African Mask Low Relief Carving

[wildhare]

Susan, PLEASE continue this thread. I am very much interested in making a mask. Your tutorial and photos are excellent. Can we save your design for future reference?
Wanda

[Irish]

I have decided to accent the finished carving with a variety of tectures:

Using a hard wire brush to create distressed wood grain
Using a blunted nail to make an indented pebble look
How about an old screw driver to make a zig zag design
Got to have some chip carved checkering and tattoo patterns

I might add a few natural accents as bark, twigs, hard straws from my Pampus grass, maybe some raffia to the head dress area.

Then while browsing the web for mask ideas I can't help but notice the bright milk paint effects many real African masks have.

Susan

[Sharon of the Dell]

Susan, this is a great thread and I'm learning much! Glad you didn't become a secretary, because then we probably wouldn't have you to teach us! Being a secretary must have been a common dream for dads for their daughters for women around our age.That's what dad wanted for me!I didn't go there! Anyway, thanks for the tutorial.

[Irish]

I should have included this area at the very beginning.
Securing your carving wood:

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(These are using my Kodac as I learn to charge the battery to the Nikon)

Any carving blank that you will working on for relief carving needs to secured to the table or to a carving bench. The pressure that you exert with your tools is enough to move an unsecure piece of wood. This can lead to misdirected cutting strokes and injury.

There are several ways to secure a relief blank. My favorite for smaller carvings, 10" x 12" or less, is to use a simple bench hook. This is a plywood frame that has one deep corner, a floor and an overhang. The overhang catches the edge of the table to keep the bench hook from moving. The deep corner catches the wood blank.

It can be dropped over any table for quick, easy use then stored away with your carving tools.

To see how to make a simple bench hook please visit: Woodcarving, Bracing Table for Relief Carving, Carving Instruction or go to the stickie thread in this section of the message board "Grape Man Wood Spirit" to see a bench hook in use.

If you visit the Tips and Tricks section of the message board there are several excellent threads with links to larger full table sized carving benches as well as clamping systems for securing your wood.

Since this carving blank is a little large for my bench hook I am using a non-skid rubber matt. You can purchase these through most woodworking supply stores or you can find them in the kitchen section of stores as KMart, WalMart, Sears ....

Usually I will have a large sheet of non-skid matt on my table. To the same work table I can c-clamp a 2"x4" across the middle of the table. I usually allow about 4-5" of space beyond my board size.

Which simply means if my board is 16" at it's longest length I clamp the 2"x4" about 20" from the table edge. I can now use the non-skid to keep the wood from moving left to right and use the 2"x4" to stop the board from moving away from me as I push my tools into the wood.

For this project I cut my non-skid matt smaller than the foot print of the board, taped it to the back where it would not show and then promptly FORGOT IT WAS THERE ... sigh!

Since I am in the office working on this project, not in the studio, I am carving this one on my lap. I have a heavy terry cloth towel that is folded in half that lays on my lap. I can use my thighs and knees for extra bracing.

When I am done for the carving session I can take the towel outside and gently shack the chips off ... I always check my chip pile for carving tools. Just as spoons and forks accidentally get cleared off the dinner dishes with the left over meat loaf carving tools can easily get lost with the thrown out chips.

I know that terry cloth towel lap carvings is about as low tech as you can get but it is still me favorite way to carve. Not all of us have fully dedicated shops, corners of the basement or even craft tables. Being able to carve in the family room, watching TV, enjoying the evening with my family is my favorite way to enjoy my hobby while being with my hubby.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 9: Background rough out

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I have continued working the first drop of the background area. On my table I have a Moor chip knife and Warren whittling knife to use for my stop cuts.

For the Flex Cut tools I have my wide sweep and the large round gouge for the rough out work.

After I have worked once around the outer area of the background I take a moment to check how deeply I have already worked. I have one corner, the lower left, down to the deepest point that I can take this carving. You can see the edge of the depth gauge catching the uncarved area of the face.

The space above that catch edge to the original pencil mark I made on the
depth gauge to show the total width of the board is how much wood I have underneath the gauge, unworked - in this carving that is 3/4".

As I was working the stop cuts I used both the Moor chip knife and the Warren whittling blade.

Notice with the Moor knife that the handle area of the knife caused the blade to angle away from the wood because of the depth that I was cutting. The Moor blade is one inch long and since I am working deeper than one inch the handle is effecting how the blade reaches the wood.

I really enjoy my Moor chip knife but for this particular area and depth it's time to set it aside.

Compare that to the Warren that has a long, 1 1/2" blade. The long blade means that I can hug the wall of the face and keep the original angle of that wall.

