Carving faces in cottonwood bark live with Alec LaCasse

all right thank you all again for joining us this afternoon for the international association of woodcarvers today is september the 12th 2020 and today we have a special guest on with us we have mr alec lacasson that's going to be carving faces in cottonwood bark before we get started with alec i'll go through the list of things that we have lined up coming up in the coming weeks next week we're going to have daniel clay from knoxville tennessee he's going to be on he has a company called saturday box company and he's going to be doing chip carving so we'll have daniel on next week on september the 26th we'll have flex cut they're going to come on talk about their tools and sharpening their tools so we'll have them here on october the 3rd we'll have catherine overcash on she's going to talk to us about bark houses catherine's actually on today hey catherine um that that is october the 3rd and then october the 10th uh we will have james ray miller on uh he's a flat plane carver and he's going to come on and do a demonstration on carving flat flat plane caricatures um so having said all that just a couple of other things uh don't forget that dave stetson's having a zoom class at the end of the month uh on carving of santa claus from a rough out uh if you're interested in that class contact dave stetson uh chris hammock is still doing ongoing zoom classes on design and caricature and then kevin applegate is also doing classes he's a cca member you can find his classes on second alarm woodcarving.com second is with a it's a the number two in nd so second alarm woodcarving.com if you want to check out kevin applegate's classes uh having said all that we'll go ahead and turn it over to alec and now if you'll go ahead and take it on thank you yeah jeez why all that boring stuff beforehand i'm just hey guys no i really appreciate being invited today it's an honor um i have i'm a new new member of the uh the instagram group if it doesn't really work that way there's no group is there i'm a new member a friend of the daily woodcarving instagram and i love it really cool to see what you guys are doing and they asked me uh they said someone brought brought me up in one of your meetings and so i thought i would do a little demo for you and um primarily focusing on cottonwood bark as was already mentioned and so this will be just that a demonstration on carving uh cottonwood mark so as far as the format uh i guess we'll we'll kind of get into the to the meat of the carving um and then is it normal for people to ask questions afterwards is that kind of yeah we can do it however you want alec if uh if they want to ask during the discussion we can do that or if you'd rather them wait till the end we can do that they also throw stuff out in the chat um so i can read those off as they come through on the chat great beautiful that works great i have no uh no problem with questions in the middle of it that's great it gives me something to talk about so cool i'm glad to be here thanks for having me again let's get to it so um i've been doing uh face carving in some form or fashion uh since i was 12 and so i'm 26 now so 14 years i've been doing carving i started i showed it up to the woodcraft store just one too many times and the uh manager came to and came up to me and said um basically like what are you doing here and uh he i explained that i was into carving and i'd been carving for a little while and he said do you have any pictures i pulled up a few pictures and uh he he called the manager's manager whoever that is somewhere who was visiting i guess the guy who was in charge of the store and came out and said have you considered teaching and i was uh let's see i was 16 right so i said yeah of course yeah of course i've considered absolutely i'm into teaching and uh and he said good and he said how old are you and i said 16. he said well you're 18 now kid and that was my first exposure to that that class the class that followed maybe a month after that conversation it was a class of i think i had 16 students it was huge for my first class but i really enjoyed it a lot and i fell in love with teaching um so on top of wood carving for me for me teaching isn't really kind of something that i have to do to make a living as an artist it's something that i really like to do and i'm pretty blessed to be able to do it so um that said i i started doing fine art shows right around that age 16 15 16 and started selling my work at the same time so that probably ramped it up quicker than my teaching did and i would say probably because i didn't know what i was talking about with regard to teaching so i'm glad that didn't ramp up any quicker than it did because i got i got some experience in selling art and being an artist professionally i know i feel like i can actually share without um being a complete pulling stuff out of my butt so that's good it's always a good thing yeah so from from age 16 on i started doing the professional art show circuit and maybe age 22 i started traveling and doing some classes workshops around the nation and that's what i've been doing of course kovid's stopped out from most of us those of you who are watching who do teach um i know dave's here and a few others but uh it's definitely been kind of a weird time but we've adapted we're getting clever um i started a woodcarving school and that basically allows people to interact with me on a one-on-one level outside of the videos that they subscribe to um and so that's something that folks um i believe we have an offer code for you um you can get that i'll mention that at the end of this gives you uh 20 off the school it's a monthly thing uh so so i've been been able to make do but uh but beyond that i've been just doing connection work i'm looking at a whiteboard on the wall with a bunch of commissions that i've been putting off so and then the fun ones i've been doing so i don't know if you guys can relate to that but uh yeah so anyway let's get to it huh how about it i've got a piece of cottonwood bark mounted to this fixture here this is a really simple setup i actually learned it from a guy named ron adamson i'm not sure if those of you out there know ron i'm going to move my camera here ron is a carver in libya montana and he's an excellent carver at that and someone who i've looked up to for a long time i'm gonna talk while i grab this light um he he does this sort of uh style of carving low relief and bark as well and uses this same fixture so the step is really simple it's just a it's a two by six i have mounted to a wall with uh two by fours scrutiny is two studs and i have a mounted light this is just like a spring drafting lamp sits up top i have a couple of auxiliary lights for photography and videography here for the school and i just tucked this bad boy here i've got a magnet strip with tools nearby probably can't see all of them but i've also got my my bark mounted to a three-quarter inch piece of ply that is screwed into the piece of wood two spots the top and bottom i'm just using inch and 5 8 drywall screws and i'm trying to stay away from the center of the piece so that i'm not carving into the screws and ruining my tools but this piece of plywood has some holes drilled in it and it allows me to fit different size pieces of bark to it then i just clamp this to the fixture with these two inch spring clamps and that's more than enough for most softer wood projects i do do some carbon and butternut this is actually my latest project for the school it's a female face um i don't know if you can even see it but so i do do materials in other woods and i say do do on accident sometimes um and yeah so this is uh this is the setup this is a piece of kylo bark i grabbed when i was in my channel last we make these trips every year out to montana and my friend and i uh ben liu had been going the last two years he's a video a guy a filmographer a film dude i don't know filmographer is the real thing i don't know if that's a great word he makes videos and movies and so he