Akita Mountain

[MeTheSwede]

I read Akitasan. Looks correct to me. You read from the top down, so the first kanji is on the top and so on.

[cteno4]

Wow, stunning tom! Fantastic woodwork and super clean on the design and aesthetics! Such a treat to have closed and look like a clean work of art then the joy of telling the visitor to open the doors and that little jewel of a scene/world inside! Like stepping thur a little doorway with Peter Pan! Takes you back to the days of the little door advent calendars of a kid with the surprises inside!

 

love the oiled teak doors, just makes you want to go over and run your fingers over it! When I was a kid an old boat woodworker once told me oiled teak was the best wood for boat interiors as it felt good to touch and on small boats you had to reach out and touch the wood work all the time so it better feel good! Even the rubbed brass as well you want to trace out the pattern with your fingers! That intuative design sucking the visitor right over to the cabinet to begin with then when opened they are so accepted by the mind’s eye to keep your hand on and then total focus into the little world! Tori design just says japan without bashing you over the head.

 

grand slam home run here winning the World Series! You’ve just set the bar super high for the rest of us now!

 

cheers,

 

jeff

 

ps my dad salvaged a bunch of old solid wood cabinets for a few years that all had great character and used them Ta’s the base a 20’ long workbench in his wood shop. It was great as there were like 6 different styles of cabinet but all were rich in character and look and super solid! I just realized I never took a photo of it! One of those things you don’t reflect on until decades later. He wasn’t big into conscious design, and though he was just reusing but it was a very cool design statement none the less.

[Kamome442]

Beautifully presented Tom! I love how the hinges and motifs shape reflect each other and the Japanese flag, I am more than a little jealous 😆

Feels like Mr Tumnus should be somewhere in the winter scene stood under a lamp!

[gavino200]

I love, love, LOVE it!!!! You rock, Tom!!

[Tom C]

2 hours ago, gavino200 said:

You rock, Tom!!

Gavin Gavin, you're making me all shy and bashful with such prase 🤣

 

But thank you anyway.👍

 

Is there any chance you can persuade my GF of this 🤣🤣

Edited August 3, 2021 by Tom C
spelling !

[shadowtiger25]

This is such a wonderful project and I have greatly enjoyed watching it come together and read every post about it!

[Tom C]

Well, I just descovered the Bob Ross joy of painting videos on Youtube and gotted me all fired  up to have a go at this painting lark and see what I can come up with as a backdrop for this little diorama ? I tried my hand with a couple of scrap bits of plywood to make tests. The photos are a bit bleached out but do give an idea as to what I will be working towards.
I painted them with acrylic. This is new to me as I have only limited expereance painting basic watercolors. I have a way to go but it's lots fun and I feel I'm on the right track.

So, thank you Bob (rip) for helping me gain the confidence to give it a go 

I always wanted a waterfall but couldn't find a way to incorporate one. So the final backscene will be my chance 🙂 

Please ignore the very unfinished scenary. The house needs snow on the roof, the trees need more snow, bushes need planting etc It's all mocked up help you get the idea and the paintings are not the final incarnation. They are pooped in place to get a feel.

 

  

 

 

[disturbman]

I feel like you do not need to do more and that the paintings are perfect as they are. Honestly, your skills - and that of some other posters here - are very intimidating 😉

[cteno4]

Tom,

 

excellent idea, his style matches perfectly with your diorama! maybe a future in painting backdrops professionally now?
 

I so loved the dude, I use to watch him in grad school, it was so calming and just so fun to watch ip his pictures take shape I like 30 min. I loved how he would just walk on that edge of just enough for the mind’s eye to then fill in all the detail. He was just a nice guy as well, no big ego or face in the camera, it was about trying to get everyone to just try some painting. I still watch him now and then on YouTube just for the fun of watching a picture be created.

 

kudos!

