tributesinwood

Wood Carvings by Mark Sheridan

Archive for the month “January, 2020”

14 Jan 2020

A Female Caricature

I finally got around to trying to carve a female caricature. It’s something that I’ve been wanting to try but have never got around to it until now.

I’ve always thought that a male caricature carving would be easier than trying to do a female caricature. A man’s face just seems to me to lend itself more to a caricature…you can really exaggerate the size of the nose and ears, you can give him really baggy eyes and lots of wrinkles and the face will still look great when it’s finished.

Now, if you do similarly exaggerated features for a woman’ face, well, you really start worrying about whether or not you’ll even be able to tell that it’s a woman.

So, off I went with the challenge to carve a pretty caricature…big eyes, nice bright smile and tiny nose.

I liked her so much that I thought that she needed a dainty little stance to go with the pretty face. Sitting with one knee over the other and her hands neatly placed together, she started to take shape.

As I went, I started to sand things smooth and remove the knife marks. I thought that this might make her look even more dainty. I’m not sure what the setting will be just yet but I’m thinking about something that pairs her up with a beau who she’s fond of but who is not quite as attractive as her…

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04 Jan 2020

The Completed Basset

A few Christmas carvings along with eating all kinds of Christmas goodies got in the way of completing my latest Basset in a Basket! But here it is all finished.

Finishing included a variety of washes of different tones of brown on the darker sections of the little hound along with a slightly off-white for the remainder. The basket also has a number of tones but predominantly yellow-ochre and shades of almost a butterscotch colour.

Everything was topped off with a light coat of satin urethane that was mostly wiped away before it set.

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02 Jan 2020
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Finishing Up The Bell

I added a handle and small bow as two separate pieces to the carved bell. Both the handle and the bow have a little dowel drilled into the neighbouring pieces to locate it and were epoxied in place after I had finished the painting. That bow was actually a lot of fun to carve.

The handle is several light coats of asphaltum brown. The bow is cherry red and gold. You can see from the previous photo that I separated the two colours with a wood burning line. This not only looks nice but it also makes a bit of a dam when you’re painting…the two separate colours stop dead at that line and don’t bleed one into the other.

The face is flesh colour with some red mixed in for the nose and cheeks and some Payne’s grey above the eyes. The brass portion of the bell is alternating light coats ( washes ) of gold and “worn penny”…which looks like copper. I was quite surprised that the flesh colour of the face blended nicely into the brass colour without looking odd. At least as non-odd as a bell with a face can be…

After a bit of dry brushing with a beige colour to pick up the high spots on the knife cuts, the whole thing got a light coat of satin urethane. A slightly grumpy looking Christmas Bell and a fun project.

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