Woodcarving a Pumpkin Head--Intermediate Instructional Whittle, Start to Finish-

I don't know if you guys knew this, but it's fall. And what says fall better than a spooky little man and a pumpkin? All right, so today we're gonna be carving this little dude. Hopefully you can see him all right. And yeah, I don't know, he's a little creepy. He's a little Halloween, he's a little bit autumn. Let's get into it. All right, now to start this project, I've got about a two inch by two inch piece of cottonwood bark here. And you could really replace this with a two inch by two inch piece of basswood, butternut, aspen, birch, and so on and so forth, right? This is not quite cut square yet, I just left it raw. So I could show you what it's like if you're carving in a branch or a piece of bark like this. So it's about three inches long. And we'll probably use most of the length. We might cut it down a little bit. Let's get into it. I'm using an inch and a half blade. This is a badger state blade. Of course, I've got a pencil and I've got a ruler just in case. All right, so I'm gonna try to get this thing true. It's always easier to make a square thing round than it is to make an obtruse kind of strangely shaped thing round. The natural orange color of the bark I think will lend really well to the color of a pumpkin. And so I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out. All right, so we're at about two inches there and just a little bit shy of two inches. So we might be at say an inch and 3 1⁄4 by the end of it, but there abouts. All right, I'm gonna take the corners off, the edges off the bottom and top, and off the sides and corners. All right, so we're starting to take the squareness out of the block. We can come back in over the corners, just like so. Slowly but surely, we're getting out of that kind of blocky stage. This is a fairly dark piece of cottonwood bark. A lot of the Eastern cottonwood bark is a lot lighter than this and would be even better suited to a pumpkin. I'm gonna get it light so you can see a little more clearly what we're up to. Okay, that makes it stand out a little better. And continuing to take the corners off. All right, so the first measurements I wanna make here are to indicate the top of the stem that attaches to the pumpkin. So about a quarter of an inch of material I'm gonna take down. So I'm gonna mark from the top to the bottom, about a quarter of an inch. I can mark that all the way around. Just approximately over there. All right, doesn't have to be perfect. And I'm gonna start paring the wood down. Now, actually, the more I look at this, the more I think it's a little bit wider at the base. So I might put the stem up at the top. So I'll redraw that up at the top. And of course, just approximate it. It doesn't have to be exact. Okay, so I'll ignore that bottom line. And I'll just carve it off so it doesn't confuse anyone. Okay, next I'm gonna start carving on that line with a little bit of a scoop upward, right? So you'll notice that when I put the tool in, I'm turning it outward. And that's gonna give me a little bit of extra room for the stem. I'm just going all the way around the carving like that. Just like so. All right, so now I'm going to just take a bit more off of the top as I want the stem to be a little bit longer. All right, so I've shortened up the base just a little bit, less than a quarter of an inch. And I took a little bit more off of the top using the same technique that I talked about earlier, just working my way around the edges, scooping upward. All right, so now that I've done that, I'm gonna start to round the edges of the piece of wood or bark. So of course, I've mentioned this before, use a glove. If you don't have a glove, you can use, you know, if you don't have specifically a carving glove, you know, using a kitchen culinary glove, you could using a leather mitt will also work well. Just something to protect your hands. It's always worthwhile. Okay, now you can see the shape that we've got here. And we're starting to get closer to pumpkin shape. I'm gonna keep cutting these corners down soon as they're all kind of fairly even in terms of the facet width. And so again, the way that we get a roundish object is just by taking these corners off, splitting the corners. So I'm gonna take that corner down and try to even those out. Find those corners, just like so. That's the idea. See how we've already got something close to round, just like that. All right, and the same thing up here. Take these corners down. We'll take the edges off of the bottom as well. And chamfer that base. So just take it down, round it a little bit more, like so. And I wanna leave a little bit of a flat spot on the bottom so it can sit on a shelf, just like so. Test that out. Pretty close to finishing off these corners. All right, I'm gonna keep rounding this bad boy