I have finally taken the time to photograph the osprey carving against a photo paper background with decent lighting. It is not quite as good as photographing it outside in natural light, but I had the time during the recent harsh winter weather to catch up with items on my to-do list. Below is the result of the recent photography session.
I was pleased with the comments I received at last month’s Spirit of Wood Show in Woburn, MA, and was happy to see a blue ribbon next to my carving. I do not carve to get awards, but I have to admit it is gratifying to see other carvers approve of one’s work.
I put the final little painting touches on the carving yesterday, and consider the carving itself to be done. Still not sure about the base. I took some photos outside on the picnic table, with a tablecloth under it for contrast. These are not "official" photos, but they will do for this post.
This afternoon I spent about two hours adding the patch of dark feathers on the underside of the wings, in the vicinity of the wrist. The images of diving ospreys I have collected reveal that the coloration and pattern in this area are very inconsistent from bird to bird. The photo below of a random osprey shows these patches at the wrist and extending along the leading edge of the wings.
Granted, I don't remember if the birds in my photos are male, female, or juveniles - all of which make a difference in plumage patterns - so I took a mental average of the extent of the dark patches in this area and painted them with several washes of a nutmeg/sable mix. Once these washes were dry, I thought it was a little too brown, so I added a final wash of straight sable that darkened the area almost to a shade that matched the upper side of the wings.
I lightened the edges of the primary and secondary feathers under the wings with the 90% warm white/10% raw umber mix, but forced myself to stop before I got carried away. I don't want to overdue the painting detail, so I will wait until the bird is dry before deciding to do any more of this stuff.
The base needed a little something more, so I darkened the edges. I had planned to use black, but in order to unify the base with the carving I decided to use sable to cover the edges. The dark sable color picks up the upper surfaces of the wings, which are mostly sable in color with some of the nutmeg brown showing through.
I will let the carving sit for a while before I do any more. We have grandchildren tomorrow, so I wouldn't be able to work on it until Thursday anyway.
I am very happy with the carving, not as happy with the base. If I have the time before the October Spirit of Wood Show, I will make a new base using wood that is less grainy and easier to carve. The ripples and fish shape could be done better in wood that is a little easier to carve.
I will take some "formal" photos one of these days, and will post them here. 137 hours!
Well, for the last few days I have struggled to create a base that meets my expectations and those of possible viewers. Didn't I already make a base, you ask? I did, but when I tentatively shared images of my carving with some of my virtual buddies on the Animal and Bird Carving Forum, one of the first comments (by a very experienced carver) was about the absence of a target for the osprey's dive. I had assumed that the reason for the dive was obvious, and therefore only provided a base with a "marine blue" surface. My carving friend felt that for artistic purposes and to complete the piece, the osprey should be going after something.
He was right, of course, and I had felt the same way, so I set to work on a new base. I wanted to keep the round one around as a backup, in case any new attempts were failures, so I got some new wood and got to work. I researched some photos of fish from above, swimming just below the surface, and sketched out a generic fish outline with pectoral and ventral fins and a swirly tail. I tried woodburning the outline into a piece of wood, but that looked cartoony. I tried doing a shallow relief carving on a different piece of wood, but since I had never carved a fish before and haven't done too much relief carving, that didn't work out too well. I was about to give up and stick with the round base, when I found an image of a zen-like, abstract carving of a tabletop with a fish's back and some ripples, as if the fish were swimming just below the surface but generating a wake behind him. That was just the effect I was looking for - abstract, containing ripples to simulate water, and providing the viewer with a sense that the osprey was diving after something we couldn't see.
The abstract fish shape and the ripple pattern got me thinking more about the shape of the base itself, and after some thought I decided to make the base an oval. The round base was somewhat static, whereas an oval base with ripples would reinforce the forward and downward movement of the bird.
