Anyone Ever Tried Sculpting or Woodcarving?

Cafe Society
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Not sure if this should be in Cafe (since it’s about art) or IMHO (because I’m asking for opinions). If I’ve chosen wrong, would a mod please move it, with my apologies.

I have a talent for detail work. Actually, it’s what I do for a living-- I clean artifacts in a museum and it can take a really, really long time to do correctly.

I also have some unused creative energy and I’ve been thinking about crafts, art projects, building and the like. My boss at work, who is a woodcrafter in his spare time, suggested I might try carving. Another person said I might enjoy scultping, and that sounded really appealing.

I don’t know much about the mechanics of it, so I thought the best way to start this sort of thing would be to buy a block of clay at the local craft store and try sculpting it with knives and tools I have around the house. (Don’t want to invest much if I turn out not to like it.) Is that a good set up? Maybe make something like a little bird and see how it turns out?

And here’s the part where I know I’m probably an idiot: it feels like it would be easy. In my mind, I can trace the contours of an object-- let’s say my dog’s head. I can see the slight indents and bumps of his face in my mind as clearly as if he sat before me. It seems a very simple matter to simply shave away enough clay until I have the same image I see in my mind. I’m sure you sculptors will say every moron thinks this until they actually start working.

Can anyone give some advice?

Seondly: carving. Besides the fact that I’ll probably slice open all of my fingers, it sounds kinda fun, too. Now, here’s the idiot part: I don’t want to spend money on a hobby until I think I’ll like it, so I don’t want to go out and buy an expensive piece of hardwood. Hubby has some pine lumber in the garage. Is there any way of practicing on something like that to see if it’s something I’d enjoy doing? What sort of cutting tool would you recommend?

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Carving: work slow, very slow. Chip off tiny pieces at a time. Better to use less force than more with the knife - you can always take off more wood but you can never put more wood on!! If doing fine work with a chisel, tap very lightly. Just take your time, there’s no hurry. Resist the temptation to rush to get it to look the way you want.

If you’re not a purist, get a Dremel tool. It’s very useful. As before, work lightly and slowly with it.

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As for types of wood, start out on Basswood. You can get good sized blocks of it at any hardware or craft store for decent prices.

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I think I’d rather stick to the by-hand methods. I was thinking of getting some sort of knife that’d be strong and sharp enough to cut, but fine enough to do detail work.

5

This isn’t exactly what you’re looking for, but you might want to look into needle felting, aka felt sculpting. You can make all sorts of weird dolls and figures and even practical items through plain felting. All you really need are some felting needles and some fiber. Well, and hot water and soap in some cases, but I hope that’s something you have in the house. If you’re into “domestic arts,” then you might want to look at something like this.

With clay, however, if you want to make anything that’s going to be fired, you don’t want anything to be thicker than half-an-inch, because it will explode in the kiln because of steam. If you have anything you want thicker than that, then it needs to be hollow on the inside with some opening for the steam to escape.

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If you want to just play around with clay to see how you like it, try something like Sculpey. It’s pretty versatile, you can mold it or carve it and it might give you a feel for working with actual clay. It may not be exactly the same but it’s similar and possibly easier to work with. Plus if you want to keep your creations you can just bake them in the oven, you don’t need to fire them in a kiln.

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I have sculpted/carved many items. Some art some not so much.

The point is it really is all about the process. Not trying to sound arty farty or anything but you really have to like it. Sculpting/carving is a process that takes a very long time.

I can whack out 10 tiki sculptures in a day with a belt sander and a dremel, they all would look fine on a souveneer store shelf. But that aint art.

My best piece was a wood carving of a ficticious Hawaiian god named Kane Oklehau. It was to be a gift for a friend who moved to California. It started as a koa log I recovered from a lightning strike. I carved the entire piece while drinking whiskey in the mountains. Something we used to do together before he took the job that moved him there.

I sat for hours at a time when I had the chance to go camping cutting wood with nothing but a screwdriver and a hammer he had loned me and I didn’t return.

Two years later I was finished. It had some serious flaws, mainly because a screwdriver is not a chisel no matter how sharp you make it.

Last I heard from him it is still on dispay in his living room.

Point is, dont invest in an expensive set of tools, just start cutting. A screwdriver can be fashioned into a suitable gouge.

Clay, as suggested, is good as you can move it back if it dont look right.

For sculpting, I would suggest plaster of paris, poured into a milk carton. Cheap and easy to cut. A cheap set of relief chisels from the dollar store would be more than adequate.