came and documented her last trip that'll be up soon i'm sure somewhere it's called bones it's a short film um but yeah this came from that trip so to start i'm mounting of course the piece of bark to the fixture and i'm using a large gouge i usually use the number four 25 millimeter uh stupid which if you're using swiss made tools you're probably going to use something closer to a three but they're they're comparable those sizes most of the alternative tools to this dubai are a stepped lower in terms of the scoop so i use this large wide tool to do most of my roughing in and some of my detailing especially when i'm working in a demonstration and i'm working more quickly than i normally would so i'll start by kind of clearing the surface of the material all right so i'm already trying to make a semi-round surface here and the thing that drew me to cottonwood bark was this sound i love the sound of a sharp tool zipping through the cotton wood bark and i love the color it's got this reddish kind of brown streak to it it's so so soft and even and almost it's got such a mild grain presence meaning that you can move in multiple directions without having to worry about it being fickle and chipping on you once you get into the actual you know the meat of the bark it's really great for those of you who haven't tried it i highly recommend cottonwood bark okay so i clear off the surface and then i start to define the proportions of the face now i normally when i carve i'm not doing what i'm about to do but for the sake of the demonstration i'll show you kind of the internal metric i'm using for proportion it's a very very simple one it's just this kind of idea of keeping things in line now most of the time when i'm carving again these rules are flexed substantially so the proportions of the face aren't necessarily going to be exactly as i explained them now but they're somewhere within this range and it gives us a nice framework when we don't have a picture to scale to reference and measure from so that being said let's say our face is going to be somewhere around three and a half inches i don't want the face to be too big because i don't want to run out of room uh the space surrounding the piece so let's draw let's say a circle and a half right the classic oval face shape we'll start with that i'm actually going to bring this line up a little higher so we've got some messy lines here just indicating the oval shape so i'll split this oval in half right we'll say this is the top of the head this is the bottom of the head and we'll go right about halfway in between those two lines so this is a this is the what one might think would be the eye line generally with male faces the eye line sits just above the center and so you can draw a secondary line just above it indicating the uh the top of the eye usually this midpoint line indicates if it indicates anything where the lower lid either meets the ball of the eye or somewhere at the base of the lid where the the first part of the lower lid meets the this kind of like zygomatic region uh if i'm using that uh word properly i think it's the zygomatic maxillary region maxilla region so um draw that and i'll split this shape in half again it's getting kind of messy here so we've got our top of our head bottom of our head eye line nose line which is just this shape split in half from the eye to the base of the chin um if you have a notepad handy and you're trying to draw that can be helpful to keep this stuff in your brain then i'll take the space and i'll divide it between uh into thirds so one two three so so basically i'm just dividing in half so i'm just dividing this whole shape in half this shape in half this shape in half and then finally the space between the bottom of the nose and the bottom of the chin is divided into thirds okay and this first and second third indicates the upper and lower lip right so if i'm carving a whimsically bearded dude i'm not super worried about the uh position of the chin and lips because maybe they're mostly covered by hair in some cases they might not be but in most cases at least the upper lip is with this project uh let's see you've got 40 minutes so does anyone have a preference is there is there uh speak first or is there anyone that's been really wanting to see one thing in particular or any input on that because i can kind of go multiple directions with this we talked about the face but any thoughts on that i'll just make a decision if if no one speaks up how about an indian okay yeah sounds good let's do it so we will care about the mouth the lips the face uh the lower part of the face so that being said uh we can start with actually roughing in the face i won't do a lot more drawing on this i can i can go into depth but that's stuff that i cover in more detail in this school and will probably subtract from the demo since i want to actually get some carving done um so i'm going to use the number four to create a basically a stop cut if you will coming right below the chin and right away i'm going to start to get the curve of the base of the face so i've got about an inch worth of depth already isn't that awesome cottonwood bark is so soft within seconds i've got about an inch an inch you know so that's a 25 millimeter number four so that was about an inch over there so i'll get a little more depth here let's say we're drawing a couple of braids beneath the um neck so i'll use the the four turned upside down let me see if i can get a little closer for you guys so you can really see what i'm doing a little more clearly just bear with my movement that'll help so i'll use the four i'll turn it upside down and i'll use the natural curve in the tool to create the beginning of these braid mounts so really all we've got here is this like triangle and this ledge of the chin okay next i'm going to start the stop cut above the head so i'm not worried about this material coming off because frankly the natural framing is already kind of busted this continuation is not there so i'm not worried about this uh material up top coming going away in fact this would be the kind of project that i would probably take a bandsaw to the top of this and just carve the face all the way back or the head so i'm just starting at this line just above it and i'm moving quite a bit of material okay so at this point i'm probably i'm gonna say an inch and a half back with a slight curve at the top and bottom okay and i'll bring it a little tighter looking okay all right next i'm going to do a little cut that is a very tricky one and actually before i do that let's round this forehead a bit or this kind of hair area i'm just going to take the hard edge off of this top part here again kind of rounding it over everything i've done thus far including the initial roughing has a semi-round shape to it all right so the next thing i'm going to do is part the hair actually this seems a little counter-intuitive i almost started with something else but let's do this instead let's start with the part i'm kind of using the vore again turned upside down to create a little separation two mounds on either side hopefully you can see that well if anyone's having trouble seeing feel free to let us know and i can position the camera a little differently yeah so so i've created this part and now i'll do the cut that i faked you out with earlier which is the uh kind of the space of the mountains of the eye where that's where that kind of starts so i'm gonna go i gotta sneeze past okay so i'm gonna make a cut with this uh this is a 20 millimeter number nine pre-curved chisel i'm going to come across the line that we indicated is the eye line so i'm staying below that line but i'm creating a little valley here and that's stretching across the face i'm not afraid to get a lot of depth here because most of this forehead and area below the forehead will be coming back what we're trying to do here is we're trying to get the nose to come forward right and with a carving that is being completely roughed out right before our eyes we have to remove a lot of material early