Walters Carving

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...

I decided the best way to approach this project was first by creating the shoe.  Eventually, I would like to create a more whimsical feeling to it by adding windows, doors, and other creative touches in an attempt to bring the nursery rhyme to life (well in a carving).  I wanted to make the shoe as realistic as possible before adding the other touches.