I’ve been spending a bit more time with metal artist Bruce Derrett, enjoying the challenge of getting high quality images of his creations. He’s kindly given me permission to show a few here. Let’s start with some bowls, the first a very simple but elegant model. Better for fruit than salads, I suspect.
The next combines metal and burr (the padlock still works):
Or, if you prefer slightly less figuring in your wood:
One of my favorites is the gardener:
Some of Bruce’s stuff is quite zany, for example this punk pig:
The climbers are fun too:
The larger works also have wonderful detail:
How on earth does he create these? My photographs don’t help much. Here he is about to start on a John Dory:
But what’s that bit for? I didn’t have a clue, but he spent a lot of time cleaning it up.
Can you see it in the finished piece?
I enjoy trying different backgrounds and treatments, for example this deep sea lantern fish:
For the photographers: some of these, such as the fish, are quite large. I’ve found I get maximum sharpness with my old 105 mm f:4 manual micro nikkor by using a fairly wide aperture (5.6 or 8), taking 10 or a dozen shots and using focus stacking to produce the final image. The best will end up as limited edition fine art prints, which is a lot of fun.
