How to Carve a Relief Carving

[Music] what I'm doing here is marking the background I don't necessarily need to do it but with a complicated carving like this you want to be sure what's background what's being taken away and what is the subject it's very easy to take wood away that you want to keep so be clear about what's the background and then we need to think about the depth now I don't want it to be very deep here's quite a shallow relief and I'm thinking something like this I've marked it on the side I think yeah that looks about right and I've put that on to my depth gauge now this depth gauge is one that we've made on the site and I put a link below this video so you can make one and this will be our guide that's two here bits in the middle where we can't see so we'll get the background looking pretty much the same it doesn't have to be exactly the same but it wants to be looking the same normally we would start by and we will start here just lining in in other words we'll take a V tool around the edge of these forms as best we can and as I come down I want to make sure that the good side of the V tool the one that's giving a smooth cut is to the hair to the through the subject the same on this side here this is coming all the way along here so I'm just inside the line loan level grip stop in there make that a bit deeper so this is always would be a bit loose for this but I am inside I'm gonna come around here so I've lined it in and that protects this this big area then i'm going to take my deep gouge which could be like this a number ten or even a number nine something deep and i'm going to go across the wood like this and start removing the bathroom so when I come to the hair itself to come for the subject I'm going to turn it like this and try to line those the bottom of these cuts this omelet it sort of depth I want to put this on here and we're pretty much on there little bit more like yeah now this bit here is very difficult to get in with that tool so I can switch to a narrower tool I come in here as best I can and this is going to be one of the tricky places where we need to work but for now I'm just going to go across and take all these think a pieces out so I've been round the bigger areas getting them to its the depth and I'm pretty sure when I look at them I can sort of see the background underneath going on which is great one of the things about this lining in like this is it it protects the edges now these are going to be rounded over here the legs so I'm not too worried about those but certainly when you come in if you come in this way across the grain you're likely to bruise the edge of this wood so going to be careful and that's why that extra bit that the retool is left is very useful just there because what a nice tight line as we go around so having done that the next thing to do just with these areas before you leave it is to nibble back some of that excess wood towards that line so it's this a high angle grip and you can just come straight down like this the little twist and just nibble that back I'm leaving these bigger sections like that for the moment it looks a bit of a mess but that's okay it's a good mess and what I'm going to do is turn to these ones that a bit smaller now the problem with those is that I can't really get this view to Lynn because he's got a chisel part here in the key also it tends to bind in there so I can't really use it the beautiful but what I can do is just go straight to a deep gouge so I've got to be particularly careful now I'm going to come along of picking a narrow account so the one I've used elsewhere we say use that one over here it's a bit narrow and I'm just going to work across the grain and I'm going to give that little rocking cut a little shimmy like this what's really important is that I don't go across into that edge here and we'll do a little bit in this way at the end of this stage it should look something like this we've got the background lowered pretty much to where we want it to be at these different points we've got the edges taken up too close to where we want those edges to be we've protected the important elements not worried too much about these looks as I said a little bit of a mess but it's an ordered mess we know what's happening so we get it as far as this and then we can go on to the next stage setting in the edges the next stage is to clean up these entries and set in and I'm going to suggest you take one area like this and then repeat whatever we do on this area on the other two areas so there are three of each Harry of course so the first step is to find a tool that matches this or the curve that you want if you don't have exactly the tool you can you can certainly adapt this tool to the drawing in other words the drawing changes to fit the tool but as long as you'll repeat this tool on each of the three areas like this then you should be okay and the drawing you know everything look equal so what we do is we we just push that straight down like this I've given it a little bit of a I'll just put that down base you set it straight down to the wall here as you get down because it's so shallow you can stab it a little bit into the background not too much but that means that when we come to finish the background up to it this chip should fall out so I'm going to find this tool here and I've moved it around he's going to slice it around a little bit but I've essentially matched that curve here and I'll do that on the all three sides so I'll then swap to another tool and perhaps this one and match this one here yeah so snap that one in like this and we're going to come around a little bit here because I don't anything to break off yeah so do that on the same one that all the way around whatever I want to