Civil war soldier aka lemonade pt 3

Previously on Cartoons2Carvings

So how can I proceed from here, I feel I have two or three options; 

1. I can carve away the cap and make him hat less, either bald or with hair
2. I can throw away the head and start over and chalk this up to experience, lesson learned
3. I can carve a new brim to match up and reinforce it somehow to the cap (least likely)

Well I can tell you even though #2 was one of my options this would not be the direction I would be going.  You see after I thought about it I realize that there is no lesson in throwing away a carving every time there was a mistake, a break or something didn't go as planned. The only lesson to be learned here is that as carvers we don’t make mistakes, we change direction, it’s that lemonade thing all over again.

After thinking about this for a bit and looking at my other carvings I realized that I haven’t carved a lot of hair lately, not on top of ones head that is. Most of my carvings in the past year, believe it or not, have had some sort of cap on. Wow, all of my carvings are wearing a cap of some sort so this made my choice even easier. Fixing the brim would have had some challenges but now I am almost excited to see if I can pull off the no cap carving. I don't believe this is a carving term but a "no cap carving" it is.

I started by simply removing the cap and the paint to see what I had left to work with, this was done the same way you clean up a rough-out before carving. Just take off a shallow layer to smooth things out and remove any markings. After this was completed I began to shape the hair area on top of the head to see if I would have him bald or would he have hair, I went with hair. There was enough wood left on top that I thought I could make a good head of hair for the old gentleman and that is what I did.   

So I was now happy with the hair and would refocus on finishing the body portion of the bust, but first I wanted to address the mouth area and the mustache, not many men I know have such a distinct perfect line there so before I move on there are one or two more modifications left to make. After all this is a caricature carving, exaggerated, whimsical, fun.