Carving Faces in Wood E-Book

Alec LaCasse

• Herausgeber: Fox Chapel Publishing
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 144

Beschreibung

There's nothing like culling hand-carved magic from a beautiful piece of wood, thanks to Alec LaCasse's Carving Faces from Wood! This fully illustrated, A-to-Z guide synthesizes LaCasse's hard-earned tips, shortening the learning curve so you can start carving a face in wood in no time. Thanks to its beautiful layout, this book presents wood carving faces at every stage--from selecting your tools and outlining a basic shape to smoothing out the texture of a face's fine hair. You'll even see which types of wood work best for carved wood faces, including the advantages and disadvantages of each. Or master different face types to suit your preferences. It might otherwise take years to learn how to carve a face in wood. But thanks to LaCasse's step-by-step instructions and photographs, you'll soon be finishing the detail of every nose, ear, and beard like a lifelong expert.

Leseprobe

© 2024 by Alec LaCasse and Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc., 903 Square Street, Mount Joy, PA 17552.

Carving Faces in Wood is an original work, first published in 2024 by Fox Chapel Publishing Company, Inc. The patterns contained herein are copyrighted by the author. Readers may make copies of these patterns for personal use. The patterns themselves, however, are not to be duplicated for resale or distribution under any circumstances. Any such copying is a violation of copyright law.

Print ISBN: 978-1-4971-0420-4eISBN: 978-1-6374-1297-8

The Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file with the Library of Congress.

Managing Editor: Gretchen Bacon

Acquisitions Editor: Kaylee J. Schofield

Editor: Joseph Borden

Designer: Mike Deppen

Proofreader: Kurt Connelly

Indexer: Jay Kreider

To learn more about the other great books from Fox Chapel Publishing, or to find a retailer near you, call toll-free 800-457-9112 or visit us at www.FoxChapelPublishing.com.

We are always looking for talented authors. To submit an idea, please send a brief inquiry to [email protected].

For a printable PDF of the patterns used in this book, please contact Fox Chapel Publishing at [email protected], with 978-1-4971-0420-4 Carving Faces in Wood in the subject line.

Introduction

Woodcarving and teaching are the only jobs I’ve ever really known. This book is dedicated to helping you learn from my years of making mistakes and, hopefully, save you a lot of time. In the past few years of teaching in person and online (through my online school at aleclacasse.com), I have learned that a few good tips can set a person up for a lifetime of success! I’ve picked up countless great tips from reading books like this one, from watching videos from generous teachers online, and from hours of practice looking at reference photos. Even if you only take away one new idea from this book, I’d be happy! In this book, I will teach everything you need to know to start your woodcarving journey—essential tools, design considerations, and most importantly, how to bring your carvings to life with a few simple techniques.

We’ll discuss how to design your pieces, apply your designs, carve facial features, and carve hair. Then we’ll talk about unique considerations and how to tie all these constituent parts together. Finally, we’ll go over hanging and displaying. I’ll even provide three step-by-step projects for you to hone your skills!

Please use this book, along with the many project videos I’ve created through my online school, to learn the fundamentals of carving faces in wood.

Contents

Introduction

Gallery

Getting Started

Tools and How to Handle Them

Safety

Creating a Simple Carving Station

Wood

Reference and Design

Drawing an Original Design

Applying the Design

Roughing Out

Refining the Front and Side Profiles

Carving Mouths, Noses, and Eyes

Getting Mouthy

Noses: The Pyramid Method

Eyes: The Windows to the Soul

Distinct Features

Carving Male vs Female Features

Old vs.Young Features

Carving Hair

Hair Anatomy and Shape

Pulling It All Together

Lighting

Taking Pictures and Video

Refining the Forms

Finishing and Displaying

Hanging and Displaying Carvings

Projects

Father Time

The Green Lady

Wizened Wood Spirit

Patterns

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Gallery

This was a commissioned piece of a cousin’s boyfriend carved in cottonwood bark. Leaving heavier gouge marks in his shirt helped to emphasize the sanded smoothness of his face.

In this, I explored the boundaries of stronger, more angular feminine features by using more angular knife cuts and smoothing with rifflers and sandpaper.

I carved this depiction of Christ in a crown of thorns for a friend of mine. Later in the book, I’ll discuss some of the visual details I chose and why I chose them.

This Viking was the first commissioned piece I did in my Detroit studio, the first studio I had on my own. The small details for the clothing here really make those pieces pop.

This piece was carved in black walnut. The angular leaves contrast nicely with the roundness of the face. I achieved texture on the leaves by using a variety of veiners and rifflers.

This piece is similar to the Wizened Wood Spirit we will carve later in the book. I carved this shortly before an art show, so it was born in a frenzy! On this, I used a long, flowing veiner and V-cuts, with an emphasis on S shapes to create whimsical hair.

For this piece, I used multiple friends as live models. It’s technically unfinished, but is a good example of the positive effect live models can have on the accuracy of your work, which we'll discuss later in the book.

