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Re: African Mask Low Relief Carving
Step 10: Working in levels in relief carvings
Irish_030.jpg
Irish_levels01.jpg
Irish_levels02.jpg
Irish_levels03.jpg
Before I start the level work on the face I want to take a moment and discuss the idea of levels in a relief carving.
If you are an intermediate or advanced carver you may now need to use levels as by this time you are thinking and seeing line art patterns in dimension. However, if you are just starting relief carving establishing levels in your pattern then working them through your carving simplifies the idea of dimension in a "flat" work.
Whether you are working a low relief carving or high relief, a complicated landscape or a simple cameo design every pattern has a background, middle ground and foreground area to it.
The background contains those elements that lie behind everything else in the design. The mid-ground has some elements behind it but it lies behind the foreground. The foreground contains those elements that lie at the front of the design with no other element overlying. I often add to these three a sky level. This is the background area that surrounds the design - it's the very area that I have just carved away from the board.
Example: Let's say we have a simple landscape pattern that shows a picture of a barn complex settled in front of a small mountain range and pine tree line. In the yard beside the barn is a series of fences fields. The barn has a driveway that leads to the road where a mail box stands.
In this sample the mountains and tree line would be my background, all of these elements lie behind the barn, the fences, the drive and the mail box. The barn complex, fields and fences are my middle ground. They lie in front of the mountains but have elements - the drive and mail box - in front of them. The driveway and mail box become my foreground area, they are the closest elements to me.
The sky area of this sample is the actual sky and clouds that would be in the far distance behind the mountains.
I now have three levels - the mountain area, the barn area, the mail box area - that will have the detail carving plus I have the deepest area of the pattern, the sky area, that will have just a small bit of detailing for the clouds.
I number my levels from the foreground to the background with #1 being the highest and in our sample for this discussion #3 the lowest and the sky level marked as "sky".
During the rough out stage of carving I can drop an entire levels area to one depth without regard to the elements that it contains. I can drop the sky area to my deepest carving point, then the background level to a little higher depth, my middle ground area runs around the center point of the carving with my foreground area usually left uncarved.
This makes the early rough out very easy and insures that every element within a level is down to the same starting depth in the work.
As I begin shaping each level and establishing the different elements within it I can redivide each level. In our sample the background level contains some mountains that are in the far distance, some mountains in the near distance, then there is a line of trees in front of those mountains with pines in the foreground.
By the time I am finished the shaping stage you will nolonger be able to see the original levels rough out work yet every element in the pattern will be at it's correct depth in relationship to every other element.
I divide my designs into an odd number of levels - 3, 5, 7. For a complex landscape I will ususally use only three levels knowing that I will subdivide later.
For our low relief pattern it is just as easy to do the sub-division right at the start. This is why our design is marked with eight.
Susan
Step 10: Working in levels in relief carvings
Irish_030.jpg
Irish_levels01.jpg
Irish_levels02.jpg
Irish_levels03.jpg
Before I start the level work on the face I want to take a moment and discuss the idea of levels in a relief carving.
If you are an intermediate or advanced carver you may now need to use levels as by this time you are thinking and seeing line art patterns in dimension. However, if you are just starting relief carving establishing levels in your pattern then working them through your carving simplifies the idea of dimension in a "flat" work.
Whether you are working a low relief carving or high relief, a complicated landscape or a simple cameo design every pattern has a background, middle ground and foreground area to it.
The background contains those elements that lie behind everything else in the design. The mid-ground has some elements behind it but it lies behind the foreground. The foreground contains those elements that lie at the front of the design with no other element overlying. I often add to these three a sky level. This is the background area that surrounds the design - it's the very area that I have just carved away from the board.
Example: Let's say we have a simple landscape pattern that shows a picture of a barn complex settled in front of a small mountain range and pine tree line. In the yard beside the barn is a series of fences fields. The barn has a driveway that leads to the road where a mail box stands.
In this sample the mountains and tree line would be my background, all of these elements lie behind the barn, the fences, the drive and the mail box. The barn complex, fields and fences are my middle ground. They lie in front of the mountains but have elements - the drive and mail box - in front of them. The driveway and mail box become my foreground area, they are the closest elements to me.
The sky area of this sample is the actual sky and clouds that would be in the far distance behind the mountains.
I now have three levels - the mountain area, the barn area, the mail box area - that will have the detail carving plus I have the deepest area of the pattern, the sky area, that will have just a small bit of detailing for the clouds.
I number my levels from the foreground to the background with #1 being the highest and in our sample for this discussion #3 the lowest and the sky level marked as "sky".
During the rough out stage of carving I can drop an entire levels area to one depth without regard to the elements that it contains. I can drop the sky area to my deepest carving point, then the background level to a little higher depth, my middle ground area runs around the center point of the carving with my foreground area usually left uncarved.
This makes the early rough out very easy and insures that every element within a level is down to the same starting depth in the work.
As I begin shaping each level and establishing the different elements within it I can redivide each level. In our sample the background level contains some mountains that are in the far distance, some mountains in the near distance, then there is a line of trees in front of those mountains with pines in the foreground.
By the time I am finished the shaping stage you will nolonger be able to see the original levels rough out work yet every element in the pattern will be at it's correct depth in relationship to every other element.
I divide my designs into an odd number of levels - 3, 5, 7. For a complex landscape I will ususally use only three levels knowing that I will subdivide later.
For our low relief pattern it is just as easy to do the sub-division right at the start. This is why our design is marked with eight.
Susan
Just kidding--you know we fly there now to save time and wear and tear!
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