WOOD CARVING TUTORIAL: Beginner Beard Guy Whittle

1. LESSON 1 INTRODUCTION: Hi, my name is Adrian, like crap. I'm an editor and author and woodcarving. I love to have a YouTube channel called carving the cotton. I've also listed and interviewed other words partners for my channel. And I've tried other words like fast-food, cedar, and altered to name a few. Cottonwood bark is my all-time favorite. I collect them all along the rivers of Alberta in BC, in Canada. It's amazing what you can carve with a decent chunk. It's also amazing what you can carve from the smallest pieces. For this class. We'll use a small scrap piece of bark that I pulled off a bigger hump to make this beers guy. He has no eyes phosphate. So he's a great beginner would carve. For this class. All you really need is a sharp knife and a piece of work. There are a few other simple items that are helpful. A pencil, a small saw, a bit of carbon paper to transfer your pattern onto the wood. Would I recommend using for this project is cottonwood bark. Cottonwood poplar is a very common tree that is found across North America. Cottonwood bark often comes apart in layers and becomes perfect for doing little whittling, carving like this. When you can get a nice clean bit like that. If you don't have cottonwood trees growing in your part of the world, I would recommend buying some fast with from your local craft store or would specialty shop. Don't try and use something like oak or spruce, pine or even worse, walnut. All you'll do is frustrate yourself. It's too hard. And we'll make this to help. Really difficult. Come follow along. And don't be afraid to stop the video and take your time. Especially if you've never carved before. Go slow. Have fun, and be safe. 2. LESSON 2 BARK PREP & PATTERN: It can be really hard on your knives. You don't want to use your good carbonized sand and dirt. And here, it's almost impossible to get an all out. Procuring Clark found in the wild is often fast. These kinds of that link projects. I hunt for small chunks and flat pieces like this. I find them all along the river banks. When you have a picture, drawing or pattern to transfer onto what it's easiest to use carbon paper. You can also make a copy of your pattern and we would write on the moon, then carve the paper away. You can even draw the image brain onto the marker or pencil. There's no limit to the ideas you can carve almost any image you can think of. Make sure the pattern fits on the woods you've selected and hold the paper down while sliding the carbon paper underneath. Now, trace the beard guy pattern included in the class downloads. Without letting it move. You don't have to trace every detail when you're doing this stuff. You do need your key highlight points. And though, this guy can be as fluid depth and complication as you want, or a simple and straight forward into depth with some tools. Give them some hair texture. Guide. Let's have a peek. Before we let go here. Look underneath and made sure that we help with lines we want. 3. LESSON 3 ROUGHING OUT: Once you have a picture and drawing or a pattern transferred onto your wood, we wanted to take away the waste was the excess width. That would take a lot of extra time. A carving that if we might as well take what we can with a saw first. This also gives us a chance to have a look at the quality of the ones that we'll be working with. If you have a lot of splits and things like this happening, right in where you want a curve, then you might want to try and see if you find a better piece. This is a small Japanese hand saw that I bought at Leigh Valley in Canada. You can use any small hand saw to remove this excess wastes foot. If you have a scroll saw or a bandsaw, you may want to use that, especially for larger pieces. Now you have your rough though piece. Let's get more careful task of shaping. 4. LESSON 4 SHAPING: Now you can take a very sharp knife and start bringing, taking away the word freight to the line. Make sure your knife is sharp. Dull knife will frustrate you and it's actually dangerous. There is plenty of help online. Lots of videos, workbooks, and even workshops that you can take. It will teach you how to sharpen your blade, which you wanted to do here. Hold the piece firmly in your left hand. It's not a bad idea when you're a beginner to wear a glove on his hand. And then you're going to hold your knife. And we're going to do a poll cut. You're going to stabilize your thumb over here, but not up here because you could cut yourself. And you're just going to bring the knife along, shaving until we get down to the line. If it feels tough to pull like you saw there. Let's try a push cut in the same spot. Now, I'm using this hand, thumb to push the knife. And I'm keeping a very firm grip with the other hand. And I'm just pushing and twisting like this. Currently right now we're carving right on the end. This is called the end grain. And that's the most difficult part to work with. Once we get over here on the side, even at the spot where the Rob bark is, you'll see that it will feel much nicer as the blade passes through