I shaded yesterday’s ring of leaves. It was alright I guess. Still couldn’t figure out how to take a nice picture of my engraving. Probably need a ring of light or something to properly illuminate the work.

Next, I worked on another leafy design which is basically a motif repeating itself 3 times in a circle. Not too complex so it didn’t take up too much time. The first attempt at shading didn’t work out too well. I was cutting too closely, thus ended up with an area which is too heavily shaded. You can see that mistake on the third picture below (the biggest leaf located at 2 o’clock).

Another design from the book of Japanese family crests (I wonder if these are real family crests?). Lotus at the bottom with two “wings” of leaves. One mistake I made is with the circle; you can see one section on the right side of the circle is thinner than the rest. Perfect circles and consistent straight lines are hard!

I will leave the shading for tomorrow.