out and we'll come back in just a moment. All right, I've got it a little bit more rounded out. And I'm gonna remove a little bit more from that stem area. I'm cheating it out. So I'm actually probably closer to, oh, I don't know, maybe a half an inch. Yep, about a half an inch. From the top there, and this will all be stem area. So I'm just choosing to make this pumpkin a little bit squattier, a little bit more squashed. No pun intended. Just like that. And rounding those edges. All right, so with the pencil, I'm gonna start by drawing some lines to insinuate grooves. You know what? Before I do that, I'm actually gonna take my gouge and go around the perimeter of the stem here. Sorry, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants. So there's a little bit of thought that goes into this in real time. Yeah, so I'm going around the stem, the base, like so. This is a, as I said, a quarter inch veiner. So it's just basically a number nine would do the same thing. It's just a little bit of a more curved tool. And you could use a palm tool for this. That might give you a little bit more control. And again, this is a great time to have a glove on to protect your holding hand. In this case, I'm just being very careful. Again, still not enough. I would recommend using a carving glove. All right, so I'm just going around like so, making a little trench in the stem area, just like that. And I can take my knife and cut off a hard edge. Just like so. All right, anyway, back to what we were talking about. Yeah, getting those lines cut in. Make sure that I'm in good shape here. Got a lumber crayon. It's a little darker and it'll help me to see the lines more clearly. So I'm going to start by splitting it in half all the way around and in half again. And I'm just going to keep going around, splitting these sections in half once again. Excuse my hand position there. All right. And just a section in half again. All right, until I'm satisfied with the amount of grooves. Let's see how that looks. Do I need more grooves? I think I do. Yeah, I'm going to split this section in half once again and that'll be good. Try to be careful here. Pretty close to half. Doesn't have to be perfect. Of course, these grooves aren't perfectly spaced on a real pumpkin anyway. Okay, so you can see that. Just marking down with my crayon. And just like that. And the downside of using a lumber crayon is you might get a little bit of crayon on your hands. All right. I'm going to come up on the grooves with my quarter inch veiner again. And I'll just show you a few of these and I'll jump back to the finished kind of grooved thing. So I'm not boring you with this, but what I'm doing is I'm just coming along here with the veiner. All right, and cutting these grooves in. All right, so I'm just going along all the way along that edge and cutting those grooves in. And turning it upside down and cutting those in. Yeah, I think in hindsight, a marker would work better. Look at this. Looks like I stuck my hand in a potash or some, I don't know, some dirt. Okay, so I'm going to clean my hands off and keep cutting these grooves in and I'll see you guys in just a little bit. Make sure when you're cutting these down to come down all the way to the base. You don't want to go too deeply here, but just some nice little grooves. All right, be back in just a second. Oh, I forgot one thing. I'm going to leave a section of this, I'll say about an inch and a half or so that is not cut. An inch and a half section by an inch and a half section. So I'll just kind of draw that in now. And I guess I haven't learned my lesson with the lumber crayon. So we got an inch and a half there. And I don't know, I'll just guess at an inch and a half here. All right, so this whole area, I'm not going to worry about the grooves just yet. I'm just going to leave this space for our face. So I'll show you what that looks like. I'm going to just stay atop of it. There we go. Sorry about the blur there. I guess I'm just going around that frame. No use putting those grooves along there if we're just going to carve them off anyway. Although it's not the end of the world if you already did. Okay, so I didn't much like the background that I was using earlier. This is a little bit cleaner to me at least. It's a little bit easier to see what's going on. And so I'm going to continue to use the darker wood background here. So anyway, getting back to it. Now I'm going to use a V tool to come in, deepen these grooves a little, coming all the way around. And as I come around, I'm then going to come back in. I can either use the side, the flat part of the V tool to come in and take the corners off. Sorry, I'm laughing because I look like a coal miner right now. My hands are still dirty even after I washed them. And so there's a lesson learned, huh? Don't use that marker. Use a, I'm sorry, don't