and it will carve much cleaner. Here we are back at the end grain. So the brains are running this way and they're all coming out at the end here. That's why it's called end grain. And it can sometimes be the hardest part. The car. When you're doing a push cut like this, make sure your finger is on the way. You don't want to come and take a PC or Nikola in hertz. Asked me how I know. We go around and finish this off, ticking away the waste wood until we're down to the line. And we have the shape of the piece. Don't try doing any detailing at this 0.1. Get your shape. Here. We want a bit of a ragged outline. So I'm taking small bets. Little swipes. Just like that swipe. Swipe. Not worrying too much about them being even or equal because we want the look of a hat. Down here, however, I would like a bit of a swoop. So again, I'm gonna do a poll cut and a longer. I'm just going to curl my blade like facts. And that's gonna give us a bit of a smoother bit here. The bottom, this is where a piece of the hat is ticked over and hanging LOW. So I'm going to leave a little bit extra meat there for us to play with. When we come back to this part. Let me show you a different mood right in here. We're going to do is push the blade in to one corner and then lift up and push the blade to the other. Along the other side. Push it in, pull it down to meet them. Now you end up with a nice defined ridge where that hat brim, go. Let's try it on the other side. And I'll do it so that you're the right way up, push down, and then push to that point. When you're pushing the blade into the woods like that. This is when if you're working with very small thin piece, it can go right into your hand. It really is a good idea when you're first starting out to have a glove on his hand and don't ever tried doing this in your lap. Let's try that again. Clean this up, push down, and push to that point, pole to that point. Let's do it back here so that everything matches up. And now we've got a hat for him to work with. Continue going around, cleaning up your side here. So here we can push in a little bit down like that and start taking some meat out. The side of his beard here. Especially where we've got some rough bark to take care of. Your piece firm. Hold your Blaine firm. Your blade firm. I choke right up on it. I use my thumb as an anchor. And then I bring this in a nice smooth cut that is the edge of our beard. Might leave this a bit rough in here to play with later. May have some tufts of hair sticking out onto that happen. Now I can come in down here and do a wash. Here. I'm going to try to go all the way to the corner. I'm just going to come down and meet that where it's still easy and safe to do so. And then I can eat away more on an angle and then bring it back and continue that line to the back of the piece. Take your time. Remove just a small amount of wood. And then coming to where you want to be and make the rest of it now, go ahead and we'll do the other side over here. I might put a couple of notches in here. Just remember where his feet are and where his beard ends. And then we'll go in here and finish this sign up to match. And we'll have the shape. So here I'm doing it backwards. There first. Push, pull, catch, push, cut. Just a little bit. Push. Claimed that. All right. This one's a little tricky, so I'm just going to use the very tip of my knife. I got to be careful or that full brain was gonna come away on me. There it is. It's going hopefully, I can keep a little bit. If there's one thing that's a bit frustrating about working with bark is that it is a little crumbly at times, but it's free. You don't have to hurt a live tree in order to carve it. It's like kind of like that. I'm going to leave some I'm going to leave some meat in here just because this is starting to flake way, we might need that for support. Okay, we still got some extra meat on this shoe here. I'm not going to worry about it right now. But we have our shape. I think this is where his beard meets his hair. From little n to there. Just to separate the two. There you go. Now we have this shape and we're ready to start adding some definition in detail. 5. LESSON 5 DETAILING: Okay, let's give this guy some details. I want to start with the hat. If you look at this example, the edges have been rounded. So the first thing we'll do is we'll take the edges, the corners off all the way round. Given a softer look, like a hat. You don't have to do the flop over part if you want to. Here's how it's done. Just cut carefully and slowly one way. And then turn the piece and come back at it from the other direction so that the cuts meat. When you pull that piece away, he gets a little indent. It makes it look like the hat has folded over. The more practice you get, the better you're able to tell exactly where your knife tip is. To get a better result. Cleaner. Tapered lines, pencil lines off. And again, soften the edge. Right there is r hat. Okay, Now we're going to work on his brown. The first thing you want to do is carefully cut Along the top line of the hat brim. Be very careful. Your knife