A pirate has been a frequent carving project in which each new pirate carving is an interpretation of a familiar theme.  Most pirate carvings have repeating themes of an eye patch, hook, peg leg, sword, craggy face with scars, skull with cross bones insignia and clothes that are representative of a pirate.  Sometimes a braided pig tail will be added and perhaps rings in the ears.  All in all, a pirate is fun to carve because of all the features that add to the carving challenges.  The pirate featured in this posting include most of these characteristics.

The photos in the gallery below are of the finished and painted pirate in various poses and one photo of the pirate finished before color was added.

The next two photos are closes up views of the face of the pirate and the leather boot of the peg leg.

Knives are used in the Whittle-Carving style on a six-inch-tall by inch and three quarters square block of basswood. The photos below show the progressive stages of development with some of the knives used during these stages.  Note that the first stage is to carve the hat first so that the head can be carved as going up into the hat. Once the hat and head a determined, the body is divided into thirds with guidelines at shoulder, waist, knees and bottom of feet. Within these guidelines the body parts are drawn as a guide for opening up the block in order to carve towards the guidelines using angled notch cuts and slicing paring cuts to continue the carving to its basic form.  Whittle by whittle the basic form is refined until it is ready to receive the carving of details of the various parts of the figure.

The last photo is an example of some of the pirates carved over the years to illustrate the variety of ways this theme can be executed.