I make design sketches with pencil and paper, these form the basis to come to carvings in MDF(1), stainless steel or plexiglass.
The possibility to produce etchings on glass is still being researched.
Once a design has been carved it can be painted, this can simply be one colour (applied with a spraycan), a gradient of two or more colours or the piece can manually be painted with oilpaint.
A mix of several techniques is of course also possible.
In the early days I used to do the carving myself, using a simple electric saw.
| Example : | Afterwards it is painted : |
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Needless to say that carving a piece manually is extremely labour intensive, that's why nowadays I produce a computermodel which is sent to a firm that can cut the design by a computer controlled laser.
This has some extra advantages :
- The design can be produced in several sizes( from about 40 cm to about 2.5 meters ).
- It can be produced in several materials(2) ( MDF, Stainless steel, plexiglass(3), ... ).
- The carving process is much more precise.
- During the cutting process the MDF gets scorched at the sides, which prevents the absorbtion of moisture.
- The complexity of a design can be much higher, more minute details can be cut.
Apart from a purely decorative function, works can also serve as chandeliers, ie:
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| Sun, Manually carved, painted in oil. | Psychedelic, Manually carved, painted in oil, with 3 halogen spots. |
(1) MDF = Medium Density Fiber plate.
(2) Some technical limitation may occure, a design needs to keep it's regidity.
(3) The complexity of designs produced in plexiglass is much lower.
