Early days of carving

I first began carving after mentioning to someone that I'd studied sculptor and photography at art college. They were after a series of carvings so I said I would have a go at them. I bought a book on woodcarving,got hold of the chisels the book recommended and got started. The first carvings I did were relief carvings, wall mounted work. Here are some of my first pieces. The dove and the St George were part of that first series, based on 12 words which it was left up to me to interpret.They were among the last of that series and I'd gained some experience of carving by the time I came to do these two.

St. George and the Dragon, from a painting in Gondar, Ethiopia. Carved in Lime wood, approximately 50 cm in height and painted in acrylics.

Dove, carved in Lime wood, approximately 50 cm wide, painted in oils.

King David, taken from a detail of an Ethiopian painting, carved in Lime wood, approximately 10 cm high, painted in acrylics. This went first to the foothills of Kilimanjaro. I think it's in Addis Ababa now.

Taken from paintings on the ceiling of a church in Gondar,Ethiopia. Carved in Lime wood, approximately 10 cm high, painted in acrylics. Now in West Virginia. The Byzantine influence is clear in some of these pieces but with a sweet twist with the Ethiopian style.

More angels from the ceiling of Debre Birhan Selassie Church in Gondar Ethiopia. Carved in Lime wood, approximately 10 cm high,painted in acrylics. These went to a gallery in Amsterdam. From there, who knows...

This wall carving was a commission for a lady who, after many years and nearly giving up hope, finally had the child she so wanted. Her daughter was called Grace for that reason. I carved this Sycamore leaf in Sycamore wood as it suited the colour of an autumn leaf, as she only had her daughter  in the autumn of her fertile years. Now in Dorset, I think.  Lettering painted with gold metallic paint. Approximately 35-40 cm wide.

St Mark, taken from an Ethiopian painting, carved in Lime wood, painted in acrylics. Approximately 30 cm high. Now in Dulwich, south London.

More early work to follow..........

Aaron Slight, starting from the block....

This is Aaron Slight on a Honda RC45, commissioned by the Castrol Honda World Superbike Team. Carved in lime wood.
Here is a record of the progress from a block of lime wood through to the finished piece.

Starting with a technical drawing of the bike, as I've mentioned before, I trim the profile closely, leaving a couple of millimetres spare to allow for tool damage and changes but close enough to that should I loose the drawing on the side, I won't be too far away from working out where I am.
   It is a representation of a specific bike so there is no room for error. All the elements have to fit together in order for it to be a success. As it is for the team, all the mechanics know the bike inside out and would spot mistakes immediately. No pressure then!

Where there is room for interpretation is with the rider and his position on the bike. Again, though, each rider has a particular style which is easily identifiable. Aaron, in this instance, crouches forward over his bike through turns, leading with his shoulder (very similar to GP legend Mike Doohan), putting weight over the front of the bike to help it turn. You'll be able to compare it to the companion carving of Carl Fogarty on his bike. You'll see he has a more upright style. Pictures soon.

The bike has to be carved first to get the thicknesses and component positions right. It would be disastrous to decide the position of his feet or his backside only to later on find them hovering in space. So as much of the bike is carved as I can get to before I start on the figure, but as much of the waste wood around the figure must be removed to gain access to as much of the bike as possible. It's a delicate balance between making progress and jumping the gun.

Bit by bit, all the waste wood is removed and the sculpture starts to work. The movable clamp helps to get the riders position in the right place, his helmet angle in relation to the lean able of the bike.Once the finer details of the bike have been picked out, the hands and feet can be located accurately to the handlebars and foot pegs and the arms and legs can be better defined as their position becomes more apparent.It's too easy at this stage to decide too early where the limbs are and how large they are. 

  This carving was completed long before I started using clay models to plan carvings. This is something I've only just got into doing as my work gets more ambitious or complicated and the time spent on the clay model would justify the extra time involved in the total time for a piece.

Eventually, the carving work is complete and the veneering work begins. Put simply, I dig out holes in the carving and put different colour veneers in. Unfortunately, I don't have photos of this for this carving. 

So, to the finished work. Here is how the carving turned out, veneered, sealed with danish oil and mounted on a mahogany base.

Aaron Slight on the Castrol Honda RC45 carved in Lime wood

This carving and the accompanying carving of Carl Fogarty are on display at Honda UK's race headquarters in Louth, Lincolnshire.

I'll show the carving of Carl Fogarty and some of the preparatory work soon.

The Lion sleeps every night.

Now, some furniture. The Lion bed. Carved in limewood with various wood stains.

Thought you might like a change from bike stuff. I'm rather proud of this and have been itching to get it on the blog. Around 8ft (2.5m) long and 5ft (1.5m) wide, weighing about 1/3 of a ton! Commissioned for a little boy of about 4 who, when standing next to it, only came up to the lion's forehead.

There are no sharp edges so it can be climbed all over without getting hurt or breaking bits off. I didn't go for a cartoon-style lion so he could grow up with it and not be embarrassed by it as he got older.Apparently he had constant streams of friends over to show it off. Well, if you've got it...... As you can see, there are hidden drawers which are opened by grabbing the tail.

