Patterns - a piece of advice for beginners

[carver33]

I haven't seen this discussed in the recent past and thought it might be worth commenting on for new carvers. I ran into this issue last night with two separate patterns (one of them, my own) : (, as well as having run into it in the past.

Wood carving patterns are often hand drawn and the two views (typically front and side) may not exactly coincide. Before cutting both views, check the patterns to be sure that both views represent the same thing.

Examples - I have a small bunny caricature pattern where the feet in the side view are much smaller than those in the front view. If I had cut close to the feet from the side view, they would have been too small. Second - I modified a cowboy pattern with his right hand in front. I did a left side view and concentrated on the left hand, neglecting to show the right hand in that view.

These are only a couple of examples, and the advice is to carefully look over all views of a pattern and attempt to reconcile them before cutting your outlines.

Hope this helps.

[Tom Ellis]

Good advice Bill,
This is especially true of the new Caricature Carvers book. Some of the patterns are exactly on front and side, but some of them are done at a slight angle on one of the views, and it really throws you off if you try to cut out a pattern from them.
Tom

[Gulf Coast Handyman]

Good advice Bill, thanks for sharing.

Dave

[Tim Marton]

I am a beginner and have only done one original carving. I drew the front view on graph paper and the side view alongside it. I used the lines on the graph paper to make sure the front and side views lined up. Seems if you drew the front view from a pattern with a twisted side view you could line the two views up that way to make sure they coincide. At lest it worked for me.

[Tom Ellis]

The problem is Tim, that you have to be able to get the arm, or leg, or whatever in the right position to have the pattern correct. Even though you can visually see all of the parts, they just end up in the wrong place, or get cut off altogether with the angle being wrong. It helps to have them at 90 degrees from each other, then you are set go saw.

Have fun. Tom

[Thomp]

maybe a bit of help or just to confuse you...
find if a picture of what you want to carve, if it is quartered away, you know its suppose to be the same on each side, so cut out the outline of the image find the side of the image that you like, trace it on paper, then flip the image left to right, trace it for the other side, level off things like the heels, shoulders and do a rough cut out,

use the wood block and draw in the features for the side view, insure alignment of things like eye nose chin belly elbow butt knee and feet is same from front to side view and carve on,
with only the front sawed out...
it works, if you keep a eye on the depth of excavation of scrap wood

iE; dont carve the neck without considering the shoulder position, and so on.
hope you got my meaning...