go then I might find one that'll fit this edge here this is quite a slow curve it's probably more better sliced but you can find our tool that fits there like that straight down so straight down like this and then we come into slicing which means you you find the tool you shunt it along I get to push it down shunt it on keep an exact on that like don't worry too much about don't think about the bevel think about the or the angle think about this wall coming pretty much vertically if anything you're going to slope it out that way little bit to it as rid of light and very careful nibbling at that push that in obvious the same towards us use the same method as before picking out the tools to match bring in smaller tools to cut on small places I go here and probably here's a torque around here fill in there now when it comes to this part here I think it's a good idea if we score this line that runs around the outside around the feet so what I'm going to do is lift this leading edge a little bit and just push it with my thumb here around like that so that this line joins with that line because across that clean edge joins this line here and comes at it that way we'll have this circle going all the way around we're now going to turn to clearing up and leveling this background here we've been able to lower the background like so one of the problems we have is that this edge here does tend to foul the blade so that it can't make its cut and this is especially true on smaller parts we've been able to do it here but not very well it's not very clean this is where a bent gouge comes into its own because you can get in much up closer and into smaller areas obviously you'd use a narrower tool for here but you can get into smaller areas now the same problem we have is when we want to clear up this area and it's even it's even more difficult because I don't want to make a scooping cut so much as a sort of slicing cut and this edge here again or wherever I come from is fouling the blade so again what we need is what's called a short bent or a spoon gouge that will actually sit in there and make this make this cut so it's a short vent gouges that are going to come into its own in this sort of tight little carving the grain in this carving is going across in this direction here like this now you might be able to go with the grain and think - it's a test is a little bit to see what happens so they're putting the tool down and sliding across and seeing what happens now we're getting a clean cut that way or cord we need to come this way going with the grain will always be best and using the largest tool possible the widest were possible to begin with is always good but if you are not sure you can always go across the grain if with a slicing cut so I will start it off little little slicer cut what I've done is I've made a nice clean area here and that's going to be my starting point and then I'm going to extend extend this to the side now I can see here that I'm pulling against the grain if we're doing this direction so I would probably need to come down here on this this direction and what I'm able to do you can see is actually rests the edge of the tool against this wood here and use it as a sort of fence I've turned the piece of wood around so you can see better I was heading in the way of the camera so this this way gives me the cleaner cut here in this direction it's a very carefully moving this like this putting it up to the let me just show you that movement again so this this tool the edge is sitting on that wall and I can actually make it along the wall like this scoop this out and then if it's a little bit not come out just Nick it off so if I've got a slight stab in there that's fine not too much though I'm going to work my way it's good here so when I when I think I finished I'm going to turn the light and have another look checking the depth pretty good let me just recap what we're looking for at the end of this stage we've set in a clean outline around our subjects the wall is vertical slightly tilting out if you if you want to but vertical definitely no undercutting the background should be clean clean as possible and it should look as if it's passing behind one element through and through and so on use your depth gauge to check that but most importantly use your eye so that it just looks flat and if you've made something a little bit deeper say just spread it out a little bit don't have any strong depressions so with that getting it to this stage we're ready to start working on the hairs themselves always before I start removing wood I have a look at my carving by leaf carving this case and make some decisions this is a low relief in other words it's not really much wood to take away so this is going to be fairly flat so a lot of this will be on the original surface so the first thing to think about is where am i high spots and they would be like the horn trees here probably along the back here and the shoulders possibly a bit around the head so I'm thinking about that the ears well that'll work itself out but there will be some point of it that is high and goes low high and goes low and so on I'd also look at what would I'm going to take away and what I've done here is I've actually highlighted the back leg because that has to go quite a way down and I want to make sure I take away the right leg there correctly rather than the wrong one so I'm going to start at the back here I'm going to lower this and then I'm going to start shaping these legs and I'm going to leave around the edge here a little bit of a lip just a little bit of a lip where the main leg comes up so looking at this back leg here of course the first thing I tend to do is line it in so I'm going to just separate this leg here from