I found a clear, knot-free section of a 2"x12" board I had lying around in the garage and drew an oval shape on it that was 8" by 12", using the old push-pins-and-string method. This is somewhat smaller than the round blue base, which is 13" in diameter. I cut out the oval with my saber saw (since I don't have a scroll saw), smoothed the sawn edges with my edge sander ( a small one meant for ship model parts, not 1.5" thick wood!), and drilled a 3/16" hole for the support rod.
I sketched out an appropriately-sized tear-drop shape representing the fish's body and drew some ripples around it to suggest motion. The ripples would be closer together and a little higher nearer the "head", and wider and shallower as they moved away from the unseen fish in a V-shaped pattern. I took a deep breath, and starting defining the fish shape and ripples with various carving bits. I was helped a little bit by the grain pattern in the area of the fish's head. When I got the effect I was looking far, I sanded the surface with increasing grits, from 60 to 100 to 150 to 220, until I got it as smooth as I could, although I couldn't completely remove the carving marks from the dips in between the ripples or eliminate the dips caused by the different densities of the wood grain.
The next decision was to stain or not to stain, to paint or not to paint. I liked the blue of the round base, and decided to stick with that. Since the wood for this new base was different from that of the round base, I used a sample piece from the same 2"x10" board with eight defined square areas to check the marine blue color on this wood and the effect of multiple color washes on the color intensity. The squares were in two rows of four. The top row had squares with one, two, three and four coats of blue wash but were not sealed. The bottom row had four squares with the same pattern of multiple coats of color but had polyurethane applied to them after the paint was dry. The poly darkened the color somewhat, as I had noticed when I was finishing the round base, but I wanted to be sure what I would get with kiln-dried white pine. The application of the sealer somehow brought out a little of the yellowish color of the pine and produced subtle blue-green color variations within the grain pattern of the wood. I like how it looked, so I proceeded this morning to add four coats of marine blue wash to the oval base, drying between each coat, followed by two coats of glossy polyurethane.
The result is shown below, with the base by itself and with the carving mounted on it. I will give myself a B+. I may make yet another one before I enter the carving in the October Spirit of Wood Show, but this one would probably be good enough for competition. At least the bird has a visible target, and a moving one at that!
I won't count the wasted hours spent over the last two days trying this and that approach to putting a fish target on a base, but this morning's washes and finishing took about two hours, for a total of 135 productive hours spent on this carving project.
One of the greatest wildlife artists produced many paintings of birds, among them the American osprey. I thought I would post the picture on this blog, just seemed appropriate.
I spent about three hours today painting the primary and secondary coverts on the underside of the wings. These areas were not covered in Al Jordan’s book on carving a half-size osprey because his bird was in a resting pose, perched on a rock. The wings were folded and their undersides could not be seen. My task was to use the color palette he has in his book along with the numerous reference photos I have showing the undersides of the wings to create a reasonable and defensive painting job. The secondary coverts seemed to be darker than the primary coverts, and the bars on the secondary coverts were broader and lighter in shade than those on the primary coverts. I swallowed hard, and began painting. Several hours later, this is what I had accomplished.
It was too hot outside to do anything, so I stayed in the back room for most of the day, working on the osprey carving. The first thing I did was to make the support for the bird, this time out of a very strong and stiff 3/16" diameter steel rod from Home Depot. I bent one end so that the diving bird would be displayed as a steeper diving angle, and then cut off the approximately 10" support from the rest of the three-foot long rod. The rod fit well, I liked the angle of the dive, so I was ready to mount the carving. I drilled a 3/16" diameter hole in the base to accept the support rod,, held my breath, and mounted the carving on the base. I am very happy with the result.
Next, I put a few more washes of dark sable over the leading edges of the wings, and did a full wash of sable over the whole upper side of the wings and body. I wasn't getting the dark brown I saw in the workbook and in most of the photos I have, so I used the overall sable wash to darken up the topside of the bird.