 

jeff

[Tom C]

@disturbman

Hey, don't feel intimidatied, if you knew how bad I am at other things in life you would feel much better. 😂 

The trick is to really look at what you do. Often ideas provent us from seeing what we are creating. Err, I think that applies to everything in life 👍

 

19 minutes ago, cteno4 said:

I loved how he would just walk on that edge of just enough for the mind’s eye to then fill in all the detail

Hi Jeff,

 

You are so totally on the money, as always.

 

Sometimes I feel I post things just to provoke your observational comments 👍👍👍 🙂

[disturbman]

@Tom C No worries, I know where my strengths and limits are. I also have learned how important it's to be able to delegate, find people better suited than yourself to do some work and not spend time learning (some) new skills or being overly perfectionist. I do find your paintings perfect and don't know how much better you want them to be. I would be totally happy with them 🙂

Edited August 14, 2021 by disturbman
too many "perfect"

[Tom C]

@disturbman I've over done the snow on the trees and the overal feel is too blue. I need some more color to pull them into the forground. I'm quite scared about commiting to painting out the inside of the cabinet so I will do a whole lot more practice paintings to build my confidence and get the feel of the mountains in Akita. These two will feed the bin.

I can't just stick a painting in there as I plan to have infinity curves in all planes and other such delights. 

[disturbman]

🙇‍♂️

[shadowtiger25]

On 8/14/2021 at 3:18 PM, Tom C said:

@disturbman I've over done the snow on the trees and the overal feel is too blue. I need some more color to pull them into the forground. I'm quite scared about commiting to painting out the inside of the cabinet so I will do a whole lot more practice paintings to build my confidence and get the feel of the mountains in Akita. These two will feed the bin.

I can't just stick a painting in there as I plan to have infinity curves in all planes and other such delights. 

I feel sad that's how you feel about that back drops as I think they fit perfectly!

[Tom C]

@shadowtiger25

Thank you for the compliment. I actually rather like my little paintings and was quite suprised just how good they were for a first attempt. But, there is much room for improvment and by pushing myself I can create something better*. I always aim for the stars but I'm never unhappy when I fail to get there. If I don't aim high, my modeling would stagnate and become unstimulating and therefore pointless to me. I have a somewhat over active thought prosess and pushing my modeling helps to burn some of that excess energy leaving me feeling calm. Sometimes it backfires and I get too sucked in and excited about a project that it over stimulates my brain and then I can't sleep. Like all things in life, it's about finding a happy balence 🙂

 

I am currently awaiting a little 'gizmo' to arrive from China, and when it does, hopefully you will see something rather fun appere on the mountaine 🤗

 

*I hope 😅

[Tom C]

Morning mist rolls down the clear water as a new day dawns.
The fisherman has been at his post beyond time.
A slight of eye his only movement. Well he knows, to ruffle a feater is a breakfast lost.
The koi, gaining confidence, moves out from under its rock of shelter.
A lightning stab of motion sees the cormorants belly full.

The monks often come and watch him to learn, not to fish, but to be patient, still, and wholly in the moment.

A lazy snowflake drifts down out of the clear sky. It dances and plays in the thermals before landing and becoming one with the river.
 

[cteno4]

Excellent cormorant Tom! Love the dry brushing, feels like feathers! I need to get back to some birds.

 

jeff

[Tom C]

10 hours ago, cteno4 said:

I need to get back to some birds.

I'm not totally sure which way to read this 🤣🤣 But, yes you do, the ones you created are wonderful and I would love to see you make more.

 

I was very tempted to carve a cormorant with spread wings but as they do this to dry themselves it would have been post fishing and I wanted pre fishing to go better with the story.

I have a note pad beside my bed and often, as I can't sleep (insomnia) I skribble notes and stories. I had no intention of modeling a cormorant but the other night the story came to me so then I just had to carve him.

N scale cormorants are quite small. 5mm to be precise !!

  

 

I carved him from a solid piece of plastic. Painting him was harder than carving him. At that small size it's very hard to keep the brush light and dry. The hardest part was the beak.

