To blog or not to blog

Since starting out its always been a battle with me over spending time to write and promote my work or to just create. At times the desire to make has overridden the need to promote.

I have been making and most of the work I've been posting on Facebook and twitter with Instagram as well.

With all those avenues the blog has suffered somewhat. I'm fond of my blog as its where I started telling the world about Woodwose Carving, but that said I don't have the time to keep it going along with all the others.

If your a subscriber to this blog I hope you'll also go and find me through the other routes

Facebook - 'Woodwose Carving And Crafts' page
Twitter - @woodwosecarving
Instagram Woodwose

And of course the website where you can buy one of the carvings

www.woodwosecarving.co.uk

Watch out for the re-emergence of the Folksy account for more of the craft work I do, wands, pencils etc.

http://folksy.com/shops/WoodwoseCarving

Here is a flavour of some of the work I've been doing since April when I last posted on the blog. I hope you enjoy what Ive been doing.

I've carved miniature skulls

Drift wood spoons

Traditional carvings - I still enjoy these the most

Pendents

Large drift wood Woodwose. The one above is carved into a piece of drift wood thats over 3 ft in length

Hand carved wooden bowls

A carved wooden soil dibber

And another penknife conversion.

So as you can see I've been busy, these are not all the carvings I've done either. You can see the full range of my work through the social media accounts I've listed above.

So what now.

Well the blog will stay, albeit allot quieter than usual but every so often I will return to post about this and that.

Thank you for following me on my blog over the years.

~ Dave ~

FREE CARVING

April 15th

Today I will be holding a prize draw for one lucky entrant to win a hand carved bird skull.

It's about 2.5 inches long and 1 inch in diameter carved in Ash and coated in oil.

You can join in for a chance to win by coming to the FaceBook Page for Woodwose Carving

I will submit a post with a picture of the carving to be won detailing how to enter, with timescales etc. I'm happy to post worldwide so don't let a few thousand miles stop you entering.

The draw is for one of these carvings

See you on FB later today and good luck.

Regards

~ Dave ~

Arthurian legends in beech

Many of us have a fascination with the legend of Arthur Pendragon, Merlin and Lancelot. It's a story thats been told many times and in many different ways over the centuries. My preferred take on the legend is that Arthur was a warlord during the period directly after the withdrawal of Roman soldiers from Britain.

This would have made him a Celt who spoke something akin to what we now know as Welsh, albeit with differences that centuries bring to language.

Merlin would have been a Druid and would have been the centre point of the Celtic religious structure.

Lancelot would have been a warrior of renown and a fearsome man. These were brutal times.

What they would not have been is plate armour wearing, clean shaven, sophisticated aristocrats living in stone castles and jousting for fun in tournaments. That came with the Normans centuries later. These characters would have been living a feudal tribal existence trying to fill the vacuum left by Rome and fending off a new invader the Saxons, but importantly for the religion of the Britons also fending off the encroaching Christianity bought over in the later stages of the Roman occupation.

This carving represents that picture of tribal, pagan times

Done in Found Beech and not finished with any oils or coatings. I'm experimenting with leaving the carving in a raw just finished state.

Enough words here is the carving

I hope you like this collection of carvings

As always your comments allow me to gauge if I'm getting this right

Regards

~ Dave ~

Aquarium Root Carving

I have recently decommissioned my aquarium and it left me with lots of bits and pieces. I sold the tank and all the bits and bobs that you collect when you have a tank.

I was left with one piece of aquarium root that didn't sell - which I'm so pleased about now.

I decided to carve it.

This is one of the pictures taken to advertise on the online auction site.

Surprisingly as its a root from a tropical tree that spends most of its time in the water, and after I brought it it spent years in my tank, it was surprisingly hard but intriguingly easy to carve.

The shape of it made for a very interesting piece that looks good from all angles

The detail I've kept deliberately simple - no eye detail for example - not because the wood wouldn't allow such detail but because the wood itself is so complex to look at.

It's swirls and curves add a certain complexity that deserved a less complex carving.

The previous photo is of the back, which is naturally sculpted and looks as good as the front with the carving on it.

Deciding if to leave it unfinished or with a coat of oil was quite a challenge. In the end I decided that a coat of oil would bring out the colour that is seen in the wood when emerged in the fish tank. So the piece has a coat of vegetable oil and I feel looks the better for it.

The last photo giving you a sense of the scale and size of it. A piece that would last decades in the elements of the garden or a lifetime in the house.

This and other carvings will be for sale on the website

Www.Woodwosecarving.co.uk

Your comments as always are most welcome.

Regards

~ Dave ~

Wind Fall Found Wood Woodwose

It's surprising but when I started the blog I would publish a post on each carving with a range of pictures. Now I tend to get a range of carvings together and post at the same time.

This post while short will have two carvings featured. Both are found wood carvings, both are beechwood and both come from the same branch that was part of a big windfall.

This piece of wood jumped out at me as I walked past. The way the bark is retreating from the heartwood made me see a hood. The heartwood on these branches is already dead or dying which is why the bark behaves in this way. It may have been from some damage done to the bark or a parasite that burrowed in.

Beech when harvested for timber is light and almost white, well beige. These pieces are red and brown and rich in colour. That's the decomposition of the wood causing it to colour in the most beautiful way.

The branch would have been dying back while on the tree so sap would not have been running into it. The wood will have dried to a point that made it brittle, compared to the flexibility of green wood, and in high winds it would have snapped off and fell to the floor.

There it would lay in the rain and snow and damp with moisture soaking into the wood. This type of moisture isn't like the internal sap filling living wood with life, this is water invading dead or dying wood. This causes the wood to start to rot and this is what changes the colour into what is a rich and beautiful colour.

The art is to find the wood at the right time; it's been decomposing for a while but not so long that the timber has lost its structure and hardness. Wood thats overly decomposed will crumble and becomes very sponge like.

If caught right decomposing wood has its strength and structure to carve, but has a beautiful colour to it. Very different from the colour we are all used to.

I've not used any stain or artificial colour on these. This is the natural colour in the wood at the time of carving. Much like an apple goes brown and then eventually black, so does wood.

In fact wind fall in the forest can become very like drift wood in texture, colour and characteristics. Drift wood looks different because the sea has eroded the softer parts of the wood.

Because the wood is wet from lying on the floor of the forest and has rain, dew and snow soaking in, bearing in mind its trying to become sponge like as it decomposes, it tends to split as it drys out as I'm carving and after I've carved it. I love the look of split wood in the carvings and feel it adds to the overall look.

These carvings look old, weathered and anciently wise.

I am glad that they have been saved from rotting into the forest floor and that they will go on from what most see as useless pieces of wind fall into a lovely piece of sculpture.

Your thoughts as always are welcome.

Regards

Dave