first carving

[ADAcarver]

Hello all. This is my first ever carving, and I was hoping to get some criticism and tips. The paint job is bad but I would like some tips on carving and painting if anyone has any to offer.
Thanks
Andrew

[Colin-Partridge]

Dont do the MSN thing so I cant see your carving. Could you post a picture on the message board.
Colin

[ADAcarver]

Hope this one works.

[Thomp]

Andrew,

glad to see another fellow Louisianian on board, Welcome

Sharpen your knife and get ready for a great learning experience here on this message board..

your first carving Looks great for a first carving, i can tell its a fish, and guessing catfish...

my first carving was one of them blood covered things only a mother could love.. probably...

Keep on trying and ask questions when they arise, none of us are born with carving experience.
Thomas

[AlArchie]

Andrew, welcome from another ADA who does fish!

Before going too much farther, maybe you could give me a little more information; Did you work from a pattern or from your own idea? What kind of tools did you have to work with? What is your age/experience? Is your carving designed as a decoy, a decorative, or a primitive?

Now for the criticism (constuructive), as every carver starts out not doing everything right, and the learning process starts with that first carving. Hang onto that guy so you can look back in a while and see how far you've come.

Let's start with my last question. If it is meant as a fishing decoy, you have a pretty good start. I'd suggest you use copper or brass sheets for the fins on a decoy, rather than trying to carve them. This way you can concentrate on the body contours without worrying about fin placement. They can be cut from sheet stock and attached with either brass screws or nails. There are several books available with patterns and suggestions for "finning", balancing and painting decoys.

If it's a "primitive" (no insult intended) that's a specific genre of carving, you have it down pretty well, although I'd suggest you work a bit more on refining the fins by thinning them down. It is also allowed, in fish carving to attach fins that are carved separately. You can cut them out of thin stock, cut insertion slots in the body, glue the fins in and fill in the little gaps with wood filler before painting.

Decorative carvings can run the gamut from extremely realistic to anything your eye determines is satisfactory, so that gives a lot of leeway. Painted or left natural wood.

Tools? Well a lot can be done with just a pocket knife or a bench knife. Some refining of fins, mouth and gills can best be done with a small V gouge or parting tool, but a good knife will work, just the same.

Age and experience. A lot of our perception of our carving subjects is dependant on our experience, and generally speaking, age=experience, but familiarity with the subject also enters into the process. If you are very familiar with fish anatomy, then you will have a better grasp of where you need to remove wood.

And on that note, I'd like to make a comment that applies to most all starting carvers......don't be afraid to remove more wood than you think is right. Most of us have started out by having our carvings look rather square, with just the corners rounded. As we progress we learn that very few carvings will have that boxy look. A fish will start being round or cylindrical right from the very center of the back and belly, and will taper to a very thin tail and a torpedo shaped head.

And, as I said, if this is intended as a decoy, you painting is quite OK. I'll let some of the other carvers who are more artistically inclined, comment on other painting procedures.

Al D. Archie

[ADAcarver]

thanks for the replies guys. Al Im 23 and have just started carving. The tools I used were just a cheap set I picked up at Hobby Lobby and the wood was Balsa. I used a pattern for the basic outline I found on the web. Wasnt really going for decoy, decorative, or primitive actually just wanted to get a carving done and see if I could do it and make it actually look like a fish. Ha.

Andrew

[Hi_Ho_Sliver]

welcome......and I too could see the fish, but you are right now at a crossroads. Your fish is truly a piece of "folk art" and you might consider carving just like you are for awhile as folkart is very popular I hear back east, on the other hand , if you listen to people like Al Archie, fishcarver and some others I can't think of right off, you will be carving beautiful life like fish, but you will no longer be a folkartist! I know, decisions, decisions, decisions!Ice Cream

[Kenny_S]

Lucky you Andrew, My first carving, everyone like the horse. However, it was a dog I was trying to carve.LOL. Some good advice has been given, All I am going to say, Practice practice and preactice some more. try different woods, Basswood is harder than Balsa. Stay focus and get a good knife, learn to hape , sharpen and strop. Strop can be made from a piece of thing leather, glued to a piece of wood, there is all kinds of compounds to use but starting out, jeweler's rouge work just find. Rub the cake rouge or if it is paste, rub it on the leather and start stroping. Lift the back of the blade up about a dimes with, 10 to 17 degrees and strop one side about 20 times and start on the other side. Now this is with the cutting edge trailing. It takes practice with it also but worth the effort.
Enjoy

[whitecree]

Not bad for a first effort. Looks like a catfish with an attitude.

Balsa is a very soft wood. You say what you had was just a cheap carving set - no point in buying anything better until you see if you really want to "get into" carving - but the problem with cheap tools is they just don't sharpen up all that well. When carving on soft woods, your tools have to be even sharper than when working on hard woods.

Now that you have your feet wet, pick up a book on sharpening - your library may have one - and see how sharp you can get your tools. If you decide you want some better tools, click on this LINK right here. Rick-in-Seattle is a professional knife maker and carver. He offers a very reasonably priced beginner's carving set.
And his tools arrive ready to use, sharper than a razor. Many of us here have purchased tools from Rick, and are very pleased with them (and him!)

[AlArchie]

Andrew, here's a link to the L.S. Irish site's free pattern section. Susan (LS) has graiciously provided help to quite a few of us on this forum, and has posted several of these free tutorials on her site. This one is of a pumkin seed fish that is quite easy to complete with just a pocket knife. Still it looks quite nice when finished. You will also get s sense of proportion and 3 dimentional perspective by completing this project. I've used it to instruct several hundred scouts in wood carving and it is a very good starter.

Check out her other patterns and instructions!

http://www.carvingpatterns.com/fishdecoy.htm

Al