A commissioned carving I did for a friend. As a fellow carver, my friend hung out with me, helped shape and sand, and gave input on the piece throughout. I also carved a massive great horned owl in an adjacent tree (not pictured). The carving is done in black locust, which is arguably the second hardest wood in North America. It was incredibly difficult to carve—even with chainsaws. While we won't cover carvings like this in the book, the same concepts generally apply.

This bust of Thomas Edison was a commissioned piece for a friend. Plans are in the works to cast this in bronze. This is another good example of how hand-tooled clothing (I used a variety of veiners and gouges to create realistic folds and wrinkles) can contrast a smoothly sanded face and add dimension.

This photo of my carving of Sitting Bull was taken before the piece was complete. It sold before I could take pictures of the finished piece, but it won first place at the International Woodcarvers Congress in the Human Figure/Bust category. I used veiners to create deep wrinkles around the eyes, giving the piece a bit of gravitas.

This carving was made during a private lesson I gave to the great Brian Melton. Note the details in the clothing that bring this character to life.

This piece is titled When We were Birds. It’s carved in paper birch and was a really unique commission from a short story writer and poet named Suzanne Honda. We will carve this piece in this book.

These three pieces were carved from cottonwood bark I collected during trips to Montana. Note how the expressions here give each piece a very different tone. These each have small articles of clothing or jewelry, too, that speak to the character. These are the small details that make a piece stand out.

A commission ordered by one of my favorite illustrators of all time, Joshua Noom. I used veiners to create a series of S cuts to create the whimsical, flowing beard.

This piece was the result of a class I taught on capturing expressions in wood. I rarely finish carvings in a class, this piece was an exception. I used a variety of gouges to create the deeply furrowed brow, and veiners to cut in the thick eyebrows, giving this character a somewhat melancholy look.

Getting Started

Creating an ideal environment for carving involves making your space comfortable, your tools and wood easily accessible, and your projects comfortable to work on. That said, I have seen great masters of woodcarving create colossal carvings in spaces the size of a small walk-in closet. Seriously. Size does not matter. My current shop is the size of a small sunroom. You don’t have to have a dedicated workshop or fancy garage to make great artwork. I’ve also seen pro carvers use crude handmade tools to carve their pieces—whatever gets the job done. You just need tools that will hold their edge, nothing necessarily fancy. There are carvers who use less-than-perfect wood because they find rough pieces beautiful. You don’t have to have the “ideal” carving wood listed in this book. While having a big space, fancy tools, and perfect materials isn’t necessary, the ideas we will discuss in this chapter are. In this section, we will cover everything you need to know to get started portrait carving, including tools, sharpening, creating a workstation, and selecting woods.

Tools and How to Handle Them

If you are an experienced carver and know the names of the tools and how to hold them then you may skip this portion of the book, but if you don’t, stick around.

The primary tools a carver will use depends on the type of carving they are engaged in. This book will focus on a bit of whittling but will mostly focus on deep relief carving of the human face. The types of tools we will discuss are those that best suit the needs of a deep-relief carver, and not a chip carver, chainsaw carver, etc.

All the projects in this book can be completed with just a handful of standard gouges that we will discuss in the following pages.

Though simple at first glance, a gouge has several important parts integral to its function.

GOUGES

Gouges are a type of chisel with a curved edge, which is called the sweep. Metal is ground from the edge of the curved tool at an angle (typically between 15–20 degrees) to create the bevel. The base of the bevel is called the heel, and the opposite side is called the cutting edge. There is a simple numbering system that most gouge makers use to determine the sweep of a gouge. The higher the number, the more curved the gouge. A #1 gouge is simply a flat chisel, without any curve at all. A #2 gouge has a very slight curve but is still mostly flat. A #3 is slightly more curved than the #2, and so on and so forth. The numbers go up to #9. A #9 gouge is the most curved of the classic gouges.

Gouges have varying degrees of curvature in their edges.

Bent Gouge

There are multiple variations and types of gouges, but the most useful variation of the standard gouge is called a bent gouge. The bent gouge allows you to dip into hard-to-reach areas that a standard gouge could not reach.

Veiners

Also known as #10s and #11s, veiners are basically gouges with taller sides and smaller, U-shaped profiles, which makes them capable of plunging more deeply into the fibers of the wood without the sides of the tool getting buried. Veiners are excellent for tight areas that need extra depth.

A veiner has sharply curved edges, allowing for deeper plunge cuts.

Skews

Skews are a flat chisel with an angled grind. The angle of the blade allows the skew to create the shearing cuts of a knife while maintaining the pushing power and control of a chisel. Many relief carvers find that the skew can be a replacement for a knife since the skew has a narrower cutting edge and can therefore get into tighter areas without damaging surrounding areas.

Skews allow one to create the shearing cuts of a knife while also lending the control of a chisel.

OTHER ESSENTIAL CARVING TOOLS

Knives

The knife is possibly the most versatile and familiar carving tool. Learning to control a good knife can make you an unstoppable force when carving. The knife is the ultimate minimalist carvers’ tool. Plus, it’s among the most versatile tools in existence. You could bring just a knife on a camping trip and use it to cut rope, open boxes, carve utensils, and whittle a portrait into a branch, to name just a few uses

Scan this QR code for more tips on selecting knives.