Next, I tackled the head. I used several washes of nutmeg to cover the dark stripe of feathers that extends from the eye back to the "cape", the upper part of the back. Once I was happy with the size and shape of this patch done with nutmeg (which I could paint over easily if I was dissatisfied), I added some washes of dark sable. The head ended up a little darker than the back and topside of the wings, so I had to do a little blending in the "shoulder" area to smooth out the color transition. The crest feathers were left white, and will be highlighted at some point with a touch of nutmeg.
After some lunch, I chose to try to finish painting the topside before moving to the more difficult underside. The first thing I did was add a touch of the warm white/raw umber mixture to the trailing edges of the primaries, secondaries, and their coverts. This really defined the feather edges and restored the viewer's ability to see the feather groups on the wing. I used the same color mix, as suggested in the workbook, to paint the shafts of the primary and secondary feathers, which I had outlined in the wood burning/texturing phase of the project. The shafts are lighter than the surrounding feather barbs and are quite prominent, maybe a little more so than I wish, but that's how they look in the workbook and in my reference photos. I can mute the color later if necessary.
So, what does the carving look like after today's efforts? See for yourself in the photos below, taken outside in natural light on the picnic table. I opened the big umbrella to block the direct sun and eliminate harsh shadows. The first photo shows the topside of the wings with the darkened background, highlighted feather edges, and painted feather shafts. The wing looks a little darker in the photo than it really is, not sure why. The photo also shows the fairly steep angle of attack, which I think adds a little more drama to the piece.
After a rare midday nap, I got to work painting the osprey's wings. What I focused on today was the gradation in shading of the flight feathers using the sable color - dark at the leading edge and tip, lighter on the trailing edge and base. Doing this right involved a painting technique I haven't really used before - wet mixing. Basically, the border between the shaded and light portions of the feathers is blurred using a wet brush. I was moderately successful, and gained experience as I went.
The first photo below shows the underwings, with the sable bars that I painted the other day and with the shading finished on one wing. I took this photo to document the difference between the shaded and unshaded wing feathers.
In all three photos, the tail can be seen, with the same shading applied but not as heavily, in accordance to the workbook.
I worked about three hours today, for a total of 124 hours for this carving project so far.
With some trepidation, I began painting the barring on the wing and tail feathers using the newly arrived sable paint. I followed the directions in the workbook, except that I adding barring to both the underside and topside of the wing at one time. The workbook would have me finish all of the painting on the underside of the wing before even starting on the top, but it seemed more efficient to do all the barring at once. The sable paint, being airbrush paint, has a slightly different consistency than the paint I have been using, but I practiced a little before applying it to the carving. The results of today's three hours of painting are shown in the photos below. The top two photos show the underside, the bottom two photos show the topside.
Looking at the photos just now, I see I have a little work to do on the topside of the tail, but otherwise the paint job looks OK to me. The washes of sable that will be applied over the barring will add more detail to the feathers, as will some highlights using the base coats and a little warm white. There will be a wash or two of sable over the entire topside of the body and wings to darken the nutmeg color to a deeper brown. Now that I have the sable, I can also paint the "face", especially the dark stripe that extends from the eyes back toward the back.
The painting is going faster and better than I thought, and I am encouraged. Today's three hours or so of painting brings the total time to 121 hours. Wow.
My sable paint still had not arrived by this morning, so I decided to work on the base. I chose the 14” round base I found at the wood sale last weekend in Sydney. I sanded it with increasing grits - 120, 150, 220 - on the top and edges and cleaned off the sawdust. Since my search for “marine blue” semi-transparent water-based stain was fruitless, I decided to instead use washes of manganese blue acrylic paint, repeating the washes until I got the right shade. Wipe the paint on, let it soak in for 15-20 seconds, then wipe off the excess, wiping with the grain. Acrylic washes dry very fast, and this method helps to avoid the darker parches that arise when wet paint is applied over partially dry paint. Once the surface is wiped, I used the hair dryer to dry the recently applied coat thoroughly in preparation for the next coat. The acrylic washes are semi-transparent, and the grain shows through. Too many coats and the grain is hidden; too few coats and the color is not deep enough. I finally got the right balance after four cycles. The grain shows through enough to suggest currents, and the blue is deep enough to resemble ocean of lake water. I considered the effort a success.