can slip easily and it might even be helpful to hold it down to do this cut instead of trying to hold it freehand. What we've created in here, so stock cut. Now what we want to do is come from just above and add a very slight angle. And just lift that little bit off right there. So it's going to give the illusion of a hat brim edge will come over this side and look at do that again. Be very careful and go slow so that you don't take your hat for him off. You may want to set it down again and go over that line. And that will help release some of these cuts that you've made here. There they go. It's amazing. You don't have to go very deep and you start to see the effect. That's what relief carvings all. But sometimes it can even be helpful to come at that stop cut from an angle on this side. And just deepen that right there so that we get the shadow. And we can tell her the hat ends and the brim began. Of course. We also need the bottom of the hat brim. We want to be careful not to go too deep above the nose. I've made a few of these and sometimes I've gone what? I've made too much of a gap in here. So don't go too deep with your knife here. But we will want to go fairly deep in, under here to give us that. Shadow under the hat brim. Right? Again, I recommend placing the piece down, making sure it's firm. Don't try to freehand it. And come along. Here, lie. Like I said, don't go too deep over the nose. We still want a line there but not too deep. And you really actually don't want to go too deep on your first cut through here either. Remember, I was saying not to worry about putting too many markings on. Here's why or just about the kind of bunch of them off. And we haven't had a chance to use them yet. Go in here carefully. Just start to see where your line is. Here. It's better to push like that. Don't push too hard. It can snap your piece. All right, Now, before we go too much further with this kind of work, we should also cut around her nose. And again, we don't want to go too deep in here. Move we might want to make right off the bat is to cut here. Just to give that angle there. They're right up against that stop cut that we made under the brim. So you're just coming in along the top of the nose on an angle and just taking it right in under the brand. And then we carry on making this deeper. As we go. I like to move slowly little bit at a time. When you've practiced a lot. You can do more in fewer cuts. So don't be worried. If you need to pause the video in order to keep up. Now, I still want a separation there. I don't want too much of a gap. Alright. Now we're going to do the same thing that we've done on the top and the bottom of the hat brim. We're going to do that around the nose, which is going to brace the piece. And gently, slowly, not too deep, cut around the nose. If you have a curved gout, that is the right size for his nose, that can help you get a nice shape. If I most of these noses or overlay anyway, some of us just don't have all the fancy tools at hand. Now we're going to carefully come in here. And he wanted to control your knife so that you don't take your nose. Keep your knife on his flatter angle as you can, so that you can just scrape across the top and bring that right up to the nose. I'm going to brace it again. And just draw right along here. Bring it up to the cut, will flop right? Can be helpful if you can carve with both with either hand. I should say. I came with some tools. This one, I seem to need the right hand and run it. Right. I'm going to take a deeper cut across here now. Bring that up under here. Don't worry, we can put those lines back on when we're ready for them. Especially getting smiling right place. If you're concerned about lining things up, this would be a good time now to just take a knife and go fairly deep. And straight up and down, I just cut whole smile right along. And then come back and still stay at a fairly high angled. Don't go at a low angle like we were doing up here. Stay at a high angle and just come right back along that line. It's going to deepen it without making it too wide of a gap. Alright. Now that's in place. It might get scraped off a little, but we know where it is. We can put another couple of cuts through there. Before I start shaping and rounding my beard. I'm going to walk these and place to the shoes we've got down here. I'm going to turn it upside down. And I'm going to draw a stock cut that comes right along that curve of the beard and meets up right with here. So I'm going to lock it down on the table and just bring it up on a nice sweeping curve to meet exactly with edge there. Just give a little push. Can see my knife is in there like that. But not too far, just a little bit. Now I can come back at Clover 45 angle, cut through there. Now if divined defined where the shoes are, believed, this one's a loan bank, and know better when we take the lines away. Scrape those off. Let's go and drop this into. So again, I'm going to use the table to help, help my left hand hold this in place. I'm going to start way or the curve of the beard comes down right in there