Wax is nice too, easy to shape and has the added bonus that you can cast it in pyro plaster, melt it out and pour pewter into the void.

If you start with wood I would suggest driftwood if you can find it. Get a sharp knife. Balsa handles in much the same way. Alternatively go out and find a downed tree and saw a hunk out. I wouldn’t recomend the screwdriver/gouge on an expensive chunk of wood untill you get a good feel for grain. On an old log, good way to cut your teeth.

Oop almost forgot, left over rib bones (beef) make a really cool faux ivory. Saw them down the horizontal axis an sand out the marrow. Bleach for a week.

Mostly I think you woud enjoy it. I too can shape something out of clay much easier than I could draw it. Your ability to envision the tactile is in my opinion a required talent for a sculptor.

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Some excellent advice here. Years ago I did a lot of wood sculpture, starting with just knives and small chisels, then bought a few gouges, etc.

Keep all tools really sharp.

Final suggestion: no matter what medium you use, as you work, keep turning the work around and around. All good sculpture must look equally fine from any angle. Unless, of course, you’re doing a bas relief. :smiley:

Have fun.

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Don’t neglect to wedge the clay if you intend to fire it and have it come out intact. Wedging gets the air bubbles out, so that the project doesn’t explode in the kiln. :wink: You need to wedge the clay whether you are putting it on the wheel, making pinch pots, or making a sculpture.

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Well, I have updated my knowledge base today! One of my art teachers, who was a professional potter, emphasized that the clay needed to be wedged, not only to get it to the right consistency, but because if you had air bubbles it would make the project explode. (The job he held before teaching art to High Schoolers was in a Colorado pottery, where every pot had to be stringently near perfectly identical. He said it was killing him to keep it up, meeting the quota of pots and not being able to be creative.) The page I linked says that this is a myth, but still emphasizes that clay needs wedging to make it an even consistency, because if the clay is too moist it will explode in the kiln. (Makes sense, expanding steam = boom.)

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If you go with wood, do not start with pine. It’s just too soft, and therefore too easy to cut more than you want. Remember, nobody ever ruined a piece by cutting too little. Especially for a beginner, and especially since you’re patient, the harder, the better.

For tools, I usually use some sort of saw for a rough outline, but for all the detail work, I just use my trusty old Swiss army knife. What tool you use isn’t actually all that important. What is important is, first, that you keep it well-sharpened. Every couple of minutes while you’re working, you’ll need to re-sharpen. You can extend this a bit by doing work that uses different parts of the blade, but when in doubt, sharpen some more. Second, it’ll take some time to get used to your tools. So try to stick with the same ones, whatever they are.

And the other thing to learn in woodcarving is that you need to pay attention to the grain. This influences both the shapes you can make, and how you make them. If you have any long, narrow parts, try to align those with the grain as closely as possible. Against the grain is fragile, but with the grain is strong. And once you’ve decided what shapes go where, it’s also important to carve them in the right direction: If you’re ever cutting at an angle (as you almost always will be), you want to be moving your knife into the grain, rather than out of it. For instance, it’s fairly easy to whittle a sharp point onto the end of a stick, if you move the knife from the wide part towards the narrow part. Try to go the other way, though, and you’ll probably split the stick. Unless you’re ambidextrous or have an extra pair of eyes in your lap, you’ll occasionally encounter a situation where this isn’t possible; the next best is to go sideways. If even that isn’t possible, then make absolutely sure that your knife is as sharp as possible, go extra slowly, and have a plan for if you screw it up anyway.

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My gf sculpts in stone from time to time. In art school, her sculpting class played around with blocks of plaster. They’d mix up a big batch and pour it in a square mold (cardboard maybe?). After it set up, they could use normal sculpting tools on it. In that form, it’s pretty easy to carve, but seems fragile to me. She did some work in soapstone that turned out well. It’s still very easy to carve, holds details well enough and looks nice when polished up.

Grab a notepad and take a day trip to either a library or a bookstore. There are tons of books out there to get you going in the right direction. She never fails to find a sculpting book at Boarders to curl up with when ever we go.

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For quite a few years, I sculpted alabaster. It was very gratifying but the muse, she is fickle and I only cut stone when moved.

You can get a small odd-shaped chunk from a local stone yard or landscaper who uses alabaster hunks for decorative landscaping. A few grinders and whatnot that you can chuck into a hand drill, or a few chisels if you chose to chisel instead of grinding and you are set. A few thoughts.

