I'm going to do another carving, but this time it will be of a seastar that we collected somewhere along the line. It will be, of course, mounted on a painted plaque, and the seastar gilded. My question is: should the display side(facing out) be of the top or bottom of the seastar?

If you display it top out, will you carve the underside?

Lew, yes, I'll do the underside first and then the top. I'm not sure of how to attach it to the plaque but I'll figure it out.

It would be cool if the plaque was/had a mirror. The carving could be mounted with clear plastic(?) standoffs above the mirror and the viewer could see both sides when viewed at an aangle.

Or carve two of them to be displayed together in one frame, either horizontal or vertically.

But I do like Lew's idea too...

19 hours ago, lew said:

It would be cool if the plaque was/had a mirror. The carving could be mounted with clear plastic(?) standoffs above the mirror and the viewer could see both sides when viewed at an aangle.

Lew, not a bad idea but I cringe when I think about drilling into glass and trying to make/mount the supports for the seastar.

1 hour ago, Cal said:

Or carve two of them to be displayed together in one frame, either horizontal or vertically.

But I do like Lew's idea too...

Cal, this is actually something that I thought about yesterday, when starting the carving. It shouldn't take too much more work to produce another seastar and mount them side-by-side. The plaque would then be rectangular and 22" X 12 1/2". Thanks.

Finally able to get some carving done. I've decided to carve two of these seastars and display both a dorsal and ventral view on the same plaque. I'll select the best carved sides to display when I'm done. Here's the ventral side completed. I've left 3 small flat spots so that I can glue them to the board before starting the dorsal side.

Cool!!!

AWESOME!!!

That's a heck of a start Frederick

Here's one of the two seastars completed. You can see the attachment points(glued) used for carving the dorsal side. When both are completed, I'll remove those points on the ventral display side.

Gonna be difficult to realize they are not real 

That is so life like. Great job

Here's the ventral side of my second seastar copy. Now to do the dorsal side and select which side to display on the plaque.

Both are now finished. Now, to select the sides for display and to "finish carve the attachment points" for the ventral view.

The magic is about to begin(painting/gilding).

Really looking forward to seeing that!

I wonder what it would look like if you put some stain on a wood scrap that has the same texture, same indentations too.  Make it slightly darker than the body so as to show more dimension. Wipe the stain off immediately and that should leave some in the recesses. Then finish the scrap piece exactly as you normally do. All you have to lose is some time, but you may come up something special.

I am thinly maybe dry brush but I am sure not experienced there