I sealed the base with several coats of fast-drying water-based glossy polyurethane, sanding with 220-grit sandpaper in between coats. The result, shown above, matches what I had in my head. I thought for a while that I wanted an oval base, but this thick, heavy circular base will be much more stable. The blue color, in addition to contributing to the illusion that the osprey is diving into water, is more or less a complementary color to the brownish tones of the osprey itself.
How to mount the bird on the base? The visually cool curved wire idea was abandoned quickly, because the 1/8” diameter steel wire was too bendy. The straight 3/16” dowel idea similarly failed, because the weight of the carving bowed the dowel and I was afraid that the wood would snap. My clear acrylic rod idea may not work either, because the acrylic rods, even 1/4”ones, are quite flexible, much more so that I expected. The latest idea involves using a 3/16” diameter straight steel rod, which would surely be stiffer than both the 3/16” dowel and 3/16” acrylic rod. A benefit of using a steel rod is that I can bend it a little at the point of exit from the bird’s belly, thereby making the diving angle steeper. I want to do this so that the underside of the wing (which I will spend hours painting) will show better if the dive angle is steeper. Bending the support rod a little to give a steeper angle is a safer choice than trying to drill another hole in the osprey’s belly at a different angle. I will pick up a steel rod this afternoon from the local hardware store and try it out. I won’t drill a hole in the base until I know what size dowel or rod I will use and what the diving angle is. The dormer will determine the diameter of the hole and the latter will determine just where the hole will go, because I want the target point of the osprey’s dive to be close to the center of the base, if possible.
This morning’s efforts took a couple of hours, pushing the total up to 118 hours. In this total, I don’t include simply thinking about the carver, which I do on my walks and before falling asleep at night. If I counted this time, the total would be in the hundreds and hundreds of hours! I am documented only time spend physically working on the project.
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Because I don't have the right sable color, I worked instead on the feet and on the beak. I mixed the color suggested in the workbook for the feet and applied it. It looked much too dark and too yellow, so I lightened it up a bit with warm white to better match the reference photos. The color looked better, and I applied a thin wash of raw umber to bring out the carving details on the feet and painted the claws black.
I then painted the beak with several washes of slate, followed by some washes of a mixture of equal parts of slate, black, and brown. The washes of this mix were applied to the beak starting at the tip and working backwards toward the part of the beak with the nostrils (the cere). This part I left the slate color, according to the instructions and the photos. I added the darker mix to the nostril openings. By the way, the osprey is the only predatory bird with nostrils that can be closed, a definite advantage when you are hitting the water at high speed going after a fish. A photo of my work on the feet and beak is shown below.
I also received in the mail today two 24" acrylic rods, 1/4" in diameter, to use for the support. Unfortunately, they had a bubble pattern in them, and were not the clear ones I wanted. I contacted the company, and they will send me a complimentary set of two clear rods.
Also, we went last Saturday to a sale of wood, books, and tools in Sydney, outside of Augusta. The sale was arranged by some of the members of the Maine Wood Carvers on behalf of the widow and family of a championship-level carver from Sydney name Gordon Harde. The prices were right, and I picked up some pieces of carving wood recommended by the professionals - tupelo and juletong. These are clear woods with little grain, easy to carve and well suited to power carving or hand carving. I am thinking of carving a series of small songbirds - chickadee, goldfinch, sparrow, nuthatch, junco, grosbeak, etc. - and some of the pieces are just the right size.
I also picked up some basswood, a nice cherry plank, and a round, 14" diameter wooden base that I think I may actually use for my osprey carving. I had considered an oval, but the ready-made round base with good grain is tempting. There are water-based colored wood stains available, and I found a "marine blue" color that would suggest water but still allow the grain to show through. I may try cutting an oval base from the cherry plank as well, so I will have a choice. The cherry has a good grain pattern. All of a sudden, too many choices!