on to get that nose to come away from the forehead and the just surrounding areas below it so i'm going to bring the forehead back once i've done so but first i'll take the marker and i'll define a center line here kind of helps me to keep things in proportion alex could you tell us where that sheetrock screw is in relation to the face that you're doing right now yeah yeah so at this point it's right above the face so this could be this could pose the challenge but i'm not using so long of a screw that i'll hit it um if i go um to the depth that i'm going right so i'm not going a whole lot further in than that in this piece um but at some point especially if i end up taking advantage of this obviously i'll take it off of the backboard and then i'll trim it clean but yeah it's just above this uh cut here so it's right about there so i wanna yeah yeah ideally on this one it would be even a little higher now if i were to go back i'd place the screw up a little a little higher so it would be less even less likely to hit it okay moving forward here i had coffee today so and by today i mean like 10 minutes ago so we'll redraw that eye line in i'm going to draw a triangle here indicating this kind of space that we're not going to touch just yet and on the outside of the triangle beneath this ridge i'm going to use the same number 920 millimeter to come on either side of the nose using a scooping motion there aren't any hard lines here i'm using big scooping tools great soft soft lines we've got a little punky area in here that'll be fun for us to mess with later all right so big deep dish cuts happening below this ridge all right and i'll go ahead and tighten this up a little bit to those lines we drew earlier see if i can reposition this to get it over my shoulder so you can see it might be a little too close for me to work okay there we go all right now that i've done this i'm going to move the camera so you can see what we're after here in terms of depth can you see that so you can see i brought this material back um i'll actually leave the camera in that position for this next cut i'm gonna bring the forehead back so i'm using that four one inch number four and i'm going to take forehead material back what that looks like from the front and again that round shape maintaining that round shape okay so what i'm doing is i'm getting that nose to come forward because i'm staying away from this triangle that we've drawn triangle is not the final destination for our nose obviously we're not looking for a triangle because frankly the nose isn't really a triangle shape but we do want some sort of uh indication for us to stay away from this area for now so i choose the triangle all right so once i've done that i can bring the material down below the nose so i'll make a sort of stop cut if you will really isn't a stop cut because i'm going to use a gouge or this is actually a number 11 veiner this is i'm going to say it's an eight millimeter veiner and it's just basically a very steep u i'm sure most of you know that but i'm going to cut below our nose here so we've got the nose line which bisects the eye and chin area in half so i'm going to use the vayner to kind of define the bottom of that i could totally use the four and i'm using the for this one inch for again to bring material down below it again maintaining that curve natural curve all right then i'll taper the nose back i'm not taking material away from the tip i'm tapering it back into the forehead area with the four and i'm going to go across the bridge with my nines is that 20 millimeter nylon again just across the bridge i'm not taking the ball of the nose down and carving back to that point and being careful not to take too much of the ball of the nose back just yet okay so we've got a strange looking frankenstein man um i'd like to talk a little bit about the nose um most people when they carve the nose they end up taking the ayla pushing it too far forward by carving the ayla too soon so i wanted to protect us from doing that by demonstrating that the ayla the ball of the nose and the ayla are separated on the profile view of the face so i'm using my face as an example but you can see what i'm talking about the bulb the bulbous part of the nose here the ball of the nose is pushed forward ahead of the nasal flares that kind of go into the bald nose right so our concern here is that we don't put our nostrils way up too far and then start undercutting too early that's probably the biggest mistake that i see when people carve the nose that being said i'm going to taper on either side of the imaginary ball okay i can draw it so it's not so imaginary so i'm going to use my four and turn it uh at a 45 degree angle to the piece and start to taper this the corners of this triangle back into the sweep of the face you're bored yet no this is great keep going out no okay so let's see we've got our profile show to you about it can you see what we're doing here we've got the ridge of the brow we've got this hump of the nose and then this area is gonna have to come back quite a bit and we'll do that now since you've got a nice angle hopefully my junk back there isn't too distracting the taper area back getting the roundness cool beans all right now i'm going to leave the camera there because this is kind of an interesting switch up i'm going to use my marker to indicate the hairline and i want to push the hair back so i'm going to draw a line from the top of the head that kind of almost splits the ball in half and that will be our hairline i'll do it on both sides even though you can't see this other side here so i'm going to use my number four to create a separation between the forehead and the hair carving to that line the nice thing about the cottonwood bark is you can carve and lift and not completely lose your line if you understand the grain direction of course if you're more comfortable i'll use a nine to create this separation or an 11 this is that eight millimeter long that i was using earlier carve that line and create that separation from the hair and the nose so what that looks like from the front and reposition that so you can see it looks like this so he still looks like frankenstein this is where most people get discouraged i feel like they're failures and they're not good at woodcarving i should give up if they've not carved the face before at least to to have felt the emotions the the ones that are all too familiar to those of bus who car faces where you kind of forget if you even know what you're doing and then you get discouraged because your your homie here is kind of looking like frankenstein alas we shall save him from his frankenstein look okay so i'm taking material away from the bottom of the face right now i'm just narrowing up the face a bit thinning it up beautiful crack right here this is going to be a wonderful crack can you see that oh yeah how about that look at this perfect for our demonstration today i'm gonna soak that while we're talking by soaking i mean give it a little wood glue a little little super glue wish it was never i'm going to flake this piece off if you guys have a compromised area on your part on your carving always better to repair that area before you started adding very important detail so if there's an area where i see a major crack or a fault and i can dislodge it and and secure it by either using glue or something along those lines filler or something i'll always do that earlier on in the piece as to preserve the the carving because there's no sense in waiting until you're 95 done with the carving and you have to screw stuff up that you spent hours doing right so always do your repairs early on and if you can you know you know if there's again if there's a crack or a fissure just take the piece off just wedge your knife and do whatever is necessary to finish that um cracked piece and so that you can reattach it that being said that that should be pretty good he's floating in mid-air so this little cracked area so i'm not sure what will happen but that's okay all right so going forward here