Goin' Fishing' Part II

Here is the next installment of "As the Carving Turns". Last time we watched we were doing the preliminary work, getting the idea down on paper and sawing out the form. This is how it looked when we left..
This time we will finish carving the body. I show it step by step to make it easier, but quite often I move around on the piece, I'll work on the hands for awhile then stop and do the torso, and so on. Doing so keeps it from getting too boring working on the same spot for too long, also it keeps the whole piece in proper proportion, so the arms aren't too long or the feet too big.

To see more pictures go to the "Favorite Sites" column on the left and click on "Carving Photo Gallery". That will take you to Picasa Web Albums, just click on the album called Goin' Fishin' Part II. Let me know if you have problems going from here to there, I do want it to be easy, thank you.

Carving 101

I have been asked by a few of you to show how I do my carvings. While inviting you all over would show things better I don't think you'd all fit in my shop, so I'll try to do my best here on my blog.

All my carvings start with getting an idea down on paper. and while I don't carve too bad I 'm not the best pencil artist! A few of my carvings come from books and magazines but most are my own concepts. Caricature carving exaggerates certain body parts but everything still has to be in correct proportion to one another. To do this I start with a drawing in a book I have for the basic form, and using pivot points like the shoulder, elbow, etc, I move the limbs where I need them for the carving I want to do.

Here is the sketch for the carving I will be doing, I'm calling it "Goin' Fishin'.

You will notice that the poor guy has no head, that's not my poor drawing skills, it's easier to carve the head separate from the body, plus you can mount the head on an angle giving the piece the feeling of movement.

To see the rest of the pictures for starting the carving go to the link on the side bar tilted "My Carving Photo Gallery", you may have to click on "My photos" on the far left underneath Picasa, that will open all my albums then click on the Goin' Fishin' picture.

Stay tuned for more posts where I'll show more of this carving.

No I didn't die, I'm just thinking.

It has been such a long time since I posted that some of you may have thought I died, or left the country or something like that. Well I'm still here it's just that my mind has been running a blank on what to share with you all. While my wife can find tons of stuff to post about, my life is either very boring or I have a bad case of writers block. I am planing on staring another carving soon and hope to take pictures of the process to share here, so stay tuned for that. Until then, if I come up with something I'll let ya' know.

The End of Christmas

Ok, it's not the end end but the end of Christmas 2008 for me.
Last Friday night we finally got together with my two sisters to do our annual Christmas thing, we always have a great time with them.
Last year my sister Diane had me do a carving for her to give to Karla, the other sister, so this year I wanted to surprise Diane with a carving for her. She is finishing a mystery novel and I thought it would be cool to do a carving of the lead guy in the book, Ransom Woodley. The story is set in the mid 1800 England and centers around Ransom who just got out of the Crimean War. He had injuries to his leg so he uses a crutch, but hates it. Anyway, here he is.

Here are some carvings I finished earlier this summer but could not show you then because they were both gifts.

This first one was of a old Russian lady I seen in a newspaper article, I called it "Babushka", Russian for grandmother. It was a gift to my wife's sister's family, who has two adopted girls from Russia.





The other was for my wife's other sister's family, her husband has firefighter ties.




They were fun to do, and fun to give away. I've got some great in-laws and it's fun surprising them.

The Sissies

Dateline 12/20/08, Allendale Michigan. A "severe" winter storm has hit the state leaving us all reeling and stranded in its wake. HA, sissies, look at me in the picture the snow is not even up to my knees, and they call that a storm?

This is going to date me, but I remember the winter of '77, now that was a snow storm. It was a total white out for three days solid, not man nor beast was out in that blow. Ok, so there was some one out; my dad, a co-worker and myself.

You see, my dad was one of those people that believed that if it was a work day it was our responsibility to make it to work, so off we went. The other guy, Bob G., picked us up in his truck and we headed for Hudsonville, at a crawl. M-45 was bad enough but when we got to 48th Ave. the road was completely drifted over, but did that stop us, shoot no we're from Michigan and it's only snow! Now 48th runs north and south and had some large open fields, which made those stretches of road even worse and one of these spots was just before the town of Bauer and that's where we got stuck, right out in the open blizzard. We piled out of the truck and with Dad and me pushing we managed to get moving again, only to break the fan belt, which was kind of a good thing because we had to hang out by a warm fire while the truck was fixed. Oh, we did make it to work that day, a little late, but we made it.

So anyway, the weather people these days seem to be always shouting doom and gloom when a storm heads our way but remember, it can always be worse, and after all we live in Michigan we can take it!

Ho Ho Ho!

I just finished a new carving that I wanted to share with you. Each year I try to do a new Santa, some of them are my own ideas and some are patterns from carving magazines. The one I carved this year is a pattern by Mark Gargac I got in Woodcarving Illustrated. I started with his basic idea and tweaked it to mark it my own. He was a fun one to do and I gained some experience carving beards, hope you like him.



I have some of my Santa carving at Season's Flowers on Chicago Drive in Grandville, this guy is headed there today.