toby
hazel.
I took up wood carving having bought a rather nice little pocket knife. I wanted to test it out, and started whittling a piece of pine. This became a little head reminiscent of the Easter Island Moai. I carved several pieces with that knife, and later with a customised penknife, then for the more complicated carvings: a good set of wood carving knives, chisels, files, and lots of sandpaper.
Some of the carvings were improvised, but especially with the more complicated and intricate ones, I draw the designs onto paper and trace them onto the sides of the wood.
Having been a painter for many years, it was a challenge to move from two to three dimensions. It is strange, being three dimensional creatures living in a three dimensional universe, that it is hard to think in three dimensions. We tend to think of the world as being presented to us visually as a two dimensional canvas - all of the complex processes that allow us to perceive the world in three dimensions are hidden from our conscious minds, so it is an effort to force ourselves to think consciously about moving between a flat image and an object with depth.
