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.

The WOOD BEE CARVER often has said as one of his rules, “The hardest part of any project is getting started, but once begun, the creative juices flow.” So we might start out with a tried and true project of a rough out, or an idea from a carving book, or might adopt what a carving friend is doing. That’s good for at least one carving and no carving activity is ever lost as we always gain experience and ability any time we put the cutting edge to the wood.

The greatest thrill and the even greater challenge is to develop one’s own carving idea, studying the subject, turning it over in our minds by carving it mentally until we are ready to jump right in and give it a try. As we are carving this “new” carving idea the creative partner of our inner being jumps in to offer us a hand, a whisper of direction and a pushing and pulling strength to press on to shape the blank block of wood into a resemblance of the carving idea that is guiding us.

There is no greater thrill when that happens and upon completion there is an inner satisfaction of “And I carved this right out of my own head (and still have enough wood left over to carve something else.)