i've defined the hairline we've got the brow ridge we've got the kind of almost pyramid shape of the nose this is my favorite angle to show people when i'm talking about the face um let's see if like not my face i don't want that let's see if i can turn this camera around come on okay you're gonna be that way favorite angle right here to show people when i'm talking about the pyramid of the nose or the getting getting the appropriate dimension hello so what i'm after here is a um i wish i had my whiteboard nearby it's over across the room for me i'll just carve it and show you what i mean so i'm actually using the four coming up to the ball and i'm getting that separation kind of using the edge of the tool to round the ball a bit hey okay but my point here is for you to notice how dimensional this is often when people carve the nose they'll take the ayla and they'll start carving them right away so they'll be somewhere up here here and here the flares when i say ayla i'm talking about the nose flares like the nostrils they'll start carving them and then they'll get way back in here and start carving underneath them excavating so they look like some i don't even know there's nothing human that i can relate whatever it is they're carving to it's very scary i recommend you stay away from it but i'll show you from this angle we'll try something new you guys you guys uh you deserve something new i'm tired of doing the same stuff over and over here we go so i'm going to use this 11 and uh new camera angles for everyone and i'm going to carve the ayla right now i might use a v tool for this step i might use a knife but today i've picked the small 11. it's really incidental people focus on tools i think um to an extent that's almost unhealthy you know i mean coming from the guy whose wall is covered in old english you know carving tools i'm a hypocrite for saying it but i don't think you need as many tools as you probably have i i don't i certainly don't maybe i'm just talking to myself that being said i'm making this little c cut under here on either side and then i'll take my nine that 20 millimeter nine we were using earlier and i'm going to come to those little sort of c-shaped cuts on either side and i don't know if that angle is showing you exactly the beauty of what we're doing here so i'm going to move the camera so you can appreciate it a little better i hope my demonstration wins for shakiest camera if you guys give out awards at the end of the year okay so so you can see now these two kind of c-shaped cuts that define the outside line of the nasal uh sorry the ayla or the flares of the nose and i'm coming underneath the nose once again with the 11 redefining the bottom of the nose separating it from what will be soon the mound of the mouth bringing the mound of the mouth back kind of rounding it out one of my students recently said this is the barrel of the mouth and i've been i've been hijacking that term um i like the i like the word barrel for one and i think it does a good job of describing the round shape okay guys you're awfully quiet this is weird alex yes would this be the same principle if you were doing a wood spirit or a mountain man i should say uh would this be the same principle i know that the cheeks are different in the forehead and the indian but would this still be the same principle that we'd be doing if we're doing a mountain man as far as what aspect of it uh the structure the yeah everything yeah yeah totally yeah do the drawing uh give yourself an idea of the proportion you know that as it fits the piece of wood but then remember that your lower line your lower stop cut isn't going to be at the line of the chin because you have a beard if you've got a mountain man right in most cases right so you're going to have the mass so that's something to keep in mind when you're placing your your mouth and doing the stop cut below uh below the mouth the chin area you're going to extend that area so if your piece stays three and a half inches your beard might be an extra three-quarter inch or inch depending on how bushy thank you yeah yeah no problem what was your name oh did i lose you i think she's going oh it's evelyn i just wanted to thank thanks for the question thank you i'm gonna lose you for just a second i'm just making sure i'm on the correct wi-fi here so i'm not i was set up because it looked a little grainy there for a second can you guys hear me yep we're good cool good all right continuing onward not sure where we are for time we started at three we're at 3 40. so we've got a few minutes left we probably won't cover the whole face for realistic here but we'll get somewhere hopefully okay so we've got the top of that forehead the sockets the nose the mouth the barrel of the mouth let's carve the base of the chin here so i use kind of a frown if you will to carve the chin and the chin sits in the last third between the bottom of the nose and the base of the chin right so let's draw these lines again we've got the bottom of the nose bottom of the chin let's draw a line in another line that that creates one two three spaces right so we've got the mouth lips somewhere in this area again i don't like rules like this i while i'm telling you these roles i'm imagining the people in my life whose faces break these rules so keep that in mind uh but the mouth is generally gonna sit somewhere in this first and second third so the lower lips down here upper lips somewhere up here in the first and second third the chin's down and the last third and that's what we're looking to do right now is carve that chin so i'm using kind of a frown line right over that last third and i'm actually coming into the sides of the face as well with some degree of depth with this uh 11 this is that um i think i said eight millimeter eleven might be a six not super critical okay then i'm gonna round the barrel of the mouth with my four again tapering the jowls or the jaw back and starting to round this area of the chin here blending that into our little groove our frown cut that we made okay next really fun little deal here is the nasolabial line which is a very fancy way my favorite way of saying the frown line because it makes me feel superior to everyone i am the master of the nasolabial fold no i'm not okay so uh basically i'm gonna just take the v tool if i can find my freaking v tool come here there here it is i have all these magnets to keep me organized to what end i don't know all right so the nasolabial lines just the frown lines that go on either side of the flares right so i'm taking my v tool and okay if you want to rule about where these lines go so you're not given in some crazy scary like joker blinds uh you can use the um the eyes as an indicator so if you want to delay this part and work on the eyes you can use the center of the eye uh as a guide so if you were to draw a line from the center of the eye and go to the bottom of the face here and here that would probably give you a nice indication of where you can carve the nasolabial folds and they come up and into these little c shapes we made earlier and they kind of curve around so i'm almost curving the v tool in and up back more towards me again same on this side and coming around rounding the ayla okay so we've got these nice defined frown lines we'll get our four again a big old one inch four and soften the transition of the full the mouth into this uh kind of cheek area if you will hey alec there's no need to rush you take your time on uh you're carving there okay don't you should if you care at all about your members you should be careful about what you say because i'll keep them here all night i'll keep them here until 8 pm eastern standard time because i've got a lot man don't worry i've got i've got a show i've got to play some music tonight at the local coffee shop so i call it a show because it sounds cool but really i'm just playing at a small coffee shop some guitar and singing some songs and uh i'm gonna be honest with you guys there's a girl i'm interested there so it's gotta be good so i i just want