Driftwood Carving

After collecting drift wood from Pembrokeshire and drying it out in the conservatory and airing cupboard this is the first piece carved.

It stands 105cm tall and is 12cm wide.

Finished in Danish oil its a wall hanging or ground standing piece for the garden.

The wood is still quite solid and carving was a pleasure.

There is something magical about taking a piece of drift wood and carving something into it. Mostly to do with my love of both wood and the beach especially the beaches in Pembrokeshire.


This piece will be available soon to buy through the website. A great gift for someone to place in their garden or home.

www.woodwosecarving.co.uk

Comments as always are welcome

Regards Dave

New Woodwose Carving Website

Hi

For those who follow me just here and not on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or now Pinterest, you are the first to get the news upfront on the website.

THE WEBSITE IS LIVE

www.woodwosecarving.co.uk

The link through the logo on the right hand side will take you directly to the new website to view the items for sale.

Thanks go to Michelle (my wife, business manager and technical consultant) who has done all the hard work in getting the website up and running with shopping basket and all that selling online entails. Until you delve into this area its not clear how much there is to do.

I started carving for fun in 2008 and produced items like the one above without thinking about marketing or selling my carvings.

Four years later and things are very different. Over the years I've been asked how my carvings can be purchased and over the period I have had a Folksy shop and sold through local markets and craft fairs.

Now in 2013 Woodwose Carving has taken another turn and become an online shop.

Selling everything from carvings of Woodwose, Kuksa, walking sticks and more the website will also allow me to sell carving tools and other carving items.

We are considering selling other people's carvings as well, people like myself who may not have thought about how or where to sell and who may not have the where withal to set up a website. If you or anyone you know is interested get them to contact me.

Take a look at let me know what you think. I'm very pleased and see this as another chapter in Woodwose Carvings evolution.

Regards

~ Dave ~

A Crowd Of Sphearoblasts

This post will show the latest sphearoblast grouping. Some of these carvings were carved in 2012 and the rest in 2013. There are 22 separate sphearoblast carvings joined together to make a single piece.

Each carved face is different and takes about an hour to an hour and a half to complete. So this piece while small actually has taken over 24 hours to carve and finish.

The carving in its entirity is 10cm wide by 8cm tall. It curves to make it free standing.

Finished in vegetable oil - many more coats to apply to get the old look patena I'm looking for.

Shown along side of the other two sphearoblast groupings carved last year. All will be for sale on the web site very soon.

Your comments are as always welcome

Regards

~ Dave ~

Inspiration

I've not posted for a while on the blog, due mainly to not having the time, I'd rather be carving or simply just because I was running the risk of posting the same old post time after time.

I've been posting more and more carvings as they are produced on the Facebook page Woodwose Carving and Crafts simply because its quicker and takes moments to upload a photo with just a single line or a couple of words. Blogging can be a bit of a chore for me especially as I am not a practiced wordsmith.

Anyway. I decided that 2013 in line with the new Woodwose Carving website (Watch this space), where the discerning Woodwose fan can load their shopping trolly up with carvings, I would use the blog to not only post pictures of my carvings but of other carvings and sculpture that inspires me to get better in my craft.

During 2012 I started a Pinterest account off and I'm constantly finding images on there that are truly inspirational.

So I thought I would kick start 2013 with images of things that I haven't carved but that I would love to have the skill to do. Where possible I will credit the carving so you can go see for yourself. Unfortunately that's not always possible but whatever happens at no point will I deliberately pass off anyone else's work as my own.

If you recognise a carving I would ask that you post a comment crediting the work and a link for future readers.

This old guy was for sale at a fair or show and I captured him on my phone. Don't know the artist but its likely that is was imported from abroad. Unfortunately the carver was probably paid pennies to create it for the western market.

I love his look

A beautiful carving image that I found on Pinterest but with no accreditation to the carver. It's a beautiful piece and a picture I look at often. I have since discovered its carved by Ian Norbury www.iannorbury.com

An image I got from a random Google image search back in 2008 when I started looking for inspiration. It's not carved but looks cast. It's a beautiful piece.

This image started it all off in 2008. I came across this image and decided I wanted to try to create something like this, so I picked up a piece of wood and started carving. Now I wonder what on earth I did with my time of an evening when I didn't carve.