use that crayon. Use a marker instead. So I'm just coming through and I'm just rounding, just taking off the hard edges here. Making those grooves a little bit sharper and using a quarter inch V tool, by the way. And I don't know if it's a 50 or, I don't know if it's a 60 or what degree V tool. Just coming through and deepening these grooves. Come back. Okay, so I switched to the eighth inch 60 degree V, a little bit smaller and a little bit easier to get deep in the grooves here. And you can see I'm just working those grooves and kind of rounding those edges, like I talked about using the knife or the sidewall of that V tool. I think the easiest route is using the flat part of the V tool, turning it on its side and just using that flat side of the V tool just to take the sharp grooves down. All right, and we're pretty close to the pumpkin shape. I can also detail this top knob, but I don't want to worry about that just yet. If I get it down to its final shape, it's a little more fragile and I'll be nervous about damaging it. So I don't want to do that. But what I do want to do, however, is get to work on this face. So I've left a little area that's flat here and from the top to the bottom, it's about an inch and a half of material, right? So I'm going to mark about say a quarter inch from the top for the head. And the goal here is to make it look like the face is kind of set within the pumpkin. So I'm going to make sure this is kind of a jagged line. Then I'm going to come in with my V tool and carve that line out like so. So again, quarter inch from the top and I'm just kind of carving into the pumpkin like so. Okay. Using that V tool. And now I'm going to come down inch and a half. I could use a pencil, but I'm going to come at the base here and define the bottom of this face. Okay. Just like so. We've got about an inch and a half by an inch and a half, maybe an inch wide by an inch and a half tall. And I'm going to use my knife to come in and start to pare this area down and take the edges to the, sorry, take the inside edge to that line that we carved. Just like that. Okay. Beautiful. Okay. So next, what I'm going to do, I'm going to make a little mark. Oh, say, I'm going to say about a quarter of an inch from the top of this new line that we marked. And let's see if I can show you that. Just like so. And this is going to be the brow area, right? And just below that, it's going to be our eyes. So we can draw a line for that part. And so like splitting this area from the top of the pumpkin to the base of the chin in half. And then let's see. Yeah, that's good. We'll start there. I'm going to grab that veiner I was using earlier to come in and scoop out the eye socket. So I'm going to go on either side there. Make a groove. Getting groovy, baby. Getting groovy. Okay, just like that. And now is a great time to grab the knife and come over on either side. Oh, by the way, I'm about a quarter inch deep there at the deepest part. Is that right? I'm going to say, I'm actually going to say an eighth, an eighth deep. Sorry about that. Okay, so come along here. And notice the scooping motion, right? I'm coming on either side into this socket that I carved like that, right? So a scooping motion here and lifting up and we want a nice little mound right there. You see that? Stop it here. Yeah, I'm going to take this area here back just a little bit. So take that hump off the side. So we got this groove here in three planes, one, two, and then three down here. One, two, three. All right, so let's grab a measurement here. So from the top of the brow ridge to the bottom of the nose, oh, about a half inch, about a half inch. So the top of the brow ridge to the bottom of the nose, there's that half inch mark here to here. And I'm going to make a stop cut. I'm actually going to make a V cut here. So come in here like so, just like that. Hopefully you can see that clearly. A V here, a V here, just like that. All right, so next I'm going to take my knife below that nose and cut this whole area down to the base of our initial round cut here, cutting it down like so. So look at that profile. You see that? I'm just going to continue that cut just like so. Okay, check that again. Looking good. And I'll take the corner off of this base here and the corner there. All right, now don't fret if at this point you're not where you want to be. It's kind of a weird spot in the carving. Call it the ugly stage. It's that kind of midpoint where you're not sure exactly what's going on and you're thinking everything's going wrong. So just kind of make nice with yourself. Don't be mean to yourself. Okay, so at this point, I'm going to put a big old smile on this dude. And so to do that, I'm going to come in with a line and hey, let's do this first. How about this? Let's mark our lines for the mouth. So divide this area from this line