How to Carve an Owl - Easy Woodcarving Tutorial for Beginners

Let's carve an easy and fun little owl. It has a very simple structure. You can carve your own little army of owls. You can use any wood. I'm going to carve a basswood block that usually comes in a pack of 10 or so. So grab a carving knife and some wood. For me it's a 1x1 inch block. Although you can easily use any rectangular piece without being restricted to a particular size. Use any saw available to cut a required piece. The first thing we do is make it rounded, removing all the sharp corners. I simply start taking off wood, seeing which way it is easier to carve. If I feel resistance, that means I'm carving against the grain. So I turn it around have circles on top and at the bottom. Now let's remove the edge from one side so that our piece on the sides for eyes. So this is what I do. I make one big round plane, a sort of a surface between them to make the forehead a bit bigger. Now again, if you look at the owl, you will see that this surface is a bit concave. So I'm going to do the same here. I will make it a bit deeper just under the place where the eyes are going to be. I draw a beak with a pencil. Then I follow the pencil with a knife and carve towards my lines, giving the beak some thickness. Now I'm going to draw eyes. You can make them bigger if you want. Again, I follow the circle with a knife and then I want to give the eyes some definition. I carve just inside the circle, less rounded. Now let's do the wings. I find the middle on the back and start drawing them. It's the same drill, I follow the pencil lines with a knife and then carve towards them and give of sandpaper just to remove any fluff under the wings and in the eyes. And now I'm going to paint it. You can use different colors and make your owl gray, for example, or you can leave it as it is, if you are carving wood other than basswood. I will make it brown. I will use burnt sienna for the most part. Here at the bottom I will add some black paint to make it more interesting and then blend it all together. Then I will use light brown at the front and I will add burnt sienna at the bottom. Some black for the eyes and the beak. And don't forget the catch light in the eyes. And this is it, our little owl is ready!