Fork and spoons

[Jeff Bly]

I was just thinking about the failures and thoughts on making a fork to match this kind of cool spoon I made. If the smallish tines on the fork did not get burned off by not paying attention, they were broken off by working them too much or too cold. So my last attempt, a three tong fork, is now an almost what I want two tong fork. I still think it looks kind of cool, but it looks amateurish. Although I am an amateur, I think I lack a lot of artistic qualities. Can one obtain artisticness? I know what I think looks good, but creating it is an altogether different thing. Even Picasso's work looks brilliant, mine looks, yawn!, whatever! My work seems to be rough, crude, boring, plain, etc. Where does one get uniqueness of creation that makes people stop and say "hey, that's a Rembrandt!" Or "Clearly that music is Mozart." Is it so late in history and late in the game that people will never say, " Hey, that's a Jeff Bly piece of work. It must be priceless!" Have all the cool ideas already been taken.

I'm curious. Does practice make perfect, or does it just create replicas?

[jimmy seale]

i hear ya.i think perfect practice makes perfect. but then again i got a pile pf picasso's that ,when i'm gone, folks will say what was he thinking?but ni guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder...good thing! just have fun,jimmy

[welder19]

Art without a doubt comes easier to some than others, I an definitely an other, but it doesn't mean that your never gonna be able to create beautiful pieces of work.
What I do is read as many books as I can find, watch as many great smiths as posible, wether in person or on video, spend lots of time on IFI, and practice, practice, practice and practice some more, get good at blacksmithing first, once you learn and know how to make things and how to make the metal do what you want it to then the creativeness will start to come naturally and you can start to work on it then.
It's just how I've done it and am still doing it and I can tell you that it will work or atleast it has for me, I'm still no artist by any means and likely never really will be but I am becomeing a pretty creative blacksmith.

welder19

[Mark Emig]

Hi Jeff,
Sounds like you have 2 problems- first being not enough experience. Give yourself time. To quote Mark Aspery-"before you can get to the hall of fame,first you must build a wall of shame". In my case,the wall of shame was a pile about the size of the Great Wall of China. Second problem sounds like design. Look around-draw a bunch of pictures of stuff you want to make-and keep at it. It's not easy, but keep trying-you will find a path if you really want to.
Mark

[Rob Browne]

Feel for you. Artistic pieces are created by some very special people. The rest of us create functional pieces or copy a pattern we have seen. The rest of us describes almost all of us. Artists are a distinct breed and very special.

Keep hammerin'

[double_edge2]

like a leather wallet i made, took 5 to get mine right, the other 4 sold for about $60 each at sherry's in the city. keep trying, you will get your desired result. for me, practice makes perfect. as for artistic, practice that too.

[tzonoqua]

Practice does indeed make perfect. Although most will concede that perfection is elusive.

Behind any successful Artist are tons of discarded works, works that didn't quite make the cut, many, many mistakes learned from. Yes, there is such a thing as natural talent, but natural talent is wasted without hard work and practice.

Art is subjective, fine craftsmanship and technique are universally appreciated.

Edited August 16, 2009 by tzonoqua