Every other month or so, I have been organizing a face carving seminar in which we build on basic structures. Each session, I add either a new facial feature or expression. We carve in cottonwood bark, because of the speed / ease that it carves, and the interesting textures that each piece of bark contains. because of the unique character of each piece of bark, each project becomes unique. This time around, I made them carve a face without a mustache - they had to carve the mouth! Some carved open smiling mouths both straight and crooked, some added one crooked tooth.
Pete's bark wanted to be a mountain man, so he carved his a with mustache and wolf-skin hat. Poor Dee - her bark had a fracture plane running under the face and needed to be glued. Well, the glue job didn't work out, Friday night, so Saturday morning we re-glued it. Unfortunately, the 2nd gluing didn't set / dry prior to carving the eye details. This resulted in tears of Elmer's white glue dripping out of the right eye. She bravely forged ahead and ended up with a great carving. Jim selected a piece of the more rare red cottonwood bark, which is a beautiful terra-cotta when finished, but is harder and weighs twice as much as the yellow cottonwood the rest of us carved.
By the end of the 1st day, everyone had roughed in the face - hair - beard - hat and had set the planes of the face, including the eye sockets, basic nose block and dental mound.
The 2nd day we set the eye and nose details and carved the mouth. Everyone finished the day with hat and beard details, after which we took turns running the Dremmel over the face (our secret technique using red-brown Scotch-brite squares in a mandrel - guess it's no secret anymore). This final step softens the skin areas without removing the carving marks. Bark spirits then receive a dowsing in sealer, 3 coats of spray acrylic varnish (matte finish) before antiquing. After the antiquing process and 4 or 5 days of drying time, a final coat of spray varnish is applied as a final topcoat. A wall hanger is then added to the back and viola! the project is complete and ready to hang on someone's wall. We started carving hats on our bark faces because standard bark carvings usually result in a big, uncarved block of wood hanging above the face. Carving a hat uses this wood and makes the
end carving more interesting. We leave as much uncarved bark as possible for the "found wood" effect.
Next time I will come up with another facial feature and / or expression to challenge our carvers - I believe in raising the bar! Eventually, they will have to carve ears and chins. Can't wait for the next class...
Make Chips!
Jeff Harness
