tributesinwood

Basset-in-a-Box

I’ve been asked to lead a carving session at the fall Magic in Wood carving show and competition held in Pickering, Ontario.  This session is part of the “Learning by Doing” program where carvers sign up to take part in one of a variety of two hour carving projects during the show.   For some reason, it was suggested that I take on a Basset Hound carving…

Here’s a few photos of what I’m planning to do.  I’ll finish this carving with some acrylic paint in the next little while such that it depicts the little hound popping out of an opened gift box or moving box.  The painting portion will have to be done by the participants outside of the two hour session.

I first cut out of basswood the pencil drawing that I made.

Then, with a Foredom tool equipped with a very aggressive “Typhoon” bit, I roughed out the general shape of the carving.  My plan is to provide the participants with this “rough-out” to begin their carving.  I thought that this would give people ample time to detail their carving within the two hour session, yet still have the opportunity to do a lot of carving.

Then with smaller gouges and a carving knife, I began drawing out the details of the ears, paws and head.  The grain runs from top to bottom which makes it fairly easy to carve away the excess material.  You can do the carving with just a knife, however, it is much easier to get the sweeping curves of this little sculpture using gouges.

With some more attention to the detail and, again, using gouges and knives, I undercut the ears and around the paws to a greater extent.  I added squinted eyes rather than round eyes as the little dog is howling his glee in meeting his new owner…or, maybe just because he’s finally out of the box!  Of course, the squinted eyes are easier to carve quickly but the individual carver can change that if they like.  I plan to bring some reference photos for people to use so they can add details of their own based on their carving experience.

I’ll add another post in the next few days of the box lid that will be a separate piece propped up against the base of the box.

Running a session like this is a first for me, so if you have some feedback or advice for me I would appreciate hearing about that.  Although the “sign-up” registration for “Learning by Doing” is not on the Ontario Wood Carvers’ website just yet, I’m the webmaster for that site ( ontariowoodcarvers.ca ) and plan to get that up on the site in August.