same carving differant results

I have done a few more Santa carvings trying to see how I can play around with proportions and expression to get a result I am happy with. One or two of these I really exaggerate the proportions. Sometimes what looks bad to me looks fine to others, you be the judge.

It is funny how they transform for me once the paint is applied. I carved it, I have seen it all along the process, but many times it changes as the color is added. This happens on paper as a cartoon goes from a pencil sketch to a water color or color pencil illustration. I think you can see the cartoonist in me with my carvings. 

In living color

Here are the three carvings after being painted. I had asked my boys what color I should paint the cap of the third Santa. It was my older son’s suggestion, actually more a joke to paint him with a purple cap. As you see I did it and was very happy with the result. Out of the three this is my youngest son’s favorite even though he still thinks his cap should have been red.

On a side note when I was at the craft store looking for paint for the faces it was my younger son who picked coral. This color was a little lighter than I thought I might like but thought with a touch of brown it would work pretty well. On the purple cap gentleman I used the coral by itself (as suggested by my son) with a little extra color added to the nose and cheeks and am happy the way it turned out.

So back to the carvings; by the expression of purple Santa, he seems confused or bothered by something. Maybe he doesn't like the color of the cap either. I like playing with the expressions of the carvings. This adds some fun to the character and gives me a variety to look at as I carve multiple roughouts. Out of the three, his proportions are the more pleasing for me and I will stick with similar proportions in future carving. As for the purple we will see, maybe other colors will be tested, you just never know. 

Santa progress

 So I took my Santa roughouts template and 1 ½” by 1 ½” by 12” block of bass wood and cut it up into roughouts. I have set it in my sights to carve all the roughouts but to play with the style in which they are carved. While doing this I am also experimenting with the gouges that I now own to become more familiar with the way to utilize them in my carvings. So far I am happy with the results and see an improvement in my carvings overall. I still have areas that I need to work on and will be moving on to those after this portion is done but for now I see progress and that is all I can hope for. I have been busy painting these as well and will share those shortly.

a rough roughout

I haven’t posted in awhile with the holiday and all. I did have a small project I recently got done and it seems to be working out for me quite well. You see I don’t have a machine to do roughouts nor do I have the budget to buy roughouts every time I want to do a carving so I got inventive, of sorts. I wanted to carve some Santa carvings on a piece of 1 ½” by 1 ½” by 4” corner cut but once I got the wood in half how would I cut out the pattern. 

So this is what I have done. I took a flat piece of 2” wood and placed the pattern on that. 

From there I used my v-gouge and cut a v right down the center of the wood. I then turned the piece over and placed the outline of the carving on that took it to my scroll saw and cut away. I then took a few pieces of scrap wood and made an “L” shaped piece that I place my corner cut on. 

Then on top of that I place my silhouette with the v cut on the bottom and with a pencil in a slight angle out from the wood transfer my pattern onto the corner cut and to the scroll saw we go. Now this is not a perfect solution but it works quite well for what I am trying to accomplish.

This takes me to my next task which is trying to improve on the style of my carvings, which has been made easier by an extremely generous friend. Knowing the small assortment of tools I had to work with I was given an extremely nice supply of knives and gouges for my very own. I can't thank this person enough it has opened my eyes to what a real carving knife can do. I know many people are in the same position I am with raising a family in today's economy. So many of us getting by using X-acto knives or pocket knives. My advice is simple, buy yourself at least one good carving knife. If possible an inexpensive set of gouges. After using the knives I received I came to realize how hard I was working just to make a basic cut. The other issue, the clean cuts you can make with a proper knife that you can't with improper tools.

I use Amazon for a lot of my purchases like this. The nice thing is you can check out the reviews to get an idea of the quality. Worth checking them out and see what is available. One of the basic chisels sets I found you can look at in the carousel provided on the left of this blog.

As I have said a number of times, research it out and if possible get into a carving group. You learn so much and nothing like hands on training and many carving magazines have a list of carving groups in your area. It is worth checking into.

New stock, old cartoons

Well now that I have some new stock to carve what am I going to do about it? That's easy, I pulled out my folder of some of my oldest cartoons and I found a few characters that I thought might be fun to carve. Since I have 1 ½” and 2” wood I thought I would start with the 2” and carve that first. I have rough cut two of the three and after roughing it out it seemed 2” was too wide. I decided to cut it down and this will give me a skinny practice piece as well a thicker piece of both characters. Maybe after I carve the skinny rough out the thicker one will seem to give me so much more to carve, maybe not. In the not so distant future I will carve a piece from a magazine or book and then I will carve from an instructional DVD. I want to compare and see which way works best for me when it comes to learning new procedures in carving. I have noticed I am lazy and don't take the time to read the article like I should. How do you learn best and what is your main resource? If anyone has any to share let me know.