Recently I was given a fisherman/sea captain figure by two carving friends who thought it looked a little like the Wood Bee Carver by its style of beard. It is one of those tourist souvenir carvings that has been around for years that used a “flat plane” style of carving technique to economically produce a lot of lookalike carvings.
Harley Refsal has been the most notable authority on Flat Plane Carving as a historian, carver and author of Flat Plane Carving projects. Flat Plane carving has its origin in Scandinavia countries and may have influenced such carvers as Emil Janel and Andy Anderson and the anonymous carvers of tourist souvenirs in cottage industry seventy five years ago.
The characteristic long and broad whittling strokes that create a “flat plane” on the surface of a carving create a minimalistic and folk art beauty to this style of carvings. Flat Plane carving offered a quick approach to earlier cottage industry for making repetitious carving strokes in an assembly line fashion to turn out carvings as cheaply as possible for the tourist gift shop trade. Read the rest of this entry »
The WOOD BEE CARVER carves continuously in the journey of woodcarving to continue to learn and sharpen the craft of carving various subjects. Each carving project is in essence a “Study Carving” whereby lessons are learned through the innovations of designs and the stretching of ability through challenging innovations. Such carving projects become the subject for an instructional posting on this blog as well as a Go-By for a carving class. Even though the subjects may have been carved previously, yet each time a similar subject is carved it becomes a new carving with slight tweaking of design, pose or feature. Thus no two carvings are exactly alike as each takes on its own personality and characteristic. Read the rest of this entry »
Gandalf , the wizard of Lord of the Rings fame, was carved using a Signature Series knife made by Helvie Knives as per my design. This particular knife is called a Universal Scimitar or U-2 in the Helvie Signature Series catalog of knives (click on “Helvie Knives” under “Cool Links” to get to their web site catalog). It is called “Universal” in that it can be used for all types of “Whittle-Carving” as both a roughing out blade (full length of blade) and a detail blade (quarter inch of tip of blade). The convex curve of the cutting edge allows for a slicing cut as it is pushed or pulled through the wood. The concave shape of the back of the blade in the Scimitar blade shape allows for reaching in areas where other blade shapes cannot reach as well as provide an easy roll out of slicing cuts. The handle is a fat cigar shape that fits the palm of the hand comfortably allowing for the knife to be rotated easily so that the blade can cut upside down, right side up, sideways and in any direction needed to make a slicing cut. The tang portion of the blade between the handle and where the cutting edge begins is extended to allow for reaching across a large area without being impeded by the end of the handle. Also this design allows for the index finger to wrap around the tang portion of the blade when choking up on the blade for precise slicing and detail cuts. Read the rest of this entry »
“Face Study Stick – Three Version” found under “BEE HIVE” is a visible and printable instructional aid for practice carving faces. The top exercise is carving a ball out of the one inch square at top of the stick. The ball is later used to carve a face that is looking sideways and upward. The second practice face is carved on a corner to illustration that the face fits into a ninety degree space from tip of nose outward to the cheek bones. The third face at the bottom of the stick has been carved to emphasis the width of the face as being two thirds of the length of the face. Read the rest of this entry »
Tom Richmond, a MAD Magazine artist has just published his book on the art of drawing caricatures. It contains a vast library of instructional information on the art of caricature that can easily be beneficial to wood carvers, of both caricature and realistic human faces and figures. Tom draws two dimensional art with pencil/pen on paper and what he presents in the book can be applied to carving in wood. Carving in wood is to draw with a knife three dimensional art. His book may be ordered off his blog site: http://www.tomrichmond.com/blog/ for $29.95 which includes shipping.
Below are photographs of examples of pages that are published in the book that begins with a workable definition of what is a caricature and proceeds with each chapter covering the various elements in exaggerating realism into caricature of the various facial features. Using his “basic caricature theory” Tom covers head shapes and caricaturing of facial features. He then goes beyond the face to include drawing live caricatures and use of caricature in illustration. Of course, being an artist for MAD Magazine, Tom adds many anecdotal vignettes about MAD. Read the rest of this entry »
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Next to carving eyes and next to carving the human face, carving hands can be a challenge to carvers. Hiding hands in a pocket is the easy way out and the quickest way to produce a boring carving. Like any other carving project, carving hands is a matter of first taking a good look at hands, studying hands and then practice carving hands on a scrap piece of wood. These “scrapper” lessons are beneficial in the long run. Read the rest of this entry »
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First things first are always important in the carving process. Carving a good foundation of the basic form first allows the details to be carved in their proper places. These four photographs show “carved to form” caricatures ready for detail carving to take place. The first two photographs show a block of basswood having the top corners rounded into a dowel shape to receive the hat and head of the caricature as well as the back of the arms and shoulder area sliced forward on the back side of the block. Each block is standing profile with a “carved to form” caricature for comparison. The next two photographs show four “carved to form” caricatures to be studied as a short tutorial in “form ready for detail.” The lesson of this “Short Tutorial” is that there are no short cuts to carving the details. First the form and then the detail.
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The RULE OF THUMB has since ancient time been a common form of measurement as well as an expression of speech. It is defined as a general or approximate principle, procedure or rule based on experience or practice. Carpenters often use thumb width or length from first knuckle to thumb tip as a quick and easy “one inch” measurement. The length of the thumb is approximately “three inches” or equal to the width of four fingers.
Often an artist will sight past an upright thumb at arms length to gain approximate perspective of a distant object. No one knows for sure who originated the “Rule of Thumb” but it has been suggested that Leonardo DaVinci used its principle in his study of human anatamony and artistic proportions.
Carvers can use the “Rule of Thumb” for a quick and approximate measurement while carving to visualize proportions, sight comparison measurements or one inch incremental measurement. Read the rest of this entry »
