My own design

Now I will be the first to admit that I can over think the simplest of things. For the longest time I really battled with the idea of converting a drawing or cartoon to a rough cut for carving. I keep wondering what the process in doing this correctly is.  I had never found a single article that addressed this issue, and wondered why it was such an elusive topic for carvers.  

So while waiting for the answer to my question and to get some practice at carving from a rough cut I opened my summer addition of Carving Magazine. There are many wonderful magazines out there but for my money this is definitely one worth the money, no matter what level of a carver you are. From that I carved my version of the Helvie knife hill billy. This was carved for the article by Mark Akers. His is really a nice carving handle that he has made for Helvie knives. My attempt was not on a knife handle and probably a little larger than his knife handle but was a fun assignment none the less. In the article there is great information on how to carve out the beard and what gouges he prefers. Unfortunately for me the gouges used in the article are not in my arsenal so I had to work with what I had on hand. Which in turn means my hair and beard do not look as good as the one in the article. In the end I was happy with the end result minus the painting (still need to challenge myself in this arena). 

I after completing the hill billy I decided to try my hand at one of my cartoons, the one in the previous blog post. You can get an idea of the size based on the pencil sharpener it rest on. I need to work on carving eyes but other than that I was very content with the way this one came out. The biggest obstacle was the actual rough cut, the pattern was obvious and this alone made this a success. For those of you who don’t over think things this might not make sense but for those that do like me the light finally came on. I will be applying paint in the next day or two and will post it when it is complete. One thing I take away from both carvings is that it is how you interpret the rough cut not how you layout the pattern for rough cut.

For the two of you who read this blog questions and comments are always welcome yet not required. Feel free to contact me any time.