tributesinwood

The Howler

The little howler is coming along with some detail today.  As I mentioned earlier, the ears are being attached separately so that the grain of the wood follows the direction of the ear…and ends up being a stronger carving.

Below is a picture that will give you an idea of how that is done.  The ear was first cut out from a piece of wood in the general shape that I was looking for.  Then I took a piece of pencil lead that you can buy from an art shop and scrubbed that lead all over the area on the dog where I wanted to place the ear.  The ear blank was then positioned where I wanted it to eventually land and pressed ( and wiggled a bit ) against the leaded area on the dog carving.  You guessed it…you end up with lead markings on the underside of the ear that marks all of the high points that now need to be shaved away.  As you keep doing this, the underside of the ear eventually gets dished and shaped accurately to fit the contour of the dog carving.  And, voila…you have a pretty decently fitted ear and you can then continue to carve the exterior of the ear…which I did making folds and hollows.

By the way, the fine black lines are from a wood burning tool used to clean up the deep cuts of the wrinkles…also, by the way…those are Peggy’s hands doing the modelling.  This is a real team effort.

Lucy’s Pals

With Lucy having been roughed in, it was time to provide a bit of shaping to one of her pals, Rain.   Now Rain apparently likes her 23 hours of sleep per day whether she needs it or not.  So, she’ll obviously be depicted as a bit laid back and with a bit of a “can’t you see I’m resting” attitude.

You’ll have seen the bandsaw blocking from a previous post…it was pretty hard to identify just what was going to come out of that pattern.  With the first bit of roughing complete, you can see that Rain will be stretched out pretty long with one hind leg tucked in and the other shooting off to the side.  Her front paws are under her jowls and the ears will cover the majority of those paws.  Speaking of the ears…you can’t see them because they’re not there.

I decided to add the ears in later as I wanted the grain of the wood going along the length of the ears for strength.  Eventually, these ears will flow over the paws and onto a dock…and, probably, the tips of an ear over the end of the dock.  I actually won’t start fitting the ears until I’ve done quite an amount of detailing of the head.

Here’s a shot of the two together in the rough positioning that they’ll end up.  Right now, Rain ( laying down ) looks larger than Lucy only because I left more wood so that I could create a “puddle” of wrinkles flowing over her and onto the dock.  She’ll be trimmed down a lot once I get detailing.

Lucy of the “Hound Trio”

This is going to be a fairly ambitious carving of what I’m calling “The Hound Trio” for a new acquaintance and owner/lover of Basset Hounds.  One of the hounds will be standing and “conversing” with a little squirrel friend, another will be howling dramatically and a third will be trying to get some shut-eye with all the commotion around.

Here’s a very roughed-in version of “Lucy”, the squirrel lover.  I call this stage of a dog carving the “pig stage”, as I really think they look more like pigs than dogs at this point.  But, I make sure that changes.  I wonder if I tried to carve a pig, would it go through a dog stage?  Not sure.

The roughing is done with the blank that I cut out earlier on the bandsaw and a “Typhoon” carbide cutter on a Foredom tool.  If you are not familiar with a Foredom tool, it’s much like a Dremel tool with a flexible shaft.  The carbide tip cuts very quickly and leaves a rough surface.  What is nice about it is that you can fairly quickly smooth out a general shape that you can later detail and shape with knives and chisels.  A word of caution even though I know that I’m repeating myself from an earlier post…these cutters are very aggressive and you absolutely must wear protective clothing including a leather apron and heavy sleeves, gloves and eye protection.  One slip and one touch of this cutter on any part of your body is bad news fast.

This will be an enjoyable project and it’s nice to get started.

The Hound Trio…

I’ve just begun some preliminary work on a trio of hounds for a friend.  These little pups will be in a variety of poses and will include at least one friendly squirrel in the mix.

I’m actually in the final stages of carving “Lola”, but here’s a couple of shots of some quick bandsaw work I’ve completed toward the Trio.

This little one will be standing up, obviously, enjoying the day in deep conversation with the little squirrel friend.

Although this next one doesn’t look like much, it will in time…can you make out the shape of this little pup laying down with one back leg extended out to the side, head resting on paws?  If you can, you’re good…I only know because that’s the way the drawing looks!  This one is going to be a lot of fun to carve as the pup’s extra skin folds that I’ve planned are going to be plentiful!

I’ll get a progress shot of Lola up shortly as she is looking real nice.