How To Carve a Portrait of Your Dog

[Music] hello quite a few of you written in about making carvings of your pet especially dogs so I thought I'd show you how to go about that but it's not just about carving a picture of of of your dog it's about how you go from a picture to a carving what's the sort of thing you need in a photograph that would make a good carving I started with a good side view picture photograph of the dog which I printed out it's a good profile yeah and that's what you want a good outline so fairly clear against the background so you can see what's going on slightly tilted so I can see the top of the iron a little bit at the top of the nose a bit more interesting than truly side on a touch of 3d going on here when I've got this picture what I did is I blew it up to the size I wanted so this is a black and white photo print and I've gone around very carefully with a liner to make sure I can really be clear about the outline because I then turned it into a working drawing so this is the outline of the dog I've also got close-up pictures of the nose of the eye the ear to help me and from that I found my piece of wood which was in this case with lime wood so a nice plain piece of wood that has lots of light and shadow not dark that will just tend to be all one one sort of shadow one shade and I've stuck my drawing on to the wood so there's the drawing with the wood now what about the depth well I'm going to go down about half an inch of 14 millimeters that's enough this is a flat relief so this will be a flat carving I've gone round with a marking gauge all the way around so I've got the line down to which I'm going to work the background and to hold it I'm going to use this method which I've I've used quite a few times before which is a board with this fence going around and this will sit in here I'll be able to lock it in place with these wedges on either side then this in turn I'm going to clamp or in this case use the vise on my bench to hold Natalie the work nicely held in ready to start carving I put a red line just around the outside of the drawing to remind me to stop what I'm going to do is we're going to start removing the background lowering the background with a deep gouge working across the grain like so it's a low-level grip like this and we're just going to I'm going to take a bite across here like this and when I get to my redline I'm going to stop and we're gonna put a next one like this you could use a router to get this down and you can certainly use a mallet to move this across but if you would have soft enough you can just do it by hand like this lean your weight into the carpet so I'm not saying all the way across obviously put a stop at the dog here on this side I can go a bit further across and I'm going to work my way across like this and then I'm going to do a second pass so stopping short and if you want to get to the end what I do is I do this little what they call rocking through the cut it just eases to cut it and I stop short at the red line that's the little buffer zone to stop me damaging this outline because the outline of the dog is extremely important to get right okay so I do one row like this then I do another row and so on till island just above the line so off I guess what I'm trying to do is aim these straight across the other side these trenches and trying to keep them as as uniform as possible and when I'm sort of nearly there what I'm going to do is I'm just going to come this way and remove some of this waste here so that's what the carving looks like at the end of this lowering stage it's plowed across to just above the final surface and looking as if it passes through and there's a waste around here around the carving and the actual outline if we get it to this stage and then we need to level off this surface on the surface I'm going to take this number three garage which is a flattest gouge that the sheffield list provides it's a number to cut if it's file and I'm going to work across the grain with a sliding cut like this I'm going to get one area nice and smooth it'll be lightly faceted but it would be clean because it's a sharp tool and I'm removing the removing these ridges and then once I've got an area going I'm going to sort of spread this out we're going to make sure that I remove all these little grooves all over so this doesn't have to be flat as if it's been playing directing but it needs to look flatter it leads to look as if it's going across all my background here up to this line of foam of shavings and mess here that's all now a finished surface so what I have to do now is pair back and set in this line exactly to the dog's head I can remove a little bit of this yes here just by coming along like this I can see more of what's going on what I don't want to do is stab into the background so this waist here is to a large extent protecting this I'm going to take my deep gouge again and I'm going to nibble down with a twist like this so this is the high angle grip where I can put my shoulder in push it down I'm stopping short or the background and I'm going straight straight down here and just short of the line at this this plane here what I can do is take this gouge steep gouge and just in the same way as I'm lowering before so I'm slightly above the finished surface I can see if I can we move a little bit more of that this way now that it's all sort of crumbled off in here the next step is to set in the edge of the dog very carefully so up to the line and straight down so I'm really cleaning up these these little grooves on here but what I don't want to do is stab into the base here so I'm very careful about what happens when I land there I'm still in a little bit of waste I could I can go across like this little one and chisel on a flat flatter parts like this might be good so I could use it some sort of chisel because that's like a a very flat gout so square on so the outline of the dog is coming down projected down onto the base so looking down here in the torn-up now I'm going to clean across here and finish off before we start carving it's always a really good idea to think carefully about what wood is here and what we need to remove so the first thing we need to think about are what I call high spots in other words where in this carving where in this dog here is is the wood that we're going to leave so some of this must be on the surface and the obvious high spot is around here the ear this hairy here so this is certainly the high spot here also there's another high spot it will very close which would be around the eye so this is a quite a high spot here this area and then along the nose that's that's fairly high but probably not as high as that but what we do need to do is leave a strong outline so even though we take some of this down we are going to make sure this is quite quite a big change of plane here the other thing we can look at is where wood will be removed so for example again in this carving the furthest away is the back of the dog here so this area is far away this is much further behind the ear and so on so these areas are are the farthest away and this whole head is in InFocus in the picture so having thought about that we can start removing some wood I've got my picture of our lovely dog next to the carving so I can keep looking at it what I didn't mention just then was that this eyebrow here this is a far I Bray love the dog is in fact also low down and the whole of this top of the dog