About three hours worth of painting over two days, for a total now of 116 hours.
The next step in painting the wings of the osprey carving involves the used of a dark sable color, almost black, for the banding and shading on the tail and flight feathers. Unfortunately, when I sat down at the bench today, I learned that the sable color had I ordered is not dark at all, but almost like the nutmeg brown. I tried darkening it with several different possible complementary blue shades that I have, but couldn’t match the color swatch in Al Jordan’s book. I tried using black to darken the sable brown, which produced something much closer to the published color, nut just a little dead-looking. It might work in a pinch, since the color it produced was close to the color in the workbook, but I want the colors to be the same as used by the original carver/artist.
I then had an insight - Al Jordan used an airbrush to paint much of his carving, so I looked into airbrush acrylic colors. Bingo! On a carving supplies website I found the very dark sable he used, manufactured by Chroma, and ordered some. I checked first to see if airbrush colors can be used with a brush, and they can. The only difference between airbrush acrylics and those from a bottle or tube is that the airbrush colors are diluted in order to pass easily through the airbrush nozzle. This actually helps, because I would not have to dilute it much or at all to use it as a wash over other colors. I will see when it arrives, whenever that is.
In the meantime, I may do some painting today on other parts of the carving, such as the feet, just to get something done and not lose momentum.
I added a second coat of gesso last night, to prepare for today's painting session. I am following the painting guidelines in Al Jordan's half-size osprey book, although not necessarily in the same order because of the difference in the poses of his carving and mine.
I started by applying three coats of a dilute mixture of 90% warm white and 10% raw umber on the undersides of the tail and the primary and secondary feathers. Once that was completely dry, I turned the carving over and applied three coats of a thin nutmeg brown color over the entire back of the body, tail, and wings. Not much of this nutmeg color will show through at the end, but hints of it will still be there. The back and upper side of the wings will be much darker when the painting is done. Here are the photos:
The colors and patterns don't look quite right at the moment, but I am trusting the professional's painting instructions. The dark spot on the bird's breast between the extended legs is the hole where the clear acrylic rod will be inserted to support the bird on the stand. Speaking of the stand: I have decided to make the stand an oval, and I drew an oval shape on the practice stand using the old trick of three pins and some string. Worked like a charm. I will cut out the oval shape with my saber saw and set the bird on the stand to see if it is stable.
Lona took some photos of me working, a couple of which are posted below. The pages visible in the background are from the painting section of Al Jordan’s book.
The next painting steps will be to add dark bands to the undersides and topsides of the tail feathers and to the primary and secondary feathers on the wings, which will be difficult for an amateur painter like myself. these bands are visible in the pictures in the book in the background. It will require some careful planning, matching of the bands on the upper and lower sides of the feathers, and some washes of a darker color over these feathers to blend the colors together and accentuate the leading edges of the feathers. I will just follow the instructions and see what happens!
Enough for now, the painting took about two hours, since I had to let each layer of paint dry before adding the next. The reasons for using thin washes of color is to preserve the texturing of the feathers, which took such a long time to do. One thick layer of paint would fill in all the burn lines representing the barbs of the stiff feathers; three thin washes will achieve the same color but preserve the feather details.
Total time: 113 hours.
This afternoon I applied the first coat of gesso to the fully sealed carving. This first coat almost completely concealed the dark brown of the burned areas. The second coat should provide the uniform white base coat for applying the different washes of color that will be the actual color of the bird. Looks different, all white.
I remembered from early in the carving process that the bird would stand up vertically on a tripod formed by its wingtips and tail. It is pretty steady, but I won't leave it that way for too long, just until the gesso is dry. A bump on the bench might cause it to fall over!
Two more hours, for a total of 111.
I did two things today - apply the first coat of sanding sealer and put together a mock-up of the eventual base I will make for the carving. Sanding sealer? Not much to say about that, except that I didn't put any on the head and feet because that was where I had to hold the carving while I sealed the rest. Later tonight I will apply sealer to the head and legs, and tomorrow I will put a second coat over the whole thing.
