Filthie's Horn

Glenfilthie

Glenfilthie

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A year ago I was on the Track Of The Wolf website and looking at the scrimshaw powder horns. What struck me as odd was how BAD the scrimshaw work was. Even the authentic antiques were pretty bad. If ya want one, be prepared to shell out hundreds of dollars - or more!:eek:

I decided that even a hare lipped retard like Yours Truly could do a better job, and ordered up a garden variety chit house powder horn to give this scrimshaw hogwash a try personally.

I got the horn last year and went at it...and found out why the artwork sucks on powderhorns. Everything is free-hand; the surfaces are all curves, nothing is flat and sometimes ya need three extra hands to hold the damn thing as you try to carve on it!:owned:

I actually got kind of lucky with this one, although you can't really see it in the photo, the tones of the horn material accidentally turned out to shade the young lady's face quite handily. The way the hues move down the horn suggest 'wind' to me, so that is what I tried to go with. Despite the incredibly bad artwork I did, the damned thing actually has a sense of 'atmosphere' to it, if ya know what I mean. I can't capture any of this with the camera, it is the damndest thing I have ever seen.
FilthiesHorn001.jpg


I am usually my own worst critic; but when I hold this stupid thing and look at it, I actually take some pride in how it turned out. Am I being objective here? Don't be polite, unleash your inner filthy critic!

It certainly won't win any art shows...but I think I need to have another go at this...
 
You should be proud of your work,it is beautiful. I imagine back in the day a lot of this work was done by rough and tumble guys sitting around a campfire using a hunting knife.
 
You've been staring at it too long, dude! You see all the flaws, because you know they are there.

That looks like a kick-ass piece of work, of which you have a right to be proud!

Cheers
Trev
 
That looks pretty nice to me.

I've never looked up how it's done - did you basically punch pin pricks into the horn to create texture then rub a soot or black into them to get shading?
 
Thanks fellers - I have been staring at this damn thing for quite some time.

Wally the guys are correct - the old timers used their knives, perhaps a nail or some other implement - and scratched the pictures into the surface of the horn. It is painstaking work, any kind of shading is damn near impossible and once the scratching is done you fill in the lines with ink and and give it a very light sanding to remove the excess.

I almost went mad trying to lay out the picture - because of the way the horn curves the girl looked like a mutant the first few times because her forehead jutted out. The second time she looked like like an austrolapithicus. I erased and cursed and tried again and again, I knew she was in there somewhere and finally I got it 'sorta kinda right'.

I am going to need to try this again, but for a first effort I suppose this one will do. Hopefully I will have better luck building the front stuffer to go with it...
 
That turned out nice.
I make my own holsters and such; a little free-hand leatherwork.
One moment I'm looking at it wondering if it deserves a toy whistle on a string attached 'cause it's so bad, then... hey; that kinda came together at the end, LOL.
Keep up the good work. Not many folks do craftsmanship work anymore.
 
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