{"id":842,"date":"2020-10-07T19:44:07","date_gmt":"2020-10-07T16:44:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodiswood.com\/?p=842"},"modified":"2022-09-07T12:01:07","modified_gmt":"2022-09-07T09:01:07","slug":"complete-guide-to-wood-carving-spirits-and-faces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodiswood.com\/complete-guide-to-wood-carving-spirits-and-faces\/","title":{"rendered":"Complete Guide To Wood Carving Spirits and Faces"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Face carving and spirit carving is a very interesting style of wood carving that can both be whittled or done with power tools. Carving faces as a beginner requires patience to learn all the details and features that make up a complete face, especially when whittling. In this article, you will find a lot of helpful tips and tricks that will help you carve more realistic and volumetric faces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Face carving comes in many forms such as spirit carvings, relief carvings, carving faces in a log\/tree, carving faces in the round, and of course all kinds of figures and statues also often have an element of face carving. The fundamentals of any face are always the same, whether it is a part of your carving or your whole carving, you will use similar techniques to carve the nose eyes, and mouth. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To start with, we will introduce you to face carving from the very basics of this style of wood carving. If you are an experienced woodcarver, feel free to skip the first section of the article and move onto the following tips and tricks to improve your face carving skills<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

How To Carve Spirits and Faces For Beginners<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you are not planning to whittle a face and instead you are going to be using power tools, <\/strong>scroll down to the power carving section<\/a> of the article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To whittle your first carving face you need to first plan it out<\/strong>. As you get better and more confident with carving faces you may choose to stop drawing on the wood before you carve it, but at the beginning planning out your work with a pencil or a marker will make the learning process much easier, so we recommend you don’t skip the planning out part.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is the basic plan of panning and executing a face carving for the first time, not worrying about details too much at first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

  1. Work out the rough ratios of where you want the eyes, mouth, and nose (and a mustache if you’re feeling creative) to go on your woodpiece. Mark it with rough sketches using a pencil or a marker<\/li>
  2. Draw an accurate outline of the face with the chosen style of eyes, eyebrows, mouth, and nose (more on the styles later). This will later become the deeper part of your carving.<\/li>
  3. Carve the wood from top to bottom with the help of your drawn outline, take off layer after layer until you reach the desired depth.<\/li>
  4. Make an accent on the eyes and make sure to add a lot of depth to them, eyes must be 2-3 times deeper than the skin of your carving.<\/li>
  5. After you carved out all of your drawings add all the desired details and see where you can add extra volume and depth on your carving.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    Following these 5 steps will get you to carve your first face. Of course, will be a very simple and basic face, but before you move to extra attentive details you should practice a little on the simple things such as this, to get familiar with ratios and the outlines of faces. You should also try different variations of eyes, noses, and mouths on such simple carvings. More about shapes below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    For a more visual representation, you can also look at this video with a fun background soundtrack!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
    https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0STVrABZPnk<\/a>