Whittle a Realistic Woodspirit--Woodcarving Tutorial

Alright, so today we're carving a wood spirit and a piece of one and a quarter inch by one and a quarter of an inch blip blip one and a quarter inch by one and a quarter inch piece of basswood and we'll get into the details of that in a bit all you need is a ruler a pencil and an inch and a quarter blade that's that so let's get into it oh by the way if you want to learn more about carving faces in wood check out my online school beginner intermediate advanced stuff there uh male female young and old all that so realistic portraiture uh is uh all kind of the focus of the school we've got other things but check that out in the link below and let's get into this carving all right so the basswood piece we have is seven and a half centimeters long by about 34 millimeters or an inch and a quarter wide square and we cut it diagonally and that's uh just a lot easier to carve it's a lot easier to carve less material to remove don't have to worry about the back side and uh i'm going to start with a cut about 22 millimeter from the top or seven-eighths of an inch from the top here so i'm going to make a little marking seven-eighths right there and this is going to be the hairline i'm going to start with what's called a v cut now sometimes you've got a piece of basswood actually most of the time you've got a piece of basswood that's digging into your fingers and so i'm going to do my best to cut the corners off quickly before we get too much further here that way things aren't digging into our hands all right beautiful much better to hold so that v cut again is at the seven-eighths inch mark or the 22 millimeter mark from the top and this is a v cut now the v cut is a very specific type of cut where two equal angles meet and so i'm coming in at one angle like so straight in at this angle and then coming in at this angle and meeting the two and the chip should fall out if it doesn't keep going back and forth with light pressure try to remove a little bit at a time okay so the next cut i'm making is five sixteenths or eight millimeter from this v cut so let's just mark that it's going to be his forehead so i'm going to make a mark here this one's more of a stop cut so notice when i'm coming in i'm coming in at less of an angle still still i guess technically a v cut but i still think of it as a stop cut because there's again not as much it's not an equal angle situation here a little bit steeper on one side and then this one's more laid back like so so you got that i've got two v cuts and the knife i'm using for this project is an inch and a quarter blade and this is a part of a 2.0 carvin jack setup and i've got i've got my strop here of course and i should have said this already but i've got a pencil i've got a ruler and that's that these are the tools i'm using you don't need to have the flex cut tool to do this project and i don't know if i'll even really use anything but a knife for this anyway i'm just putting this tool through its paces all right i adjusted the light there hopefully it's a little easier to see now i'm also going to make another cut another v cut for the nose five sixteenths of an inch or eight millimeters from this v cut this next one that we made okay so i'll just take the same distance that we've created here i guess we could just do it the old-fashioned way because it looks a little short okay this is going to be the bottom of our nose back and forth here like so so we've got one two three i guess v cuts if you will but these two more stop cuts all right now i'm going to deal with a little bit of the forehead now the forehead is a very interesting shape it's not as flat as people think i like to think of it as four angles so we've got the one angle here and we've got sorry three angles did i say four i've got one angle off to the side so i'll cut that in and then make another stop cut off to the side here make another stop cut here for us another angle off to the side here like so stop cut at the top there and notice that's giving us this very particular shape say hello to mr airplane he's out there clearing the skies all right so that's the idea of the forehead right beautiful all right now i'm going to create the brow ridge by coming alongside and kind of matching the angles up top here so three cuts so one here and you can actually have a little bit of a downward turn for this okay downward turn just like that beautiful okay next thing i want to do is define the sides of the nose okay now then these cute little knots this piece of wood it's adorable um you might want to uh decide on the width of your nose i'm going to make a pretty standard width of nose i'm going to carve this to be about a quarter of an inch or that would be six millimeters distance from the center line so you can re-establish your center line because you kind of lost that corner that gave you your center before and we'll go what did i say did i say a quarter of an inch yep okay draw that and then i'll come straight in with the knife blade with a triangle cut now this is a really unique cut this is a cut that involves three angles that meet one another one two three in such a way to that to create a triangle well really a sort of uh i was that a tetrahedron a pyramid with three sides and yes i know a pyramid typically has four sides but there is a three-sided pyramid and do you remember remember that in geometry well i don't i had to look that up recently because somebody had mentioned it in the comments i don't remember a lot from chemistry or chemistry listen to me from geometry obviously i don't remember a lot from geometry can't even remember the subject title okay so i'm coming down now i'm extending one of the legs of that triangle off to the sides here see that and i'm going to use my knife in a scooping motion on either side of the nose to get the nose to be more subtly kind of coming out of the face not so angular all right you might need to make a little stop cut in the corner of the brow ridge here but we're just establishing the shape of our nose we look at it from the side profile and we should see now beautiful those little triangle cuts starting to form the nose and already what in just four minutes we can start to see some of the shapes of the face come in the nose the brow ridge so once you kind of master these initial cuts and you might