Posted on July 9, 2011 [Permalink]

Continued from [Mystique #15 - 2] : carving underway | Starting point of the thread was [Mystique #15 - 1] : how it was made ...

Carving on this one has really moved along quite quickly. While chatting with Marc Kahn on the webcam for an hour or so this morning - solving the problems of the world - I cut most of the remaining areas, leaving only the most delicate zones ... the eyes, eyebrows, and hair.

The eyes will be last. Opening them up is traditionally the final step in carving a face like this. I'll do the eyebrows just before that, so for the rest of the day today, I worked my way steadily along the hairlines.

Here's what it looks like at the point where I broke off this evening (Oops! Don't use that expression, Dave!):

Let's move in a bit closer ...

And maybe even a bit closer (these are all clickable):

The wood is behaving very well. It's somewhat softer than I would like, but at least I can't complain about the grain - there effectively isn't any.

I ran the webcam during a bit of this, so you can get an idea of the general procedure by watching this archived session at Ustream.

The thread continues in [Mystique #15 - 4] : carving ... and splash! ...

Added by: Hannah Skoonberg on July 10, 2011

Ha and people have called my carving intricate! Doesn't hold a candle to this. Do you ever have bits of it chip off during printing?