Carving the Spawning Sockeyes Netsuke
Here's how I often design a netsuke from start to finish. After deciding what subject and a general conformation of what I'm going to work on, I gather reference material. I've found the World Wide Web (Internet) is a wonderful resource, especially the image search options in search engines like Google. They allow me to search and review lots of pictures, as well as specify the approximate sizes of the available images. I often make composite groupings of the images I've chosen as reference and print them out. Here's a small version of the reference sheet I'm using. I didn't keep any information as to the sources of the images, and so to those artists and photographers whose work I've blatantly plagiarized, my sincere apologies. Please take comfort in my appreciation of your efforts to make this information available to others. Thank you! For this work, I cobbled together a model for reference. I don't normally produce models, since I often feel that once the model is completed, I've already created the work and rapidly lose interest. Some of that attitude comes from my experience with models in the past. I either used plasticine modeling clay or ceramic clay. Both have their drawbacks. The plasticine modeling clay (you know this stuff from kindergarten) is easily damaged and collects carving dust like a super magnet, rapidly obscuring all your hard won work.
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Tom Sterling PO Box 1621 Coupeville WA 98239

Last Updated:Monday March 24, 2008