2011 in review
01 Jan 2012 2 Comments
in offtopic
a happy new year to all our readers ! this was a great year, and as i love these stats provided from wordpress (thank you wordpress 
), i like to share them. they did a miracle to make the stats fun to look ! enjoy !
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 42,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 16 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
memorial carving
28 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in woodcarving
i just finished this carving i made as a memorial piece for september 11. …
it is again a carving i made with the help of a digital maquette :
of which i printed out several views, to have something for measureing the basic proportions. i did not intend to copy the digital model, but used it as a mean to visualize my idea, and get the roughing out easier done… unfortunuately i could not get fotos that not show so much shine. the carving is waxed, and has some sheen, but is not that shiny as on the fotos…
the title of the piece is “remember”
constanza bonarelli
25 Jun 2011 Leave a Comment
in offtopic, woodcarving Tags: bernini, bust, portrait, sculpture, zbrush
i know this is not wood carving, but still it is about my passion of portraits… since a while i am learning digital sculpting, i want use it as a tool to visualise projects for carving. in deed, i have such a project in the work right now, i will share soon… this digital sculpting, is closely mimicking sculpting with real clay, and i find it very useful to learn forms… for today, i want share what i did the last nights, and invite you to visit my zbrush blog, where i showcase my digital sculpts created with zbrush.
i tried to recreate the marble bust of constanza bonarelli, carved by one of my favourite sculptors, bernini… i tried to be as close as i could on her face and expression, i was deliberately loose with her hair and blouse. for these i just wanted capture the essence, but not every detail as bernini has carved it…
acanthus leaf
02 May 2011 2 Comments
in woodcarving Tags: acanthus leaf, relief, woodcarving
acanthus leaves are always fun to carve, and this one was no exception. the design i used is a classical one, and i saw one version carved as pierced relief from mark. i liked his leaf, and so i made mine, only much smaller. this is only 18 x 12 cm and 1 cm deep. and, as it is so small, i did cut out everything just with a fretsaw. it looks like a lot of work, afterall there are more than 20 little openings to cut, but is was rather quick in fact.
so, here is an image how the journey began,,, glueing the drawing onto the wood, and then sawing away the background :
a note for ipad user
30 Apr 2011 Leave a Comment
i just received my ipad, and, of course, one of the first things i tried, is to see how our blog looks on the ipad … and, i was disappointed at first, since the “ipad view” is quite restricted, and you would miss a lot of the features i have put into the blog. but, you can still see the blog as you do see it on your mac or pc !!! simply scroll down on your ipad the whole page, until you find the button “standard view”. click that, and you see the blog as on a computer in all its glory, with all featues enabled
and, again by scrolling down to the page, by clicking the button “ipad site” you can view the blog in an ipad format, if you prefer, which has some features disabled…
portrait bust – part 7
14 Mar 2011 4 Comments
in woodcarving Tags: bust, portrait, sculpture, woodcarving
today, it just remains to share the fotos of the fnished carving i hope you enjoyed the sequel…. (please click thumbnails to enlarge)
wonderful book
07 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment
in woodcarving Tags: draw, learning to see
recently, i got a new book about learning to draw… and while i read that book, i realised how much it shows what we try to present here on the blog : namely that a good carving / a good drawing is determined by the big shapes, not the detail,,, and how to learn to see these … the book is
william l.maughan, the artist complete guide to drawing the head
the author introduces into drawing to the principles of chiaroscuro, what is masterfully applied by da vinci in his mona lisa, just to name a single example. and, as he does this, we can so well see how strongly forms develop, very early in the drawing process … the same is true for carving. a good carving has a strong foundation of basic forms…
check it out, its worth reading, with many drawings shown in four stages giving really a strong impression on how forms develop,,,and it helps thus for carving … there are also discussions on how to make good compositions, again his suggestions are valid for carving too … and the book fits well into our discussions learning to see and carve the form not the details
portrait bust – part 6
28 Feb 2011 2 Comments
in woodcarving Tags: bust, portrait, sculpture, woodcarving
the face is now essentially finished. might tweak it here and there, but all is in place, and might go this way…
today i started roughing out the hair. i will do a different hairstyle than in the cast model. hope it will look nice… so, the first step is to define the big shapes of how the strands fall. not too many, trying to keep them large, and nicely flowing… yes, it looks a big mess right now :
… but the mess is easily cleaned up, and already a little refinement of the strands shows how the hair will look… :
as you notice, i carve the ears together with the hair,,,i do this, since i want them interact, and so i need do them simultanously to get it right…
portrait bust – part 5
22 Feb 2011 Leave a Comment
in woodcarving Tags: bust, portrait, sculpture, woodcarving
the carving is coming along now. starts to build resemblance. today, i decided not to stick too close to the model, as i found i made mistakes in that. so, from now i use the model as a guide, and try to correct the errors of that in hope of obtaining a closer portrait… as you can see, i started to define the features, after i have settled down on the proportions of the big volumes. also, note, the features are still rough, as i prefer to keep the carving overall at about the same stage. i feel this way i can better judge how well the parts fit together. no single part can be correct alone, it all depends on the correct proportions betwee the single parts. so, thats what i am still focussing on. making it pretty and carving details will come at the very last step…
portrait bust – part 4
19 Feb 2011 2 Comments
in woodcarving Tags: bust, portrait, sculpture, woodcarving
finally i am able to pick up this carving again… i am still in the roughing out phase, but decided to carve all around, to get a better feeling for the proportions. he is still a little too “big”, as i need some wood to carve the smaller shapes. overall, i am happy how this stage looks, as i can see already some typical features, which hopefully will bring out a resonable portrait… so, here he is, now raised, as he is right now..
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