Young girl with ribbon

[mpounders]

I have been practicing with my lathe in order to include more turnings with the canes I make. And this started out as (and may still turn into) a cane topper. It is from some Bradford pear scraps I picked up on the side of a road. I was not pleased with my previous attempts at female faces, so I have been trying to practice them more. I hope this one is more recognizably feminine, although the hair ribbon probably helps. I'm still not completely happy with the results, but I think I'm through with this one! Should I stain the turnings underneath darker? Use as a cane topper? Mount on a base? I welcome all advice, criticism, and comments. Thanks for looking!

[jmischel]

Nice female face, Mike. Seems like lots of us struggle with that one. I think it'd make a beautiful cane topper.

[Robert Cahill]

I think you did very well on the female face. Like Jim I like the cane topper idea

[doris]

hi mike, yes definitely looks feminine... if i may guess, why you are not completely happy with her, maybe i can help... when you look from side view of her, you see the profile is like it can be on a woman, the nose is a tad long, but that happens,,, but also, when you look profile, you see the depth of the nose is very very low, the depth of mouth is very low... these two thing combined make that the underlying skull is not visible, and that make us feel uncomfortable when looking her, and you too... so, the advise for next attempt is, try to carve the nose deeper (not only the profile, that you already did great !!) and carve the mouth mound before cutting in the mouth... i think, when you do that, you will carve wonderful female faces, you have a hang to the ice curves already...

[mpounders]

Thanks for the comments and advice, especially from Doris. I went to your web site too late, but you should have seen the mouth before I looked at your tutorial! The pictures you have posted for reference on the mouth, especially from below were great, and I hope to do better on my next one. I have been looking at a book on anatomy and, like you indicated, the shape of the skull, the ears beneath the hair, all of those things affect the shape of what we see on the surface. I like parts of what I did, but still not there yet! Thanks again for encouragement.