to let you know that uh i make jokes but i'm gonna have to leave at 7 45 p.m at the very very latest so i know i know most of you want me to stick around and explain myself but i can't i can't go any later than 7 45 so i'm sorry thank you for setting the limitations yep no problem no problem you still after that same girl no uh no uh the girl the girl no i'll just say no i don't know what girl you're talking about but i'm gonna say no uh because i'm just after so many of them you know i don't know how many people know but alex is quite a musician as well thanks wow you obviously haven't heard me play very much but that's nice of you to say no i am i am what uh i don't know i i was gonna make a mean joke but i actually can't say that i'm uh you know what let's just forget i even started saying something let's just get back to the carpet so i'm starting to bring the chin back let's get our little bird's eye bug's eye view if you will again show you the chin again another mistake people make similar mistake to um to the one they make with their nose they end up with a flat nose with not very much dimension chin is another area requiring a bunch of depth and dimension and most people aren't getting that so i am taking the chin back on either side of our little uh frowny line if you will tape bring it back give it lots of depth guys stop making these flat faces nobody wants to see your wooden flat face okay so we've got nice jawline your mother does i lied your mother wants to see your flat faces and she will tell you that they're the beautiful the most beautiful thing that she's ever seen my mom did she still comes over and tells me crappy carvings look awesome and that's what moms are for and if you don't have a mom anymore find someone in your life who tells you your crappy carvings are awesome i mean if your singing doesn't work out keep the jokes up brother they're great thank you thank you two things i shouldn't do but i continue to do because i enjoy them making jokes and playing music both at the expense of my audience you have to do some stuff in your life that you only you laugh you know it's about self-care guys said your jokes were good wasn't speaking for all of us okay so can you see the is that angle helping at all or is it just frustrating those of you who are putting up with my jokes and not recompensed by the good carving is that helping cool i'm gonna just take your silence as a resounding yes damn focus okay here we go back to it i like that zoom just randomly shows me the last person who talked and that focuses on them and uh i think that's great so my forehead chipped off so now i'm bringing it back even more which isn't a problem i don't know a few carvers have noticed this when something flakes off and it forces you to level an area you didn't plan on leveling if it's not like the nose or some very important part at the end of the carving if it happens early on it ends up benefiting you more than it ends up hurting you i feel like i'm talking him i feel like a crazy person talking to myself okay so i'm coming on either side of the nose again with that 20 millimeter v-tool getting more depth and roundness to the ball we've got a nice jaw here we've pushed the jaw area back our chin now for the mouth right so let's see we've got our third splitting this mound in half i'm going to use a knife in this case you could very well use a v tool following the line of the mouth but i'm going to use a knife that's somewhere in between a bench knife which is a little heftier and detail knife which is just slightly smaller and thinner this is my favorite carving knife made by dave lyons shout out to dave lyons i'm going to start by making a stop cut and a relief cut right at this line and i'm going to continue the stop cut and the relief cut okay now my concern here is that the lower lip is pushed further in generally speaking than the upper left the upper lip generally comes forward a bit more than the lower lip and that's the case for i would say probably more than the it's the case more than not but then again you know i'll save this rule and then i'll look at my students and sometimes two-thirds of them have uh lips that are even in terms of the way they protrude exactly the same or sometimes the lower left will come forward more so these are these are rules uh meant to be broken i think the most helpful thing for me is looking at reference photos i use reference photos a lot when i'm carving even just for fun because they help me to uh you know basically there's almost nothing i can learn in carving or or less than i'd like to think that i can learn from one carving that i can take and directly apply to the next carving because each face has new a new set of rules and a new set of proportions and so it's it's more interesting long term to have reference photos because it keeps you it keeps you occupied and it keeps you on a new path every time each project okay so i'm starting to bring the nasolabial line back again with my v tool this kind of frown line okay and then i come on either side of the corners of the mouth that have opened up and i emphasize depth in these corners emphasize depth in these corners because i don't want to i don't want a mouth that sits flat and almost looks like fish drips i want them to be set in the face so i'll use the knife to clean that area up a bit and i'll bring this this area here is called the philtrum a lot of people call it the snot trough i like to call those people um weird but to create the philtrum i'll use this is an old number nine an old english uh cj uh c uh s j adam addis i can't talk an addis tool i think it's like civil war era pre-civil war era but i'm kind of going in with that nine that's probably uh i'm gonna say a six millimeter number nine at most an eight and i'm coming in from the bottom of the upper lip into the nose into the septum and that gives us our philtrum right eyes let's do a little uh talk about the eyes and i think we'll probably cut out pretty shortly because we're getting close to that hour mark and i know most of you would prefer probably not to be here until 7 30. i would never want to put you through that that'd be horrible okay any questions before i move on here thoughts concerns any of you ready just to to tell me how you really feel about me yeah or maybe you're a great guy i do have a question though if you don't mind um how often do you find your uh sharpening your tools working with that wood all the time um usually every 30 seconds when i'm not doing a demonstration because of the sand and deposits that's what i was wondering yeah every 10 10 seconds to 30 seconds um yeah it feels that way at least no actually probably like um every every at least once between each carving i'll bring the tools over to the polisher sometimes in the middle of a carving um but always if i'm transitioning from a part carving to a hardwood carving i'll take my tools to the polisher sometimes to the sander to reshape because these pieces of bark do screw the crap out of your tools great thanks for your time yeah screw the crap out of your tool what does that even mean i don't know what i just said so i'm coming in the corner of the eyes at this point let me move this so you can see what i'm doing get right up on there one of the areas of greatest depth in the face is right here in the corners of the eyes on either side of the ball so i'll take my number nine this is a six millimeter number nine and i'll come on either side of the nose and i'm scooping here and creating the beginning of the mound of the eye i'll also take the same tool and i'll come beneath the eye this is called the mid-face groove it almost parallels the nasolabial line or nasolabial fold and it comes right above it if this is our nasolabial angle the mid-face groove is about the same parallels but it's just above it and the mid-face groove transitions into the mallard bag and the mallard bag is the most prominent bag under the eye it's kind of the fatty tissue the the line and the fatty tissue right under the eye here so we're kind of already