[Woodcarver] Relief Carving Finishing

[Doug & Carol Rowe]

I have recently finished a relief carving in bass wood and decided to tint
it. I wanted to use oil pastel pencils but living in a small town could only
find oil pastel sticks.  I pressed ahead anyway and in the end ended up with
a carving that looks good on the weathered wood surfaces, looks mediocre on
the water and sky surfaces and looks garish on the grass and trees.  I'm
saying that much of my problems come from the limited pallet I had to work
from and from my lack of experience in this medium, but perhaps I need to
rethink what I tried to do.  My thoughts were to end up with the carving
showing a suggestion of colour on the wood background.  Do any of you have a
suggestion for this or my next carving in basswood?