First Whittling Project

For my first whittling project I decided to try and carve a tiny gnome. As you will see, mine does not look quite like the one in the video because it is much more difficult than I thought! Following this video was easy. The steps all made sense, and there were no skips so I could really see every single cut. Outlining the area that you want to carve is very helpful, but once the outline is cut off it becomes more difficult. Learning from this video was not difficult. The issue with this carve was my own skill. The issue I ran into the most was shaving too much wood off. Once I did this, I had to shave down other ends because it looked very disproportionate. I did find ways of cutting that worked best for me over time and I am confident that from the mistakes I made in this project, the next one will appear much better as I know what not to do.

The video below is the one I learned from.

 

And……. the final product.

I think I did a pretty good job on the hat of the gnome, but the body/head is lacking. I got rough shapes out and you can see where its going, but I cut so much off that I couldn’t do much more as it would have broken off entire chunks of the arms and legs. The face was the most difficult part by far. It was hard to make it smooth and defined. I cut too much off and therefore lost the definition.

As a little bonus I carved out this heart for my girlfriend. I didn’t use any videos for this as it was simple enough, but I think it turned out really good! Plus she loved it so that is more than good enough for me.

For my next project, I am going to try a different account and see what changes I notice in understanding. Also, I am going to try and record some videos of me carving so I can really immerse you all in my learning journey.