tributesinwood

Caricature of a Carver

Last year at the Quinte Wood Carving Show and Competition held in Belleville, Ontario, we were challenged to think about entering a caricature carving of…a carver.  I’m not sure that I’ll have this ready for the show or if I’ll show it at all, but I thought that it was a fun idea.

As you are probably already aware, carvers in general are a fine looking group of people, so it’s a bit difficult to think of them with the exaggerated features required of a caricature!  So, I’m going in a bit of a different direction.  My would-be carver is going to be a caricature of the good old Canadian beaver.  I’m picturing him in a leather carving apron with some gouges in the pouch and wearing either a Mountie style hat or something along the lines of a Tilly hat.

The caption for this carving will be “Another Dam Carver.”  Ha!  Once I experiment a bit with this caricature, I’ll post a decent pattern for those that might like to try one for themselves.

I started by gluing a couple blocks of basswood together to make up a head and body portion of the carving and cutting out the profile of the carving beaver on the bandsaw.

I added a slightly upward curving tail section to the bottom of the figure.  I did this tail separately so that the grain of the wood could run along the length of the tail, giving it greater strength.  I cut a somewhat keyed section into the bottom of the figure and matched that shape on the end of the tail to “lock in” and glue the two pieces together.

Finally, with a Foredom  tool equipped with a Typhoon bit, I quickly roughed out the edges and then followed up with a knife and gouges to give the carving its initial shape.  In the process of shaping, I returned the carving to the bandsaw and cut a straight line through the neck of the carving, separating the head from the body.  I then glued the two pieces back together with the head turned just a little bit to give the carving a bit more character.

You can start to see what this guy’s going to look like with his hands wrapped around the neck strap of his leather apron and his shoes sticking out beneath.