My good friend Don Stephenson is a remarkable artist whose creative mind keeps coming up with unique carving ideas.  He is so prolific with his artistic creations that I have nick named him the “IDEA MONSTER.”  Recently he drew a pirate in the shape of an egg as an idea for carving a wooden egg.  There was nothing for me to do other than carve a pirate first in a goose egg and then in a hen egg.  The photographs that follow in this pictorial essay are the results of this journey on the high seas of carving adventure.

The next  four photographs use the original drawing by Don Stephenson as a backdrop for the front and back view of the goose egg pirate and then both the goose egg  pirate and hen egg pirate.

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Cy Clone was carved a few weeks ago along with two partially carved examples for comparison purposes.  Since that initial carving journey it became a challenge to “clone” Cy into additional figures of different sizes than the original six inch tall.  In the photograph Cy is on the left while in the middle is Cy carved to basic form and the Cy on the right has been stained with one color of raw sienna artist oil paint  and boiled linseed oil.  The monochrome of one color is another way to present a carving with the understanding that “texture is color” as well.  The colored Cy on the left and the monochromed Cy on the right each stand on their own while offering a different aesthetic approach to the same carving theme.  The additional “clones” of Cy will all be monochromed in one color with their difference being their size. Read the rest of this entry »

What  a fictional and mythical character like Gandalf  of “Lord of the Rings”  looks  like can only be determined by the imagination of interpretation.  There can be a verbal description that dresses up the readers imagination of an image. An artist can draw and paint an artistic interpretation as well as a cartoonist can give another visual description. An actor playing the part of a character certainly puts a flesh and blood interpretation with an audible and visual signature on the look and sound of the character. A wood carver can offer another creative interpretation as the action of the cutting tool sculpts another interpretation. Read the rest of this entry »

Sonny is an avid fisherman whose fish stories are bigger than his actual fish brought home in the fish bucket.  He is always telling about the BIG fish that got away ending up by saying, “I never seen a fish so big!”  Of course those who have heard the same story over and over again agree that he NEVER did see a fish so big.  As his story is told over and over again, Sonny begins to believe his fish stories, so much so that he begins to dream about catching the really BIG fish.  So often has he had that dream the   fish actually lives in his mind and memory.  If only there was a camera that could take pictures of dreams then there would be proof of the BIG fish. Read the rest of this entry »

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CY CLONE is carved out of a six inch by an inch and a half square block of basswood.  The pose is of an old geezer in deep thought as he holds his hands behind his back.  The mental image of Cy Clone had been napping in the study hall of the sub conscious for a good many years.  A smaller version was carved ten years ago as a study go-by which also took a nap.  The idea woke up to become a current carving project in preparation for class go-bys.  The photographs above begin with a completed Cy Clone.    Two instructional photos of how the block is opened standing beside a carved example are in the middle.  The final photo is of a completed Cy Clone with two versions of carved to form examples of Cy Clone.  The original idea came from Harold Enlow’s 1989  book on carving hobos.  Some carving ideas take a while to work their way from an observation to an imagination of a carving subject and finally to reality.   The photographs that follow are for study using observation, imagination and comparative visual instruction. Read the rest of this entry »

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CAVEMAN was a recent carving project carved using only a knife to experiment with using the tip of the blade to texture the animal skin sleeveless robe the caveman is wearing.  Also, his face was carved to emulate a larger jaw structure to his skull and his hair is long and scraggerly to depict his caveman characteristics. 

Every carving is a learning project and every new carving subject compels one to discover how to carve into wood what the imagination envisions.  CAVEMAN was carved out of a four and a half inch tall  by an inch and  a half square block of basswood and finished with artist oil paint and boiled linseed oil.  The four photographs offer a visual study of a carving project that is “so easy that a carveman could do it.”  “Yabba-dabba-do”

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WHITTLE FOLK EGGS  are caricatures carved into a basswood hen egg that shows the head, arms and trunk to right below the belt line.  The subject being displayed in this photo essay is a “motorcycle dude”  in that he has his hands on his handlebar mustache.  He has a braided pig tail on the back of his head underneath a bandanna head covering while his pants are held up by his suspenders.  All those little touches adds character to the caricature.  Each is carved using only a knife in the Whittle-Carving style of the WOOD BEE CARVER. Read the rest of this entry »