[Smee]

You can't pick at it like a new carver does. Just remember that these were originally made for sale and time is money. Just like the misha bear toys. These people have made so many of these, they can do it in their sleep.
I asked Harley R. one time" How long does it take to make a carving?" "He said "Down't know. Maybe an hour or two." So he started one while we continued to talk. He finished it in about 15 - 20 minutes!

[Thomp]

Yeah,
right,
15 or 20 minuets, ,
if i tried that i would have to pre unwrap a box of band aids,
and make a place for them sticky side up on the desktop..

i might get one outlined before i made a Boo-boo! or bo-bo...!

but i could see where in the right conditions where one of these would be carved faster than 11 hours like mine.

lot of the old elders of carving like trygg was told they used green soft wood,
I only wonder how they kept them from cracking. ?

think i read on little shavers or one of ricks posts about boot wax being used?

i would think a quick dip in paraffine after finishing the carving would keep it on an even tilt, towards drying properly..??

[Eddy Smiles]

Thanks guys! I'm gathering together a bunch of projects to take with me when I head up north in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I'll go out to the shed and cut me out a couple of blanks. After 8-hours of highway driving it sure is nice to just sit and whittle awhile before hitting the rack.

Thomp... How do you size your projects? One method I use is to first create an outline of the size wood that I want to work with in Publisher. It's got those handy dandy reference scalles on the left side and the top. Then I cut and paste the pattern into the outlines making it fit as close as possible. After that I can save it as a publisher file or a JPEG. I usually print out one on regular paper and the other on card stock so as to transfer the pattern to the wood. But the neat thing about Publisher is that you can scale just about anyproject you want as long as it doesn't exceed 8-1/2 x 11.

Any one got a better or faster method?

[Thomp]

I have written this before somewhere on the form, but dont know where it is,

hope this works for you as well as it dose for me. and i dont miss out on any steps.

• First you need irfanview a freeware photo-graphic viewer and editor of one kind. its the only program that has control over the printer that i know of, get it at

http://www.irfanview.com

once you got irfanview installed;

• load the graphic of any size.

• crop the image to just what you want to print,

then click print. a printer control window will pop up.

• in the print window you have several options in this window (image is attached below.) direct it to print to the size of your block i use inches,
• then tell it ok...

Now if you want to keep the modified image on your computer, save it with a different file name. if you have no need for it modified , then dont save it
the original image is unaltered!

remember to add room for the side view if you have both in the same image, otherwise do the same for the sideview.... I print them in greyscale, to save ink.

now to make them outline is another story......... and pretty complicated to explain right now. if your leaving town tonight for 2 weeks.

[windsong]

Thomp
Thats is a good job on the little man.I like the way you keep him in perportion.I away get the head to big.
Vic.

[Thomp]

Thomp
Thats is a good job on the little man.I like the way you keep him in perportion.I away get the head to big.
Vic.

Vic,

i dont know much about the pattern i carved from it was a picture of mwilleson's carving, he gave permission, but i printed it directly with aspect ratio preserved... im sure, then check print with ruler..

sometimes with ivew you have to crop close to the subject, and turn off preserve aspect rato and then force the print to the exact measurement of your block, in inches to fill the block with pattern..

but in the book, carving the little guys the author stated when doing little carvings, that really made sense to me
its almost impossible if you carve strict proportins or realism on a caricature when you get small. Especally when you have big tools ill add... its too hard to get detail when your dealing with only a few wood fibers at a time,
some basswood, at the stop cuts the wood turns like its sticky and crummy chips dont want to behave and fall..

but the little guy book author . keith ? said the head should be bigger to capture some detail...

dont know how much salt thats worth but it worked so far on the little guys ,

even my little feller with the grimace had a head bout twice what it should be, in heigth and half again to wide

some standard in sketching i remember said the charter should be 7 heads tall from shoe sole to top of head and 3 heads wide at shoulder for proper proportins... i use that for sketching.... . sometimes..

hope i answered your question , i sure yammered on a long time... sorry

[Eddy Smiles]

Thomp.... I'm ahead of and behind you. I downloaded irfanview after you recommended it in one of your previous threads. And I'm already using edge detection to get a good pattern outline. I just found it easier to use Publisher to make the pattern because once I've made the working pattern on cardstock I make one reference sheet of the pattern with all the reference photos. I'll try the irfanview method the next time. But I love the edge detection capabilities of irfanview. You can go on line and Google any two pictures of the subject you want to carve (side and front) and with edge detection come up with a pattern in a matter of minutes. The only thing left is to scale it to your size wood.

[Thomp]

From the pattern here of mwilleson's image heres my flat plane man...
and a wemon with a loaf of bread two versons of her, the larger one is just a quarter sawn pine block, the smaller is basswood,, her picture was from another image i found on the web somewhere,

[Raparee]

Loved Mike's flat-plain guy, so I thought I'd do my own. Here it is!

[mwilleson]

Nice work! I like it Tim.

Flat plane is an infectous style of carving....go ahead and do more!