The river was made from Noch's hot melt water system. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ji2o8sjxLus&t=676s I like this method for small areas of water. I then used Modpodge to create the texture and added white highlights to the wave tops.

  

It was all rather tricky as the gorge is over 5" deep and less than 1" wide. I had to tape extentions to my paint brushes to get in there ! Hard to photograph too.

I had ordered a mist maker to create atmosphere but I couldn't get it to so you'll have to accept somewhat less misty morning photos.

[cteno4]

19 minutes ago, Tom C said:

I'm not totally sure which way to read this 🤣🤣 But, yes you do, the ones you created are wonderful and I would love to see you make more.

Just you inspired me to get back to the birds. I did my cranes quite a while back as a challenge to see what I could do in a couple hours of fiddling. I learned a lot, turned out some decent work, gave them all away, but I never got back to them!

 

jeff

[disturbman]

@Tom C😂 We can never be certain of the details, but Jeff always maintained he was happily married.

Edited August 19, 2021 by disturbman

[Kamome]

秋田山　Akita-yama or Akita-san

秋田の山 which means Akita-no-yama or mountain of Akita.

 

You would write as follows depending on what you decide:

 

秋　　　　　秋

田　　　　　田

山　　　　　の

　　　　　　山

 

You could look at putting the Akita Clan family crest (Kamon) on it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akita_clan

 

 

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Kamome

[Tom C]

@Kamome

Oh wow, I didn't know there was a Akita clan. That's cool, thank you big time 👍

 

I'm still very much undesided as to what will go on the inside on the doors. I'm open* to all sugestions. I'm looking towards something very Japanese but not too distracting ?

 

*Bad pun  👎

Edited August 19, 2021 by Tom C

[gavino200]

2 hours ago, disturbman said:

@Tom C😂 We can never be certain of the details, but Jeff always maintained he was happily married.

 

Some transatlantic translation: Birds = women 😉

[cteno4]

Doh! Guess I’ve not been spending enough time with British friends these days and have let my vocabulary slip and read right thru that! Let’s not talk of cigarettes and such (it was a hard challenge to break a few English friends in grad school of that term, especially in the 80s in sf Bay Area). I still get odd looks all the time as I use bloke, chap, and chappy all the time as I grew up around folks that used them a lot. But then again I still use dude a lot.

 

Funny aside my last trip to the Galapagos was with 10 friends and we had a wonderful galapaganian naturalist on the boat that was extremely handsome and long flowing hair and ironically named Fabio. He was going over the next mornings early snorkeling and shore hike and we all agreed we would get up early to beat the other boats to the best place. Fabio turned to my single friend Barbara and asked in perfect queens English (he went to British schools) “Barbara, what time would you like me to knock you up in the morning?!” Well barb made her living talking and being unflappable as a high end salesperson but I’ve never see her so flumixed and turned beet red while the rest of us proceeded to roll on the floor seeing her reaction. Poor Fabio was left standing there completely mystified as to what just happened. We explained the difference of knocking up a girl in us English vs British English.

 

aint language fun!? Makes my dyslexic brain hurt at times and can make me say some silly things and not even see it!

 

jeff

[Tom C]

I've always had a thing about soft shapes and curves. Way back when I was ninteen, having just started a painter/decorater business I was asked to build an infinity curve for a local photographer. It looked something like this:



This was to alow the photographer to take pictures of items for catalogs with blank backgrounds. These days photoshop has rendered this method obsolete. It turned out really well and when lit right there was no way you could see were the walls converged. I would spend ages looking into nothing. Simply mind blowing  I always thought how amazing it would be to have a house built this way, though it would probably drive you insane pretty fast not to mention the bangs to the head from walking into the walls  I did though build a nice soft curved hole into the first floor of my home to furfill my obsession with all things round:

 

However, the infinity curve stayed in my mind and now after all these years, I have found a place for it 

I present to you the infinity of space its self:

  

Now I can get on and paint the sky and all the snow draped mountains that will live in the background.

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