Completed The Ship & The Sea

Job thread #1 - Laviku's Figurehead

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Center of scholarly knowledge and shipwrighting, Zeltiva is a port city unlike any other in Mizahar. [Lore]

The Ship & The Sea

Postby Ravenna Raye on January 9th, 2015, 1:23 am

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34th of Winter 514 AV


A deep breath brought with it the familiar smells of wood, both natural and cut. Ravenna stood in the back workroom of Laviku's Figurehead, a few basic sketches for an order in hand. Approaching the nearest workbench, she set down the sketches and placed her toolkit off to the side. Today she'd be working on a relief scene to be placed in a door panel on a ship. Ravenna spread her sketches out in front of her, placing the overall scene against the wall in the back, but kept the close up sectional sketches near her at the edge of the table. The scene depicted the ocean along the bottom, and a large ship in the center with an open sunny sky above save for a few small clouds. It wasn't anything she couldn't handle, though she was already fretting over the finer details on the ship. Her skills in fine detailing weren't nonexistent, but she still needed to improve in that department. She also knew that would never happen if she didn't actively work on it. She only hoped her current skill level for that section wouldn't displease the customer.

Next she moved over to her toolkit, emptying its contents and placing them on the table where she could grab any one she needed at will. She placed her charcoal, mallet, v-chisel, and several gouges closest to her workspace, and placed the rest behind them. Next, she went to the back backroom to pick out her wood. She chose a lighter colored wood, it would stand out a bit against the darker wood most ships were built with, and it appeared that luck was on her side, as there was a nice piece just about the size she needed for the taking. It was no wider than a typical door and was thick enough to give her a good base to work from but still thin enough to be set into a door without haphazardly protruding outwards. Returning to her workspace, she set the wood down on the bench between her sketches and tools and picked up her charcoal.

To make sure she didn't lose sight of the big picture, Ravenna copied her sketch onto the wood. The finer details of things were left out at this stage, as her only goal at the moment was to determine where all she would be carving to get the overall shapes of the design. She moved slow and took her time, making sure to keep her proportions correct and to ensure she didn't mess up her lines. They needed to be right or her carving would be misguided. A few minutes later, she stood straight and appraised her drawing, satisfied that she'd properly portrayed each major section of the piece. Next would be taking her mallet and v-chisel to begin the main outline carving.

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Last edited by Ravenna Raye on March 9th, 2015, 7:20 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Ravenna Raye
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Posts: 37
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Joined roleplay: August 19th, 2014, 12:58 am
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The Ship & The Sea

Postby Ravenna Raye on January 13th, 2015, 2:29 am

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Now that the majority of the design was drawn onto the wood, at least where it started and stopped, it was time to start removing the bulk of extra wood around where she needed to carve. Doing so would save any fragile corners she needed to go around in the defining stage. Her right hand was her dominant hand, though she could use either one necessary for the design, so she began on the right hand side of the piece, working first on the outer waves on that side. Their tips curled up and towards the right side, following the direction of the wood's grain, and this allowed her to use her dominant hand with ease. For the other side, she would switch hands, though she'd still carve left to right to follow the grain. She knew to always carve either with or across the grain, and never against it. This would make smoother and cleaner cuts, minimizing if not all together removing the chance for the wood to split or splinter and ruin the design.

Angling the v-chisel along the first line, just beneath it so that she could still see and follow the drawing, Ravenna planted the bottom side of her right palm against the wood. From here, she could either use her strength and push the chisel through the wood, which she would do on bigger chunks, or use her mallet to tap the chisel along. Mallet tapping always results in more control of her stopping point than pushing through, and so any time there was even the slightest risk of messing up, Ravenna always used her mallet. Picking up the mallet in her left hand, she double checked that her chisel was positioned properly, and began tapping on the end of the handle to push the blade along. She fell into a trance-like state, the tap-tap-tap of the mallet on the chisel turning rhythmic in her ears as she tuned out everything around her save for the task at hand. Wood shavings curled at the tip of her blade as she went along, Ravenna stopping every few taps to wipe them away and keep her vision clear. When she reached the tip of a wave, she'd move her chisel to the bottom and follow the line up from there, connecting the two points at the top. When the waves on the right hand side of the ship were finished, the carver moved to the other side and repeated this same process, only with the chisel now in her left hand.

