Glossary of Engraving Part 3 - Digital Design
Basic design overview
Much can be said in regards to art design from a creative stand point, however the engraver
must be fully aware that creativity is not enough as often times an engraving artist must be
fully versed in the appropriate fundamental styles that have proven to be sound in nature for
traditional engraving purposes.
Different mediums have different levels of flexibility, e.g. gun engravings in design appear to
be somewhat more rigid than knife engravings.
What this means is that firearm enthusiasts tend to request more traditional formats in their
designs such as standard scroll work or vine and leaf ornamentation, traditional borders,
floral clusters such as rosettes and all other typical embellishments that can be found on most
classic guns.
At times this may appear to be conservative from the designers view point
however firearms, especially the classic shotguns and doubles have maintained a level of
continuity and respect for a very long time thus the standards are firmly set in place.
This does not mean that more diverse and interesting subject matter has not or should not be
engraved on firearms as it always has been but it is on a very small percentage of firearms in
comparison to the typical standards often seen, one can safely assume that tradition to a
certain degree is literally considered as protocol.
Knife engravings tend to be a little more free in format and far more accepting of non
standard decorations, this is not to say that when engraving knives one should not follow
certain guidelines that have proven to be acceptable by the masses but it does mean that
there is generally somewhat more latitude for the artist to create non traditional designs.
With much experience a well versed engraving artist is fully capable of creating
directly onto the medium. This works particularly well if the engravers style is well known
and the client is commissioning the engraving based on that artists own style characteristics.
Often this will not be the case and a perspective client may wish to commission the artists
services to design and engrave a style that perhaps the engraver does not find 100%
appealing to his or her own tastes. In such cases it is wiser to carefully plan out the design on
paper or in a digital format and submit a rendering for client approval.
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Understanding & appreciating the Digital Medium
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When adopting the'Digital Art' format we are not replacing an artists drawing skills
with computer generated imagery, hand drawing is still taking place as it did before, the pencil becomes a digital pen
and the paper a digital tablet.
It is simply a progressive process much in the same way in which
the horse drawn carriage has been abandoned in favor of the internal combustion engine.
We still need to know where to go and how to get there, we still feed and re-shoe our transportation.
The concept remains the same and paper to digital is merely a transition within the art medium, the necessity to understand design
and at the very least manage the basics of drawing skills will still apply as fundamental rules.
First and foremost any artist relying solely on software to create art is not much of an
artist, though a bold statement it is painfully true. Any designer that lacks the ability
to create without software is not much of an artist plain and simple. However it does not mean
that advantages cannot be had by means of electronic imaging...
Digital tools in the hands of well versed designers become icing on the cake and can only serve to enhance
flexibility with expanded latitude allowing for more choices in manipulating artwork, therefore broadening
the concepts within the creative process.
Lets view a typical scenario
A client requests an engraving of a deer and the artists painstaking works the image until it is believed
that the desired results are achieved. The art is presented to the client and much to the
artists surprise the client requests alterations.
The client may wish the head tipped forward a little, the animal enlarged,
or the antlers modified, possibly scrolls repositioned.
Whatever the requests may be the original pencil and paper art which was once clean and final will now require
erasure or perhaps a complete redraw, possibly photocopy paste up's employed as well...
All in all these methods are not very efficient.
If the alterations are frequent the end result will be messy final drafts. |
With the digital medium one can draw traditionally on paper if one chooses to, then scan the renderings
into image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop and other equivalent programs
or design directly to screen fully bypassing the paper medium via graphic tablet and pen.
Now editing is endless, the original remains intact and finals are always clean for client submission.
Scaling of individual elements within a rendering are now easier, mirrored images, rotating portions of the design,
broadening segments, duplicating patterns, shifting entire elements from one place to another while leaving backgrounds intact.
These are simply the basics of what will be achieved.
The basic concept is to have each segment of a design on its own separate transparent layer
allowing it to be edited freely without interfering with the other components of the artwork.
e.g. scrolls on one layer, borders on another, wildlife scene on yet another as well as
breaking that down further into sub layers, head body grass, trees...
As you can see this allows the artist to freely manipulate individual portions and at any time
fuse them into one another saving copies of as many versions as one chooses.
In the end a wise designer will have at least 2 to 3 versions that are appealing and submit one
or two to the client and still retain a backup version to show in case the first or second does
not meet client approval, this is general practice in traditional graphic art design and always has been. |
The Above Coat of Arms was completely designed and painted using Photoshop 5.5 No special effects were generated,
Wacom Tablet was used and the image was entirely air-brushed by hand. The original was painted at 3 times this
size and took approx. 35 hours to complete.
