Walters Carving

The carving mounted and finished.

The final day has come and gone, and way too quickly I might add.  Its been exhausting but in a great way.  Meeting other carvers, seeing their work, sharing technique, experiences and talking about artists that are inspirations to each of us...just an awesome experience. I managed to put in a lot of detail today.  Rick showed some interesting techniques and tools that made the experience more rewarding.  The following picture shows the texture of the mushroom stem made a little more realistic to what a wild growing mushroom might look like simply by using an embossing tool to texture the bark. The following two photos show more texturing.  The one on the left-hand side shows the underside of the mushroom top, simply textured with gouges/veiners OR with power which is how I chose to do it.  The second picture shows a post, carved in place (not an added on piece of wood) and the texture of the bark, plus a knot.  After seeing how Rick "a...

Today was another long day.  It included a lot of different steps.  First there was laying out the windows and any doors.  Later on after glue up (more on this later) we had to set in the doors and windows  which is essentially exposing the frame and making sure there's enough room between other details on the house to get a gouge in since.  Exposing the frame is done by taking away the background which is why you need that room.  Then there was overall shaping: shaping of the mushroom base so that it as more realistic (and fit on the base), plus  the shaping the roof. After laying out the windows, Rick gave his final thumbs up on each design (i.e. we won't get into trouble during the "setting" phase) and we split the bark pieces apart.  The next two pictures show the front and back.  You can see that if its split apart correctly the cardboard is what splits.  This is later taken off with a Jointer before the final glue-up.  The n...

Day 1 of a 3 day seminar with Rick Jensen (http://www.rickjensenwoodcarving.com/) complete, and I'm exhausted.  Twelve students from all over, started with something like this.... This is two pieces of cottonwood bark laminated together with a piece of thin cardboard down the center.  Rick's method is unique in that most cottonwood bark carvings have an "ugly" side that you position against the wall.  That "ugly" side is the side of the bark where it was attached to the tree.  You could still do a 3D carving, but a full 360 degree "in-the-round" carving wasn't very practical (i.e. you'd waste a lot of wood and hollowing it out to allow light through...ugh).  Later in the process, after roughing out the basic shape with both hand and power tools, you'll see that we'll be splitting it in half in order to hollow the backsides such that when we add doors and windows light can shine through the carving making it more realistic.  Her...

What better way to start a blog on carving than to talk about the one person in my life that truly puts up with my habit...my wife.  Quite often after dinner at night the first word's out of my mouth are "I'm going down in the 'hole' ... " which is what I call my shop since its a small shop in the basement (L-shaped, less than 150 sqft, with two doors).  She truly supports me in this hobby in many different ways. Over the weekend she has been working on a few things for me for the upcoming days.  Upcoming days?  Yes!  A 3 day seminar with a very talented wood carver.  The focus will be on a whimsical house in cottonwood bark.  So here's how my wife is helping me out ... I have a really awesome commercially available tool roll that I've been overloading for a while so having another just as awesome tool roll for those times you're just not sure what gouges/etc. to pack rocks.  She also made an apron which will dual as a turning smock si...