Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 14

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Patience and a soft touch are required at this stage of the carving. The limbs are carved with short, shallow strokes that remove only small pieces of waste wood at a time. The limbs are far too fragile to withstand the pressure necessary to take large chunks out with single strokes.

Here you can see the just a few of the shavings removed in shaping just a few branches.

You’ll also notice that the lines left from long, straight strokes are noticeable on the smaller branches. Less material can be removed from them, else they become too weak. The shaping lines will disappear once the bark carving is added.





















To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 13

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Carving limbs and branches is so much fun. Here’s the final shape of the first limb. As you can see, it looks like it has lots of twists and turns, which will ultimately give this tree its gnarly character. If you look closely on the right side of the limb near the trunk, you’ll see a thin line right down the middle of the face that has not been carved. I intentionally left this part high and did not round it off. The line will disappear once the bark carving has been added.



Here’s what became of that knot I left high in the elbow area. When I do the bark carving I’ll give it more detail.



To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 12

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Since this particular limb doesn’t have any branches coming from the bottom, the edges are simply rounded over with long, shallow strokes.



Those are then broken up by short, shallow strokes to give the limb character. This also adds elements of shadow, which contribute to the illusion of dimensionality. You’ll notice that I’m not cutting into the elbow area much. That’s because I want it to remain higher than the rest of the limb. I’ll probably make a bit of a knot on it later.



In the next installment, I’ll really dig into the limb and give it a personality.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 11

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Shaping the limbs is one of my favorite parts of carving these trees. Each one has its own personality.



I start at the stop cuts between the limbs. Angling the cut down into the stop cut helps give the illusion of the lower limb slightly receding behind the upper limb. The same treatment is given to the branch area on the left. These angled areas will cast deeper shadows than the surrounding wood and add to the illusion.

The rest of the limb is rounded using long, shallow strokes. These lines will later be broken up with short, shallow strokes.



The lower part of the limb is shaped in the next installment.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 10

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Now that the trunk has a little bit of shaping, the knot hole can be made.
















A flat gouge is held at an angle and the edges are defined. The center is scooped out with a micro gouge. Then, the middle area is flattened with the straight gouge and the process is repeated one or two more times. The result is a rather dimensional knot.

In the next installment the limbs are shaped.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 9

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.

Now that the roots are finished it’s time to start integrating them into the trunk and shaping it up to the first set of limbs.



The sides are gently tapered from the center out toward the edges. The trunk is cut under and sloping away from the first set of limbs, so they will give the illusion of coming forward and the trunk receding behind.

The next installment shows the creation of the big knot hole in the trunk.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 8

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.



A special undercutting technique is used on the inside edge where the roots meet. When viewed right-side-up, it appears that the roots are actually coming from behind one another. This is because the undercut casts a shadow on the root below, giving the illusion of distance.

The edges of the entire root are then rounded and meet with the rounded edges from the backside. The final step is to use short carving strokes at slightly different angles. Doing so adds low and high spots along the length. These break up the straight carving strokes and give the shape of the root character.

In the next installment, the roots are shaped into the trunk area.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.

Follow My Carving - Gnarly Tree - Step 7

To celebrate Heartwood Art carvings being featured in upcoming issue of Woodcarving Illustrated the "Follow My Carving" series was created to give you a an insider’s view on how the art is made.



Now that the back edges are rounded, it’s time to start shaping the front. I always begin with the roots because they require the most depth. The outer roots will have the deepest recess. Determining that depth affects the shape of the trunk and is why it must be addressed at the beginning. The first step is to deepen the stop-cuts between each root. A carving knife is used to go over the lines several times.

The outside root that lies on the opposite side from the knothole in the trunk has the deepest recess so, I start with it. The edge of a shallow gouge is placed next to the stop-cut line and the wood is shaved off the root in a level manner. The stop-cut is again deepened and another layer is shaved away. After three or four passes, the depth of the shavings are gradually sloped from the trunk area to the end of the root. This gives the illusion that the root falls behind the tree. After several more passes, waste material is only removed in the middle section where the two roots meet. The reason for this is to avoid weakening the smallest part of the root where it attaches to the border.

The process is repeated until 1/4” of the root has been removed from the deepest part of the slope. In this picture you can see an edge-on view of the slope as it graduates from right to left away from the trunk area.

In the next installment, the root is rounded using a special technique.

To see more carvings, please visit the Heartwood Art site.