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Charles and Doris Leverett hosted a three day class, June 17, 18 and 19 at their rural Northeast, Alabama carving studio.  Seven students survived the rigors of learning about the A-B-C’s of Face Carving.  Those pictured are (front row right to left): Hugh O’Neal, Bob Zenoble, Mike Lancaster, Doris Leverett,  (back row, left to right) Joe Cernut, Murrel Mc Curley, David Wilson and Charles Leverett.

Face carving using only a knife in the Whittle-Carving style of the WOOD BEE CARVER is to learn to begin to “think inside the block” by learning how to “see” within a block of wood how to open it up to expose a face.  Using the “Rule of Three of Facial Proportions” as the spring board to learn how to see and then carve a face was emphasised through the exercise of carving a “Three Version Face Stick.” In this exercise students learn to use the basic slicing cuts to carve a notch (two angled cuts that meet a the bottom of each cut) as a way of opening up a block of wood.  The first exercise is to carve a round ball on the square end of the study stick.  Next exercise is to remove two corners on the bottom of the square study stick to illustrate the narrowing of the face which is two thirds wide and three thirds long.  In between the narrowing of face at the bottom and the round ball at the top, a series of notch cuts are sliced in one corner of the square block to lay in the landmarks of the face to illustrate that the face fits into a ninety degree space from tip of nose back to cheek bones.  These landmark notches are the hairline, eyebrow, wings of nose nostrils and bottom of chin.  Special care is given to carve in the junction of the nostril wing and smile line with a three cut triangular chip cut to set the nose on the dental curve.  At the same time the mouth mound is established one third distance down from nose between nose and bottom of chin.

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The model of a human skull is instructional for seeing the bone structure underneath the fleshy covering of the face.  This helps to begin to see the “form” of the head so that the student learns to carve first the “basic form” before ever attempting to carve in the “details” of the face.  The photo showing the WOOD BEE CARVER studying the skull in a thinking pose illustrates the study of “basic form.”

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Between carving on the Three Version Face Stick, each student was also opening up a block of wood for their major project of carving a Shelf Squatter, an egg noggin,  a bust or a full figure of their choice. Two additional mini projects were carving a face on a golf tee and carving a Whittle Dwarf.  The eight steps to carving an eye with only knife cuts were also added  to give each student a challenging exercise to practice.

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The WOOD BEE CARVER teaches the method and how to of face carving with only a knife while each student carves in their own style by applying these methods.  Slicing cuts that create notch cuts and three cut triangular chips cuts coupled with rounding square corners and flattening round surfaces are the basics for learning to Whittle-Carve.  The end result is “the more one carves the better one carves.” These Survivor Students survived to carve another day. Carve on!