It’s almost Christmas time again and it’s time to start thinking about decorating the tree soon and what gifts you need to get to your loved ones. An awesome wood carving project that even the beginner can have fun completing, is a hand carved Santa Ornament. These really fun wood carved ornaments can be completed with just a small cylinder piece of wood (2 ½” long and 1” diameter), a carving knife and a small v-tool. They make great ornaments to hang on your own tree or to give as gifts for your loved ones trees. Trust me, you will be asked to carve more when you start handing these things out.
Safety is very important, so to start off this simple project, make sure your wood carving knife is sharp and you have your carving glove ready. Your first step is to mark a ring around the wood about 1/3 from the top of the block. Now draw in a line about a 1/4” above the previous line. Now with your v-tool, create a small separation around the wood that removes the lines that you just drew. When this is completed, it should look like this (click on images for larger view):
As you begin to read articles in wood carving magazines or start researching new tools to buy, you will notice that some of the gouges have strange numbers along with them. For example, you might see that a particular project was completed with a #11 gouge or a #9 gouge. If you want to purchase the same tools for you projects, you need to know what the number signify.
Here is the answer that you have been looking for. The numbers represent the “sweep” of the gouge. The “sweep” is the diameter of a circle that would be created if you placed the gouge straight into the wood against that cutting edge and made a circle with it. Therefore, the lower the number of the gouge, the flatter it is. So a #11 gouge compared to a #2 gouge would be more curved.
Sometimes, there are other numbers also associated with gouges and other wood carving tools. For instance, a gouge in the wood carving store may say 1/4 by 8. That means that the gouge is 1/4″ wide and the sweep is #8.
When referring to v-tools, they with have numbers that represent the angle of the “V” and the width between the top of the “V”. They usually look something like: 45 degree 1mm. This denotes that the angle of the “V” is 45 degrees and the “V” is 1mm. Obviously, the larger the degree of angle, the groove that will be made in the wood will be wider.
From my experience and from veteran wood carvers that I have read after, acrylic paint is the way to go when painting your wood carving projects. There are several advantages of using acrylic paint over oil paint and water colors.
Acrylic Paint is easier to apply to your wood carving projects. It can be thinned in water and applied in light coats that allow the wood grain to show thru.
Using acrylic paint that is thinned, will keep your finished wood carving pieces looking like they were carved. In my opinion, wood carving pieces that are painted, look better when you can see some of the wood grain. This allows the viewer to quickly realize that the piece was carved in wood by hand and not mass produced in some type of synthetic plastic. Continue reading »
When it comes to working on eyes during the wood carving process, there are several options. You have to decide whether you are going to carve the eyes completely or carve part of the eyes and paint the rest. A wood carving friend of mine, Steve Reed, has a great method of painting his eyes on his wood carvings. I wanted to share his method with you and he has graciously allowed me to share his eye painting tutorial to help others learn to make their wood carving more realistic with painted eyes.
The first photos show my BLO mixture. It is BLO with a little raw sienna and yellow ocher mixed in. Apologize for the lighting, it’s not really as orange as it appears. I first coat the entire carving with the base coat, then wipe it off with paper towels. I then proceed to paint the eyeballs with Delta Light Ivory using a 0 size brush. Normally I put about 3 – 4 applications of the light ivory, full strength.
