first things first

What's this all about? 

My journey from uneducated inexperienced artisan into an accomplished artist.

 Through this blog I aim to show those intermediate steps that often go unshown. That period where your artwork is bad and covered in the blood of your cut fingers from the mistakes you've made along the way. That art that makes the artist cringe and their public smirk at its poor craftsmanship. By the time someone is posting their how to videos on YouTube they've become a master already and they make their efforts look effortless and so easy all you need to do in order to achieve similar greatness is to pick up a chisel and any blank slate of wood and the flurry of ensuing chips will fall revealing a masterpiece of baroque elegance worthy of any European palace built during the reign of king Louis or that would be worthy of Cosimo de Medici's patronage. Sadly this instant rise from amateur into old master is anything but quick.

 It takes years of practice and countless bandaids and cloths to stem the flow of your mistakes. I know from my limited knowledge and experience carving. I've photographed every single slash and stab often reaching for my phone to take the picture before I rumage for the first aid kit. And boy does a wound made by an errant well sharpened chisel bleed a lot. Besides the initial shock of plunging the impliment into my flesh the only fear I have is that I have done some irreparable damage that won't heal or will take a long time to heal and therefore cut short as it were my ability to keep on working. 

While you're learning be prepared to buy a lot of practice wood and practice making shapes and lines that are accurate and increase in difficulty but end in pieces that aren't anything resembling a saleable product or finished piece. With the outcome therefore technically unimportant it will allow you to both create freely and to make mistakes without which you won't reach your best work. Also think of each piece as being your last and the one you'll be remembered by and you'll always do your best work even if it is less than a masterpiece. Remember when you learned how to write and how much practice it took to accurately pen letters that were legible and could be repeated easily? Add the levels of complexity regarding doing the same in 3d using sharp bits of steel to render the results abd it becomes clearer as to what you're trying to take on. Yet others have succeeded a great many others have failed to put in the work due to becoming saddened at not being accomplished without knowledge of such practice being needed because it hasn't been fully shown just how much is needed to become good. 

Even before sinking a chisel into a slab of that organic semi rigid carbohydrate foam has been done choosing the correct weapon and preparing it properly to carry out that job is a subject of its own and which is often skipped or under emphasized as to just how important those pre steps are. So scant in some cases is this information overlooked that I will be using my own judgement on what worked for me as to material and choices of chisels are concerned.

 Though my own basic knowledge has shown me that cuts made from single or minimal numbers of cuts produce the best results. Use a gouge that follows the curve exactly rather than use a knife to slice your line freehand. Grain that is tighter is easier to control your cuts without skipping or over cutting due to parts of the wood being less dense. Also do many shallow cuts before deeper ones are made to lessen those errors from happening. And take a pause and step back often to look at how your carving is progressing it's easy to hyperfocus to narrowly and misinterpret your pencil lines and turn what should have been a relief or overlap into cutting that branch into two by accident. Outlining your pieces first and using v tools to cut line work that is following a shallow slit line is easier than to v tool that line by following just the pencil line. As you can already see from my scant descriptions that don't even begin to flesh out the subject and my work is cut out for me. (Sorry for the puns my subconscious mind is to blame I swear) 

Anyway that you may find use of my posts in whole or in part will still be less than the help it will be to my own efftorts and areas that I need to focus on. There will be sections that through key words will link themselves together better but due to this blogs nature I won't be putting them in any general order of which should be tackled first to last. But once the posts increase in number it should become easier to sift through them to find what you may get benefit from.