We can start to clean up and refine the features of the Gnome. Make the beard a bit smaller, put some shape to the shoes, and deepen any areas that need it. Soften the edges of the arms by removng slices of wood from the edges. I don't round the arms or lags, because I want the Flat Plane look.
If the reference lines have not been carved off, you might want to do that too.
I can either paint the Gnome, finish it natural, or stain it.
For those that don't like the flat plane look, you can do some carving to round off the edges.
With some practice this little Gnome can be whittled in 15 to 30 minutes. And they sure make great little handouts or gifts. Heck! who doesn't like a Gnome?
3 comments:
After attempting this project and mostly failing (I'm new to carving). I assume that you try to make deliberate strokes, as few as possible to get the shape? I did a lot of scraping as opposed to carving, so I think that's part of why mine didn't turn out so well. Also, my basswood had a dark section that was very brittle, I know to avoid that in the future. I also had to freehand draw the pattern, is there a good way to trace the pattern onto the wood? Thanks for the great tutorial, I hope I can make em like this someday.
Thanks for commenting. I'll try to answer your questions. Yes to the deliberate knife cuts. But I don't know about "as few as possible". Bad things tend to happen when you're trying to take off too much wood in one cut. Use a combination of STOP CUTS and knife cuts up to the stop cuts. You can use carbon paper to transfer the initial pattern to the wood. But you'll have to keep on redrawing the pattern as you make cuts in the wood and remove the wood chips. I am working on a real simplified Gnome pattern. I'll post it soon.
Forgot something! It sounds like your knife could be sharper too. Shoot, all our knives should be sharper. Also when making a slice cut up to a stop cut, try to "slice" rather then just push the blade up to the stop cut. Not a real exaggerated slice, just a little will do.
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