Relief Carving Wood Spirit Grape Man WIP

[Irish]

Red Face OK guys, enough of this! You all have me blushing this morning. I'm off to work the backdrops so I can get to maybe a little carving this evening.

Susan

[Tidewalker]

I agree on Laura Secord!

[Irish]

First, thanks everyone for your patiences while I helped my kids out with their play backdrop!

Second carving session: A quick check here that I have everything I need at hand to
start my second session.
1. Tools - check
2. Sharpening set - check
3. Camera set up - check
4. Rings off for safety - check
5. CHOCOLATE - BIG CHECK

I think we are ready to start carving again.

Step 59: I am checking how deep my first carving of the eyes is. I want the eyes to be the deepest point of the carving. You can see from the depth gauge that I have plenty of room to drop the eyes more.

Step 60: I have repeated the eye steps until the eye ball area is at the gauge mark level.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 61: There are a lot of ways to create the pupil area of a face carving. If you are going to paint the face the eyes and pupils can simple be colored into place. Some carvers will mark the pupil area with a shallow v-gouge line. Since I am not going to paint this carving, at least that is not the current plan, I am going to carve out the
pupil area.

I use a large round gouge and gentle walk it into the pupil area at an angle pointed towards the forehead. This cut when finished will be below my deepest gauge mark so work carefully. Notice that the pupil is not a full circle, it's a half cirlce tucked into the upper eye lid.

Step 62: You will free the round gouge cut with your bench knife or chip knife.

Step 63: Creating the pupil with the gouge means that when your face is hung on the wall the pupil area will become deep shadow areas, exactly as the human eye. Quick, easy and always round!

Susan

[Irish]

Step 64: I am rounding the bottom edge of the area above the upper eye lid. Notice that I am working from the center of the lid towards the outer corner with my chisel. That area will be tapered down to meet the eye lid area.

Step 65: Doing the other side, working from the center out.

Step 66: Do the same for the area below the lower eye lid. These steps connect the face to the eye.

Step 67: Back tracking here for a moment. In the last couple of steps, 64-66 I have worked from the center of the eye out to the corner of the eye. The reason I did these areas in two cuts is because of the direction of the grain ... All of the grain is running from the top of the face towards the bottom leaf point. This means that if I
cut the eye lid areas in one cut half of that cut is going into the grain. That into the grain direction means I can chip out or get caught and pulled too deep into the cut. So by working from the center out I am always carving with the grain, no chip outs.

Personally I would rather do several cuts with the grain than one cut that might get caught in the grain at some point in the stroke.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 68: Make a wide stop cut under the nose and along the mustache areas. We are going to drop the mustache under the nose, the stop cut will be the demarcation line.

Step 69: The ball of the nose is the highest area of the carving ... but we can't add wood to make it stand out. Well, I could but I ain't gonna So, since I am not adding wood to make the nose high I need to drop the areas surrounding the nose. If you can't raise the bridge, lower the water! You can use either a chisel or gouge to drop
the mustache areas.

Step 70: Lower the center area of the mustache ... I have used my bull nose chisel to make the cuts then I go to my bench knife or chip knife to free those cuts.

Step 71: Just as we did early in this carving, I am chip cutting along the points of my mustache. This frees those sharp corners so that I am ready to shape the rest of the mustache area.


Susan

[Irish]

Step 72: I am using both my wide sweep, large round gouge and bull nose chisel to tuck the outer mustache hair below the lip hair. Use the tool that fits the area!

Step 73: This is just a quick depth check. Note that the eyes are the deepest and the nose ball and eye brow ridge are still at the original level of the wood. The mustache has been tucked under the nose, but it is not quite as deep as the eyes. From the nose the mustache flares back to the original wood level.

Step 74: I'm working the lip hair next, freeing the chisel cuts.

Step 75: Sorry ... I lost a couple of photos in this area that I can't save. I have chip cut along the upper edge of the mustache then lowered the lip slightly below that mustache area.

If you place your finger tip on the ball of your nose and let the bottom section of your finger touch your chin ... you can feel that the nose ball, lips and chin are all in line with each other but they all taper away from the high point of the nose. In order of highest to lowest it's the nose, upper lip, then lower lip then chin. The lower lip is deeper into the face than the upper lip.

Now this does two things for your carving. A high lower lip, one that is at the same level or higher than the upper lip makes your face look like it's pouting. You know the saying about 'sticking out your lower lip'. When you go to paint a face because the lower lip is deeper into the face than the upper one it is darker in color! So an upper lip is painted salmon color where the lower lip is painted dark salmon.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 76: I am using my depth gauge as a straight edge here. The gauge is laid across the highest points of the upper eye lids ... this is where the nose bridge lies in the face.

Step 77: The angle between the forehead and nose bridge is very sharp, steep but not very long. I am using my bull nose chisel to cut into the pencil mark for the nose bridge.

Step 78: Cut the second side of the angle.

Step 79: Clean up the joint line in the forehead-nose angle. You can see in the close up that the bridge is about one half of the distance between the original wood level and the depth of the eyes.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 80: I am using my wide sweep gouge to taper the nose ridge into the forehead-bridge angle.

Step 81: Use your chisel to round the tip of the nose, tapering it towards the mustache.

Step 82 and 83 are quick checks of where we are at in the carving. Notice the angles of the nose in image 83.

Susan

[Irish]

Step 84: I have turned my carving over and marked on the back where I have left the thickest edges along the outer leaf.

Step 85: Because I want some shadows on the wall when this carving is hung I am rounding over the thick leaf edges on the back. These areas will cast shadows that make the leaf look as if it curls. I am using both the wide sweep gouge and my chisel.

Step 86: Ok, I'm starting to rock here .... because I have only a few points at the original wood level on the face of this carving as I work the back it is rocking nastily. So I have grabbed some pencil erasers and used them as wedges or braces. I don't want the carving to rock because that can cause the knife to slip. The weird shaped blue eraser in the center of the wood is a kneaded eraser. This type is nice since you can pull it apart into small pieces that wedge under the carving well.
You can see the taper along the sides of the back in this photo.

Step 87: The rough out stage of this carving is complete!

There are many ways to approach a relief carving and what style you chose depends on what is comfortable for you. There is no wrong way to create a relief carving. My preference, especially for faces, is to completely rough out all areas first then come back and dress them out to a finished appearence.
By roughing out first I work each and every area just a bit. And I work them in groups related to each other ... Example, the eyes need to go down deep before the nose bridge can be cut, the nose bridge is worked off both the forehead and the nose ball tip. So, where some carvers will completely finish an area before moving into the next area, I like to do a little of everything and work through the face as if it were just one unit.

We are done the rough out ... this is what I call the UGLY stage of the carving. This is about the time that I begin thinking this is hopeless and that I will never pull it off.

So, next I will be starting the dress out stages but in the mean time I am going to slip over to Stacey's thread and see if he has added anything new on router carving ... See ya there!

Susan

(Oh, if you have any questions to this point this is a good time to post them. Thanks everyone!)