have to watch this over again because i'm kind of moving quickly here you can really get the major shapes of the face in just five minutes i mean really really quickly and you know this is a slightly caricaturized version of a face but some of these foundational building blocks can add up to helping you understand that the realistic face as well and i do teach about the proportions and the symmetry and all that stuff um in my online school and i post to that uh regularly as well and there's that's a resource that uh very uh very fun resource i've been creating for the past four years so anyway so this is the shape i'm looking for got that now i'm going to establish the hair let's talk about hair for a second now to create really fun and interesting hair i want to create movement so i'm going to start by coming in to the side of his face at the eye at the brow ridge area right so right around here with a v-cut and we want to make this again super fun i'm going to make one side kind of curve over i like to see the flow in here so i'm going to make one side kind of come over and the other side more prominent so i'm going to come take this side come over curve that part of his face or face part of his hair so see how it comes out like that perfect all right i'm going to do the same thing on this side but this side instead of a um a curve coming out i'm going to do a little curve coming in right at the again right at the brow ridge area so i went a little bit high just take that down like so that's the idea okay all right so we've got our fun swoopy hair just roughly blocked in yet we don't have any hairline to kind of make it less straight across you can see a very amateur thing to do to make hair the hairline um very straight across and that's something pointed out to me by vic hood is that you'll see a lot of intermediate carvers making very straight hairlines so i'm taking a triangle cut a lot like the one we did down here at the base of the nose and taking out some sections of the hairline to make it more flowy all right making a stop cut at the hairline here the general shape is kind of turned downward it's like so for that hairline all right beautiful now the overall width of the face is going to be about two centimeters or seven eighths of an inch so i'm going to draw that on here because this is a small little face we got let's make sure i got that looks good so i'm going to narrow his face a little take this some sides uh some material off the temple here and here adjust this camera great now i'm going to define this the bottom of the face as it meets the hair and to do that i'm going to create a v and i've already created one side of the v like so coming along into the side here the next thing i want to do is create one that comes along here same thing here and this could be like what a 45 degree angle let me fix that it wasn't i was looking at my camera and not my carving so it's a little crooked that's better okay so on either side a line now you could use a v tool for this if you have one that's just a v-shaped chisel but i'm going to just stick with the knife and create a long v cut so going in along the line at an angle following that line just outside of it and then coming along the other side of that line meeting that angle just like so and that gives us a v cut now this establishes the beard and mustache line like so not fun super super sweet simple cut and alongside the temple make a stop cut and a relief cut there a lot of times the temple narrows a little bit more than the cheekbone or the zygomatic arch very cool this is coming alive isn't that fun okay so if his hair is going this way to head hair let's have this beard here going this way so to do that i'm going to take a big section out of the opposite side this side rounding that over okay just like that beautiful now take a little curve out of this side look at that that's one let's break up the hair at the top here so it's not so perfectly jimmy neutron smooth i don't know if you've seen that cartoon before but there's a kid with perfect like it's kind of like conan o'brien here where it's like almost like a looks like a whipped dessert we want to kind of break it up a little bit some tufts of hair some groupings notice how there's little spaces one two three kind of major spaces here and these groupings are important to notice and kind of define early on in the creation of hair otherwise you just get a big blob with a bunch of textured lines on it and that's what you see a lot of folks doing when they try and carve hair for the first time so make sure and break up these shapes with these v cuts like like the ones i'm creating here to kind of disturb the line the outline of the piece and make it more interesting looking just like that okay some concave and convex shapes so some curve up some curve down just like that okay we're looking pretty good here actually making some good progress taking the saw marks out of the hair all right now to do the mustache in the beard i really have a fun plan for this mustache i want his mustache to be carried off to the side just like his beard and i want it to be nice and bushy and full and fun so i'm going to take this line here that we created earlier and extend it down and then have it curve over like so look how much fun that looks all right so let's do this with our knife come alongside that like so i'm gonna do the same thing over here curve that baby just like so all right so then i'm going to establish the mouth area and i'm going to kind of follow the curve that i created out here so i created a line and i'm going to meet that line another v cut again if you have a v tool just follow the lines with a v tool much easier to do same thing here i'm going to follow the curve so the the opening of the mouth and the mustache is going to curve over just like that and then i'll come in with my knife i'll create that little distinction separation okay isn't that cool well that's kind of coming out okay i'm going to take a little bit of material out of the mouth area here like so give him some fun shape all right i'm gonna get rid of the saw marks now from the from the cutting of the wood and add continue the mustache down stop and relief cuts you can actually also break up some of the shapes here the edge of the beard just like that see how much that breaks things up makes it look nice not