Knives and engraving » Art

Silver Zippo engraving

Viljo Marrandi — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:46:19 +0000

What are the best days for engraver? When a customer comes in and says “Do me something nice on that silver Zippo. I like your scrollwork and just do your thing. I’m sure it’ll be good looking lighter”.

So I get to drawing board, I can try out some new styles, play with ideas for a while and then “do my thing” on a lighter. Sure it can take way more time than allowed by the budget, but it’s fun and I’m always learning new things for the future.

One engraving style that has fascinated me since I first saw it, is called “Liberty”. It has quite unique look to it and can be concluded with one work - spaghetti’s. But very beautiful and graceful ones.

Without further ado, here my next Zippo project on a silver body.

Hand engraved Zippo

First try in Bulino

Viljo Marrandi — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:46:52 +0000

Bulino means in Italian burin, or graver. When engravers talk about bulino technique, it usually means engraving pretty (small scale) pictures. This technique came from Italian engravers and they create truly amazing works of art with this, and they don’t use any power tools, just one graver and small 10x loupe. Works from masters like G. Pedersoli or Firmo Fracassi are so well made, that you’d think it is photo.

One customer ordered a Zippo with engraved picture on it. As I have never done any bulino work before, I took the hardest part from that picture, a facial part of that woman, and engraved it about 3x bigger than it will be on Zippo. Here is my first finished practice plate with bulino engraving.

In real life size it is about this big:

Real size

Practice plate with enrgaving

Engraved woman

As you can see, more practice is needed.

One more spoon

Viljo Marrandi — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 16:29:39 +0000

Different things have taken up my time lately, so not much has been going on related to engraving and knife making. But the other day I engraved a spoon. It was again sort of experiment – I did not prepare the design beforehand, but made it up as I started the engraving.

Also, this was the first spoon I found, or actually any other kitchenware, that wasn’t made of terribly hard metal and was easily engrave-able.

Sketch a Day: Days 15-30

Viljo Marrandi — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 06:21:27 +0000

Here are the next and final sketches. Some better, some worse, some outright ugly. But the good news is that it can only get better!

Sketch a Day: Days 7-14

Viljo Marrandi — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 06:54:39 +0000

Here’s last week’s batch of sketches. Some are better, some worse. Final conclusion is, that I should just practice more.

Engraved Zippo

Viljo Marrandi — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 19:39:23 +0000

Don’t you just love it when you get something done? Past few weeks I’ve been working on a Zippo engraving for a customer. My first idea was to make it rather simple design, but that sort of didn’t work out. This is first of the ‘replicated pattern’ type of engraving I’ve done, at least on this level. One I made a mirrored design engraving, but I think this one is an improvement over the old one.

Anyways, that engraving is now completed. Here are few photos of engraving in progress.

Zippo engraving in progress, half of the contours done.

In this stage the lower right corner is completely finished (I just wanted to see how the final result will look like, impatient as I am), all the shading is done and some of the background is removed (the more shiny spots).

Zippo engraving half finished.

And here it is, completely finished.

Completed Zippo engraving.

Design took about 8 hours (I’m still very slow at it) and engraving 13 hours.

So, what do y’all think about it?

Sketch a Day: Day 6 (and Zippo progress)

Viljo Marrandi — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 21:46:47 +0000

You wouldn’t want to run into one of these in the night.

That fella is sort of recognisable, isn’t he? But I think I will start posting after every other day or so, not to bore you to death with my crappy drawings.

But here is also a teaser of soon to be finished Zippo engraving.

Lower right corner is already inked, so that’s how the final result will look like.

Sketch a Day: Day 5

Viljo Marrandi — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 20:09:12 +0000

Ok, panthers usually aren’t that ugly, but it’s a start, right? Actually I start to like this drawing/sketching thing more and more. I just have to practice to get anything that might resemble a good result.

Sketch a Day: Day 4

Viljo Marrandi — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:07:29 +0000

A magnificent bird in a not so magnificent drawing.

Sketch a Day: Day 3 (and bit of Zippo shading)

Viljo Marrandi — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:14:11 +0000

Today’s sketch gave me also fits. Just couldn’t get it right.

Maybe some of you recognize from which photo this model is taken from? There were 4 of them… Anyways, I think I will take a little break from full figure drawing and try out something else. Maybe just hands. These don’t come easily either (what does?).

But on another note. One Zippo engraving is starting to take a shape. Today I managed to start shading. Here’s a bit of it.