The sketching begins!

Potential customers are always surprised that creating the sketch for a lovespoon design takes as much time and effort as it does. As much as I wish I could just dip a bucket into a never-end well of ideas and pull out a finished drawing whenever I felt like it, it rarely happens that way. In fact coming up with the initial design spark or theme concept is the hardest part of the whole process. Generally, I count on a good third of the total time involved in the creation of a lovespoon to be taken up in design work.

Which is why, when Laura and I began trading some ideas via email to see if we could come up with a start concept, I figured it would be quite a while before anything much started to come together. Sure, we did have a couple of initial ideas such as our plan to work with the idea of '2' and the idea of incorporating symbols of both Wales and America, but scant else after that! So it was a complete surprise and shock when after only an hour or two this lovely sketch appeared in my inbox.


Laura had been working on an idea for a spoon with two layers and had mailed the sketch over to illustrate some of the descriptions she had mentioned during the emails. The design as shown, is a way to mix organic and traditional designs while using the double layers to highlight the '2' idea. Talk about a great start to the project! A lot of guys would be delighted to have this as a working drawing, let alone having it as a 'rough sketch'. I can already see a couple of potential ideas lurking in there and feel like we've rocketed over the hard part already!
- Dave




When Dave first asked me to join him for this project, I was very excited, so my mind was flooded with thoughts, but very disorganized. How would I make some sense of this chaos, and merge these ideas with Dave's? How does he approach coming up with a theme, or what elements to include, or what message to convey? Then, Dave suggested "two" as a theme, which made a great basis, and helped give some direction to the chaos in my head. So - Here I am, getting to work on a spoon with this carver whom I admire so much - naturally, I hope to learn from him, and hopefully even try something a little ambitious. I am so excited, I probably inundated him with thoughts and questions. But then, we started discussing ideas over email, and before I knew it, some ideas were easier drawn than described, so I sent a sketch over to Dave. It was especially to show him the 2-layer "bridge" idea I'd had on a recent design, but I got carried away and drew the rest of a spoon, too - trying to illustrate a few other ideas we had mentioned. I didn't intend for it to be a starting point, but once Dave suggested it, I realized I liked it, too. So there we were! This collaberation thing seems to be going well!

We had talked about playing on our strengths - as far as I can tell, everything is Dave's strength, and I suppose some of mine will reveal themselves. For instance, it seems I may be good for general shapes or concepts. Someone once asked me which I liked better: designing spoons, or carving them. I don't remember if I was ever able to come up with an answer. But, I do know that I struggle when I get into the details, so I'm hoping Dave doesn't. I am excited to see what happens next!!
- Laura