Wood Spirit Carving, 8 Rough Cutting the Features

In this free, online Wood Spirit Carving Project by Lora Irish, we will learn how to rough cut shape the human facial features of your wood spirit in your basswood practice block.  Learn the techniques for carving your own walking stick or cane wood spirit.

The eighth chapter in Lora Irish’s Great Book of Free Carving Projects and Patterns Series
“Wood Spirit Carving” – Rough Cutting the Features
Step 12

Step 12 Rough Cut Shaping
We are ready to start the rough shaping steps along the top of the forehead, the sides of the face, and the bottom of the cheeks.
Begin by dropping the forehead, at a slant, into the hat line. Keep these cuts in the upper one-half of the forehead area. The bottom one-half will become our brow ridge line.
I have added my large round gouge to my working knives. Using the round gouge, cut along the bottom 1/4 of the cheek area, guiding the gouge into the nostril area.If you run your fingers along the side of your nose, towards your mouth, you will note that there are no hard, angled lines in the bottom of the face.
Using my bench knife or v-gouge would create harsh, angled lines. By using the round gouge I can create a rolled curve to this area.
Use a two-stroke cut with the bench knife to lower the sides of the face into the shallow cut guidelines.Remember the face makes an angled turn at the corner of the eye. So keep these cuts away from that eye corner.
My hair line on my left of the wood spirit face does not have as much room or distance from the eye corner as my right side.So as I lower this area, following the previous step, I am also going to widen the distance from the eye.
We are ready to start carving the eye, eyelids, and rounding over the lids into the rest of the face.
Wood Spirit Patterns Exclusive Designs by Lora S. Irish 17 Line Art Patterns New Edition! with New Patterns!
Copyright, Lora S. Irish, 1997 – 2015 Copyright, Art Designs Studio, 1997 – 2015 All International Rights Reserved Use of any information, images, or text in digital or printed format or in any magazine, book, or booklet is strictly prohibited without the written, hardcopy permission of the author, Lora Irish.	Wood Spirit Carving, Free Project by Lora Irish 1 Introduction and Supply List 2 Walking Stick Preparation 3 Exploring the Human Face 4 Planes of the Human Face 5 Carve The Human Face 6 Shaping the Facial Features 7 Sloping the Sides of the Face 8 Rough Cutting the Features 9 Carving the Eyes 10 Detailing the Eyes 11 Shaping the Features 12 Defining the Cheek and Nose 13 Working the Facial Hair 14 Refining the Face Shape 15 Carving the Wrinkles 16 Trimming the Beard 17 Review of the Techniques