  1. Grind, don’t chisel. Alabaster is shot through with crystalline and is likely to fracture while being chiselled. I’ve done it. About 6 months into a large piece, I was chiselling and it cracked clean in half. Broke my heart.

  2. Use a breathing filtered mask.

  3. Use eye protection.

  4. Read up on how to finish the stone. It’s easy and inexpensive to grind it smooth, then sand with emery cloth, then polish. Enjoy !

Cartooniverse

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I love working with clay. I’ve found one principle extremely helpful for me.

Ish. I can never never get a piece to look exactly the way I want. But, when I stopped trying to get an exact match of my mental image and decided I should just try to get the piece to look ‘exactly like that’ ish, things went well. The feel and the important features all came out great. People still laughed and cringed as appropriate.

I also found that realism is not for me. Any of my attempts at it looks like it was done by a third grader. But, when I tried impressionism, things went very well. I cannot make a realistic wolf. But, I can make a great ‘big scary dog monster with sharp teeth that lives in the closet’.

Clay is forgiving. Most of the time, if you put too much on, or take too much off, or do a detail badly, you can fix it. You can’t use slip and scoring to glue plaster or stone back together.

I’ve been thinking of getting into woodcarving for a long time.

After clicking the link, I’ll be taking up needle felting. I already do work with felt as it is cheap, available in many colors, does not tear easily, and is machine washable. All that makes it perfect for making little stuffed animals. I’ve made my niece a SpongeBob, a Patrick, and am working on a Mr Krabs.

15

I did soap carving once, in art class.

Mind you, the face I was doing looked more like a squashed bean with odd bits of fungus stuck on, but it was a real, genuine soap carving…

:slight_smile:

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I think I’ll try clay sculpting. From what you guys have said, it sounds like the easiest and least expensive option for me. Plus, I still have that little-kid joy of playing with squishy stuff.

How quickly does the clay harden? Can I leave it out overnight without covering it and expect to be able to work with it the next evening?

Anyone know of a good website which gives clay sculpting tips?

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Clay usually takes a few days to harden. It goes from soft, to leather-hard, to mostly dry, to dry.

If you do not want a piece to harden, you can wrap it in a damp papertowel and cover it with a plastic bag. Soft and leather hard clay will soften with water. Wetting mostly dry or dry clay erodes bits off the piece. If you are extremely careful, the drying process can be accelerated by using a hair dryer.

OTTOMH, most of the tools in the last clay kit I bought can be replaced by things in your kitchen without much loss.

Remember that unless the clay you use specifically says it can be fired in the average oven, you will need to take it to a kiln. If you are just starting out, do not buy your own kiln. Opening the kiln too quickly, or removing the pieces too quickly will result in pieces cracking or falling apart.

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I’ve done a (very) little stone carving. I really love stone sculpture, so I wanted to try it.

In college, I took two sculpture classes, and in the second one, I tried carving stone. I bought a hammer and a couple tools, got a chunk of limestone from a quarry in Maine (I just called them up and said, “can I come by and take a piece of limestone”), and carved it. I really enjoyed it, and spent a lot of time on it, and wound up with a pretty funny looking sculpture.

It’s sitting in one of my mom’s flowerbeds.

About 5 years ago, I got a chunk of marble, and started carving it in my basement. But, marble is HARD. Way harder than limestone. It was making a ton of noise, and I live in a rowhouse, so I’ve put that pursuit aside for now.

Oh, and I have another chunk of limestone at home that I got from a guy who makes tombstones. I just went in and said, “you got any scrap limestone around I could haul off?” That’s just sitting around right now, too.

You really need a detached house, or a dedicated studio if you want to carve stone.

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Wood carving and sculpting are both subtractive processes; you start with a big chunk and whittle it down.

Perhaps an additive process might suit you better, where you take a blob and add more blobs and then blend them together to get your final shape. There are any number of sites on the Web that deal with sculpting using Sculpey (oven bake it to harden) or two-part epoxy putties. Even I, an engineer, with no artistic skill whatsoever, can make a fairly decent looking figure using epoxy putty. Try a Google search under “garage kit”.

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Just before my dad retired, he took advantage of his job’s education allowance to take a course at the local community college in “Spanish colonial furniture making”. He loved it, and he’s been building all kinds of great stuff ever since. You could always look into something like that.

I understand that his primary tools are special chisels, which he said cost a fair penny, so you may want to choose your purchases wisely until you figure out if it’s what you really want to do. He does say that the hand-carving and detail work is his favorite part of furniture making, although it takes the longest.

If you want, I can take pictures of the chest he made for my wife when I get home this evening.