I have also changed my rough out tool from the wide sweep to a narrower, tighter large round gouge. I still want the round profile to remove my background quickly but the tighter round is leaving a more desirable texturing than the wide sweep did. I kept working the background area until all four corners had been dropped to the deepest point according to the depth gauge.

Now ... the background areas next to the ears in not nearly as deep at this point. There simple is not enough room right now to really drop them down. I have used my chip knife and whittling knife to stop cut this area as deeply as possible. Now I am at a place where I can lower than area later after the level work on the face begins.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 10: Working in levels in relief carvings

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Before I start the level work on the face I want to take a moment and discuss the idea of levels in a relief carving.

If you are an intermediate or advanced carver you may now need to use levels as by this time you are thinking and seeing line art patterns in dimension. However, if you are just starting relief carving establishing levels in your pattern then working them through your carving simplifies the idea of dimension in a "flat" work.

Whether you are working a low relief carving or high relief, a complicated landscape or a simple cameo design every pattern has a background, middle ground and foreground area to it.

The background contains those elements that lie behind everything else in the design. The mid-ground has some elements behind it but it lies behind the foreground. The foreground contains those elements that lie at the front of the design with no other element overlying. I often add to these three a sky level. This is the background area that surrounds the design - it's the very area that I have just carved away from the board.

Example: Let's say we have a simple landscape pattern that shows a picture of a barn complex settled in front of a small mountain range and pine tree line. In the yard beside the barn is a series of fences fields. The barn has a driveway that leads to the road where a mail box stands.

In this sample the mountains and tree line would be my background, all of these elements lie behind the barn, the fences, the drive and the mail box. The barn complex, fields and fences are my middle ground. They lie in front of the mountains but have elements - the drive and mail box - in front of them. The driveway and mail box become my foreground area, they are the closest elements to me.

The sky area of this sample is the actual sky and clouds that would be in the far distance behind the mountains.

I now have three levels - the mountain area, the barn area, the mail box area - that will have the detail carving plus I have the deepest area of the pattern, the sky area, that will have just a small bit of detailing for the clouds.

I number my levels from the foreground to the background with #1 being the highest and in our sample for this discussion #3 the lowest and the sky level marked as "sky".

During the rough out stage of carving I can drop an entire levels area to one depth without regard to the elements that it contains. I can drop the sky area to my deepest carving point, then the background level to a little higher depth, my middle ground area runs around the center point of the carving with my foreground area usually left uncarved.

This makes the early rough out very easy and insures that every element within a level is down to the same starting depth in the work.

As I begin shaping each level and establishing the different elements within it I can redivide each level. In our sample the background level contains some mountains that are in the far distance, some mountains in the near distance, then there is a line of trees in front of those mountains with pines in the foreground.

By the time I am finished the shaping stage you will nolonger be able to see the original levels rough out work yet every element in the pattern will be at it's correct depth in relationship to every other element.

I divide my designs into an odd number of levels - 3, 5, 7. For a complex landscape I will ususally use only three levels knowing that I will subdivide later.

For our low relief pattern it is just as easy to do the sub-division right at the start. This is why our design is marked with eight.


Susan

[Irish]

Step 11: Beginning the rough out of ear accents.

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My deepest level in this low relief is the accent grass behind the ears. So I want that area dropped to just above the design background that we just carved. In the image in the posting above for the ear accents you can see that this area curves with the background curve.

I have finished one side and have the other marked in red pen so that you can see where I am working.

Just as I did to free the background I am using the wide stop cut to free the accent area from the ear line.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 12: Dropping the ear accents to level

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To clear the wood away from the wide spot cut I have switched to my large round gouge. When I had completed my left side ear accent I marked my depth gauge and am now using it to check that the right ear accents are at the same depth.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 13: Inside the earrings and the collar area

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I want to leave the earrings extra wide at this point ... don't want to accidentally loss them as I shape the ears, collar and chin. So I am simply cutting the open collar space inside of them to depth using a chip carving triangle along the sides. Eventually I will hit a mid-point of depth, which is enough for now.

After the collar area has been dropped to a depth just above the ear accents I marked my depth gauge. I will use this same measurement for the head dress area. In a while we will be retracing each area of the pattern back to the cut levels so I am taking a moment to lightly smooth both the ear accents and collar with a chisel.

This is usually where I grab my bull nose chisel but since the Flex Cut set does not have one I am using the straight.

Susan

[BobD]

Ouch...I've been there before! See if you can talk Michael into getting you one of the new Nvidia cards that allow you to hook up two monitors...I couldn't live without two monitors now (when I'm working on articles and the corresponding photos).

Bob