the leg in front and push this back and I probably want to go about half way down to being this probably ending up about a third of the way from the back to what the front is and I'm also going to line in just inside here so this is the edge that I've already set in I'm going to take this back now all right so now I'm going to actually lower the leg I was going to remove wood across the grain to take this down takes it back to the level I left and I do this on all three legs at the same time I'm lowering the leg and then when I've got it roughly to the the depth meaning that this top bit here is the high spot now on this second level top second and then the background I can start rounding Tobit so I'll just take what I've got to take the same garish beam width and just start rounding this edge over like this so pulling it down I'm trying not to stab into the background so it's gonna come over here is if I use a pen and now with a curve like that what you might find is something like a back bent which is this sort of tool that's is a bit big but you'll see this tool will be able to come around those curves on the inside like this so this is where a back bent tool comes into its own same here it sort of follow the curve around but if you don't have one that's alright you can just get your tools and and just a little cut round eight about and what will happen is you'll see now as you come down here you'll see the junction more clearly and it might be that you need to clear that up clean it up a little bit daddy over here around the other there might be so this back it almost is entirely separate from the rest I've turned the carving around because I need to get at it from this side and the camera was getting away the camera but Tam hope you can see what's going on so what I'm gonna do now is I'm just going to set this edge in again down to the foot so this is now the edge of this wall comes across down to the foot like this now making this some foot rather flat and I'm at the emphasizing this angles have got quite a change of plane here not there and that's a sort of carving technique that will catch a bit of light and show off the leg better so having got this leg I can now move into the other bits of a hair so I'll start on this leg and we're going to go round the face here now there's a little bit of a tail going in there got to remember that come around this rabbit keep calling it a wrap it the hair up here so I'm now taking that bit up here so what it means is I can now come up on this leg and round over into the hair here into that head a couple of things are what the pointer at this stage this tail here of this rabbit that's just left chewed up a little bit so I'm going to deal with that when I deal with the head all the way around I think you can see here that I've got a strong change of plane down here and down there on the legs and what that is is it's me me doing a sort of cut little carving stylization thing here to make these more leg like and the body itself will be what we rounded so that's quite a common sort of carving fingers to actually make strong changes in plane the other thing to notice is that I've got a very strong outline so I've got a little wall going on down here so haven't come right down the background I've got a strong it's a sort of outline that tells us exactly what's going on and that's a little relief carving technique where you you make sure everybody can see exactly what's going on the subject and then within it the changes are playing or less anyway so make sure you've got a strong outline we're not undercutting we just have a nice strong chunk here I'm going to work on the ears next and come down into the head so the first thing I need to do is make sure I understand which year is frontal which is back so this year here the front of this head becomes the back of this year here so this would to come away there the front of this year becomes the back of this year here so I've decided which bits go down and I'm going to run my view tool here like this so this now separates off one ear from the mix we'll come on here and so those are now my three ears and I'm going to take some wood back here so as I come back here I'm going behind this here but I've got to rise up to be the front of this year so I'm the top of this year here and when I came down the back of this year there there's a little twisting Hill thing going on here and then this one here comes over this way so now I've got that the plains of the ears decided what we're going to do is just give them some shape so I'm going to round this over this bit here there's a finished tail the reason I've got a tail in here among other reasons is because I don't want a little dead area in there that I have to clear out so that's a good carving practice is not to give yourself more work than you need anyway to create the tail here what I'm going to do is I'm going to start coming over the top of the head this way like so and this tool here I can pick a fit match this one over here so again consistency and swing this round like at the top of the head here I've already rounded over a little bit so that's rounded this way to match into that that back leg I'm going to take a gouge and cut this mess here at an angle like this I'm going to cut this along there like that remove that wood you can see that a back edge of the tail started to appear so it's running right into the ear take a corner and then go back to that original tool I can find it this I'm going to come this way and create a little berm of wood there separately something a bit smaller to tidy that up so this are taken along here comes down and along the rabbit they're wrong the hair a little bit so and then to finish the ends off what I do is I just take a