How to Carve a Caricature out of basswood - wood carving

You will be surprised to find out that for carving, most cases a single carving knife may be enough. Of course, everybody wants more... and eventually you will need more than one, but for most projects one good carving knife is enough.

Let's see some of the basic knifes and the cuts that you can do with them:

Retracting of fixed blade knife cutter.

- I use this for roughing cuts, it is very easy to sharpen and it has a good handle. Most days will do the job just right.

Carving knifes:

- These are some of the knifes that I use for most carvings that I do. I bought the small set because it has most blades that I need.

Cuts:

- Stop cut

- V -cut - composed of two stop cuts but angled

- Pull cut

- Push cut

The rest of the cuts are, to some extend a combination of the basic cuts that we just covered.

I will show these to you when we get to the carving part.

Safety:

- This is very important, and every single carver at one point will have a nasty cut on his hands to brag about. These can be avoided, if we use the safety gloves and finger protection.

- Safety gloves, I recommend using the gloves for carving, regular home depot ones, will not stop the blade of your knife from going though and it will make a nasty cut. Carving knifes are sharp - or at least they should be.

- Thumb protection is mostly important when you do the pull cuts, most likely the blade will stop on your thumb, so you want to avoid this. It can be done from hokey tape or any good solid tape really, with some plastic reinforcements on the face of your thumb, where blade may come in contact with your skin.

Wood:

Is any piece of wood good for carving? How about using a branch I found in the backyard... it should work right?

Well, the answer to that may be yes and no. Any type of wood for work for carving but...

If you want to use a branch found in the backyard, you can do so, but beware that softness of the wood inside will vary depending on the type of wood is coming from. Second aspect of that, smaller diameter brances may have a soft or even shallow inside. Third, most likely after you will be half-done or even finished the carving, chances are it will crack.

Best wood for carving is dry wood you can purchase from you local carving store. Basswood is very popular, it is soft, it carves well, finish can be good also. Pine is also good for carving, again secret to that is the wood needs to be dry.

I found myself in the situation where I remember that I've seen a carving somewhere that I really liked, but can't remember much details on it.

Best way that works very will for me, take a photo with the object that you want to carve. Rotate the object if possible with 90 degrees and take another photo. There are many apps that will allow you to take these photos and print them to size. Pick the exact size of the wood block that you will use for carving, print the photos to size and you're all set.

Use carbon paper and transfer the design to the wood. Is that easy.

You can also print a bigger size of the carving as well, bigger size will allow you to see the details better. You can sketch that design on your wood block free hand, or use the print-to-size photos and trace contours. It is easy and works every time.

We have a Rectangular Prism... which is a solid 3D piece of wood with 6 faces. How do I start working on this and what would be the roughing cuts I have to start with. Do I start at the top? At the bottom? Middle? It is easy... follow these easy steps and get started on your carving.

How to I cut the nose... In the photo looks nice, but what cuts I need to make it look real? You need 4 basic cuts to rough up the nose. I will show you step by step how to make it look real.

How about the eyes, everybody says the eyes are the most difficult to cut, and by doing the wrong cut you will ruin the whole carving. Luckily, for this design eyes are covered by the hair, which is coming down on his face.

Mouth and chin area... easy! How high up, is it too low... should it be right in the middle of the face? Again, easy as 1, 2 and 3.

For the hair and legs, we're not going to add a lot of details as we only need few cuts for these sections. For the hair, we can leave as is, or use a v-shape chisel and create few thin lines to simulate hair. You can use a combination is small v-shape and larger one so hair will look uneven.

For the legs, we first do the two square lines at the bottom. We can shape them rounder or leave the as is.

Going a bit deeper, making deeper cuts.

Final Cuts, adding details, carving the hair

Finishing the hair, last cuts.

How to I cut the nose... In the photo looks nice, but what cuts I need to make it look real? You need 4 basic cuts to rough up the nose. I will show you step by step how to make it look real.

How about the eyes, everybody says the eyes are the most difficult to cut, and by doing the wrong cut you will ruin the whole carving. Luckily, for this design eyes are covered by the hair, which is coming down on his face.

Mouth and chin area... easy! How high up, is it too low... should it be right in the middle of the face? Again, easy as 1, 2 and 3.

For the hair and legs, we're not going to add a lot of details as we only need few cuts for these sections. For the hair, we can leave as is, or use a v-shape chisel and create few thin lines to simulate hair. You can use a combination is small v-shape and larger one so hair will look uneven.

Use additional resources for extra videos which explain further the carving process.

For the legs, we first do the two square lines at the bottom. We can shape them rounder or leave the as is.

Correction cuts will use at the end of the carving to make sure everything is even and symmetrical. We had a design in mind, sometimes the face will look bigger, the nose to thin. Make sure that you ask know what needs to be corrected before starting the cuts. Do a quick evaluation of the carving and decide if is possible to change things with few small cuts. If that is not possible, continue on the next section and finish the carving. We all have carvings that may have been better if the eyes were a little bigger, or chin not that low. Practice will make things better. For now, you are good. Carving looks real.

Sanding:
Now that the carving is finished, we want to make sure that everything is nice and smooth. I suggest you a hard to medium cleaning brush. The hair of the brush needs to be hard enough to be able to remove all the splinters that are left from carving. A short rub in at least two directions will do the hob just fine.

Second option I would suggest to buy and use cleaning pads, either round or square. Just fold it in half and give your carving a little scrub, again, don't go more than few seconds in each direction. All splinters that were showing up before, now should be gone. For any stubborn ones, you may want to use a small carving knife and cut them up.

Staining and/or Painting:
Staining the carving involves few steps, based on the result you want to achieve. I like to use clear danish oil for most of my carvings unless I am asked for some specific color or stains. Danish oil can be purchased from any local store and 500 ml would only cost you few bucks and last you for many carvings.

Second option is to use mineral oil, which deeply penetrates and protects the wood. Options for finishing the carvings are limited only by your imagination. You can always mix different stains for different parts of the carving.

Painting is also an option, you can use acrylic paints on top of the oils (once carving is dry). U personally use this for Holiday decorations which looks sometimes better in red of green colors, or custom orders that require specific colors. You imagination is the limit.

Take few minutes and realize what you just accomplished, and not only that, image what you can do next. Attached are some of the carving that I have done and honestly, these are not much different form what we did today. Design is different, but techniques are similar.

You can pick your next project by visiting the next carving shows on your town, or just reading a magazine, watching a movie where a specific carving caught your attention. Follow the steps you have learned on this course and you will know how to plan your net carving. If you have any doubts or there are few things tat you cannot remember from this course, repeat that section that us not yet clear and have it done. Remember, wood carving, like any hobby or work you do require a lot of practice and skills needed to gt better at. You can learn how to carve in one afternoon, but it may take years to get very good at it. Practice, practice, practice. You will love the results.

If you liked my course, feel free to browse so some of the other courses that I have and pick the one that you like. If you need a hand or advice on any project that you want to take, let me know, and I will be able to assist you.