A quality carving knife is essential to any carver’s kit.

Rifflers

Rifflers are small wood rasps designed to remove material and make smoothing surfaces easier. Rifflers can often replace sandpaper in the early stages of shaping, since they don’t leave behind minerals that can dull your tools. They are also helpful for fine-tuning and removing smaller amounts of material in your projects, as well as scratching fine wrinkles and subtle transitions.

Rifflers are great for fine details.

Carving Gloves

Gloves are especially important for those who carve while holding their work, such as whittlers. Gloves should be worn on the non-dominant or wood-holding hand to protect from knife slips. An additional wrapping of one’s dominant hand, specifically the thumb, with cut-resistant tape is also a great idea. You can also cut the thumb out of a Kevlar or fiberglass kitchen glove to wear on your dominant hand’s thumb. Keep in mind that while a glove can prevent you from getting sliced, it cannot prevent a hard jab. Use the safety methods outlined in the upcoming section to lessen your chance of injury.

Carving gloves should be worn on your non-dominant hand (the one that holds the wood).

SHARPENING

Sharpening is one of the simplest concepts to understand in carving, and yet is somehow one of the hardest concepts to figure out. It took me eight or nine years of carving before I felt confident in my sharpening abilities. Sharpening is the bane of most carvers’ existence. Some folks find a method that works for them and stick to it, and others give up and send their tools out for sharpening every few weeks. Ironically, sharpening shouldn’t be that intimidating, since is just another form of subtractive sculpture, like carving. Instead of sculpting a face, you are shaping the bevel of a curved object and polishing it to a mirror-like surface. This section aims to simplify the process and take the fear out of sharpening.

Polishing

To have sharp tools, without exception, you must regularly maintain a polished edge with a strop. You should strop your tools when you are finished with a project. Much of the heavy grinding, flattening, and profiling of your tools can be avoided if you consistently polish your tools using a strop. A strop is just a piece of leather, wood, or cardboard that has been dressed with honing or polishing compound. Polishing compounds can come in many forms, and each have their own “grit” or coarseness. More aggressive cutting compounds leave a rougher surface, while finer polishes leave a mirror-like surface on your bevel. I tend to use an intermediate grit (aka green polish). Jewelers use color coding to differentiate the grits, and typically green is the best middle ground for smoothing and refining your bevel to a mirror-like polish quickly and efficiently.

The process of polishing is simple. First, rub the compound on a piece of board, wood, or the rough side of a piece of leather. Next, take your blade’s bevel and lay it flat against the newly dressed surface. Then, pull the tool away from the cutting edge, dragging it across the flat surface. When you are sharpening a curved edge (a gouge) you should try and rotate your hand and wrist while maintaining a parallel meeting between the main bevel and the strop. The goal is not to raise or lower the angle of the tool while you are dragging it across. Remember, your goal is to polish the existing bevel, not to create a new one

Keeping your tools sharp will make carving an easier, safer, and more enjoyable experience.

GRINDING/PROFILING

If you drop, dent, or otherwise seriously damage your sharpened edge, no matter how much polishing you do, you will most likely need to regrind your bevel. The goal of sharpening a hand carving tool is most often to achieve a 15- to 20-degree angle, called a bevel. Tools used to create the bevel of a gouge or knife can range from a piece of 80- to 100-grit sandpaper to a specialized grinder. The cutting edge, then, is usually created with a much finer sandpaper or by using a polishing strop (my preferred choice).

Fixing Dents

Reprofile the blade. To do so, hold the cutting edge perpendicular to the sharpening surface and either drag the blade against sandpaper (80–100 grit for large tools, 220 grit for tools thinner than ⅛" [3mm]). In the case of a power system, let the power sharpener do the work for you. Try to only remove as much of the edge as necessary to start with a clean, undented/undamaged edge.

Determine the appropriate angle for your edge. Once the edge is flat, you can find the appropriate angle (approximately 15–18 degrees) based on the hardness of the wood you most typically carve. Most carvers use softwoods like basswood (limewood), butternut, and poplar, so a 15- to 18-degree angle will be just fine. Some carvers using much harder woods, or doing a lot of heavy mallet work, might require a 20-degree angle or higher to help resist damaging the edge while carving.

Sharpen the blade. When trying to regrind the bevel, as with using the strop, be sure to avoid changing the angle of the blade to the grinding surface. Stay as still as possible and use pulling strokes, moving in the opposite direction of the sharp edge. As with stropping, for gouges, using a gentle turn of the hand and wrist as one pulls the gouge across the surface will create an even bevel across the tool.

SHARPENING V-TOOLS

Let me preface this by saying that my focus when sharpening V-tools (and any tool, for that matter) is mostly on making the tools ridiculously sharp. Symmetry, although important within reason, isn’t my primary focus. Most of my V-tools, when examined closely, have some degree of asymmetry between the left and right “wings.” When sharpening V-tools, it is important to think of them as two flat chisels connected by a small U-shaped gouge.

It is much easier to approach the sharpening process by dragging a V-tool on the strop, sandpaper, or stone when you consider the two flat sides of a V-tool and the connecting tiny gouge between them. Start by laying the V