starting to define that it's going to give us a nice eye mound so once i've gone in these corners started to come under the eyes to get the ball i'll take my knife and i'll start to soften the transition of that mound or that groove we just cut so i'm basically cutting it away down below that channel and i'm taking off the hard edges above because i want to leave this mound here this mound of the eye all right so notice yes chat um how do the proportions differ for a female face as compared to the face you're doing well i'm definitely not in the uh expert on carbon female faces i'm a growing uh person with regard to that but i will say that the female face tends to have eyes more centered on the head for sure there's more fatty tissue so the lines aren't usually quite as sharp or defined the jaw has a less dramatic angle um the mouth tends to be a little more centered between the nose and the chin um there are uh you know kind of like us usually the brow ridge might be a little softer the nose the angle of the nose from the profile if we're looking at the profile of the nose here you're going to notice on the female that there is a negative slope instead of a positive one so you'll get the fairy nose effect so it'll curve down and up at the tip whereas with the nail face usually it'll either be more straight or sometimes more crooked of course these are general rules so they're not always the case but the forehead also on the female face tends to be a little flatter and more forward not more forward but more consistently flat i think flat is probably the best way of putting it um the the angle of the male forehead is usually greater it's usually pushed back like so hopefully that answers your question so all right let's move this back so you can really see what's going on here bringing the chin back hollowing the cheeks i'll use the knife to define the edges your eyes kind of always naturally go to the outside of a project um the outline of the shape you kind of learned that in like i think it was ceramics 101 was the first class where our instructor said that your eyes always are drawn to the lines of the piece or the outermost shapes so i'm often kind of maintaining um uh look at the the outline of the face and right now if i look at the outline of the face i notice it's way too wide so i'll take my knife and i'll start to narrow i'll start around the hollow of the cheek and the temples at the forehead you can also use a fork for this many of the times i'm using of a knife it's it's interchangeable with the four especially in roughing it in because it's a semi flat large tool okay so i'm starting to narrow the face are we for time so we're an hour in bring the hair down a bit soften the angle of the brow okay so i've just narrowed the face up a bit i can do so more i'm also going to take the brow and raise it a bit less dramatic of an angle and raise it i'm also going to take the corners of the bridge as the transition the bridge transitions into the oh there's that chip again let's get our v tool out for this transition the bridge of the nose it comes our knife so so if i make a more dramatic line here the transition between the brow and the bridge of the nose he'll look more aggressive more angry like so also i'll create a hollow under the chin the angle in and upward to define the jaw a bit more and bring that neck back show what that looks like in a second i'll move the camera so you can see the angle of the neck greetings i think a form of alien life is trying to communicate with us via their washing machine whatever that was some heat event or something based on coming along the sides of the face this is all boring stuff this is all kind of like fine tuning often there's a little ridge here forehead by ridge i mean just a soft um scoop creating uh some definition this is the frontalis muscle i like to think of the forehead as being kind of like one two three kind of planes even though they're really not planes they're kind of rounded semi-rounded shapes reminds us to taper the temples back get that nice roundness of the forehead so i kind of bring this area one and three back a bit that gives us some nice shapes for the forehead okay so in carving the profile i'm going to use my v tool to carve the ayla from that profile again this is something that is uh important to note not undercutting so i'm not coming far into this corner and and cutting underneath the ayla until i've set the depth so i'm using the side of the v tool to bring everything on either side of the line that we just carved back rounding the ayla separating the ball from the ayla emphasizing that midface groove we talked about earlier that kind of runs parallel with the nasolabial fold or the frown line the malar bag underneath that sides so you can't see what i'm doing on the other side sorry about that these are the mannequin lines lines that come almost similar uh shape to the nasolabial folds here but they exist right at the transition of the upper and lower lip and usually are on more prominent prominent on older people right and so this guy's going to have some crazy looking mannequin lines okay i'm gonna turn this i can't we've already decided that i can't turn this god forsaken camera around so you're going to have to deal with this awkward position so we had a couple of chips and flakes this is the nature of rushing through a carving project bad things happen more bad things happen than when you're taking your good old time um yeah so should i yeah i think we're pretty well over our time at this point i could talk more about detailing the the eyes and the nose and the mouth but i want to keep you guys much longer but you can get a pretty decent idea of where we're headed with this carving i'm applying some of the principles um that i mentioned earlier about proportion the eyes just above the center of the mound nose halfway between that space mouth in between the bottom of the nose bottom of the chin upper lip the first third lower lip in the second third lines of the mallet bag of course there's a whole lot that needs to be done in this car game um i'm doing a wood carving workshop i'm carving the face uh that's september 30th so a couple of weeks from now that'll be a one day event five hours and that will be i'm gonna open the open that event for um yeah so you can sign up in the next uh probably probably by tomorrow um i believe you can sign up on the site right now um but i'm gonna have that formally open tomorrow so if you want to get a jump on that early start you can go ahead check out my website uh alcocast.com and i'm also giving uh folks a discount on the school as well i'm interested in that for more information any questions anyone really we have a couple in the chat go ahead alex when you're done with your carving and complete it uh how do you what finish do you put on it yeah well if i don't end up uh burning the carvings i um used a i used a combination of lacquer and mineral oil sometimes i use mineral oil so it's pretty simple i'll just take the carving i'll have two brushes next to me i'll have two um natural bristle brushes so apply the finish i'll wipe it off with a towel very quickly this works even better with a poly something that's slower drying and i'll take a towel of course wipe it off then i'll use the extra brush to get in all the corners and then i'll set that aside let that dry and repeat that process three or four times so i'm getting a very thin buildup of finish on the carving i don't want it to look plastic i don't want it to look like there's this uh gooey build up in the crevices which often happens if you're spraying a carving or you're just kind of loading up a carving with finish so thank you so it's it's mineral oil that you said you used to yeah and sometimes like the tiniest bit like the tedious tiniest bit of mineral oil on the very corner of a dry brush once the finish is dry the lacquer that is and i'll just kind of work it into the carving and sometimes that brings luster if i want a little more luster out of a carving in the same way that someone would