[MikeDubber]

Thanks for the closeup study Ron - I really don't know how you do that. For everyone else, I sent Ron an e-mail containing the floor plate - then he took digital photos off his computer screen and did the enlargements???

In any case, I appreciate seeing the lion in closeup. There is some loss of bulino detail, but most of it shows up nicely.

The artistic process:

After inlaying the lion, I taped off the cartouche area and bead blasted the background - then I cut the grass to to "ground" him in the scene. The whole scene, inlaid borders and scroll, is done in a kind of "layering" technique. That is, the Lion is the centerpiece and the background within the cartouche is softened with the bead blast. The grass is brite cut through the bead blast. The corners of the floorplate are engraved with bold scrolls to "frame" the scene. Finally the very light ghost scrolls were cut in the area between the cartouche and the heavily scrolled frame. The addition of an entirley different pattern - the three leaf spray with gold berries on the hinge boss - topped off the floorpate to create something new to look at.

It's been my experience that people (clients or others) examine these things over the course time. First the client sees his lion - that's what he was looking forward to seeing in the finished piece. Later, sometime months later, he might call to say that he just noticed those leaves and berries at the top of the scene...maybe he will comment on the ghost scrolls during that conversation, or maybe even later during another conversation about another piece he's thinkng about. The important issue here is that he will spend a considerable amount of time looking at his Lion before going on to other detail.

In the final anaylsis, if you don't do a really good job on the central character (the powerful Black Maned Lion in this case) you probabaly won't hear the gratifying and complementary comments about all the other supplemental art you spent so much time creating. Incidentally, I have few chances to study mature Black Maned Lions in real life. This lion was in an old coloring book that I cut up for reference material years ago. Simply drawn in black and white lines, it provided all the detail I needed to create this lion.

So, that's what builds your client base for the future....and the amount of money you charge is adjusted upward as the level of your art continues to grow....and that's when engraving becomes profitable and satisfying.