Mountain range scene

I started this project with a 10" h X 24" wide piece of Oak.  From there and ran it through my planar and then sanded as well ensuring a smooth surface to work with.

It is always fun to see what can be created with acrylic paints!!! One of the best parts is acrylic dries pretty fast so you don't really need to slow down on the project progress.  I took some yellow and red acrylic and smeared it across the top half of the board working it to where there was more red further toward the top to depict the sunset….more yellows toward the middle of the board show the sun closer to the horizon.

Using the “Trees.xcs” file (attached) I cut out 6 trees on Basswood Underlayment.  I have found the underlayment style material is pretty quick and easy cutting on my D1 Pro.  When it was done I painted the trees in black acrylic.

This step I engrave the mountains on to the oak board.  I do have the D1 Pro Extension kit which when you use the “XCS” file, you will notice that in the settings.  If you don't have the extension kit, you will definitely have to shrink to fit your machine.

This is where acrylic paints are so awesome yet again because once you get a color down you can pretty much keep going…especially when you want a bit of overlap in the colors on something like this.  Once the colors were dry I set my sunset on the right hand side and did some shading to the mountains, added in a bit of white on the grass and detailed out the river.

When you glue the trees, the main thing is to have the larger trees as close to the bottom as possible which shows there are closer in the scene.  On the right side, I overlapped one tree on to 2 others which provides a 3D look to the trees.  I then shaded the trees like the background providing the sunset from the right side.

Finally….I cut the bear out of ¾" thick pine.  I wasn't sure how many passes were needed for the cut out so I set the X-tool at 10 passes (I believe I stopped after 7).  Once the bear was cut out, I painted it with black acrylic and glued it in place.  Once the acrylic dried I went over the bear with an ultra fine white paint marker (bought at Wal Mart) to define the bear.  I covered the project in clear lacquer to seal it.