nearly-completed work, though there was still a day or two of work to do before we were finished what we learned by the end of the class. Personally, I was thrilled with what I learned and with the outcome. Both Brian and I learned a lot and will finish our pieces in the next few days.
I hope you will give airbrushing a try, it's fun and you can achieve some amazing results. Not all embellishment projects need to be at this level of complexity. Our embellishment DVD shows four complete projects that include: texturing, airbrushing, pyrography (woodburning) and piercing. Should you wish to turn a deep vessel vase, our Deep Vessel Boring DVD might also be of interest. The important point is to give it a try; I know I am thrilled with the outcome and have added considerable value and pride in my work.
If you have any interest in taking your embellishment process to the next level, I would encourage you to take a course from Dru. I am sure you will enjoy it, make some new friends along the way, and have a lot of fun in the process.
While we were treated to some true South Carolina hospitality and treated to Christine Blair's home cooking, I also learned that you can generate quite an appetite. On our way home my airbrush buddy seemed to have kept that appetite and ordered some ribs in the Toronto Airport.
TWO IN ONE SAFE DRIVE AND FACEPLATE
The three adjustable pins account for the versatility and make it ideal for most between centre work such as spindle work, large logs, natural edge and regular bowls. For small work that requires attaching the face plate exactly at centre, just leave the center pin protruding a small amount to locate the center and then use three #8 or #10 screws to fasten on your work piece. 
Designed to be as versatile as possible, these boring bar set ups should suit most any lathe and shop configuration. Though they may look intimidating, in actual fact the simplicity and ease of use could surprise you. Even relatively new turners can achieve amazing results with a basic knowledge and a little practice. This boring bar is not only useful for deep vases but can be very effective when turning deep bowls or even shallow platters. I once turned a number of 16" flat serving platters with mine and found nothing as effective to achieve a perfectly flat bottom. They are also very useful when a relatively small opening, as small as two inches, if desired. 
The boring bars themselves are manufactured in two pieces that thread together to form a 1 � inch by 6 foot solid mass that weighs close to 50 lbs. This mass is required to reduce vibration when reaching far off the tool rest. Depending on the timber and the moisture content, up to 24 inches depth can be achieved. I usually recommend and use a steady rest when I'm turning over 18 - 20 inches. The cutter holder is bolted solidly into the end and a greater angle cutter holder is available which is very useful if you desire a small opening on a larger diameter vessel. A lot of the South West pottery is designed this way. 
The 17% HSS cutters are essentially scrapers and are very simple to sharpen with any bench grinder. For consistent angles a tool rest on the grinder close to the wheel is handy. Just set the angle once to match the angle that is ground into the cutter. 
The back floor mounted tool rest is built in five pieces to accommodate ease of shipping and storage. The bottom bar that holds the weight of the boring bar is a conveyer belt roller. The ease and smoothness of operation is hard to imagine. The beauty of this floor mounted stand is its versatility: it can be adjusted for most any height of lathe, and lathe bed length isn't an issue. Another nice advantage is the fact that you can push the roller stand well away from the lathe to achieve greater angles of attack if you want large diameter vessels with small openings. A disadvantage is that your lathe can't be up against a wall.
The secondary tool rest is also designed to accommodate most lathes. It should attach to any lathe with a split bed and is adjustable to suit lathes with 14 - 26 inch swings. The wide rest has stoppers welded on the ends to prevent the bar from accidently slipping off. Once you've made the adjustment so that the cutter tip is at center, both the secondary tool rest as well as the floor stand shouldn't have to be adjusted again unless you change lathes with a different swing or off the floor height. If you do upgrade or change your lathe a simple adjustment is all that is necessary. 
The light kit is almost essential if you plan on turning thin with translucent timber. The ease of gauging wall thickness will soon be apparent once you've tried out the light. It's also a nice way to see what's happening inside your vessel. A 12 volt battery charger combined with the automotive socket and bulb also will produce satisfactory results, though I like the higher light intensity achieved using either 18 or 24 volts. The drawback to using the higher voltage is that the bulb life is reduced considerably. I believe the trade off and final results are worth it.
For those of you who may still be a little skeptical as to the ease of use of these boring bar set ups, I'd like to relate a nice success story. A few years back when I was demonstrating at the annual Utah Woodturning Symposium I had a couple of hecklers in the front row, all in fun of course. They turned out to be Les and Judy Roberts from Australia. Les, the woodturner was quite impressed with the boring bar demonstration and said no one that he knew at home was using such a beast and he'd sure like to give it a go. A year or so later Les was instrumental in having me invited to demonstrate at Turnfest down under. The catch was, I needed a 100 lb boring bar set up to demonstrate with. Les had one built and a short time later I was over playing in his shed, as they call it. We managed to turn a number of deep vessels using Hoop Pine, a wonderful Aussie timber similar to Norfolk Pine. This summer Les and Judy gave me the pleasure of traveling over to Canada and spent 10 days hanging around, mostly playing in my shed. I hadn't mentioned that though Les was a professional turner, he'd had the misfortune of losing his arm in a boating accident a number of years back. His turning skills and eye for form put me to shame. While he was here, he managed to complete a number of birch vessels as deep as 18 inches with the 6 foot boring bar. 
