Looking For A Replacement To Sketching, Think I MAY Have Found It!
A Relaxing Easy To Do Craft
Finding that I no longer find sketching as easy as it was, I've been looking around for a replacement 'artsy' hobby. I wanted something pretty simple that's easy to get into, but - like sketching - does not require to much specialist equipment to do and can be done almost anywhere.
While trawling about YouTube I came across some tutorials on very simple wood whittling which seemed to fit the bill.
I do actually like sculpting, I did a fair amount at art school and very much enjoyed it - so much so that clay sculpting was another craft that I was considering - and I also love working with wood. I never went back to my old pastime of making wooden peg figures, mainly because I got a bit too intense about the painting of them and I don't feel I'm up to that nowadays.
But whittling little figures is a lot more loose and even the painting aspect is very much simplified (or can be) so I thought I'd give it a go.
Good Ol' Fashioned Whittlin'
When you think of wood whittling you may get the picture of an old fella sitting on a rocking chair on his porch hacking away at a piece of branch with his pen knife. Well, that's the picture I get anyway! 😆
And, to be fair it can, indeed, be a low tech affair only requiring a piece of scrap wood and your trusty pen knife. In fact, that's how I started - using just my pocket Swiss Army Knife!
Tutorials do recommend that you use a specialist whittling knife, but you can make do with an bog standard pen knife though. I did notice that my Swiss Army Knife's blad wasn't quite as sharp as the specialist knife, which I guess is constantly being honed to retain a razer sharp edge. So my first attempt tended to be a bit of a hack job! LOL
So, I quickly learned that while you can do this without special tools I could see the difference they can make when comparing my effort to those done by better equipped and more experienced whittlers.
Still, this was a learning experience and at this point I was just trying out this new hobby so I soldiered on.
My first attempt took me a day and a bit to complete, which is interesting as the online tutorial says that you should be able to complete one of these Tree Spirit carvings - with some experience - in just 15 minutes!!! 😕
Obviously, my dexterity issues has a part to play in the time it takes me to compete a small carving, along with my inexperience BUT I've gotten used to things taken me longer to do these days. So, it takes as long as it takes (but I expect that I'll eventually get a *little* faster at these)!
Anyway, the first attempt at whittling done I had to work out how to paint raw wood. In the past when I painted my wood peg miniatures I used to prime the figure before applying acrylic paint. But, I noticed that it's quite common for whittlers to colour their creations by staining their carvings with what looks like a thin paint wash.
As it turned out - when I checked - you can just use a craft acrylic paint to apply wash... Yay!
The Next Step...
OK, I was quite happy with my first quick(-ish) try at whittling. Happy enough that I wanted to take this potential hobby further. I found whittling quite a relaxing craft and it felt a lot less 'tight' a discipline than sketching (which I always had to concentrate a lot on), so I decided t take it a little further...
Realising my pen knife was not the ideal tool if I want to get really good cuts (and haven forgotten where I had put my knife sharpener) I decided to have a go using my large craft razor just as an experiment. *Realizing there were safety issues, but I wanted to see what a really sharp blade could do.*
>Sure enough a really sharp blade did not chew up the wood as badly, and the addition of wet & dry sand paper smoothed out the cuts even more. I'm a bit unsure whether using sand paper is kinda cheating but at this stage I was more interested in freestyling it a bit and doing some experimentation.
I also diverged from the tutorial I was using as a guide and tried out some caricature features of my own, building on my cartoon drawing that I had done in the past. This worked out fine for me and I felt a little more relaxed and confident about what I was doing.
This second carving was a very useful in further investigating the basics of carving techniques and that I should be open to experimenting with my own ideas. And then, a funny thing happened...
My Third Attempt Is The Charm?
I'd put some of the pictures of my first Tree Spirit carving up on social media and was taken by surprise when someone contacted me asking how much it would cost to buy my carving! 😗
Rather than selling someone my first - rough - attempt at carving I decided to whittle a third example which I hoped I would be more satisfied with now that I had a better understanding of what I should be doing. So, here we go again...
In this case I combined my new understanding of some of the whittling techniques with the pattern for a Tree Spirit shown in the tutorial I was using as my guide.
Again, because I lacked the specialist carving tools I used the craft blade and sand paper fudge that I tried out with my second carving.
I should note here that while this produced a relatively smooth looking finish to my carving it kind of negates the sharper faceted whittling marks that make whittled carvings so unique. To get these I would have to buy myself a proper whittling set of tools - knives and chisels - to achieve the sharp and clean cuts that are stylistically pleasing and 'whittles'.
For now, though, my overly smoothed out finish at least looked a little neater than my first - and decidedly rough - example...
Additionally, I added the use of my Dremmel power tool and some of it's carving bits to do some of the 'heavy work' (like the deep 'V' cuts, which would usually be done with a special chisel). This additional technique worked quite nicely for my and I enjoyed this hybrid way of 'whittling'.
Finally, my 'client' wanted this carving to use as a Christmas Tree ornament, so I added a small screw loop to the figure. And finally, I used my acrylic wash technique again to paint the model. Job done.
Conclusion
Well, I enjoyed that and I would like to try out some more models - there are plenty of example ideas on YouTube (just search 'whittling'). Additionally, I was happy that this is a hobby that can produce some relatively quick results, which opens up the possibility of sales!
As with my third carving, it struck me that these cute little carving would make ideal Christmas novelties, for selling at local craft fairs! It's an idea! 😉
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