so blocky all right i'm going to take a little bit more of the saw marks out of this hair and i won't bore you with that i'll be right back okay i went through and cleaned up the shapes surrounding the uh you know the beard i added a few more edges and i came in and i made stop cuts at the base again i talked about that in the head a lot um how we kind of want to break up the shapes they're existing and so i did that i broke up the edge now it looks pretty uneven and it looks more natural and uh to me that just looks really fun so what i'm going to do next is i'm going to do some very simple stuff with the eyes so let's do that now i'm going to come in with a triangle cut on the inside corner of the eye like so so remember the triangle cut because it's an important one in this type of a project okay so we're gonna do the same thing here okay now the this bottom part of the triangle i want to go a little bit deeper this one leg you know how in this triangle cut we did here we took one and we extended it we're going to take the bottom of this triangle cut and make that one a little bit deeper and extend it all right just like that just like that and then i'm going to come under and i'm gonna make a v cut moving up to the corner of the brow ridge like so same thing over here see that and those are the eye mounds i'm gonna narrow this up a little bit more looks a little too thick on the sides here there we go curve this in like so and i'm going to take a little bit of a curved scoop cut out of the inside corner like so anchoring at the inside corner of that triangle cut okay just coming in this corner and then angling up same thing here our ridge down so and you know you could really paint these eyes and you don't have to get this fancy but i really like to establish the the opening of the eyes and get some of the details and i'm going to make a curved cut now i'm coming in right about the halfway point of this mound that we just created and i'm creating a really small stop and relief cut stop cut at the top and relief cut at the bottom same thing over here i'm going to make halfway across i'm going to come across with the knife and then make a relief cut to that line okay like so i want to make this guy looking off to the side so i'm going to make a triangle cut this is this tiny little triangle cut within this little space that we've created and the inside corners and a stop cut just so it kind of turn and do that here as well take a little bit more off of the forehead here it's a little bit too pronounced and i mean guys you could again you could really get carried away with detail and eyebrows and all the shapes and fun stuff that you could do with this it's kind of endless uh how much you can do to this little whittle project but either way it is such a fun little concept um i hope you enjoy it i hope that you have you play with this design a little bit you expand it under here a little stop cut at the outside edge of the eye to make it a little bit rounder just like so coming in at the tip of the knife under the lower lid a little stop cut just like that notice how that kind of tightened up the eye beautiful a little curve of the blade to create that upper bag or the hood of the eye which is what that's called not the upper bag goofy and i don't know to me this is such a fun little project you could grab sandpaper if you wanted to and clean his face up that would be a great idea i would definitely suggest that if you're into that if a lot of carvers are opposed to sandpaper and i can see why sometimes you can hide behind sandpaper if you don't have clean cuts you can hide behind sandpaper but at the same time it's kind of nice to have i think at least again you could add all kinds of wrinkles to this guy could create some lines up at the nose up at the nose sorry meeting the brow ridge like this and just little lines can make a huge difference in the shape or sorry in the expression rather of the piece and expressiveness of the piece so do have fun with it don't uh you know pull up a reference photo do that pull up a reference photo and get some ideas from that find an old guy or father time looking dude so again this is kind of a take on a father time carving that we've done before but just a little bit of a different variation and smaller and i hope you've enjoyed it i've enjoyed making it and i hope that you guys take care of yourselves today all right take your vitamins how about we do the nostrils let's do that that's a good idea i'm going to angle the nostrils slightly upward i'm going to catch the side of the nostril here with the blade just like so a little curve a little curve at the top of the nostril into the triangle cut that we made earlier this is a challenging cut if you can get it it's great see how it defines the nose the nostril holes okay a little curved motion there at the top anchoring at the not at the base of the nostril and then turning that blade to get this kind of scoop cut like so actually i'm even turning the carving okay just like that and you could spend all kinds of time cleaning this up because it's not quite clean enough yet i think there's hairs and doodads and things all over the place and you could pretty easily just take your time and clean that up it's all just a matter of taking your time and in these videos i don't always take my time i kind of have to hurry up and get things done that's not what wood carving is about wood carving is about relaxing enjoying the process and that i have i've enjoyed this process but i've got to try and get the project done for you so all right beautiful thank you guys so so much again and we'll see you in the next little i enjoyed doing these i haven't done one of these in a while um and uh yeah i appreciate your support you guys watching and sharing these videos it means a lot so and also for buying the book because i do have a book out now and folks have been supportive in buying that book and that's been a huge thing leaving reviews on amazon makes a huge difference as well so i appreciate the those of you who have done that and continue to do that that'd be very helpful so okay guys that's that how fun is that how fun is that i'll take a little scoop out of his hair i could just play with this all day i'm serious i could just play with this all day but i gotta stop myself all right okay guys see you in the next one bye