There are other pieces that go with this, a chest of drawers, desk, shelves and a bedside cupboard, some of which I have no photos of. A shame as the bedside table had meercats on the front and you had to pull on one of them's nose to open the drawer. I'll show more photos of the bed and some of the other pieces soon.
This photo below will give you a sense of scale.

Eddie Lawson, sideways.

Eddie Lawson (on the Cagiva C591), carved in lime,viewed from the side and front this time.  You can see clearly the veneers  applied to the bike. The number boards and Cagiva logo are done in Maple, Agip logo in birds eye Maple and Ebony (which is a nightmare as it blunts the knife almost immediately) and  Madrona and stained Maple for the helmet.The bike is approximately 33cm long.

At the time I began this, the Cagiva was the most beautiful race bike to ever grace a track. A few weeks after I started it, they launched the C593 which was even more beautiful, much more curvy but I had already taken off too much wood to adapt it to the new one. Still, it's a beautiful bike and it turned out well anyway.

This, if you were wondering whether I assemble these bikes out of separate pieces, is a photo of the beginning of a carving. This is the start of a carving of Aaron Slight on a Honda RC45 commissioned by the Castrol Honda World Superbike Team together with a carving of Carl Fogarty. I start with a technical drawing of the bike and dive in very cautiously from there.
I've only recently begun to sculpt in clay first before carving. Here, I just got on with it,fraught with anxiety at making fatal errors early on, which is very easy to do. Gung ho and accuracy are uneasy bedfellows

 I just get the silhouette quite close before starting on the widths. However, I leave a couple of millimetres spare to soak up damage from tools and inaccuracies early on.

I'll show you more of the stages of how it developed into the finished article (below) soon. 

Eddie Lawson carved in Lime

This is a carving of Eddie Lawson on a Cagiva C591, carved from a single piece of Limewood and inlaid with maple, redwood, myrtle and ebony on a mahogany base

I'll show more pictures of this and some of the other bikes I've carved as the blog goes on.

Valentino's leg, the ongoing saga

 One leg finished, or maybe not. I haven't veneered anything for years so I've been reacquainting myself  with the technique as I've been going along. I may come back to this if I think I could improve it or tidy it up without causing unnecessary damage.It's always the way; by the time I finish I'll have the skill to begin.!

So, onto the other leg. This is a graphic of the moon which looks hideously tricky to approach. I'm starting with the main block of colour on the face and all the features can be laid over it.

 Some wood veneers are very brittle and break or crumble when cut down to very small pieces so sometimes, as is the case with the red veneer around the side of the face, you need to put the woods that can be re cut and overlaid upon on first. The red wood will be surrounded with dark Indian Rosewood which is very brittle when it's cut into thin lines. Had I put it on first and tried to put the red veneer down the middle afterwards,I think it would crumble. Well, that's the theory I'm sticking to today, you'll know shortly if it works.

Waving, not sanding.

I have many different carvings over the years that I want to put on this blog but carving generally is a slow business. It's very exciting at first, starting a piece, not knowing how it will eventually turn out, how well it may go. I want each piece I make to be better than the last, regardless of subject matter.

However, after the initial work, when the general shape has appeared, it becomes more methodical, slowly whittling down each element watching that I don't go too far, too thin, concentrating too much on one area without constantly relating to every other area. Little by little, all the elements slowly meld together to a point where I'm finally considering the sculpture as a whole. Now it gets exciting again, seeing the piece hinting at how it might end, but also at a point where ruin is a much more present possibility.

Anyway, point is,carvings take ages and following my progress on the veneers on Valentino's leg may begin to feel like watching paint dry. So I'll introduce some of my work interspersed with progress on the veneers.  

Here is a horse anatomy study, carved in Limewood, taken from a plaster cast of a horse study when I did a term at the City and Guilds of London Art College many moons ago. This particular sculpture crops up all over the place.It may have gained popularity with the fashion for plaster casts two centuries ago around Europe which gave us such treasures as the cast rooms at the Victoria and Albert Museum.I've seen a copy at the Leighton House Museum.  If you google "horse anatomy sculpture"  various versions appear, I think most notably the Leonardo da Vinci horse in Grand Rapids, Michigan which seems to me to be the same pose but beefier and with skin.It may well be that the sculptor of the original may have been inspired by Leonardo's drawings for his giant bronze horse Il Cavallo

   My carving isn't finished, interrupted by commissions and not returned to. I usually sand down my work as I generally aim at a sculpture that looks like the subject first and recognition of the material it is made in second. I don't like the "chiselly-sculpty" whittled look as a rule. Wood is a beautiful, warm and alive material and, in my humble opinion, doesn't need to have the gouged effect to reinforce that  it is carved wood.

 Having said that, because I usually sand my work, I wanted this horse to have all the tool marks and try my best to hide them with deft and nifty handwork LOL.Not there yet though. Lots of work still to do, but it's been so many years, I'd prefer to leave it as an unfinished study lurking on a shelf waving a powerful hoof in the air.