Indian Mask with Wolf Cape

[Blake Lunsford]

I started this Indian Mask with Wolf Cape today out of 5" tall piece of basswood. The pattern is from Jeff Phares' book Carving the Human Face. I thought I would pick up this book to help me with the eyes and nose on my Woodspirits. I have enjoyed working on this project probably more than any others I have started. This is a great book for anyone who is interested in carving realistic faces. Please let me know what you think!! Thanks for looking!

Blake

[GaryMc]

Great Start Blake, Keep it up!
I have several of his books also, excellent material.
GaryMc

[Claude]

Looking great so far, Blake - I have that same book, but so far haven't had the courage to try it. His descriptions of the anatomy of the face were very helpful in my other carvings, though.

Claude

[Kenny_S]

Looks like several of us has his books, I too, Have not carved anything from his books.

Great start Blake, Like what you have done so far. Waiting to see the finish carving.

[Mark Gargac]

Blake,So far the blocking out stage of your carving looks like your heading in the right direction. From what I see in the pics. is that your playing it safe,which can be good and bad at this preliminary stage of roughing out. What I mean by that is you might not be using a big enough gouge in the roughing out stage. This appears evident at the shallow planes you have established on the secondary profile of the face. I am guessing that you are using a #3 sweep maybe a 7 or 10 mm gouge, I dont want to try to tell you how to carve your mask expermenting is sometimes the best teacher but from my experience with carving them and the size of that carving I would use a #5 /16 mm in establishing the planes. When I begin to knock a carving down and start tighting things up to the final size, which may take several passes,then I will use the smaller gouges to bring detail to the piece. It's easy to tell some one to take off more wood if its not your carving but sometimes you just have to go for it! The proportion looks really good at this point . I would love to see this when you are finished . Take your time , step back from it and take a good look at it,often, at different angles, different light , take it outside and look, spray some water on it and look, put it in front of a mirror and look at it,carve a little more and do it all over again. Study your work and any reference material you have on the subject your carving often.

[Colin-Partridge]

Blake that is a great start really impressive. I also have all of his books and was lucky enough to have taken one of Jeffs courses when he came up to Canada. He is a great carver and he does it with such great ease. Look forward to seeing your progress as you go.
Colin

[Mark N. Akers]

Blake:
Great start on the face,and if you don,t have Jeff's other books plan on getting them,they are very informative.

[squbrigg]

Good beginning, Blake, looking forward to the stages of progress!!

Bob

[Nancy-G]

Swell stuff, Blake....
IMHO it is the best looking thing you've started ( and you know how I feel about Santa - lol ).

[Irishman]

Looking forward to seeing the finished product. I find it interesting to see how all the carvers rough out their work. Having been tought by another carver, my roughing out would be slightly different. I must get this book everyone is referring too.
Patrick