I decided, after much thought, to simply support the carving on its base with a single rod extending from the belly of the bird down to the base. I ordered some clear acrylic 3/36" diameter rods from an online acrylic products company, but for the time being I used a 3/36" wooden dowel in my trial run. I carefully drilled a hole in the centerline of the belly at an angle that would support the bird in a diving pose. I then drilled a hole in a 1.5" thick piece of pine board from the garage, and put the assembly together. This is the result:
By using the clear rod as an obvious support, I don't have to be too clever about making the support look like reeds or grass, which would have taken a lot of work. I would also have had to make the flat part of the base look like water or else the realistic reeds would not look right. I can now go back to making the flat part of the base an abstract form with a simple, rippled surface. The plain base and the clear support will not call attention away from the carving. Viewers will accept the base and support for what they are, and move their attention back to the carving itself. That's my hope, anyway.
The piece of scrap wood in the photos above is too big, but I will use it as a starting point for trimming down the rectangular shape or for possibly creating a more visually pleasing shape such as an oval.
Maybe another hour today, for a running today of 109 hours invested so far. My first post on this blog was May 3, so I am coming up on three months of work. I could have gotten to this point faster, but if you have to rush, it's not a hobby any more.
I had a good day yesterday, working about 5 hours on the carving. I finished the texturing/burning on the wings; put in the glass eyes; finished burning the feathers around the eyes and beak; and attached the feet. The latter job involved putting a ring of epoxy clay around the wire protruding from the upper part of each foot, and pressing the foot into place against the wooden stump. The epoxy squeezed out, which is what I wanted to happen, to make sure that the gap between the two parts was filled with epoxy. It dried fast, and I removed the excess and worked a little with two different power carving tips to blend the texturing over the transition point and obscure it even more. Below are some photos I took this morning out on the picnic table, in 88-degree heat.
In preparation for the next step, I have begun reading once again the second half of Al Jordan's book on creating a half-size osprey carving. Lots of info there on painting, with a complete color palette. I have all the colors already. One difficult part will be transferring his painting instructions for a sitting osprey with wings folded to a diving osprey with wings extended. The sitting osprey has less of the undersides of the wings exposed than my carving, so I will just have to extrapolate his color schemes to the extended wings. I have plenty of photos to rely on, as well. My final choices will be a combination of what is in the book and what I see in my collection of osprey photographs. The author makes a point for artistic license himself, since ospreys all look a little different. No one can say I'm wrong.
Next step: sealing the carving with sanding sealer, and applying several coats of thinned-out gesso. This will produce a uniform white base all over the carving, in advance of applying the colors.
Five hours yesterday brings my total to 107.5 hours, rounded off to 108. I don't think the painting will take another 100 hours, so my initial estimate of 200 hours for this carving was way too high.
BTW, I did a full mockup of my idea for mounting the carving, with a curved metal rod supporting the carving above a base. Didn't work. The carving was too heavy for the 1/8" steel rod, especially with the curve, and the carving would not stay up. I feel that I must do what I didn't want to do, which is support the carving with a vertical rod from the belly down to the base. Oh, well.
We visited the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor yesterday, as part of my birthday trip up the coast. It is a small museum, but one dedicated entirely to bird carving. I get a lot of inspiration, and even some carving tips, by examining the carvings they have on display there. There were three osprey carvings, two by Wendell Gilley himself and another by a carver whose name I forget. I took photos of them for my reference file, and the three carvings are shown in the images below.
The poses are all very similar, with the bird perched on a limb or piece of driftwood, with wings spread as if taking off or just landing. The bottom carving is life-size, and is all the more impressive because of that. None of them have the level of feather detail that I am adding to my carving. My pose is different, an “attack” pose with the wings partially folded as the osprey zeroes in on his prey fish. Still not sure about the base yet. I will have to experiment tomorrow.
