[Woodcarver] new projects

[maricha]

hi dave .... what a delightful email.
  what a lot of wonderful things are coming out of this list and as you mentioned a few i will not go into it. 
  there is no doubt in my mind that you are entering a great journey, being a draughtsman you have a splendid background, actually i have a few students with similar back grounds to you, and after many hours of explaining the left and right side of the brain, they are really coming up with the most delightful works in carving and sculpture and jewelrey.

  the secret is to use the skill you have with tools, but to tell your unartistic side of the brain.... to shut up and not interfere with the artistic side of the brain. this is explain in the book joe talks about but also it is much in use teaching in school for schitzophrenics dislectic and lateral thinkers.  it really is not a big deal it is just plain common sense when you apply it, because we have learnt so much in our life that we have a warehouse of information inside us and this dictates and censors what we do and becomes our worst critic, so we have to kindly tell the side that does not know anything about art to give the artistic side a fair go and you will see the marvelous discoveries you make.


  dave each step at the time, and you have already reached a milestone , my apprentice jeff was exactly the same, could not visualize in the round, yet now i make him touch a round ball, a flower, a leaf etc. and make him close his other side of the brain, and wow he is indeed improving tremendously like you are.  congratulations with all the wonderful carvings you have done.  do not think of your confidence or any other stumbling points, just take each step at a time, and ask and discuss and work hard.
  i recommend you also read a book called THE ARTISTS WAY   by Julia Cameron, which is a wonderful book to give back to your artist/inner self the self truth and confidence that is there.

  different levels are hard to grasp but if you take a good look at a stair case you will see the steps going up or down, drawing it is difficult at first, so just plainly get three or four bits of clay, wood and make rectangles of the same size put one on top of the other with about one inch space to glue them and three inches to step on.  the different actual graduations will give you the exact location of where to put your router for the different layers you want.  

  Now for my question(s) for Bill or whomever: 

  Do you model and carve the whole image with regular gouges before defining the hair or do you use the hair defining tool to do the shaping? 
  i am sure you will get different answers to this question, but i usually carve hair in clumpbs of three, use three different size gouges, largest one first to create a wavy effect, then a medium u gouge to create deeper crevices and a small u gouge to give the shadows and deep recess to create dark and shadows of the hair.


  If you shape before defining hair do you leave extra thickness to carve the hair?  yes leave enough material to give you the bulk of the hair.
  The ears seem to me that they should be deeper than the plan calls for. Is that a misprint?  may be the ears are deeper, or could not be made deeper because of lack of timber but by creating certain cuts you could give the illusion of depth.
  How can the nose, eyes and forehead be at the same level? they are not, look at your face with several mirrors and you will see the different graduations.
  when you are doing a face think of the elements that make it, the eyes are shaped like a football, so you must shape them like a foot ball. the nose is more like a pyramid, so when you are carving think in shapes, think of cylinders, pyramids, cubes, umbrellas etc. this will help to work out carving the round.  do not attempt very difficult things. i suggest you first carve one feature at a time, get to know it as it really is, quite a magnificent shape.  forinstance the eye, its shape is like a football, but it has the eyelid, the pupil and the tear glad.  work one step at a time and you will surprise yourself. hope this helps a bit. am sure joe and ivan and bill will give you much more input than i can.

  cheers
  maricha
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