power to the carving the flip side

Well this morning and then finishing this afternoon I carved the flip side of my little power carving. I am really having fun with this new way to carve and so far so good, no statues of David quality carving but hey I will never reach that level, I just won't but then again growing up my favorite artist was Michelangelo. My favorite of all time was the la pieta, did you know this was the only one Michelangelo ever signed, years later he regretted his outburst of pride and swore never to sign another work of his hands.  

So now this one is complete, I had carved the face this morning but wanted to tweak a place or two and then I wanted to add something that would make it obvious that I had carved it, yeah he now has a candle on his head. It's my thing what can I say.

And no I didn't sign this one either................

as always happy trails

and

Carpe diem 4 carving

power to the carving

I had recently bought some pine knot because I had really liked the look of this wood so on a whim I bought some from the tree wiz. What I got was awesome but word of advice never purchase things on a whim. It became extremely evident that these are extremely hard and would be best to use power tools to carve them, best for the life of my carving tools that is. But all was not lost because I own a Dremel, if we are being honest I own three, so I have a tool that with the right bits can be utilized to carve these knots. I got a set of 4 bits for my Dremel and now I am in business, at least I have enough to get my feet wet and try my hand at this.

The day bits arrived my first impression was they are very cool. I just had to try them out and when I did wow. I love that you get the aroma of the wood while working. If you have ever cut a pine tree with a chain saw you know the aroma.  It took me a few minutes to get acclimated to the rotation aspect of using these but in the end I thought I was getting the feel for them. I found you can put some pressure and get a deep cut or put light pressure and get more of a detailed cut. I can see why people like these and why they love carving the knots in general even more now. I was advised to use two hands when carving for control, but for the first one I was holding a little piece in my hand using a garden stake to hold my Dremel. At times I would use my thumb to steady the tool and after about 40 minutes I had my first test carving done. I will flip this one over and carve it again but the top will become the bottom on the other side just to experiment some more. So for my first attempt I liked the end result and even more I liked the experience, I will always carve with my knives and basswood but I will also spend time carving pine knots as well. I bought my knots from the tree wiz from his Etsy page, The Tree Wizard Shop, check him out,

 as always happy trails

and

Carpe diem 4 carving 
 
 
 

candle top carving

Well this has been an interesting journey to get to this point, I carved an ornament and was fairly happy with it, and then it broke. Carved the design idea a second time, no this one didn’t break, I finished it and painted it. At this stage I am pretty happy with the design and the carving and then I thought and this always gets me either in trouble or creates more work for me, I thought really what I should have done with the design was………. and so I carved a third one. Maybe this is as the song says “too much time on my hands” so here they are; 

1. far right (which ended up broken) 
2. The one in the middle is the second carving before paint  
3. The second carving completed, paint and all

 

The next three images are of the new carving so without further a due here is “night flight”. This is an old pilot with the old timey goggles and flight cap and for some reason he has a candle on his head. Obviously the vintage plane he flies doesn’t have illuminated gauges. He has improvised his own way of illuminating everything and now his hands are free to handle the stick and other controls while in flight.

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent..."

 

Calvin Coolidge

 

I had a friend, Susan Alexander, share this with me recently. I think she noticed I was letting my mind take over and discourage my plans and she would be right. My wife and sister had said the same thing in a different way but it's funny, we get so used to our family believing in us that sometimes we think of it as blind loyalty and maybe it is. Most of the time isn't the point that we just need to try, understanding that if we give it our best and we fail those that love us will be there, just as they were the day before.

 

Remember, you have to look for a four leaf clover to find one, so was it really luck or persistence?

 

Don't take the support from friends and love ones for granted. Chase your dreams and give it your best as a way to acknowledge the love and support you are given. No matter why you try, always remember the quote above because;

 

 “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence." 

as always,

 

Carpe diem........you fill in the rest

tbt on friday déjà vu

Well yes it is Friday again and I almost forgot TBT, but as I remembered last night my head was too close to hitting the pillow so here we are, again. It has been a fun and busy week; I have been busy planning out my game plan for the next few months. A few things got decided, some wood carving based some cartoon based, and since this blog is about the 2 of them, this is the game plan that I will try to set up a schedule for and hopefully implement in the next few days to weeks.  

Starting with the cartoon portion of my world I will get back to planning out and preparing art work for the making of my book for Amazon. It will be classified as a picture book since most of the pages will have one liner cartoons on them. I will be gathering my cartoons together and researching the format as I redo each cartoon in water color. I think for folks that have a version of kindle that displays color this will make for a wonderful display and for those that don’t I believe the images will still have a pleasant display as well. I still have numerous issues and topics to decide on this but that’s ok I can think these through as I am water coloring all the images. More on this later………

As far as carving I will begin the process of carving one or two requested pieces and also carving some new pieces for my Etsy shop for the holiday season. I also will enter the CCA again this year, many may remember that last year I took a beating but after analyzing what I entered last year I believe I know where I went wrong with my entries and have a better game plan this year. One of my favorite carvings was sent out to Nebraska as a gift to my uncle but it is coming back east for a visit so it can be entered in this year’s competition. I have one or two more that I will enter and will ship them out early, hopefully saving a bit on the cost of shipping.

I will in the next few days begin to finalize and set in place a realistic schedule to get many of these things accomplished while still keeping up with my other obligations. But life is good and God has blessed me with these gifts so it is time to see how far I can go with them. This is not my ego talking but it is in my opinion that any gifts you have whether carving, cartooning or any other gifts in the form of some talent are exactly that, gifts from God. Just as all parents love seeing the joy on the faces of their children on Christmas morning, so does our Heavenly Father enjoy these same expressions of joy on the faces of His children, and wants to see these gifts used, if only to bring joy to those around us.



So with no further ado, let me present TBT, on Friday……………