try try again day two

Well I haven’t dropped it yet so I might as well begin carving the body, as I said I wanted to carve it as a great coat. I am not saying that my carving will be better than good; this is what the coats were referred to as, a “great coat”. There are many different versions of the coat so I grabbed a few pictures off of the internet for basic reference to flow and depth and began to carve. I am happy with the outcome though next time I may give more length to the body or maybe not do the cut out forming the base to give more definition to the coat itself. I did carve a grove in the shoulder to give a feel of layers, once it is painted I will get a better feel if this helped, hurt or had no impact. Here it is for now will be painting soon, so more to come. 

try try again............. I guess

Well I have to say I don’t like defeat, nobody does, and though the civil war soldier minus the cap came out well in the end I was still not happy that it broke in the first place. This is the second one I have carved just to have it break, so try, try again. That is exactly what I have done. I started a new soldier and hopefully I can make it all the way to the end of the process (and beyond) without dropping, breaking, or anything along those lines. As always I carve the head first and then afterwards I match the body to the head. I have always thought of carving the soldiers coat that has the layer over the shoulders and might attempt that with this carving. Here is the progress thus far, wish me luck.

civil war soldier aka lemonade fini

As I said I wanted to make a few changes to the mouth and mustache line as well to the chin. Wanted a little more depth to these areas overall and wanted better detail to the mustache. It didn't look bad before but I think it looks much better now.

After finishing that up I  moved on to the painting of the body portion of the bust. in short, the uniform. I did some research and found that the Confederate officers had to supply their own uniforms so from what I understand from this, if they wished they could add items to the uniform to add their own style to the uniform. Kind of takes away from the whole "uniform" concept but the times being what they were. I decided that this gentleman being an officer was a bit on the showy side so he added a few items to make his uniform stand out. I didn't model him after any one person so his uniform is a simple design of bits and pieces I found on images of officers for the confederacy.

To complete the base design I tried to give it the look that the wood had been twisted like a piece of taffy. To highlight this I added color coming down from the uniform and a gold stripe as well. As I did with the barnstormer I used the little pad on my Dremel to soften the effects of the finish so the face wouldn't have a wet look but still have the protective qualities for the wood and paint. You can see in the last two pictures there is less shine on his face. On a side note I made his part go from left to right, which is usually not the way someone parts their hair. Most peoples part goes from right to left.........oops

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.

civil war soldier aka lemonade pt 2

Previously on Cartoons2Carvings

I got the carving done the evening before and by morning and at the point of this photo I would have to say, I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing. Things can and would change in an instant…………..

Yeah they changed alright, you see the table, floor or something shook and the head toppled down and a piece of the brim shot across the room only to be found four hours later behind the couch by my youngest son. Besides the few hours that I wondered what happened to the broken piece, this in itself would be a mild set back. After all every good carver has wood glue at the ready. So as any level headed carver would do I simply grabbed my wood glue and the broken piece and Voila!, finito, problem solved. So I thought.

I worked on carving the body portion of the bust for a few hours. Being happy with my progress, I began to paint the head. This is where the earlier issue reared its ugly head. I had the face painted and most of the cap when I proceeded to paint the brim. There was a line, a fault line showing through the paint. Right where the break occurred. After a bit of time goes by and numerous attempts to get paint to cover the area I put the carving down and headed off to bed. 

The next morning I get up, head out to the living room/workshop. There I see a now distinct gap between the cap and the brim where it had broke. I wondered how it was holding on. On my first and hopefully last side note of today, I paint a watered down color to allow the wood grain to show through, this would be to the caps down fall. After all, the carving is wood and wood and water don’t always do well together, at least not this time. So now I have a decision to make because the broken portion of the brim is no longer lining up with the rest of the cap and as you see there is not enough of the brim now on the cap to work for the carving. 

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)

to be continued 

(hey you came back for this one)