Carving small figures such as animals is exactly what you need to do to train your wood carving skills. They are challenging to carve and hard to detail, sliding wood fence gate but they are the perfect exercise to push your wood carving skills to the next level. Chip carving is not so popular type of carving in the modern age.
Next draw a line slightly angled down and cut above the line to define the beak a little more. Make a v-cut just below the point where the beak will be to make a rough beak. At the 3/8-inch marking, use your knife to carve out the wood, take wood away from both the top and bottom of the line.
Access the best of Getty Images and iStock with our simple subscription plan. Millions of high-quality images, video, and music options await you. Just make sure you ask a parent first, and possibly have someone supervise you to make sure you’ve got the technique down. Traditional mallets are technically made of heavy wood, but rubber mallets are less noisy and generally cause less damage to the handle of the chisel upon repeated impact.
Steven lives in Souderton, Pa., with his wife, Elda, and son, Mike, and is a member of the Delaware Valley Wood Carvers. It is very easy when planning a carving to fall into the trap of searching for a suitable photograph in a magazine and trying to copy what you see. Many carvers are so set on getting all the anatomy somewhere near correct that they lose the essence of the subject. Simply study your subject and have confidence that you can carve it to your own design. Then it is matter of making sure you are clear in your own mind exactly what it is that you hope to produce. In this case it was the playful side of a young polar bear.
You can go slow if doing so makes you feel more comfortable, but it can take a long time to obtain even a basic shape if you’re too shy with your tools. A stabbing cut creates sharp carvings in the surface of the wood, allowing you to create hard shadows. Push the cutting edge of a gouge straight into the wood, then pull it out without pushing it any further. It’s always a good idea to practice some basic cuts on scrap wood before working on any major piece. Doing so will give you the opportunity to become familiar with the tools.
To carve a bird out of wood, you need to draw out three bird patterns, the top view, and both of the bird’s side views. Using a band saw, carve out the mouse pattern that you must have drawn on the block of wood. Connect the top of the eyes to the head using the line connected at the top in step 2. Carve from the point at the top of the eyes to that line.