New Year(s) carving

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Awesome, Mike! Great job! My knife making has only been putting someone else's blades...Shipley, Deepwoods Ventures...into my own handle!

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Great job!...

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Di...your work is simply breathtaking!!!!

What did you use to carve that?...

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Great job! I took my very first carving class from Mike! Love his patterns and the simplicity of his carvings. His mantra is, 'Give your carvings enough detail to make it interesting, but keep it simple enough to make it fun!

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Here is a carving I did using BLO first...I painted the eyes and teeth first, then coated it in BLO, let dry for 72 hours and then cams back with the hair color and color of the clothes. I had no problem with the water thinned acrylics sticking to the wood.

The skin tone is BLO only on...

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Great carving, and great paint job!!!

I started dipping my carvings in BLO and then painting with thinned acrylics. I really like the look. I learned this from caricature carver Roger Stegall in his class I took a year ago.

I then finish with clear Minwax 209 stain. It...

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Spend some time looking into and carving different things. When I figured out I wanted to carve seriously in 1997, I thought I wanted to carve birds...after picking up Jack Price' book on carving small caricatures and trying those, I was hooked!

Doug Linker has his own method, and I love...

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Randy...it is quite fun to see what kind of creation you can make from the bark pieces! I can offer some suggestions for newbies...bark is quite dirty.

I have a separate set of 'bark carving tools'...re-purposed sturdy kitchen paring knives sharpened to a flat bevel, other palm tools,...

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Good for the Dawgs! Glad to see that someone other than 'Bama can win...

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#2 pencil for me...if I can't erase it off the wood, I carve it off. I use a white fabric marker when carving bark. If it doesn't get carved off, I can use a nylon brush and get it off the bark...

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Very cool! Love the carving and the paint job!

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A small round stylus...you can get them at most craft stores. I picked mine up at Hobby Lobby. If you look close at the door inset, I textured the bark with the same stylus. Just poked holes over and over to get the texture.

If you ask at the craft store, they usually don't know what you...

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That is great!

I found a book by the artist, Christopher Hart, at Michael's Craft store called Figure it Out.

He goes into a great deal on motion, head tilts, etc., and if one can incorporate his ideas into drawings used to make blanks of caricatures, it would take the mystery...

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I was planning on watching some good college football on New Year's Eve as well as New Year's Day...unfortunately, Cox Communications was out in our neighborhood, so all I could do was watch DVR'd Hallmark movies...not all bad, but not what I wanted to do! Along with cable being out, our internet was...