Post #226906 by Bay Park Buzzy on Sun, Apr 16, 2006 1:02 AM

The Continuing Adventures of Buzzy, wherein Buzzy explains the process of tiki #13:
So now I'm going to take this carving process on like the legendary Bruce Lee. Bruce was never constrained by the limitations of a single martial arts style; rather he invented his own system of jeet kun do, where he studied the best aspects of every single style of traditional martial arts and kept or incorporated only the aspects that made sense or worked for him. Anything that he didn't think would work in a real fight situation was simply disregarded and not incorporated into his system. His strengths came from the best of the combined knowledge of all who ever preceded him. It is with this methodology that I now, with tiki #13, fully implement the carving system version of Jeet Kun Do.
To be a JKD carver, I must carve every different style I find appealing or innovative. I must learn from every style and method that makes sense to me in my personal development. To achieve this, I must now carve as many different styles as I possibly can. I will not center on one style or make a run of similar pieces. To be able to one day do anything, I must first attempt everything. I am now Buzzy, a mere white belt karate carver, who will study hard and progress and one day become a black belt. Here I go trying to move up the ranks now...
I was going through my tiki reference album looking for inspiration, and having a hard time of it. My friend was over and he pointed to a picture that had several tikis in a row carved by the same artist. He said to me, "All these are kinda cool lookin'. You should try one like this." I thought-well I should, I might learn something. When I first started compiling images, the aforementioned picture was one of the first that really inspired me to become a good carver. When I saved the picture, it was not with the intention that I would copy one of this carver's works. Rather, I saved it because it was the first example of a carver that had a distinct and personal style that I found in my initial research. I looked at it longingly, hoping that one day someone could pick one of my works out of several in a room and go "Oh cool, that looks like a Buzzy! Is it real?"
For the piece that I did, I didn't pick one work and replicate it closely. I tried to replicate the style and motifs that this carver used and come up with something that I guess you would say "in the style of" or "inspired by" the original artist, not a replication of something he actually produced.(oh yeah, scavenger hunt hint-the carver I'm talking about has a wide spread presence on this very site-this one's easy)
Okay, now that I got all the wordy philosophical stuff out of the way, here's that part that has words and pictures about actually making something:
It's a 2'9" mexican fan palm, 6 1/2" diameter and lacking any variation of fiber color, it's a very pale yellow throughout. None of the usual darker fibers are in this particular log. Here it is drawn out

This one was the first one that I carved in one sitting. I also did it at night. I hope the neighbors couldn't hear me. It went fast. the next morning it looked like this:

I tried really hard to make the eyes perfect globes. This was one aspect that was not in any of the original artist's work. I just wanted to try to carve a rounded sphere the right way. They were finally much rounder than this after I used the dremel with the sanding drum

this is the first draft of the mouth

I left the mouth the original way for about three weeks. Every time I looked at it, something just didn't look right to me. I figured that it was because I tried to carve a piece in the style of that one guy and I wasn't that guy, I was just me. I grabbed my chisel and reworked it. I thought it looked like a dorky walrus and I needed to change it. A little cosmetic dentistry, a blow torch, and some clear polyury stain saved this piece for me in the end. No one would confuse it for one done by the original artist, but someone might say, "Hey look, someone tried to copy one of (censored)'s tikis. That one's stupid though, it looks like a walrus."

Now being Jeet Kun Do Buzzy, I not only had to replicate the results of my teacher( in this case the original carver-my white belt sensei), I also felt I needed to copy the methods of my sensei. Since I do not yet own quite fancy tools and a workshop like my sensei, I did the best I could with what I had on hand, In this case a blond female to do my sanding for me, just like sensei does:

What I learned:

1. I am now a sponge who needs to be filled with all the carving knowledge I can hold.
2. Being a white belt at anything sucks-I need to train!

Well, to you who finds yourself reading this now or in the future, I hope you learned something from me reading this post. I really don't know anything though. There's this guy named benzart around here and he seems to know just about everything. Stop wasting your time here and find his thread. You'll learn something from not only a black belt in the art of carving, but like a tenth degree something black belt at that. I bet when benzart was a white belt, he was actually carving all night, not sitting on a computer talking about his junky white belt carvings like I do....Good night future readers, I NEED TO GO AND TRAIN MORE, right now. I won't be a white belt for long.