I will return to my osprey carving with renewed determination to do my best at representing a dramatic moment during an osprey attack dive!
Yesterday (Tuesday) I brought the osprey to my local carving group meeting, where it was seen by seven of my carving buddies. I borrowed an extension cord from the Rockler's back room and set up a wood burning station at one end of the long table that had been set up for us. I was a little worried that the smoke from my burning would set off a smoke alarm or sprinkler, but the Rockler's staff assured me that I was OK. It is wispy smoke, and didn't seem to bother either the smoke detectors or the others sitting around the table.
I spent the entire 2.5 hours of the meeting working on the underside of the left wing, but still had to wait to finish it up today. The job took 4.5 hours altogether, counting time spent this morning and yesterday afternoon. That is consistent with the time spent on the upper and lower surfaces. Four and a half hours on each surface of each wing means that 18 hours have been spent so far simply on the texturing of the wings with the wood burning pen. Below are photos of the undersides of the carving, with both wings done.
The sharp color contrast between the burned and untouched parts of the wing are only temporary. The burned portions represent the stiffer flight feathers and their coverts; the untouched portions of the wings represent the softer contour feathers that have been textured by various stone carving bits. Once the carving has been covered with several coats of primer, the brown color will disappear, and the two types of feathers will be distinguishable only by the shadows and textures left by burning and stoning. After priming, the feathers will be painted, further blending them into an overall representation of a fully feathered and functional wing (I hope).
Below are photos of the upper surface of each wing. revealing the next session's 4.5 hours of work! After the texturing of the wings has been completed, I will get back to my plan of setting the eyes in place and texturing the head feather detail around the eyes and bill. After that, the final "construction" piece will be attaching the feet and smoothing the transition zone between the epoxy feet and the wood of the lower leg.
I am looking forward to finishing up the carving and texturing part of this project, and moving on to the painting. I will follow the painting scheme outlined in Al Jordan's book on creating a half-size osprey, as well as the many images I now have of the undersides and topsides of the wings and body. I have all of the colors on Al Jordan's palette, and am ready to apply color to this carving!
The 4.5 hours total from yesterday and today puts me over the hundred-hour mark, at 102.5 hours. Where did the time go?
I managed to get out on the picnic table this morning around 9:00 a.m., and worked on the bird until about 1:30. I had just about finished the topside of the right wing before it started to rain, and I burned the last feather while huddling under the big umbrella. Lona came out and snapped the photo below of me early in the day, while I was first outlining and undercutting the feathers. It was a good day - I had my music playlist of favorites playing on the iPad, the birds were chirping, there was a little breeze, and the time passed quickly. I hope for many more days like this, doing hobby work and enjoying the time!
The right wing is now nearly done, with just a few touch-ups here and there to take care of. I decided to complete one win, top and bottom, before moving on to the other. I still have to put in the eyes and finish detailing and texturing the head, but I think I will complete both wings before I get to that. The wings are too much fun!
I will bring the osprey to tomorrow's (Tuesday) 4:00 p.m. meeting of the Southern Maine Wood Carvers Guild, and will continue the burning/texturing process there, surrounded by other carvers working on their own stuff. The group usually moves from Rockler's to El Rodeo for dinner and continued conversation around 6:30, and I will likely follow along. Nice group of very skilled people, all from different backgrounds but united in their interest in carving. The combination of private carving time and group meetings provides a nice balance.
Five hours today brings my total to 98!
I will finish with some advice from Wendell Gilley, a renowned Maine woodcarver: “Be it a perfect work of art, or one with some flaws, it really doesn’t
matter - it is your creation. What seems important to me is that you
have come up with some results and you have enjoyed doing it.” I will be visiting the Wendell Gilley Museum in Southwest Harbor on Thursday, as part of my birthday trip down the coast, and will hopefully get some inspiration from viewing his carvings and those of other Maine artists.
I have finally taken the time to photograph the osprey carving against a photo paper background with decent lighting. It is not quite as g...