would buff a carving with um you know any sort of wax or um bees beeswax or whatever you know thank you yeah of course somebody wants to know if you do a carving like this start to finish how long does it usually take um i think there's like a really like annoying cliche answer where people say well it takes me 14 years i all the skills that i've developed over the years to finish a carving in under three hours um but the the reality is that's true you know the experience that you gain builds up to uh and you can utilize the years of making bad carvings to help you make better carvings uh so you're not just factoring in the time you put into it you're acknowledging the time you've developed your skill um but no it's usually you know usually in my head i'll plan out a carving and i'll say i can get this done in six hours something of this size but it usually ends up being something like eight hours or twelve hours um if i'm really uh especially if i'm using a reference photo and doing commission carving like if there's a reference uh that the customer wants me to use that's something that eight hours 12 hours 14 hours it can be really time consuming um now it's a different story like what i can do i can make this car i can finish this carving in you know another 30 or 40 minutes uh and it'd be decent and it didn't sell uh in the in the art show marketplace but in this time of corona what better thing have i got to do than than a little around this carving alec yeah um nice nice job not the best one i've ever seen you carve but yeah um if you hadn't spent so much time telling us jokes you might have had time to detail an eye how can i detail and i'm too busy playing the guitar thank you dave i think i appreciate that comment so let me just recap i did a shitty job and you wish i wouldn't have talked no i could still do the eye if you want me to do the eye if that's a consensus doing uh do an eye sounds real weird when you say it like that but okay i'll do an eye this is for dave this is for dave for being a wiener okay so this is this is the uh the deal with carving the eye right there's there's one of two kind of general eyes that i'm that i'm generally carving here right so it's an exposed lid or a closed or hooded lid so the hood is the piece of skin of the fold of skin that comes over the forehead and covers the upper lid in this case since we don't have a ton of time i'm going to do a hooded lid um i'll talk about the hooded lid so very simply set up for that already and i kind of uh hinted at it here basically i'm splitting this kind of round area here in half with my v tool and i'm not going very deeply in here but i'm going to come up into the corner of the forehead where it meets the bridge of the nose okay and i'm going to take back this material here right so so i basically decided that this is the upper lid or the fold of skin covering the upper lid right and i'll do the same thing on the other side you can use the knife i'll show you what it looks like with a knife so come across up from this corner down over i'll taper it can you see this yeah i'm hoping dave does a correction video like a part two for this in his uh demonstration to correctly carve the eyes okay dokie artichokey okay so you see what's going on here we've got this upper hood and carving below it so that comes from the profile you can really see what we're looking at here all right cool beans we're good we're straight okay all right so next i'll carve the lower lid to carve the lower lid i'll use my knife or even a veto work let's grab a v-tool very close to that upper lid it's probably even hard for you to see what i'm doing here just a sliver of an opening i'll go over that line with my knife kind of creating an almond shape here also dave i'm putting you in charge of auctioning this carving for me after this so i'm hoping to get as much as possible so if you can you know if i use whatever techniques you have to sell this that would be great i appreciate it need extra money to impress that girl this evening that's right i need to buy myself a top hat and uh and a nice fur for her for the lady as well so because this is the 1850s oh seriously buddy you're doing a good job yeah thanks dave i appreciate it man coming from you i do appreciate it also dave i want to i want to take one of your classes next year in uh it it stinks because we usually for those of you who are watching uh who don't know i i travel and teach um and uh i i run into dave and i get to see him and his awesome classes and but i almost never am able to take the class and the couple of opportunities i've had at least because he is teaching at the same time i'm teaching so it's like i get to be you know i get to talk to him afterwards which is pretty awesome but i never get to take his class so take advantage of his classes online if you can because he is super ba an awesome awesome carver so okay i'll let you know when i have a beginner class coming up yeah yeah i'd love to uh i'd love to be a part of that that would be i appreciate you even letting me know it means a lot so yeah something like uh some yeah that'll be that'll be nice although if you get i don't know if you have any like those uh stage you know go bys where i'd like one of those i probably actually could use uh could use a go you know what's you know what's fun about carving faces you never i feel like there's no way i will ever be like totally comfortable i feel like i i feel like it's if i didn't have someone coming in the shop every once in a while to pull me away from a carving i would just work on it until kingdom come and it's uh it's what could happen very easily today if you guys don't literally tell me to stop i'll keep going okay so i've carved the lower lid and then i've gone ahead with a knife and i've cleared out the the eye area so i'm actually kind of turning the tool as i'm put pushing it into this gap between the lower lid and this hooded area here so the nice thing about the hood is i don't have to carve the upper lid i don't have to worry about it so much and that gives us a nice excuse to to work less okay so i'm getting extra depth in the corners and i will maybe just hint at the upper lid by cutting in with the v tool from the corner of the eye let's see how close we can get here so you can really see what i'm doing cutting up into that space i think you guys said to do a i and now i'm doing two eyes so i told you keep you here all night then i'm carving under the eye with the knife here hmm lots of depth in the corners okay take a little sandpaper i know this is i know some of your cringing how dare i use sandpaper before the carving is done i use it a lot less okay i've never used it but often i like to about this time in the carving touch things up a little bit blend what the sandpaper does is it kind of takes the lines and blends them so you can kind of better see what you have it's a nice thing to do but it does deposit grains and you're carving so keep that in mind when you are shaping if you're removing a lot of material probably hold off on sanding so much okay i'm in the corner of the mouth with a knife and all the way across tuck that lower lid underneath the upper lid okay get a couple of wrinkles in there there are a couple of them up here he looks kind of angry so we'll emphasize these wrinkles i'm not going straight when i'm carving wrinkles i'm actually wiggling the back of the tool because often these lines aren't perfectly straight there's a little if you were to kind of magnify them there'd be some like some movement it's not a straight line so i'm actually taking the tool and i'm moving it you can see and they're not they're not always consistently all the way across they break up sometimes a bit of a wrinkle will show up here and then there and then somewhere further down the road take the knife come under the flare okay we've sufficiently bored any other questions before i continue to hog up the rest of your saturday afternoon anything else you just send that to me and i'll get it auctioned off buddy what's your minimum i need