All of these photos again were taken from the Internet and I used them as tools, inspiration, training aids to help me carve features. I download images just for one particular aspect of detail like the nose or eye or how a wrinkle is carved. For many its how the pupil has been depicted and more recently the hair.

This one is a Russian carving and a carving I want to see in the flesh so to speak. I just love the feel of this one....... It's almost that the carver hints at aspects of the carving making it more detailed



This is a favourite of mine.

All carvings that I've spent time exploring technically to try to improve my skills through imitation before adapting a style to fit how I want to carve.

Technically this carving is just superb. I look at this and it reminds me of a stone sculpture of the Veiled Virgin I saw in the flesh at Chatsworth House of a face under a veil and my goodness I would swear I could see the face through the veil.

This like the Veiled Virgin at Chatsworth has a brilliance that I can only aspire to have.

This is the stone sculpture of the veiled Vestal Virgin at Chatsworth. That is no cloth over the face that is marble, carved marble? Stunning

The monk is a carving from a florentine door.

I love his nose

And other carvings offer a chance to explore texture and shape

I do have a fondness for Scandinavian, Norse carvings, imagery and runes.

Some of my favourite pieces at the moment belong to a talented bone carver http://www.bonecarver.com I recommend you go look at what he does. Here are a few of my favourite pieces for his website.

I hope you have enjoyed a brief look into what I look at in-between carving my own work. The final images are my carvings. Two that are a year or so old and the last more recent. They are ones that I am pleased to display alongside of these other artists.

Your comments are as always welcome

~ Dave ~

THE MADE MARKET

Today was our first market for woodwose carving. The Made Market brings together crafts people to sell their hand made items.

Its a great opportunity for crafts people to get their items in front of paying customers.

This is the table lay out and the carver (me)

We had a range of stock with walking sticks to small rustic elves on sale.

Starting at 11am and finishing at 3pm we managed to sell more than enough to cover costs, so all in all a good day.

The challenge is to calculate the true income from the day. If we took into account the time taken to make the items and the time at the market I guess you would hang up your tools and not bother.

The local press were there and took a couple of photos so I may get in the paper. Publicity is what could make a difference too.

Im happy with the response from the folk of Gloucester and its encouraging that people like what I do.

We will now proceed with the website and increase our avenues for sales so watch this space for the web address.

Thanks has to go to Michelle who has spent time planning for today. Tshirts, professional marketing banners, table decorations and advice on layout and stock. its great to have such support and belief in my craft.

regards

~ Dave ~

Traveling Woodwose - multiple walking sticks.

This is the first post in a while. I've been busy carving and working. Watch this space for the up and coming website with a shopping basket facility.

I have a number of items ready to be blogged but thought I'd start with the range of walking sticks carved ready for my first stall at the Gloucestershire Made Market this December. Always a challenge to make sure you have enough stock when setting up a stall.

I've started carving the eyes completely hollow rather than using the stone carvers trick of a Hole in the formed eye. It's working for the smaller Woodwose on the sticks and I will see how it looks on a larger carving soon.

These three sticks are hiking sticks oiled with Tung oil and made from Hazel. Each has a different style Woodwose just below the handle area.

Not a great photo of the sticks together but shows the handles curving forward. A design for the hiking stick that ergonomically allows for more pressure to be applied to the stick thus assisting the walker up-hill particularly. The curves are all natural and the sticks harvested specifically for the curve.

The next three photos show a carving doodle undertaken as part of a commission to carve a Daemon into a twisted Ash staff. The idea being that I carve a range of Daemons, as there are a range of styles, so that the customer can decide the look and type (over a pint in the local hostelry). The doodle itself is carved in birch and oiled.

The next photo is the completed Ash staff carving.

The client chose the root and branch looking Daemon. The practice of carving a doodle stick paying off as this wasn't the original design idea discussed at our first meeting.

I haven't a full size picture but the staff itself is just under six foot tall.

I did take a range of photos as I went through the carving process. If you follow my Facebook account (Woodwose)I have posted a picture there already.

The following pictures take you from plank to finished carving.

So ends the post on the recent walking stick carvings.

Aware oiled with Tung oil and the three Hazel sticks are finished with a metal ferrule on the base. The commission is going to have a hand made Iron nail inserted to protect the tip.

Your comments are as always welcome and appreciated.

Regards

~ Dave ~