ornaments, really?

Yes, ornaments, I spent the last two nights dusting off the carving tools and carved two ornaments. I haven't carved in a bit as I usually take some time off after the holidays and let the tools cool down. These two guys have something similar to most my carvings but also have something that is not that similar to my carvings of late. As you see the two carvings are Santa ornaments which is not unusual for me to carve though usually not at this time of the year. What is unusual is these two are carved in bass wood opposed to butternut. This past year the majority of my ornaments have been done in butternut wood and honestly will probably continue to be. I get a wonderful antique look for my ornaments with this wood with its strong and expressive grain. Yet this year I will be carving more bass wood or at least at present time this is what I believe to be my goal, but things can change so don't hold me to this.

 The first of the two is a squinting happy Santa with as you see a big smile on his face. One thing I do is to keep very simple lines when it comes to the teeth, for my ornaments there are times when less is more. I could carve out each tooth but sometimes this can make the carving seem busy. For most if they see a carving with a mouth wide open and a large white area they simply accept this as the characters teeth, not needing to see every one of them carved in detail.

The second is a Santa trying to catch a snowflake on his tongue. I have penciled in were the eyeballs may be painted but may change this once the paints are out. I have considered having them either looking up more as if to be trying to find the perfect snowflake or having them looking down at his nose, possibly verifying that what he caught was in actuality a snowflake. Either will help with the telling of the story and this is what we try to do with each carving, convey an expression that your mind can attach a story line to. This is what after all the faces I have carved continues to make carving faces a joy and challenge.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless" 

roughouts ready

Before I forget to mention this Mark Akers now has his roughouts ready for the Santa ornament he carved this past year. It is a beautiful ornament and the roughouts look great and should make a fun project for carvers of all levels, glasses not included =].

So if you are looking for a fun and unique roughout, this is it.

http://www.carvingsbymarkakers.com/contact.html

as always, 

Good night and may God bless 

more questions than answers

Have you ever started a project and halfway into it you realized you had more questions than answers? That seems to be the case for me at this stage, but remember; 

It's supposed to be hard. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The "hard" is what makes it great.

With the new book idea I am trying to figure out how I want to proceed but more importantly, what is the best way to proceed. Here is the dilemma, I am looking at publishing my book through Amazon and with this I need to make the decision as to what readers will be used to view my book. You see I don't know if there are more readers that handle color nowadays or if the majority still do b&w only. For my cartoons I need to do them in one of three ways; pencils sketch, pen n ink, full color probably water color.  I think any of the three choices would look good but I lean towards either the pencil sketches or the water color illustrations. If I go the direction of color then I could always have the first portion of the book the water color illustrations and then in the back of the book let folks see the original cartoon sketch.

One thing that has always been the case and the motivation for this book is that people will look at the cartoons and give me their version of what they think the object would be saying. I have always loved the way the people have become part of the cartoon and hope I can set up the book that this continues to be the case. As I am writing this, on the radio is Martina McBride's "Anyway", wow what a reminder that no matter how this plays out I need to do this just to be able to say I did.

You can chase a dream

That seems so out of reach
And you know it might not never come your way
Dream it anyway

God is great
But sometimes life ain't good
And when I pray
It don't always turn out like I think it should
But I do it anyway
I do it anyway

Martina McBride "Anyway"

 

as always, 

Good night and may God bless

What does it mean to fail? Does anyone enjoy failure? More importantly is the thought of possible failure overwhelming to you.

For many people it is, to many people the thought of failure makes people not even try which in the end is a failure in itself. Did you know that the great Babe Ruth for 29 years held the record for strike outs in his career, he held that record until his record was broken by Mickey Mantle. These guys knew if you are going to swing for the fences you have to be willing to strike out. More importantly they believed they could swing for the fences. I think there are two types of doubters, the ones that have a fear of failure and the other are the ones that can't fathom the idea that they could actually come out on top.

I know right give, me some coffee, this is way too much to think about this early in the morning.

Many of you folks may remember before carving I was busy cartooning. You may also remember back on the 27th of September I had shared that I was working out some patterns for a carving friend. Well from this it has been suggested that I make a book of patterns. A book, that sounds vaguely familiar, oh that's right that book. Yes a year or so ago I had looked into doing a coffee table book of my one liner cartoons. No it never came about, I wasn't ready to swing for the fences and now another book idea is out there, what to do what to do. Well the only thing to do is make a few books. I will still carve some and share them here but I will be busy in the not so distant future setting up some cartoons for a coffee table book as well as designing some cartoons for patterns to carve from. I will welcome prayers for my new venture and will post any and all updates as I progress. in between all this I will share any and all new carvings as I complete them.

as always, 

"Good night and may God bless"

Playing around with a few carvings in the last days of 2015. The first one is an extremely small piece of wood just to see if I could pull that off. I may carve a few more of these but not sure if I would ever put any in my shop or even paint them for that matter but as I say it was just to see if I could and did I like carving that size.

I also pulled out some bass wood and carved a pilot Santa in bass wood, as many may know I have concentrated a lot of my time carving butternut wood as I have a fondness for the way it carves and also for the wonderful grain in the wood. I did hit a snag in that area though.

Butternut has a wonderful grain but when I was first introduced to this wood I read that this is not a good wood to paint as the paint could bleed through the grain. I had by chance begun to put a finish onto the wood to seal the grain to allow me to paint my carvings but this caused its own problem. When you seal the wood the paint can't be absorbed into the wood itself and when applying a sealant over the finished piece you can have some paint chip off. This makes the final sealant stage very tedious. I have begun the research process for this area of concern to see if I can find a modification that will allow me to continue to paint my carvings done in butternut. Until then I will continue the way I work now, knowing that I have to be cautious in the final sealant coating.

The final carving I did was a fun one for me. With this one Santa's cap has gotten twisted up in his beard and the two have begun to wrap around him. This one I think will be wonderful after painting and will give a bit of a candy cane effect as the red of his cap and the white of the beard twist around Santa.

It has been a full year and as we lay this one to rest and prepare for the new year to come we look ahead with excitement and wonder for what God has laid out for us. As a wise man once told me years ago, "as long as I am casting a shadow life is good and I will not worry, because we don't know what the future holds, but we know Who holds the key"

I Corinthians 2:9

as always, 

Good night and may God bless