[Woodcarver] Relief Carving

[Ivan Whillock Studio]

MessageSusan offers great advice when she writes, "Personally I work in odd numbers of three or five levels then break each level down into smaller layers.  Adding layers to levels reduces the stacked look a carving can get.  Too many levels can be confusing both to the carver and to the viewer.  By my keeping the number of levels small, again three to five, I am grouping areas for easy viewing."

For most of my scenic carvings I think in terms of foreground, middle ground and background.  I will usually give the most thickness to the foreground, less thickness to the middle ground and even less thickness to the background, emphasizing the perspective--as in railroad tracks where the ties seem farthest apart in the foreground and seem to be narrower as they go into the distance.  

There is a traditional "split the difference" rule of thumb.  Say you are carving a two inch thick plaque.  Half of that thickness would be used for the carving, so the deepest point would be one inch into the wood.  Splitting the difference again would make the first level, the foreground material, half of that, 1/2 inch into the wood.  The middle ground would be half of that, 1/4 inch into the wood.  the background would be half of that, 1/8 inch into the wood.  That is simply a rule of thumb to help in visualizing how deep to carve each of the layers, not a mechanical law, because each carving will differ, depending on the visual interest you want to put on any specific area.

Many beginners work just the opposite.  Fearful of "taking away too much wood", they, for example,  make the background hills very thick and make the foreground layer quite shallow.  

Ivan Whillock Studio
122 NE 1st Avenue
Faribault, MN 55021
Visit my website at
 http://www.whillock.com
Visit my Picturetrail album at
http://www.picturetrail.com/gallery/view?username=ivancarve
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://six.pairlist.net/pipermail/woodcarver/attachments/20040222/8733b9c0/attachment.htm