Walters Carving



I had this potpourri bowl with a pewter lid that my wife picked up for me from somewhere.  The lid is destined for a wooden bowl that I'll turn (or have - she's since picked up a couple more) but that left me with this glass bowl.  She asked if I could make some sort of candle holder using the glass bowl ... and out of that was born this idea.   It's a fairly simple carving, but it takes a long time to do.  I turned the basic shape, and then hand carved each stone, the windows, and the door.  I haven't had much experience in painting carvings, but I had fun with this one.  Below is a detail shot of the lichen/moss I added to the carving with paint.  I used acrylics. 

This piece was started probably two years ago.  Over time I kept coming back to it and carving on it slowly, changing ideas as I saw things I liked in other carvings or changing how I carved a detail as I learned better how to carve them.  For instance, I think the roof and shingles have been carved 3 times.  I wasn't overly happy with it, but decided to push through it.  It actually was about 5 inches taller with a longer ladder.  The ladder broke, and I got this idea to cut it off right above where the ladder broke creating a house that sortof looked like it belonged sticking up out of the water.  I added the boat and brought it to a finish.

Here is my latest carving, a whimsical house carved during a seminar with Kathy Overcash.  Something new that she suggested I give a shot was to keep the "wing" on the house and carve around and on it.   And of course, I managed to get through the entire carving INCLUDING carving underneath of the wing without breaking it off ... which eventually did happen when I was mounting the carving on the base. Something else new that I tried was patches on a roof which creates a really cool effect.  Below are shots from the start of the carving throughout.  Notice I originally had a post included (it didn't make it...) and a ladder (also didn't make it ...).

Here is a bowl in Mahogany.  I've hand carved the texture around the edge with a v-tool.  I followed that with tint in two tones, a red and blue.  I also tried some burning to set off the edges somewhat and add some other "color" elsewhere.  Below are photos of the entire bowl, plus the bowl before I started "embellishing." 

The carving is done!  Some of the ideas mentioned previously in another blog post were not accomplished mostly because ... well ... things change.  As I started adding detail I didn't want to make it too busy. The carving is 8 separate pieces of Bass wood glued together except the ladder which is not glued.  Each piece is carved separately and then fit together.  I used a small trim router to get the top house part to fit into the shoe top, and then again to fit the roof to the top.  The chimney is turned on a lathe. The Bass wood is sealed and then it is finished in acrylics, shoe cream, and finally sprayed with a spar urethane.  To get a sort-of antiqued finish I paint everything in multiple layers of acrylics, and then using a rotary tool with a scotch-brite sanding wheel i expose different layers of paint, and in some cases go all the way to the wood.  I also like to highlight certain areas where hand carving tools are used. ...

I haven't said much about this carving thus far.  I've had this idea for about a year.  I've been looking at different illustrations, read over the nursery rhyme a couple of times, even looked for original carvings.  I gave consideration to various woods and types of carvings.  I really wanted to do this in the round and in Cottonwood bark, but decided instead to go with Basswood for a variety of reasons.   You can see that I am creating an extension where a foot would go into the shoe into a sort of top-of-the-house portion with a roof.  I've gotten shingles done on the one side of the roof so far.  The ladder is to go to a door.  One of the things I haven't worked out is whether I will try to hollow out behind any doors or windows I carve into into it, allowing light through the carving.  I do that on all of my Cottonwood "house" carvings.  Thus far I'm fairly pleased with the direction and have some ideas of the other "whimsical" d...