“EYEBALL” is a term that implies taking a close look, an “eye to eye” look to see more than what at first appears as there is always something more that meets the eye.

A carving exercise the Wood Bee Carver used when he taught carving classes was to carve a ball out of a square block of wood. That basic concept was then applied to use the carved ball in an exercise of carving a face using the roundness of the ball to symbolize the roundness of the face in the round shape of the ball. The ball metaphor was used to apply to the concept that the head acted much like a ball rotating in a ball joint in that the head can rotate from side to side, rotated up and down and tilt at an angle. This comparable concept was applied to design the head on the carving project to look either right or left as well as straight ahead or for the head to be looking up or looking down as well as the head being tilted in any of these various positions while the body of the figure was standing stationary.  This head position variables give a sense of movement to the carved figure rather than the static standing at attention looking ahead figure.

The first part of the exercise is the mark off an inch square on the top of a two inch by inch square basswood block and to mark the square to be carved into a ball, begin to slice off each corner at an angle, top four corners and bottom four corners. An octagon or stop sign shape will begin to appear on the top and the four faces of the square. Draw a center horizontal line around the octagon shaped ball. This center line represents the equator of this ball to guide the direction of the slicing cuts. Slice up towards the imaginary North pole from the center line and down towards an imaginary South pole from the center line. Slice off the corners of the octagon shape and continue to roundoff corners until the form of a ball is carved. (Follow the sequence A -> B -> C in the photo)

Once the ball is carved the next step is to draw a center line in the direction the face will be looking using one side of the square base as the imaginary chest area of a figure to determine the front and opposite side as back. On either side of center line draw a circular line on each side of the ball to indicate the side of ball sliced away to narrow the face. (illustration D) (Illustration E) the center line indicates the face is turned to its right and the side of face narrowed and on the center line an arching line indicates the eyebrows and “V” indicating the nose.  Moving the eyebrow and nose line up would indicate the face looking UP or moving those lines down would indicate a downward look.

The Rule of Three for facial proportions are the guide for marking the Proportional Divisions and to guide the Eyeball visualizing of proportions while carving the basic form foundation of the face.

The photo below illustrated an angled upwards look in #1 and #2 illustrates basic form of face carved. # 3 illustrates a basic form face looking to its right and #4 illustrates a basic form face looking to its left. #5 illustrates a basic a basic form face looking to its right and upward.

The next series of photos illustrate a comparison between a basic from face compared with a finished face.

Disclaimer Note: This exercise of carving a face using a ball shape is intended to teach the basic concepts for turning the head/face and to mentally be reminded to not carve square or flat faces but instead create soft roundness and contours to the face structure. The face is made up of angles and planes underneath the contours of flesh and skin textures of the face. The exercise to carve a ball from a square shape is helpful for the method to carve any ball in a carving project like a wizard holding a crystal ball in the hand, a tennis ball, baseball, a basketball, a ball at the end of a tassel can all begin as a square shape and simply round the corners round and around until the ball shape is formed. There is more to Eyeballing than what meets the eye.  “Don’t be square, carve around.”