The mental image normally associated with “Gnome”  is the little character who advertises for a travel company or for the “Garden” variety that are available in gift shops wearing a red pointed hat, blue tunic and sporting a white beard and mustache.

Gnomes are imaginary characters so it is OK to use one’s imagination in carving a gnome in a non-traditional style.  In fact carving should be a creative process that allows imagination to be set free to create in a style only imagination can visualize.  All too often in the carving journey a carver wears a strait jacket of staying within the lines of convention by carving in a predetermined style or one similar to what everybody is carving.

Imagination sets a carver free to experiment and innovate with inventive ideas and subtle changes in the normally accepted pattern. Thus hillbillies should not all look alike and the same can be said for cowboys, hobos, clowns, old geezers  or any other common carving subject like a gnome.

The carved Imaginary Gnome pictured is the result of allowing imagination to guide a slicing knife to carve flowing lines of a non-traditional gnome. Imaginary Gnome  was carved out of an inch and half square by three inch tall block of basswood and finished with artist oil Raw Sienna paint and boiled linseed oil. Carved only with a knife in the Whittle-Carving Style, this Imaginary Gnome  does not have any straight lines.  Notice how the posture as well as the beard and mustache have flowing and curving lines that leave an imaginary trail to follow.  And that is what Gnomes do best by following the crooked trail to unimagined discoveries.