rough cut mistakes

Well I found out some good information about rough cutting a pattern. I took two of my cartoons and basically made a silhouette out of the cartoon and cut that out, and this was where the problem began. You can see these in an old post “New stock, old cartoons”, where it shows the cartoons and the cut outs. The problem with this is that I rough cut way too much detail, which limits the detail I can carve into the character. I am finding that more is better in a rough cut. You can always cut away wood to change the detail but you can’t add wood back in to create detail. In the beginning my thought was cut out as much as you can so that you spend more time carving in detail and not just shaping the carving, wrong. I have found in the initial shaping you have as much impact, maybe more, than in the final detail cuts of the carving. Lesson learned………….

I did take one of the rough cuts shown on vacation with me and at the request of my youngest son am turning this into an old timey football player, leather helmet and all, hopefully. Here is how it is coming along so far. I also started another Santa ornament as well a pirate. This was my first pirate and I already have plans to try another with better direction. The one shown carved was me sitting at the table and cutting away with no true concept to work from. Sometimes this can work and then again, well you know, sooner or later we all throw a carving or two away for one reason or another. Usually for me it is from one of two things; 1^st when carving I get impatient and try to force a cut which usually forces a big chunk of wood to break off and we are done. 2^nd I just simply don’t like the way it comes out and am extremely unhappy with my efforts and simply throw in the towel and start over. Carving is teaching me much more than just learning to recognize the grain of the wood and what tool can carve what section. But that is for another time and another posting because for this post I am done…………….