Whittle Folk Busts originated in 1994 as a carving project that carved a face on the corner of a three inch by inch square block of basswood with a variety of themed subjects. An article was written in Chip Chats about that time to offer instructional guidelines for this carving project using only knives.

Whittle Folk Busts was also used as a class project (among many choices of subjects) as an introductory project primarily for carving a variety of faces. The go-bys consisted of some completed carvings along with some partially carved examples.  The instructor would carve a separate demonstration block to show the opening cuts the get each student started and then continue to carve on the demonstration pieces in the round about time with each student.  Needless the say these demonstration carvings accumulated from class to class as a resource for go-bys.

Since the Wood Bee Carver has retired from teaching and participating in carving shows these demonstration pieces are now used for personal carving activity by finish carving the demonstrators into finished carvings.  Here is a photo of some of those finished carvings.

The next series of photographs are of the original 1994 Whittle Folk Busts to be followed with examples of the partially carved demo pieces.  The goal of these busts is to encourage carvers to experiment with carving a variety of faces and subjects in the mantra that “every carving project is a learning project and is a practice carving for learning.”