Now that the waves were done, it was time to shape around the ship. She started with the base and deck of the ship, using the same chisel as before, and again followed the grain, always making sure to keep a palm braced against the wood to retain control. The base was the easy part, at least in this stage. It was the masts and sails that would prove more difficult, even in this beginning stage. For that part, she switched tools, choosing a much smaller chisel for finer cuts. This chisel still did the job the bigger one did, but resulted in thinner cuts and was easier for maneuvering around tighter corners and making thinner lines. Ravenna only chiseled out the shapes for the masts, control cabin on deck, and the basic outlines of the sails in this stage. Satisfied that her vision was still headed in the right direction, she moved on to the sky. Shaping the few accent clouds and the sun were easy and effortless, their shapes simplistic in design. Basic outlines finished, Ravenna then used a large gouge to slope the outer edges of the whole piece downwards, using her strength to push the gouge through the wood instead of the mallet, resulting in an almost three dimensional feel to the whole piece. From here, the next step would be adding in defining details and accents.

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Last edited by Ravenna Raye on January 13th, 2015, 3:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Ravenna Raye
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Posts: 37
Words: 33663
Joined roleplay: August 19th, 2014, 12:58 am
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
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The Ship & The Sea

Postby Ravenna Raye on January 13th, 2015, 3:30 am

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Having taken a bit of a break, Ravenna returned to her piece to begin the defining stage. During this stage, she would use various size chisels and gouges to add depth, fine details, and accents to the scene to bring it to life. She would begin by using a gouge to add depth to certain parts of her piece. This would further accentuate the three dimensional feeling she was attempting to give the piece and make certain parts of it stand out more than others.

Picking up her curved gouge, she first went along each wave, using the mallet to tap further down into the wood around the top of it, giving it depth and making it appear to curl right up out of the water line. She mirrored her work on both sides of the ship, letting a grin start to spread across her pursed lips as she made more and more progress. Next, she deepened the lines along the outer edges of the ship, being careful as to not move the gouge in between taps so it wouldn't disrupt the flow of the line. She took her time, knowing patience and control were of the utmost importance to prevent mistakes. Finished with the ship itself, Ravenna then moved onto deepening the lines on the masts and sails. She only deepened the outer edges of the sails, hoping that making those lines deeper than the "background" lines of them would give them more shape while also accenting that side. Lastly, she deepened the cuts made for the clouds and sun, making them really stand out against the solid flat wood of that side of the piece.

Satisfied with the gouge, she picked up her charcoal to start drawing in the finer details to follow. Happy with her guidelines, she picked up her v-chisels to start adding in the details. She would use the generic one for thicker details, and her smaller one for finer additions. Beginning with the generic one, she freelanced the open "V" shape of distant birds in the open space between the clouds and the ship, and added a few sunshine rays to the sun and extra curls inside the clouds. Ravenna also used this tool to add in the plank lines across the ship's exterior, most of them horizontal but with a few vertical ones to signify the ending of one plank and the start of the next. She defined the shape of the control cabin and its roof as well as added in the "ropes" attaching the sails to the masts.

Using the smaller v-chisel, Ravenna added shorter thinner lines between the first sun rays she'd added and then moved down to the waves. Focusing her attention on the larger curled waves, she added a second curve along the top of it, connecting it to the tip of the wave, the extra line acting as a "light" accent on the top of the wave, coming from the sun above. This smaller chisel also went to work carving window shapes in the control cabin and carving out an anchor hanging from the side of the ship. Lastly, Ravenna picked up a small tool with a skinny but blunt end, and used it to add two vertical holes on the ends of each siding plank, showing where they were nailed in place. Satisfied with her piece, knowing more could be added to it, but not trusting herself to do so without screwing it up, Ravenna breathed a sigh of relief and stepped back to admire her work. Feeling it came out well, she cleaned up all her wood scraps, put her tools back in her toolkit, and put her drawings and the order slip with the piece for Master Heigan to go over in the morning. She'd worked all day long on this piece, wanting to finish it, and so he'd gone for the day. Making sure all was tidy in the workshop, Ravenna retreated home for a bath and to finally fall into bed for the night.

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Ravenna Raye
Player
 
Posts: 37
Words: 33663
Joined roleplay: August 19th, 2014, 12:58 am
Location: Zeltiva
Race: Human
Character sheet
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