This Summer I have been in a bit of a slump with regards to carving. I had a couple “must do” very personal projects which I thoroughly enjoyed doing, but, did add some time pressure that I usually don’t have in my whittling.
Since then I have bounced around with a couple other projects not finishing any of them. Oh, they will get done, but they just have not been holding my interest. There has also been a few upcoming life events that have given us lots of other things to focus.on, our Daughter’s upcoming October wedding to name one. And while we are throwing around the excuses, lets mention the weather. Here in the Northeast we have officially had the 3rd wettest Summer on record, and is seems like more of the rain fell on the weekends! As the camp site has been my favored whittling spot the rain has had a definite impact.
But enough of that!!
I have always worked with small projects, 6 inches on average. An article in the current Woodcarving Illustrated Magazine (Fall 2021, Issue 96) by Karen Scalin on carving miniature figures really intrigued me. The fact that she was able to pack so much character into such a small carving is amazing! I knew I just had to give this a try!!
This little guy is my copy of her example figure from the article. It began life as a 1x1x2 inch block of Bass wood.and about 4 hours later this little walnut-sized guy emerged. The size and detail in this figure required my use of more of my tool collection then any other carve I have done: 3 knives, 2 gouges and 2 V tools. A huge break from the predominantly “one knife” carves of the last several months and I am pretty happy with the results of this first attempt!
I know I am going to need to try a few more of these!