Post #227432 by Bay Park Buzzy on Wed, Apr 19, 2006 2:16 AM

After finishing the last piece, I spent the evening fine tuning a couple things that were waiting to be completed before I finish sanded them. These pieces were done before I had purchased a set of gouges and there were a couple details that I couldn't do without the new tools. I left the carvings in limbo until last night, and now they are only a sanding and staining away from being completely done. I usually wait until I get about 3-5 finished pieces before I sand. Then I go on a 2-3 day non-stop frenzy of sanding and staining until all are done. Usually, I would stop right now and start sanding because I have 6 pieces finished. But this time I think I'm going to make three more before I sand them. Right now I have three logs left out of my "old stock." These last three are several months old(5-6? since the tree was cut down) and are so far the driest logs I've used since the first one I ever carved. I really like them about this age. Ideally, I would use them in the 3-5 month range because they cut just a little bit easier. But these three logs are the last that I have that are stripped and ready to go. All my other logs are only about two months old. I figure since these are at least a month away from being ideal, I'll just power through the last three in the next week or so, sand and stain everything in about a week of nights and then it will be serious log prep time for about a week. But for now, I'll just pull my focus back to my next project.

Once again, this one starts on a Mexican fan palm, 5'4" tall and 8 1/2" in diameter. I first sketched it out with chalk to get a general sense of where everything should be. I use chalk because it's easy to wipe off quickly and it contrasts with my final lines, which are done in pencil, which will cut down on the confusion when I'm doing my final layout. If the preceding was confusing to you, don't go back and try to reread it, just look at the pictures...

Here is the whole body chalked

After I chalk it out, I move it inside the house and sit down and look at it for a long time. I'll go away from it a couple times and then come back to it, each time trying to find problems in the composition and what can be improved from my initial rough layout.
This is the face after final adjustments, done in pencil. You can see how close my initial freehand sketch is to the final one pretty well in this picture.

I draw the body after I carve the face fully. This is in case there are any sudden surprises with the log after I cut into it. I don't want to lose the time drawing out the body if the log has a problem and I have to end up throwing it away or scaling back my ambitions. It has never happened to me yet, but when it does, I am going to say, "I'm glad that I didn't waste my time drawing the whole body" and I will not be as mad as I would have if I did. Then it would all be worth it and make perfect sense.
I will start carving it tomorrow, and as always, will keep all of you well informed of my progress...