The initial step was to draw a clean final key line of this design and use it as a guide for air-brushing and blending
for boundary purposes. The next step was to begin the painting procedure for solid colors such as the green leaves.
Shadow and highlight tones of green were then selected and roughly brushed in place, then manual blending and
smoothing until the desired result was achieved. All main elements were generated on separate layers.
The final steps were to change or adjust colors then discard all unwanted layers and finally shutting down the main
line drawing layer. Additional steps were taken to reduce and compress the image for web display at 1/3 its original size.
Due to this reduction the estimated quality loss is approx. 40% |
Click here or the image for a full page view
Note that this graphic was designed at high
resolution 300 ppi (pixels per inch) and is approx. 32,000 pixels wide, it is intended for small poster printing.
However, in order to allow web viewing it was necessary to compress the image creating an
approx. 80% quality loss. This image was designed for commercial printing purposes and not for web
viewing. The original file size was 31 megs and has been compressed down to 90 kb.
Though the image
has suffered considerable quality loss it will give a good idea of some of Photoshop's capabilities and will
serve as an example for design layout regardless of the final medium, be it print or web design or engraving layouts.
Please be patient as it may take approx. 30 sec at 56k modem speeds to display.
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Is there a down side to digital? As with most things 'Yes of course'!
1) The assumption that digital art speeds the design process, it does not! in fact it does just
the opposite it slows one down, with more flexibility comes more decision making and more
variations an artist wishes to see, therefore the artist has a tendency to do 3 to 4 times the
creative work attempting to achieve better artistic results.
2) Drawing on paper is easier and faster than drawing directly to screen however the digital
results are cleaner in the end and editing is endless. Alternative is to draw to paper, scan and edit digitally.
3) Learning to use professional graphics software such as Photoshop will be time consuming and is very much
step oriented, you will not be able to simply startup the software for the first time and begin drawing an engraving project.
You will learn over time step by step like learning anything else and it will take you a lot of
time, assume 6 months of a learning curve at least several hours per week practice in
familiarizing yourself with the software. One week of serious study and hands on practice should afford you
the ability to at least scan images and do minor design and editing.
4) To be fully flexible you will need a scanner, laser printer preferable, a graphics tablet
is a must as you will not be able to draw and edit easily using a mouse.
Tablet of choice is the 'Wacom tablets'.
5) Professional software is expensive and there will be times you will instinctively wish
to abandon the new ways and fall back to older methods expelling your monetary investment
and your time. With perseverance you will wonder how you ever worked without it.
Though these may seem like deterrent's they are nothing more than transitional
steps that will in the end allow you so much more freedom as well as seeing far better results
in your designs. The real bonus is that what you create can in most cases be sent via e-mail in
minutes to a client and a response sent back swiftly, hopefully with full approval.
An added advantage is in having a digital camera but not required.
A CD burner is another lovely extra so you can safely store all designs and forget the bulk of
your paper medium, though it pays to have both. Additionally storing to CD will allow a large
number of files that can be extracted at any time and portions re-used for newer base designs
being created and of course transportability. e.g. save different single scrolls, borders,
flowers... you've created and later import them back into the software, edit and use them as a
starting point for new work.
Once again the CD burner is not a requirement but merely and extension of your digital tooling. |
So what's available in graphic software?
Complete configurable tools / brushes pens / rulers / grids / line tools / pressure sensitivities / hard edges soft feathered edges /
color palette's / erasers / blending tools / Lasso's and Marquee editing tools that will allow you to
select and cut or move or modify any segment of the artwork / layers and as many duplications as u desire
/ History palette's for what you have done during your drawing editing sessions and ability to
revert back to any step and re-edit / undue what you have just done with a simple click /
rotate / size / distort / add perspective / skew / scan and edit a photos and crop unwanted
areas / zoom in and out of your images / masks...
The list literally goes on and on.
As you can see the flexibility is enormous and equally so will your time be in learning how to
best apply these powerful tools.
Think of things this way, it's not the tool that makes an artist good, it's the artist that makes
the tools look good. A non artist will never create at the same levels as a true artist will
regardless of how many tools are supplied.
The one good thing about all this is that for engraving design purposes
we are dealing mainly in black an white and generally as line work, this reduces the amount of available functions needed to
learn and use in order to create good artwork. Learning all the extras will give the artist vast latitude enabling the designs to
be fully painted for gold inlay's and air-brushed with shaded effects as well as typing in any necessary information within the document
and finally prepping for client submission electronically via e-mail or snail-mail hardcopy, color or black
and white prints, floppies for small files, CD or zip formats for larger files. And finally if you wish to
promote your work on the web the means to prepare all your image files for web format.
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The Wacom Tablet is an absolute must for artists and designers using Graphic Design software. Visit