Whittling Wizard

For this week’s learning project post I decided to carve a wizard. My first project I made a gnome looking thing. It was not that great and I wanted redemption. To learn how to carve this wizard I watched a video made by Alec LaCasse. This was probably the best video I have learned from yet. It was great quality and all of the tips that he gave were super helpful. Also what was different about this video is when Alec mentioned something that you did not want to do, he did it so you could see it. Every other video said not to do something, but you never saw what you were not supposed to do. I know that’s a lot of negatives and probably wordy, so to summarize, the video was noticeably the best one I have watched yet.

This one was a challenge for me still even though it is direct to beginners. Even though I have a few projects done now I am still very much a beginner. I always keep thinking that I am at a higher level, but I just started! Its not as easy as I thought. Anyways, this project was really satisfying to complete especially because the final product was much better than the first go at it. The video was great to learn from. Alec gave multiple tips and pointers that were super useful. The best part about this video was how Alec showed what not to do. I have not seen something like this in any video yet. Instead of just saying don’t do this Alec actually does the thing you don’t want to do so you can visualize it and not just think about it. It might not seem like much, but it is a huge help. It helped me create my product:

I enjoyed this project. Faces are difficult so I was lucky that this project was majority beard and that was not too difficult. I did not have any difficulties with chipping the wood or catching the grain so that was a good feeling. It was difficult however to make the correct shapes of the face. I tended to do a lot of small cuts so it got rounded out and lost definition instead of just trusting in a big cut. I had fun carving the hat since I could make it however I wanted. I could do lots of big cuts and be creative. Overall, I liked how this one turned out in the end and it was a sweet redemption story from the first carve I did.