narrow gouge something like her Oh what we've got here I can find it again yep that is help so take a narrow - like this something like that and just clip off the end of the tail I'm going to clip it off like that push that corner in push that corn in there and then just take out that little bit there so a little bit of a shadow at the back and I can tidy that up that'd be effectively achieved up a little bit how the tail run so that run along there and underneath the ear there so the other thing we need to do is make sure we've got a neck here so what I want to do is first of all I've got a line for the bottom of the jowls here so I'm going to put that in there a little cut there which is on my drawing so I can do that similarly then I'm going to round over the neck forget little so this this is high comes down over here and behind the ear so there's definitely a shoulders neck head rhythm going on there and back over here and then I'm going to around over under the snout like this so what I'm left with in the head will be just the eye okay the last thing we'll put in when we do the details so I can clean up some of this over here down into the top here not much wood to come off so just marrying everything together so this back here that's a bit flower blowing that into that here it's around [Music] like that so I have to just slap it again here look a bit and then cleaning off the the pit paper over here cleaning it up just leaving that little bit there so Lesley when I've cleaned all this up what I'm going to do is I'm going to stamp this ear here this corner like that that just separates the ears off and I've done that in the same place for all of them and I've also stabbed in this line here says it's come on and they actually pushed their corn in there and in there and that just gives a little bit of an accent in there okay so I'm going to clean that up and then we're just left with the with the eyes just before I do the eye let me just say that I've I had a look at the carving and I thought this cut here look too much like a smile so I softened that all off and I made that a much lighter little cut at the bottom of the jail here it's quite a many evil looking hair I'm not pretending it looks like anything too real so the first thing I want to do is put in a nostril here which goes something like this so there is a cut on here you can see that that's like so I use a smaller tool much easier to see so there's a cut in here at an angle we're going to cut a little wedge out of there like that and we're going to just round that little bit over might need is futures off but that there is the nostril coming in now the eye well that different ways of doing it what I want to do it quite simply it's made quite a big so I'm just going to make a round literally take a number nine stab it in move it round snap it in move it round and see the papers coming off let me pull that off well it was kind of don't stay on okay so I push them at it what I don't want to do is pop that out it is coming off for you they can see clearly so there's my eye there and I'm going to create a bit of a shadow I'm taking a little bit of wood off here this isn't quite the right tool I really want something a bit more been to present have it two hand at the moment that's how this one will do I'm just going to use that corner to just take some of that out over there so put a nice sharp shadow there I'm over here stab that pin again then we're going to create the eyebrow with a gouge across here so again a simple cut straight down like this hard with that corner coming out to nothing and then let's put a cut in this way a little bit left in that core not to spit that out with this skew chisel and then to create a pupil what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to punch into this end what literally is punch this and I've made this punch here and what you wanted a very hard edge you don't want too soft one little compress what I want to do is actually come right in here so the right hairs looking forward that in like that so that's basically the eye so I know you'd just clean up the surface and then that'll be the I finished with the eyes I've I finished all the detailed carving although if you want to you could put a couple of Nick's in for the toes and you'd do that very much like you did the eyebrow here this little Delta cut perhaps you put a couple of toes in there if you want to I'm not going to do it now although I might change mine later check everything over look at the background change the lighting make sure this is quite a strong outline I took these two this tail back a bit because I thought it's a bit confusing so I've actually made that soft and made this line here stronger the one that goes around there the actual hair so with that I've cleaned off the paper now and what I'm going to do is I'm going to wipe it with something like a 340 grit paper that just means doing this over it and what that does is it just makes a little more tactile takes any of these very hard sharp edges off so a little bit of white and then the carvings finished what I'm going to do finally is just do something with a background I'm going to get a punch and and stipple this background little decoratively mark then I'm going to turn it a little bit so that I sort of tessellate these marks so I try not to be equal and I try not to put anything in a straight line line it up like this so I just move my way around here I think the stippling looks really great and I'm very pleased with that so there we are the three hairs

Channel: woodcarvingworkshop1

Views: 253,251

Keywords: woodcarving, relief carving, Three Hares, how to carve

Id: StcAWU0eVx0

Length: 34min 27sec (2067 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2019