Once a woodcarving friend, Ron Turpin, upon referring to one of my carvings, said, “Don carved that right out of his own head and has enough wood left over to carve another one.”

So where do carving ideas come from? From the block of wood we call our head, from a rough out of another carver’s idea, from a pattern in a book or from the observation of life and objects around us? Carving ideas come from all of these and even from word association. Most carvers are on the look out for carving ideas, Sometime inspiration comes out of one’s creative soul and other times we carvers borrow someone else’s idea in hopes that the more we carve we will be able to develop more of our own ideas of creativity. Read the rest of this entry »