Wood Carving Studies/Tutorials » Ozark Walking Sticks

Santa Study Stick – Tutorial

Oct 262011

Santa Study Stick – Beginner Wood Carving Tutorial

This beginner wood carving tutorial has been edited for clarity with permission of Tom H. It is a cooperation between Tom H. and Thomp both Wood Carving Illustrated members. It is with great sadness, to report that since this tutorial was originally created, Thomp has passed away.

Purpose of this document: It is in hopes, that those with basic to intermediate carving skills can accomplish the task of making the Santa study stick, or practice stick for themselves, then have one to copy from in their hand and continue carving others as practice. All wood carvers needs to learn carving safety, how to sharpen, hone and maintain cutting edges, in addition to general carving experience in the basic skills. The tutorial teaches the use of a study stick. Each step is in progression and starts where you left off on the prior step and builds a more completed step in the overall carving of a character, leaving the previous step as a record of how the carving was accomplished

SKILLS NEEDED: Skilled BEGINNERS to INTERMEDIATE

The carver is required to obtain:

Carving safety equipment: Good lighting, (visor, or reading glasses if needed) Kevlar carving glove and finger guards.
Tools: a serviceable Sharp Carving Knife, and a Sharp small 2mm Gouge if possible (see scary sharp method for help on this) LINK TO WCI
Materials: Box of band aids, 1×1″ basswood, White pine, cypress, or other suitable softwood practice stick 12: long. One source is heineckewood

Proceed: Starting with a blank stick 1″x1″x12″ , Divide the stick into 5 equal parts, 2-1/4″ or so and mark with pencil. Now you should have 5 bands of pencil marks all the way around the stick giving you 5 segments. You will be using the corners of the block to carve the nose.

Step# 1 – In this Step what is going on is cutting a small notch for the eyebrow at the bridge of the nose and another lower notch a slight bit larger, below the nose. Keep them small, you can always make them deeper, but you can’t add it back. The top notch will be at approximately 7/8″ from the top of the segment and the lower notch at approximately 1 3/8″ from the top or 1/2″ below the top notch. Continue reading »

Wood Carving – Carving Beards and Hair Tutorial

Beginner Wood Carving Information, Wood Carving Studies/Tutorials No Responses »

Oct 092011

When carving beards and hair, you have to realize that in nature, hair isn’t straight. Hair naturally grows with at least some curve, especially facial hair. Therefore, when attempting to emulate this in your wood carvings, you need to make a series of varied, elongated “s” and “c” shapes.

A good starting point, is to use a v-tool to make some deep elongated “s” shapes throughout the beard area to give the beard that curved, uniform depth that is seen in real life. Now you can use another smaller v-tool to carve other elongated “s” shapes to fill in the voids created by the previous step. You can now go back with another v-tool or your wood carving knife and make even more definition.

The important thing to remember when carving hair, is to never make it uniform and equal. Natural facial hair is uneven and scattered. If your facial hair was always uniform and straight, it would look like you had Crystal Gayles’ hair hanging from your chin.

When studying a new carving technique, I always like to see some examples of what I am trying to accomplish. Here are some example pictures that I hope will give you an idea of what I am trying to explain above. Short of a step by step photo example, these close-ups show the elongated “s” shapes in the wood.

: Wood Carved Beard 2

: Wood Carved Beard 4

: Wood Carved Beard 5

: Wood Carved Beard 3

: Wood Carved Beard

Hand Carved Wooden Santa Ornament Tutorial

Beginner Wood Carving Information, Wood Carving Projects, Wood Carving Studies/Tutorials 1 Response »

Aug 242011

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):

Wood Carving Eye Painting Tutorial

Beginner Wood Carving Information, Wood Carving Studies/Tutorials No Responses »

Aug 032011

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.

Improve Your Wood Carving Caricatures – Using Proper Proportions

Beginner Wood Carving Information, Wood Carving Studies/Tutorials No Responses »

Jul 112011

If you are reading this information, you are more than likely interested in wood carving caricatures and want to know how to improve your wood carving results. The one word key to doing so is “Proportions”. Using general proportions will make your wood carvings appear pleasing and natural to the eye at first glance. When I say “general” proportions, I am saying that using exact to the millimeter measurements is not needed, rather a close approximation to correct human proportions is enough.

Following the basic proportions of the human anatomy will improve the way that your wood carvings look and will please the eye of people that are seeing your wood carvings. There are several sources of information about anatomy that go into extremely detailed information about how long or how wide various parts of the body should be, to be considered ideal. After researching several proportional guidelines, I prefer to follow the basic proportions rules that are described by Don Mertz the “Woodbee Carver”. Mr. Mertz teaches what he calls the “Rule Of Three” that basically divides various areas of the body into thirds to allow for an easy conversion for all sizes of wood carving figures. A picture that I have marked up to show the dividing lines appears below for a visual reference. Continue reading »

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