Wood Carving - Eye Tutorial
When you first start a wood carving project that involves a face, you have to think about what areas of the face stand out. The nose stands out the furthest on the face. Look at your own nose in the mirror, from a front view and a profile. Therefore, you should start by carving the nose and relieving the areas around the nose to allow for a natural looking nose in relation of the face. Below is an example of what your carving might look like when you are ready to start caving the eyes.
Now you are ready to start your eyes, by carving a shallow dip in the area on each side of the nose. I like to use a gouge to create the slight indention and make an oblong shape on each side of the bridge of the nose.
Once you are satisfied with this step, you can move on to using a pencil or pen to draw in actual eye. I have used a pencil to draw in the eye so that you have a both eyes drawn to match.
You are now ready to cut a small triangle chip on each side of the eye. Push your carving knife straight into the wood, at the corners of the eye. Now make an angled cut towards the corner, that connects the two cuts that you just made and this should remove a small chip. Now just make a stop cut straight in along the top and bottom lines of the eye that your already had drawn. From here, you make an angled cut from above the top stop cut into the stop cut to remove a sliver of wood. Do the same from the bottom line up to the bottom stop cut.
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You now have the basic eye carved into your face. Now you can make further wedge cuts around the eye as you see fit to give the eye more character. Also using a small v-tool, you can make small notched in a line above the eye for eyebrows.
