| Blog series by mpounders | updated 570 days ago | 3 parts | 11673 reads | 19 comments total |
Part 1: Starting out
Several people made some nice comments about some ornaments I posted and there seemed to be a little interest in a mini-tutorial on how to carve them. Santas are pretty easy to carve, since everyone has some familiarity with the subject and Santa is easy to recognize with just a few key features. This style is particularly easy to make since the eyes are covered. A carver named Don Worley may have invented this style, called “no-see-ums”, but I just make them up without following ...
Part 2: Beard and Hat
So we left off after we carved the mouth and teeth in the first blog and it looked something like this. It will really start taking shape quickly now, when we start removing massive quantities of wood. First we do the stop cuts on the corners under the brim of the hat and then remove those chips, to make the hair go under the hat. Remove that same chip in the back also, I shape the beard so that it curves to a bit of a curl at the front, and round over any edges. I’m trying to us...
Part 3: Finishing up & Painting
Today we’ll finish this little guy up. As I’ve carved ornaments, I’ve gotten faster at doing them and I can complete one in an hour or two, depending on how complex it is. I have started saving them up and painting 4-5 at a time, so that I don’t waste as much paint, and that seems to help also. So after we get him all carved, I spend a little bit of time going back over the whole piece and cleaning up the cuts a bit. I try to get all the little fuzzy pieces in the c...