and bringing on a nice sweeping curve down and push in there. Again. When I feel stuck, it's not too deep, but it's just deep enough that I can get that nice shadow. Down. Here. We go. We had some shoes. Now can work on her beard. Start shaping it. Just right. Okay. Now, if you have a V2, that is by far the easiest way to put in here. A veto is literally a tool that is shaped like a V. This one. You actually pull the tool through what? Like this, like that. Or you may have one like this one. You would push the tool through what? I find it more difficult to control. Now, if you don't have a veto. Here's how you do it with your knife. Very similar to this. Only we're gonna shape it a little more open so that it looks more like this and not so close like the Malthus can send along the table for stability. For unites, true? One way. Turn them round. Bring it through the other way. Peace will pop out. The better. You match your cuts. Cleaner the look. And you can make a cut that's very similar to the veto. Tend to go pretty small and short here and curve them like this. Face and head would be curved. And then with these ones like with deeper and then curve along with the shape of the beard, like that. Shirt. One thing here, some small ones down. And here. It's looking pretty good. Sometimes these markings can get kinda lost if you don't have the right shadows. So what we're gonna do to make those pop is put some fire tone and that'll help clean up any of the fuzzies. Okay, here we are with her little dude and his hat. If you feel so inclined, you can get hello sandpaper. Soften that up a bit. I find you don't want to go too hard with this. You can take something away from the way it's carved. It gives us a certain look. I don't worry too much about the black lines from this stuff from the carbon transfer paper. I find that once we've burnt, it just seems to be little enhancements. Let's see how it looks. 6. LESSON 6 FINISHING: Like his nose and shoes to be quite Bert. Bother. Back to. This actually helps seal and protect the wood. Know we're still going to put a homemade sealants on. Now is when you might want to give this a good brush or light sand. Just to take off some of the answers and black. It's gonna be messy. But not today I need much at all. And then take paper towel and clean that up so that it won't do that. Brush works good for this too. Don't worry over much. Just take off the worst. If he use a sprain lacquer finish. It's going to cover that right up for you. All right. It's time to put some finish on this guy. Let's go see what we've got. Okay, and let's finish this little guy up. I have here a homemade bee's wax oil. If you go to my YouTube channel, carving the cottonwood, I do have a video of a homemaker. I use old toothbrushes that I cleaned after they were done their job as a toothbrush. And this one I've used, as you can see for bert carvings many times because it's quite black. I'm going to use that here. And what's going to make sure that we push this stuff. Looks and crannies. He's going to darken up real nice just like his body that was already done. This also will help seal and protect the woods and give it a really nice finished. The soil is all natural and can be used on wooden spoons and bolts. Because it's nothing but the oil and bee's wax. Again, be a little messy. Because of the fact that burnt them. There. He's got a really nice look down now. Push that ends all the grooves. And we'll give them a white paper towel and use some time to dry. And then we'll turn them into magnet. 7. LESSON 7 MAKING A MAGNET: There you have it. Bearded guy. Let's turn this into a method. This guy already is. But the magnets, I got them at the stationary store and they came with sponges in there. And they don't like how far offset. For this one. I have removed all that. And I'm just going to use some contacts and let's go ahead and have some of that on there. I'm really excited about these. I think it looks super cool. And I love the idea of chunky mat. Just overdone that a little bit. But let's see what we've got. I did clean spot here, really good for this matter content. That's some time to dry. That's going to sit. Let's try. Another thing you can do. Instead of glowing the magnet onto the back. You can make it flush like I did with this eagle had to split your magnet on there and draw around it and then carve out a little bed for the magnet descendant to go ahead and include it in there. Now your magnet is going to sit flush with the French. These magnets are huge hit with friends and family and light, and they're a great way to use small bits of cotton. My name is Adrian Brown. I'm an editor, an author, and what? I love to have a YouTube channel called carving the cotton. I've also visited and interviews wood carvers for my channel. And I've tried other words like fast food, cedar, and altered to name a few. Cottonwood bark is my all-time favorites. I collected all along the rivers of Alberta in BC, in Canada. It's amazing what you can carve with a decent chunk. It's also amazing what you can carve from the smallest pieces.