here, excuse my reach, to the bottom here. Let's divide this in a third. So all we need is two equally spaced lines from one another like so. So we got one, two, three sections. And in this first line, this dividing line between the first and second third, I'm going to carve a V groove to open the mouth. That's going to be the opening of the mouth. Okay. So it starts out fairly straight and then we're going to widen it out just like that. All right. And I'm going to take the lower lip back just a little bit. And then this bottom third, I'm actually going to carve a kind of upside down U shape to carve in or establish the chin. Just like that. All right. Now I'm going to come in, find the bottom of that lip, a little scoop cut, just like that. Okay. And the same thing up here. I'm going to define the lip by taking it back here, taking it back here, and I'm in a pretty good spot. Pretty good spot. All right. I'm going to take my knife and I'm going to make a V cut. Now pay attention to this. I'm going to come in here and I'm going to come in here. The deepest part is this inside corner right in here. All right. And then I'm going to turn my tool flat and do a plunge cut to relieve that cut. And I'll go in once again, that flat section out. Okay. I'm going to do the same thing over here. Show you again. In. So it'll take a little triangle out. In. And then turn the tool flat to cut that chunk out. And that gives us the inside corner of our eye. And we're a little low on that side, so we'll just get that out, right? Okay. Beautiful. Okay. I'm going to narrow the bridge of the nose. Another scooping cut, just like so. Take a little bit out of the corners. Let's grab that V tool and cut in some smile lines, just like so on either side. Starting at the bottom of the nose and working out to the edges of the mouth and curving around the corners of the mouth. Like so. Okay. There we go. Once we've done that, we can use the V tool to go underneath the nose, like so. Boom. And just move the bottom area beneath the nose, which is really the upper lip, right? We're just going to use the flat part of that V tool to pare that down, just like that. Okay. Turn that lower lip down. And we'll just reestablish that line. And use the V tool to round out the lower lip as well. And either side of that chin base, just like that. There we go. Okay, coming underneath that chin. We want those cheeks to be pushed nice and high because of that smile. So I'm going to come right below, I'm going to say about an eighth of an inch from the brow ridge down, and I'm going to carve a line across. Okay, and it's almost an arcing line. So notice how that comes up like so. See that? And that's going to be pushed open just like that because of the squinting look of his eyes, right? And on the inside corner with our veiner, since we've got it, might as well use it. Got that eighth inch veiner. I'm going to come in just like so. Okay. Come above the nose to get the nostrils in, just like so. And then come underneath the eyes, a little groove. In fact, I'll grab my V tool again for this. It's a little neater of a tool, a little smaller can get under there. And we'll get that cheek area. Okay, so the downside to the bark and the upside to using the basswood or butternut or another wood that's a little harder is you're going to get a little bit more control out of the wood. In this case, it's a little bit harder to do this because the bark is softer and it tends to chip out a little bit more. It's not quite as consistent and just good at holding small, small detail. That's okay, we're making it work. Along like so, getting that outline cut in. Just going back over that outline, making sure everything's looking good. And this is where we can start to deal with the odd shape of the face, right? That kind of opening that the face is set in. You can kind of try and make it look like he's almost part of the tree or the tree of the pumpkin. And so we can carve the grooves in and soften these lines like so. See if you can see that, taking those lines off. Blending that face in a little bit more. Just getting the side of those nostrils cut in, like so. See it from the side view. Come along. All right. All right, let's see if we can get a little bit more I'm just blending those grooves in to the face. Making those lines a little less hard. Okay. All right, so I'm gonna cut the cheeks down a little bit. Actually below the cheeks, right? Where the mouth kind of comes over, like so. Just like that. Okay, and I'm gonna come in, set the eye. Going along that opening that we made. Just creating a little slit there for the eyes that are kind of, because he's smiling, the eye's gonna just be a slit, right? It's not gonna be super wide because his eyes are pushed together from that happiness. Push those eyes a little bit closer together, like so. Around the face