Bones: Engraved Dog Skull!
I'm getting ready to start a big push to list a bunch of higher-dollar items on my Etsy page, and I am starting with the carved skulls I did a while back, and have never showed you guys. This is the first one.
It's a domestic dog skull supplied by the folks at Skulls Unlimited, so it's a fine specimen. Dog skulls are a lot more expensive than you'd think, by the way.
The carving was done using a Dremel 400 with diamond engraving bits. I pencil the design out before I carve. There's a wolf skull I'm getting ready to start on, and I will be taking progress pics so that you can see the process. It's really cool.
I covered every external surface but the underside of the top and the inside of the jawbone. It takes me about an hour and a half to two hours to pencil in the design and about eight hours to carve it in.
A detail shot. The engraving is deeper than you might think. This picture almost brings that across.
It's a painstaking process. Bones are not solid. Some have marrow cavities, some have channels and openings to admit blood vessels and nerve bundles and these can run just under the surface, skulls have sinus cavities and also areas of soft, granular, almost spongelike bone on the forehead and over the roots of the teeth. I have to go very slow and take off only a tiny bit of bone at the time to avoid punching through the bone and into one of these hidden openings. I have to know where the bone is thickest (brain case, jawbone), and where it is the thinnest (inside the eyesockets, which is why there's no design there).
A picture of the only damage to this skull. When it was being prepared and separated from the spine, someone cut cleanly through the occipital condyles. A tiny detail that doesn't affect the appearance or the structural soundness. Not, in fact, something I think most people would notice on cursory examination. It certainly doesn't show when the skull is being displayed.
Just for fun, I put an LED into the skull and turned the lights off. I think the way the patterns show through is super-cool!
Ultimately the pictures don't do it justice, as anyone who has been here and handled it will probably tell you. The thing is sturdy as hell, yet so delicate.
Best of all, it's for sale!
A big thank you to bat_cheva, who lent me the backdrop cloth which made these pictures look so sharp.
It's a domestic dog skull supplied by the folks at Skulls Unlimited, so it's a fine specimen. Dog skulls are a lot more expensive than you'd think, by the way.
The carving was done using a Dremel 400 with diamond engraving bits. I pencil the design out before I carve. There's a wolf skull I'm getting ready to start on, and I will be taking progress pics so that you can see the process. It's really cool.
I covered every external surface but the underside of the top and the inside of the jawbone. It takes me about an hour and a half to two hours to pencil in the design and about eight hours to carve it in.
A detail shot. The engraving is deeper than you might think. This picture almost brings that across.
It's a painstaking process. Bones are not solid. Some have marrow cavities, some have channels and openings to admit blood vessels and nerve bundles and these can run just under the surface, skulls have sinus cavities and also areas of soft, granular, almost spongelike bone on the forehead and over the roots of the teeth. I have to go very slow and take off only a tiny bit of bone at the time to avoid punching through the bone and into one of these hidden openings. I have to know where the bone is thickest (brain case, jawbone), and where it is the thinnest (inside the eyesockets, which is why there's no design there).
A picture of the only damage to this skull. When it was being prepared and separated from the spine, someone cut cleanly through the occipital condyles. A tiny detail that doesn't affect the appearance or the structural soundness. Not, in fact, something I think most people would notice on cursory examination. It certainly doesn't show when the skull is being displayed.
Just for fun, I put an LED into the skull and turned the lights off. I think the way the patterns show through is super-cool!
Ultimately the pictures don't do it justice, as anyone who has been here and handled it will probably tell you. The thing is sturdy as hell, yet so delicate.
Best of all, it's for sale!
A big thank you to bat_cheva, who lent me the backdrop cloth which made these pictures look so sharp.