Pow-wow Dancer ---painting in progress

I have been painting on this guy for about a week and still haven't got him finished! There are a lot of little details and it just seems to take a while. I hate not to be carving, but I really don't mind the painting that much, at least not like some carvers do! It can really add to a good carving, depending on the subject or style of the carving and I learned to draw and paint a long time before I started carving. I use different painting techniques, but I'll describe part of the process I used on this one. After carving and burning, I dip the carving in a bucket of water and then start painting with thinned artist acrylic paints. The damp wood gives you an idea of how the piece will look with a finish applied, can keep paint from bleeding into unwanted areas, and also aids in the blending of a more washed-out water color effect.... I like the wood to show through in certain areas. Too much paint or finish can give it a plastic look.


I mixed brown, yellow, and red and thinned it for the flesh color, using thinned brown paint to create shadows. I watered down some black to give his scalp a "5 o'clock" shadow where his head is shaved. The warpaint and eyes were all painted after it had dried out, because I wasn't trying to blend any large areas, such as the skin and the pants. All of the bead-work areas were first painted with gesso, to make the colors brighter, before painting first with white and then painting different sections other colors. I am trying to paint all the areas that I won't be able to reach when I add some of the attachments like the shield and the fan in the back. It is easier to complete some sections without all those delicate pieces stuck on! If I have any mistakes, I either paint over them or carve it away and repaint. When I have it as I like it, I put a heavy coat of fresh polyurethane over the entire piece and let it soak in for a few minutes. I remove any excess with a paper towel. I don't want a heavy shiny coat sitting on top of the wood, so I wipe off what hasn't soaked in. This protects the carving with a durable finish and really makes the colors vibrant. I buy the smallest cans of satin polyurethane so that it is always fresh and thin, which absorbs better into the wood rather than sitting on top.


I'll be painting and finishing all the attachments separately before attaching them with either wood glue or CA glue. I hope to finish him this weekend and have the finished project posted soon. Thanks for looking!

Pow-wow Dancer - burning the details

I used to do woodburning with a single temperature pen, similar to a soldering iron, that I purchased at a hobby store. I had some success with it and you can create some nice stuff with it, but that is probably due more to the talent of the user than the quality of the tool! Pyrographis technology has improved since then and after a lot of reading, I decided to spend $130 on a variable temperature unit with a replaceable tip pen. Wow! Tremendous difference, like going from crayons to pen and ink! The details and effects you can get with just a few tips is pretty amazing.

On some pieces, I use it for a lot of shading and other purposes. But for caricatures, I use it to outline areas to prevent paint from bleeding and also as a "hot" knife. I can burn fine lines and patterns like the beaded areas and the veins on the feathers with more detail and definition than I can with gouges or knives.

Even though they will be painted over, you will still see the subtle patterns beneath the paint. I need to finish up a few details, like straps and such, and may add some ermine tails and a medicine bag, before I start putting the paint on.

Hopefully, I can get started painting him this weekend! Thanks for looking!

Pow-wow Dancer -Attachments

Here are a few pictures showing some of the progress on my Native American dancer. I completed as much of the carving as I could on arms, legs and other parts before gluing them on. I use a strip of old inner-tube to hold them on as they are glued one-by-one, and then I carve and sand the joints down and try to keep everything in proportion. I want him to look muscular, but I have to watch the shoulders to prevent it from looking like the arms are just stuck on. I carved the breast-plate and was then able to shape the chest and stomach areas behind it.

The chaps and groin area needed to be carved before attaching the carved breech-clout pieces front and back. The front piece tucks under the breast-plate to hide that joint and the back piece curves over and behind the belt in the back to disguise that one. I have penciled in some of the beadwork designs that will need to be burned and painted before some of the other attachments are glued on.

The feathers and quills on the head are not glued down as yet, so that all the details can be burned and painted before assembly. I have the feather pieces glued up and will use small pieces of wire brads as tenons to joint them to the carvng. I had thought about using toothpicks for the quills but I felt they would be too flimsy after turning them down to more of a tapered quill shape. The brads used will be stronger and will look good after painting. I try to use wood for everything but I don’t want a piece to be flimsy; if I decide to make him into an automaton, he will be subjected to a lot of jarring and movement and everything must be secured well.

My plan is to do a few additional feathers on the spear and a sort of turkey fan decoration in the back. I haven’t decided whether he will be holding a shield or a ceremonial feather fan in his left hand. Thanks for looking…comments and suggestions always welcomed!



Pow-wow dancer



Here are a few pictures of the progress made on this carving. It shows the legs roughed out and shows how I played with the positions before gluing them in place. I also decided to switch hands with the spear. Now that I have these things in place, I can start carving all the details and decorations. I am working on a design for a possible commission that is more of a priority thatn this piece right now.

Leftovers

I have little odds and ends laying around my garage….things that i carved for practice, bits and pieces started or just carved for fun, things that haven’t quite simmered enough, or were intended just as proof of concepts. Leftovers, of a sorts. The head on this guy was started just as something to do when I was at a carving club meeting several months back. It was just something to whittle on and I was showing a guy what you could do with a plain old utility knife, a fixed blade box-cutter. Over the months, I have kept messing with it. I wanted to practice ears and to really exagerate the nose to accentuate the cariacature aspects….I think some of my work that I intended as caricatures sometimes has too much of a realistic appearance, not enough humor. Then I tried a new technique I saw for doint eyes. This evolved into a basketball player, kinda Charles Barkley-like, then it started looking like a guy I used to work with! I finally decided I wanted to do something new, at least for me. I have did a few cowboys, so I was wanting to try a Native American caricature. I haven’t seen many carvings with Mohawks, so I thought i would give that a try.
I wanted to work a bit on anatomy and muscalature, so he will probably be shirtless, maybe with a bear-claw necklace or chestplate or something added. I think he will be posed with a spear in one hand, probably doing some type of dance? I am debating whether to try and animate him so that he may actually dance or just have him posed? I may just be looking for something easy….more fun rather than something complex!