Grey Heron Intarsia

[FrankEV]

I obtained a ‘Limitless Lines Design’ Stained-Glass Pattern from Etsy that I thought would be easy to convert to a suitable Intarsia project pattern.    The Heron is an almost a direct copy, but I modified the background significantly to work better in wood.  In doing so, I messed up the perspective somewhat by lowering the land on the far side of the water.  This was not obvious to me until the project was nearly complete.  I’ll live with it as is, but I have already corrected the pattern, to be more in keeping with the original pattern, that I will share in Pattern Exchange.

Woods used include Premium Pine, Blue Pine, Yellowheart, Cherry, Walnut, Aspen, Black Limba, and some 4/4” thick Sapele for the fixed Frame.   The Cherry I used for the Water was too close in color to the Pink toned Pine I used for the Sky, so I enhanced the color with some Blue/Green dye.  The Grey and Light-colored areas of the Blue Pine worked well for most of the Heron itself, but I had to darken a few areas using some very diluted Black dye.  The Eye was painted with White and Black acrylic paint.

Currently, my wood selection is limited, therefore so are my choices since I would have really preferred to use a different wood for the Sky.

The approximate 80 pieces of this project was quite a challenge to cut and assemble.  After all the pieces were cut, shaped, textured and sanded - knowing I was going to frame the panel - I first assembled the background, within a rectangular jig sized to the finish panel size, onto a 1/8” thick BB Ply Backer.  The Blue Pine is only a scant 5/8” thick and I wanted the Heron to sit proud of the background, so I cut a 1/4“thick shim to fit the remaining area and then I fit the Heron into the area.   The many small pieces of the Heron’s body proved impossible to assemble, one by one, into the open area.  I was forced to use CA to edge-glue the pieces together and fit into the open area as one piece.  Being very careful to fit the pieces together accurately, this worked out well.

The 1” wide Sapele was rabbeted 1/4" to produce a 3/4" wide border Frame.  The rails were mitered and cut accurately for a tight-neat fit around the glued-in panel.

The completed Assembly was finished with multiple coats of rattle-can Clear Gloss Acrylic Finish spray with light sanding/buffing in between coats. 

Comments and critiques allways welcome.

[Frank Pellow]

Frank, I thank you for a detailed explanation of the steps that you went through to create this piece.  I like the heron a lot.

The fact that you used a stained-glass pattern as a starting point has given me an idea.  Stained-glass work is also one of my hobbies and what I am now going to do is to look through stained-patterns and attempt to find one that would also look good as intarsia - or perhaps as segmentation.  Then I will create both.  I'm not sure why this never occurred to me before.

[rjweb]

Frank, that is beautiful, excellent job, RJ

[FrankEV]

29 minutes ago, Frank Pellow said:

...Stained-glass work is also one of my hobbies and what I am now going to do is to look through stained-patterns and attempt to find one that would also look good as intarsia - or perhaps as segmentation....

JFYI, If you use Inkscape to develope your SS Intarsia Pattern, I find the trace bitmap command does not work well to translate a SG pattern into a SS Intarsia Pattern.  I find it just as east ro do a manual trace using the Pen Tool or the Pencil Tool with my Wacom pen/pad.  The SG Lead lines are just too wide to use directly.

[Frank Pellow]

2 hours ago, FrankEV said:

JFYI, If you use Inkscape to develope your SS Intarsia Pattern, I find the trace bitmap command does not work well to translate a SG pattern into a SS Intarsia Pattern.  I find it just as east ro do a manual trace using the Pen Tool or the Pencil Tool with my Wacom pen/pad.  The SG Lead lines are just too wide to use directly.

Thanks for the tip.  I do plan to do things manually.

[Peter N White]

Great looking heron.

[daveww1]

awesome job

[barb.j.enders]

A beautiful heron.  Thanks for the writeup on how you produce you works of art.

[FrankEV]

We need an "Ah Shucks  " thank you reply button at the bottom  for some of these toooooo nice comments!!!!

[wombatie]

Beautiful.  Excellent work Frank.

Marg

[Fish]

Very nice!  

[rdatelle]

You did a great job on that piece Frand.