Have you ever heard the phrase "an instructional manual would have been helpful"? This could or should be the words I live by. Lately I have been busy with cartooning, I have been working on some patterns for a carving friend. I even pulled out the water color pencils just cause I can. You who do your own patterns know all you need is a front and side view. Sometimes depending on the size or detail you can get away with just the side view. Here is where the rub comes in.

In cartooning it is suggested that you should show movement even with something as simple as a coffee mug. In addition a straight view, either front or a side is usually not as preferred opposed to the 3/4 view. I had the opportunity to have a person in the publishing industry view some samples of mine years ago. His response was "wrong view for the viewer and there is no movement". Yeah, you tend to remember these things. This was in the 90's and I have made some modifications since then. I also have moved on from doing mostly cartooning to doing more carving, thus you and I are both here. Let me illustrate. Even though the goose is a better angle he would be considered stiff with no movement, while the coffee mug has some movement and expression. The man on the park bench is a simple side view limiting the amount of detail in the character. Let me say this lest I forget, I have always drawn for the pleasure of drawing and none of the cartoons you see would I ever discard. I loved drawing them and I still find pleasure in them
today.

But now we stand at present day and I have to go back to the 90's and begin doing side and front view. They also need to resemble each other. This is a priority in a carving pattern. So I am an old dog once again learning new tricks. Any talents I may have I have learned by trial and error. I have no training per say so I am not as diverse as I would like to be in certain areas. None the less this is where we are and what I have on my plate, and yeah, to a certain degree I love the new challenge.

 Well today I am sharing my pilot Santa ornament. I had done a few of these in the past but they all sold out at a craft show and I never posted any in my shop so this year I wanted to make sure I got a few done for my shop.

I have always had a fascination with the biplane era and always dreamed of flying one. Then in the beginning of our marriage we went down to a fly in for r/c planes and when everyone was done flying their planes and gotten something to eat a friend and co-worker of my wife's ask if we wanted to see his Stearman. Not knowing planes like my wife and the rest of the gang I thought we were going to see a basic plane.

We went over to the hanger and the hanger door began to be raised. As I gradually caught sight of the wheels my excitement began to rise. As the door raised I saw some of the wheel and then the planes legs of the landing gear then by the time the body started to come into view so did the lower wing. Yeah it was a biplane, a bright yellow Stearman biplane. Just being next to one was exciting enough but then with a bit of a grin, the owner of the plane Jeff said "Richard grab a wing and help me pull her out". Long story short before our time was over we all got a short ride up in the heavens in this wonderful open cockpit biplane. I now had firsthand knowledge of what fueled the fires for the young pilots back when aviation was in still young. It was breathtaking, truly breathtaking.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"

Three of the ornaments recently carved, painted and sealant applied. These are carved in butternut wood and I am playing around with the look of the wood mixed with the way I apply the paint to give these a nice antique look. I really like this wood for the grain, the only problem is I at times struggle when carving bass wood after carving a few in butternut. The two woods in many ways need a different approach on how to carve certain areas. The bass wood being softer needs more finesse while the butternut I can be a tad more aggressive with my technique. I will in the future carve a grouping of bass wood and then transition to the butternut but going butternut, bass wood then butternut may not work for me. Every carver is different in this regard, this is just the approach I may try and see if it has any impact on my carving.

 

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"

holiday carvings pt 2

Back on the 9th of August I posted some of my holiday carvings. Today I will share one that all painted up, the Christmas candle. The carving before paint was applied didn't seem to emit Christmas cheer; luckily the painting process has softened his facial expression a bit. I painted his eyes brown and found a wonderful way of doing this. I paint the area in with brown the come back with a clean but wet brush and begin to remove some of the paint leaving of course a dark line on the outer portion of the pupil. Then I come back and place a brown dot in the middle and add the white dot as well. I will continue to play around with this idea as it seems to give a more realistic look of an eye.



The flame of the candle was simply painting this section yellow and then coming back with a watered down red that I painted from the lower portion of the flame up towards the tip of the flame. With my painting I am reaching into what I have learned from using water color and also trying to not over think the process.

Overall I am happy with him and may carve another one or so for the upcoming Christmas season. If I do another one I will expand his beard further down the candle.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"

new season new ornaments

 Well the contest is over though the excitement is still there but now I need to get focused. A new season is upon us and there are new ornaments to carve, paint and post in the shop. I am hoping to have a wide variety of faces and looks this year. After all the upcoming season is a season of joy and celebration. I also will experiment with a few ornaments inspired by the soldier bust I carved but more on that in future postings. For now I will continue to carve and then put the knives off to the side for a day or so and paint some then back to carving. I will be chancing my process in painting the ornaments as well but this to will be in a future post, after all I need to give you a reason to stop back by.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"

call me corny but every time I type this in my mind I hear Red Skelton in his humble manner