here is tilted over like that there's a plane so there's a plane this way and playing this for a little bit so I'm going to start by working downhill start removing some of this wood here so this is the top of the head and I'm going to keep this fairly flat and slowly this tilted over then when I come to the the iPod I'm going to come down here then I move a lot of that here over there and back into the into the middle of this mount part along here making this plane first I've taken more wood along here so the whole body part is becoming less than the ear there and drifting off behind here as it will drift off under the under the chin here this is a quite an important line basically it's a change of plane from there today so this whole forehead which includes this far I here up to this eyebrow there is in the same sort of plane as this top of the snout so this is a fairly sharp change of plane here that's important I'm going to come down here along the ears of it and sort of then take a bit of wood in here so continuing this sort of general modeling there's not a lot of wood to be removed after all it's very flat so we take it easy step at a time forget some of this bigger shaped modeling in but I should be able to feel now is a sense of Ania coming over indeed not a lot of wood to take away so I saw even removing some of this paper they come to where I think they will be I will then start thinking about setting a team let me just get rid of this here so as this here comes over like so I can start actually having even at this what seems to be an early stage so I thing to put the edge of that here in and this is going to start coming around so really just talking if I'm talking to myself a little bit so this is going to come round the jaws gonna come round the neck so there's a little logical one of how this is working in this dog you can see I hope that the only ball is is like a little mound here and the eyes within it so there's a sort of bag underneath this shape here is what's called the zygomatic arch is what's part of the orbit the boat it's a bone here so we need help of something like that it comes around here and down there so there's a flat bit all around here so I've been looking at my drawing I'm looking at my wood and looking at my photo and I can see that using my pencil that I have to take wood along here to create that so I'm going to start there with that big shape so that's below that arch shape here comes across there you're going to come along here this this eyebrow connects to the other eyebrow on the other side so there's a bit between the other flowers that comes down here and then the eyebrows coming over and then the actual recorder of bag beneath the eyes and here again we don't have a lot of wood to be removed but we need to get that and then consolidate it into the rest of the carving let's move some of this paper the paper served its purpose but now we're into form so let us consolidate those shapes and see if we've got this sort of bag thing wrong the neck is coming down here and you can make sure we have that something of that coming in it's a bit of a jawbone there a little bit of a shape yeah and then ouch all this [Applause] this is the main shaping I mean modeling after which there's very little to do on the surface but clean up this is an important detail this is an important detail and this party down here is important detail so that's what we're going to deal with next so the eye is going to come down here I'm gonna have to redraw this but the eye is heading in this sort of plane to lose my drawing obviously I can see the top of these top the eyelid here the eyebrow rod is coming around that's high and then it's coming down into there [Music] we've got to do now so this here will have to go a little bit deeper but then we come around I'm going to have to now here to redraw this eye so let me just do that so that's the important things to get this main change of plane otherwise this is going to be looking straight out this way instead of forward so come down here I'm gonna have to put in some of this here a little bit more and redraw this eye so let me just do that well I've done a bit more than just redraw the eye I've done a bit more of this shaping and interesting enough the shaping itself has sort of created the eyes although I've put a pencil here the eye is really formed by the shape of the wood around it I'm going to pick a gouge that fits my line which is the edge of the eyeball and just run that around to set in the top here and clean that up very carefully and then pick this line up around here and then this edge is much flatter around this part so I'm finding the right shape tool and it not necessarily just one and then this I come around here to put in an outline of an iris here more to the front and then I'm going to make a little I call a Michelangelo eye which was a little thing at the top here that will reflect a bit of light so it'll be something like this I've got my little my outline their hair that's clean what I've introduced I need a parallel edge here and then this little bit of left over there so that little bit that's left over is a little bit of light and I'm going to create it with I don't have the u-shaped gauge with you here I'm going to create it by stabbing in this it's also number nine and just I'm with an arrow carriage filling that in so this is a u-shaped little no depression and I'm going to find always never find the tool when you need it so nice around here create this quite deep shadow here then that will create an effect of a little glint of light so for the nose we need to as before sort of shape the overall structure of the nose so there's this sort of flap thing that comes nostrils and then when we've got this overall shape I've redrawn this here so I've got a sense of where the nose is going then I'm going to run deep gouge around here and then round under here what a party is a very narrow number nine and I'm spinning it around in there like that what I've got here in the photograph is a little bit of a as a fold where the bottom of the jaw goes underneath is a little bit of a flap warm as it goes on so go to create us a little Hill here and then then sort of scoop scoop that in rather like the nostril so I'm going to do that next and that brings us on into the neck down here so we've sort of headed we started with the ear we did the eye the nose without come back to where we started over here so let me put that down yeah it's model the top what I'm happier this this part see what's happening here we're coming along here and round and underneath and I'm happy with this part what I'm going to do is I'm going to work my way just along here and make sure everything is in this part of the carving in fact the neck well I think our dog is looking great what I'm going to do now is what carve is called licking up which means making sure your tools are really nice and sharp using flat tools and just working the surface smoothing off consolidating in small strokes all over so that everything is joined and subtly modeled to everything else you can finish off this ear here and down to the back so then we're pretty much finished with our dog you

Channel: woodcarvingworkshop1

Views: 699,942

Rating: 4.8909402 out of 5

Keywords: mans best friend, how to carve, relief carving, carve a dog, dog carving, cameo carving

Id: 89IjJlkV1uA

Length: 25min 26sec (1526 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2018