Painted up

Well last night I painted my little Santa head so for the most part he is done. Now I did not carve in the eyes due to the size of the piece (I also need to improve my skills in this area) and I didn’t paint them in either. The previous Santa carving that I did was a free hand carving and with this since it had a more cartoon image I did a simplified carving for the eyes and painted it as if it were a cartoon on the page. I didn’t feel that style would match up with this carving so I left it alone.

Years ago I had seen some folk art carvings. With these they just carved out a socket section and painted in the eyes, white area then a dot, normally blue. Back then I copied this style since this was the style that inspired me to carve in the first place. Then about three years ago my boss that gave me two rough cut duck heads for Christmas and that got me temporarily back into carving again. The key event was when I purchased a magazine because it had an article about duck carving. It also had an article about a caricature carver with a wonderful spread on his work. On that day I realized if I was going to carve this was going to be the direction that I wanted to go in. This was either a historical day or a hysterical day, yet to be determined.

So this Santa doesn't have eyes carved or painted. Does this hurt the carving, and or is this a caricature carving no no? Your thoughts are welcome on this issue as always.