Practice

I spent a few hours out on the picnic table today, practicing how to carve the wing and body feathers.  I have done this before, but did not document how I did it, or which of the various power carving bits I used for what.  I essentially had to figure it out again, by trial and error.  I decided that the trial and error should be done on scrap wood, and not the carving itself.  I drew some feather patterns on pieces of pine from my woodbox, and worked on defining them using carving burrs of various shapes and materials.  I could tell which ones I had used, because they had wood residue on them.

 

After about an hour of fiddling around, I had a plan for how to address the wings on the carving.  I did decide, however, that the wings needed to be thinner than they were to make the feather carving more realistic.  I spent another hour or so gradually thinning the wings using a sanding bit, which was efficient at removing wood and had the additional benefit of leaving the surface relatively smooth.  I thinned the wings from the underside, because I had already drawn the feather pattern on the dorsal surface and didn’t want to draw it again.

A good session, not much real progress toward a finished carving, but reminding myself how to define feathers by working on some scrap wood was worth it.

No new pictures, sorry.  30 hours in.