at least um we are sure it's corona right so i i trade and start i trade in bitcoin so i need i i need whatever the equivalent value of this carving is in bitcoin a starting bid of 15 15 bitcoins sounds good whatever the hell that is to be honest i don't know what bitcoin is i i just wanted to say bitcoin at some point in this live stream my approach to investments has been like uh has been like the what is that grill that that rotisserie thing like set it and forget it it's been basically i've gone about investing what's your website again alec lacaze.com a-l-e-c l-a-c-a-s-s-e so it's like emerald lagosti's last name but with a c instead of a g lakas l-a-c-a-s-s-e i look like alec baldwin can people buy stuff off of your website or do you have your stuff for sale somewhere else um now i'm probably the worst businessman uh ever so i in terms of selling art i don't sell a ton of it on my site right now but i do have a shop there's one carving available up there and there's the lacasse dubai wood carving set which is a set of five tools that i use most often i use them every day basically they are unlike the average carving sets um full of tools that you won't use like weird random skus uh they're just the tools that i i use every day so it's a five piece professional size stew by wood carving set that's on the site um but otherwise uh there's not much else available um there's this school which uh probably your best bet if you're looking to learn more about what i do here a little more in-depth information all this like fine-tuning i'm doing this stuff that i i'm not really going into depth explaining here but stuff that i explained in the school um and some other exciting things happening with the school as we move forward so keep an eye on that but yeah we're getting there okay guys thanks for sticking with me for an hour and a half i hope you had fun um yeah can i answer anything else before i scoop alec uh i just uh you're doing this is fantastic by the way cool i did my first uh carving last night now you mentioned earlier that uh you go on a material hunt and you go yeah so my my first carving did last night my brother had a cotton tree fall down it's about eight foot across but the barks only about an inch and a half thick are all kind of not created equal yeah yeah all cottonwood trees unlike men uh they're not all created equal so um they are uh depending on the species there's black cottonwood there's i guess there are there are a few other varieties i've learned about recently some of which i can't remember the names of but there are uh plains in eastern primarily most commonly and the plains cottonwood tends to grow larger and the eastern cottonwoods what we have out here in michigan it's not the best it doesn't typically grow as large i don't know if it's just the species or if it's also the climate that makes it so i just know that mostly michigan bark and bark in the midwest is not as good as the far western bark even even as far east as the dakotas they have great bark but yeah i know it can be it can be tough even in those uh you know like wyoming uh dakota montana those areas it can be kind of hard to find the bark uh but if you know where to look and you find old dead mature trees we call them bones because the bark is sheathed off or flaked off and you can just see this dry white thing sticking up from the river sides out there and that's what we're looking for okay um yeah so it you know it's definitely a trick there are these people that say well you know what there's no more good bark anymore and i don't they're definitely not right those aren't people looking for bark because there's great park out west you just have to look follow the riversides and look for big down dead trees and uh you kind of have to work for it but uh it's mostly it's mostly for me a fun experience like a fun journey um i love traveling to my montana wyoming um i'm pretty motivated to buy some property out there i think one day it'd be a great thing to do but uh you know because i'm because i'm filthy rich so i just think about things like that like buying properties but uh i'm i you know i probably will never buy property but i want to it's an awesome place to live let alone um i'm sorry visit let alone live so if you get a chance to go out there to hunt for materials it's worth checking out um check out libby if you ever go out west to look for bark libby montana where ron is ron adamson the guy i mentioned earlier it's one of the most beautiful actually it was originally slated to be um the uh glacier national park but it wasn't passable enough so you can just imagine how gorgeous it is it's like insane oh they won't let me over the border yet oh yeah you're in canada yeah right ebay is always a good source for bark you just look at the pictures to make sure it's the kind you want i got so excited i drove a couple hours this morning and i picked up some of the the chipping away store and it was like 15 bucks for a piece and i thought oh i'll stick with my little inch and a half for now then dang yeah if you have if you have some cotton wood and it's been sitting outside um can it get too old that you won't be able to carve with it oh for sure yeah i've got probably what three or four pieces in the shop right now that are total garbage because they got left out oh okay um what if they're dry but they're outside i mean can they get too hard that's what i'm at yeah can they get too hard well the hardness of the park usually has to do with the location of it on the tree from what i've been told and actually if you if you go if you see a cottonwood tree around the base of the tree the bark is hardest and so if you collect bark that's in the middle part of the tree up higher you know maybe uh six or eight feet and above you're going to get softer easier more workable workable wood i guess because i guess it's because the sap kind of sits uh settles down to the base to the tree so okay yeah thank you for sure no problem great work or indoors i'm sorry what if the bark is stored indoors would it age the same thing your background is awesome oh thanks i'm actually on your wall right now man that is cool yeah yeah that's funny you mentioned that because i i am too actually in my studios uh those are fake trees but yeah i live i live under water as well um no yeah it it stays pretty stable indoors i haven't had problems with it have any of you had problems with park sitting inside for too long not me it's pretty stable if you want thicker good things if you want your bark thicker store it on the sunny side of the house and soak it really good with miracle grow there you go yeah that does work i can vouch for that as well just to make sure from dave yeah yeah that's definitely that's one option it's just time cons it takes a while but it's now i'm going to stop you here and uh we'll go ahead and uh close down this meeting we appreciate your time we appreciate your uh your abilities and your art and sharing it with us it was thank you guys so much go out and check out his website check out his classes sign up for those um alec you're welcome back anytime so come back again and uh do another demo with us is dave doing a demo uh dave's m1 i may try to talk him into doing a live demo yeah let me know i want to tune in for that all right i'll get up with dave later okay all right so uh next week tune in uh we'll have saturday box company on talking about chip carving flex cut knives catherine overcash james ray miller so tune in uh every saturday 3 p.m eastern standard time and alex thanks again for everything yeah it was fun thank you guys much love to you all bye thanks alec good luck tonight thank you i need it i need it okay thank

Channel: International Association Of Wood Carvers

Views: 9,489

Keywords: woodcarving, woodcarver, woodcarvers, cottonwood bark, caving faces, alec lacasse

Id: GW6Y7X7wcik

Length: 92min 5sec (5525 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Zonk_Zach]

At the 15:30 mark of the video he moves the camera closer and it's much easier to see the demonstration.