Pilot Santa w/paint

I got the pilot Santa painted and with an added cut or two, I think he is now done. This one really shows of my efforts from my water color days. The biggest focus for me was making the goggles believable. To do this I did some research and down loaded a few pictures of goggles and tried to use the images I found as the foundation for the carving, it didn't end there. I have said in the past that you can have a great carving and it will change to an OK carving once the paint is added. The opposite is true as well if the right amount of effort is not put into the carving. Paint will not change a whittling into a sculpture. This was my concern with the goggles and the way they would come across painted as well as carved. If I don’t represent them well it will take away from the whole carving. On a side note, while looking at the old photographs of pilots I noticed that the goggles were very rarely placed neatly on their heads like in the movies. Instead they were just kind of tossed onto the cap, usually sitting crooked, ready to fall off.

So to paint the goggles I started by painting a watered down bit of red right in the center. I followed this up with taking a less but still watered down blue and painted it into the edge of the glass then worked it in towards the red. I took a mildly wet brush and washed out some of the color both red and blue. Finally I painted a few faint white lines to give the look of refraction on the glass. The strap of the goggles I painted in an army style green as a way to work in the Army Air Corp patch on the tassel. Finally the leather flight cap I painted a darker brown for the indents in the cap to make sure it would stand out more. All in all I was happy with the goggles. I wonder if the carving itself suffered because of my obsession with making the goggles the center of my attention. This by the way is a bad thing and I try not to get too wrapped up into any one feature of any carving that the rest suffers. I am hopeful that this was not the case with my latest efforts.