a little bit more. Just take a little bit more out of the forehead. Just like that. And we can go nice and deep on this, unlike a real pumpkin. You know, at this point, we'd probably already be into the pulp, and so it's kind of the benefit of this. And carve a little character, like so. Take the forehead back ever so slightly. And I'm gonna use that veiner to come in and narrow the eyes just a little bit. So I'm gonna come in the edges of the eyes, like so. And we'll do our little philtrum, these nice big lips. And now would be a good time to grab a little tiny bit of sandpaper and just clean them up. All right, so I've narrowed the cheeks off camera a little bit. I just literally came in with the knife and took them down, still taking them down ever so slightly. And yeah, he's starting to look kind of like a little face hidden inside of this pumpkin, which is a little unusual, but kind of fun. So I'm gonna leave the face what he is. Oh, I should also mention, I used my V tool and I took these little corners of the mouth and I pushed them in even more. So I made another little line on the inside of that line, of the smile line on the inside corner here and set that just like so. I think that made a nice effect. And yeah, so that's that. So I'm going to, let's see, put a little groove in the top of his forehead to make sure that you can tell that he's got his eyebrows raised as well. Couple little grooves there. Okay. And a little bit of sanding and that'll clean him right up. And then we'll get to work on other things. We'll get to work on the stem and then just lightly sanding this pumpkin and we'll call it a strange little creepy pumpkin man. And I guess if it weren't Halloween, I'd be concerned about how kind of odd this guy is, but I guess that's okay. In fact, he's a bit spooky and it's on par with what we want, right? Let's carve that stem. All right, so to do the stem, I want it to kind of curl over. So I'm going to decide on the position of the stem and let's just decide it goes one way or the other. I'll go left. So I'm going to have this thing curve over. So I'm going to round this edge and I'm going to have the flat part of the stem here, like so. And I'm going to thin out this top here, like so. Come on either side, come beneath it, a little stop, a leaf cut. So you can see what I'm doing there. And take the corners off. Okay, so there's our weird little pumpkin man. He just has some little fuzzies to clean up on the inside. Get a brush, that'll work just fine. All right, so one thing I want to do is kind of break up the line here, the circle. Use the blade to do that. Just kind of pop a few little edges out here and just kind of frame it up. I kind of want him to look like he's set in there. Just like that. And I might cut a little corner out of here as well just to get that edge less straight and perfect, make him look a little bit more like he belongs. Okay, and do another one down here. Okay. And again, just kind of setting him in his hole. Corner in this one as well, just to break it up a little bit. The old whittling trick, using the toothbrush and just a little bit of shadow, undercutting underneath here. Okay. And I like that. It kind of looks like he's coming out of that pumpkin. I'm going to do another little ziggy zaggy here at the base as well. Get some nice depth in there, underneath that chin. A little triangle cut here. All right, and he's just kind of set in there. It's a little bit odd. I keep saying that's what Halloween's about, right? Why is there a head floating around in that pumpkin? Who knows? Don't ask me. I don't know. I wish I could tell you why, but he's in there. All right. All right, guys. I'm not going to paint him. You could clear coat him if you wanted. If anything, I'm just going to put a little sealant on him. Just some dead flat polyurethane. And clean him up, of course, a little bit more with a little sandpaper and a little touch here or there to get the fuzzies out. But otherwise, he's all done in terms of carving. And I appreciate you guys watching. If you want a real in-depth presentation on how to carve realistic faces, sort of like this one, maybe a little more realistic than this, a little less playful, along with a few playful instructional videos, check out the online school. It's in the link below. And that's where I teach mostly. So if you're looking for more instructional content like this, I've got a few free videos up you can dig around for, and quite a few videos at the school there. So, all right, guys, thanks for watching. And this is how it turned out. Kind of cool, kind of creepy. I'm happy with it. There were a few moments during this project where I was unsure about what I was doing. I didn't know if it was gonna turn out, but it's spooky and I like it. Weird and kind of fun. We'll put him in the house. All right, let's call it, bye.