Wiz Part 4 - Roughing Out

Work begins on the wizard, but not without some minor disaster right off the bat. Let's just say there's a lot of short grain in this piece and I'm going to have to be very careful with certain parts. The arms are of great concern. I managed to break one off. The add-on pieces near the bottom are also very delicate.

I roughed out as much as I could with the band saw, but as you can see by all the shaded areas, there's a lot left that I have to get rid of some other way.




 With the blank screwed to my shop-made vice and started hogging off big chunks of wood. Novice mistake! Before I knew it, the left arm was lying on the floor. I let a few expletives fly, took a deep breath and decided to make the most of the situation. It was a clean break and a fairly large area, maybe 1" square, so I know I can get a good glue joint. I have to drill that sleeve for the hand anyway, so I can reinforce the arm with a dowel which will never be seen. I realized I could get at some areas more easily while the arm is off, so I worked on it in those areas before gluing the arm back. This would have been a tricky joint to clamp, but a strip of old bike tire made the task simple, fast and safe [no clamp dents].

Lesson learned though. I will have to take my time if I don't want to be gluing up broken pieces for the rest of this carving. Why didn't I make the arms separate and glue them on after? I thought about it, but then I looked at those long, pointed sleeves and realized they needed to have the grain running up and down. I know the thin wrists are going to be be a problem if they are cross-grained, so they will be made and glued on separately. Now I have to go take off that inner tube and see how my glue job came out ...

Wiz Part 3b - Final Pattern

For the final patter sketch I chose to freehand some adjustments and corrects to what I got from the photo of my mannequin. The final pattern will be a little larger than my 3X6X12 block of basswood, so I may have to glue up some parts of the blank. I'm not sure if the process I used was worth it all, but it was something I had thought about for a while and wanted to try out. There are probably better [easier] ways to get where I ended up, but the process helped me to make certain decisions. Multiple freehand sketches would have gotten me to the same place, I suppose, but I did enjoy being able to change poses with the mannequin until I got a pose I liked. Now it's time to rough out a blank and get started carving.

Wiz Part 3a - Sketching the Pattern

I have the first and second set of sketches done for my front and side view patterns. But there's a problem. Getting a photo of a 3-dimensional figure that prints like a 2-dimensional pattern is not easy. I'm not even sure it's possible. Photo distortion and perspective are working against you. I even tried photographing the bottom and top halves separately and making a composite in Photoshop - better, but still not right. Have a look at the sketches and you'll see what I mean. Here's pose #1 - the right arm is angled back, but appears straight up and down. The left arm is going to be a problem with the angle too. The material I end up cutting won't let me get what I want for the sleeve.

After this sketch sat on my desk for a while, I decided I wanted the right arm bent more and holding something. I also decided to try a female model to get more of a slight build, more appropriate for an elderly Wizard. Here's are the second set of sketches with a different model and new pose. Better, but look at the feet. For a 2D pattern, they need to be flat on the horizontal floor line, but perspective distorts that in the photo. Again, there will be sleeve problems. Also, if I use this side view, there won't be enough material to make the arm look right. The concept is good, and using the model will help as a reference to carve or get some measurements, but not to generate a 2D front/side set of patterns. I'm going to have to draw what I want and make adjustments that I know will give me an accurate pattern for cutting out my blank. I think a footprint and overhead view might help me too.

Since I'm going with a full beard and big mane of hair, and a robe without the big collar, I don't have to make the head separate. But considering the grain direction, I will probably carve the left hand separate and add it to the sleeve since some detail in the fingers is needed to grasp a staff. The same for the right hand, which will likely be holding a globe-like object (a marble or bead).

Wiz Part 2 - Choosing A Robe

More decisions. The inspiration sketch I chose works for the basic body stance and attitude I want. But the more I study wizards, I find some variations in the robe that cause me to stop and make some decisions. For extra inspiration, Google helps and I have collected a number of wizard outfits that I am considering. I am going to guess the final choices will be some composite version. Do I want wizard shoes to show, or will there be a pile of robe cloth at the base cover his feet? Some robes are very plain with a small amount of trim or decoration at the bottom of the sleeves and robe. Some are a combination of open robe over a tunic. Some, like my original sketch, have a huge collar which encircle the neck and head other lie flat across the shoulders. And there are variations on the sleeve, though most flare out, but some are generally looser than others. All choices to be made before any carving can begin. Then there's color to be considered, though blue or purple seem the right choice. Here are some Google Image Search results.

Wiz Part 1 - Character Development

For my wizard carving, I decided to use as my inspiration a wizard from the "Drawing Wizards, Witches and Warlocks" book  shown at the right.
As it turns out, Tom Wolfe's book concentrates on just one wizard, so I might use it for some help carving the head and face, but otherwise that book won't help much on this project.


To make a front/side patterns, I dusted off our wooden anatomical model. It took a bit of "playing" with the doll to get is posed the way I want. The I took front/left/right photos and brought those into Photoshop. I want to make sure the scale is the same for all three shots. If I decide to size them down or up, I can apply the same proportion to all three. For Photoshop uses, I'll do this in one file on three layers and using opacity setting, make sure all three angle are the same size. To make sure this will work, make sure the photo resolution is the same for the three photos I took and the new file I will bring them into. I'll use 150 dpi. Next, I label the layers "front", "left" and "right". I decided to make the figure about 9.5" high. You can see in the photo on the left (front, left and right views) he is leaning back a little (about 8 degrees).

All I need from this is a good outline of the figure. I will be adding clothes and other physical details drawn by hand, drawn on a printed copies of each pose.

My next step is to get some tracing paper and start on some sketches of the robe. This is going to have a very large, thin collar. I'll have to work out how to do that. I think I might make the head and arms separate pieces, glued up after most of the carving is done. He'll also be holding some kind of wizardly staff in his left hand and I think I'm going to make his beard much longer than the one in the sketch.

It's a Wizard, Harry

My daughter asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I told her I wanted some books that might help me learn to draw some aspect of human anatomy. I figure to better carve, I need to better understand and drawing might help with that. Also I want to be able to design my own characters and not be confined to copy work from patterns, not that there's anything wrong with doing that. I think I also mentioned that, at some point, I'd like to try some fantasy characters - gargoyles, wizards, dragons ... that sort of thing. So she got me a great book by artist Chris Hart called "Drawing Wizards, Witches and Warlocks". The book suits my purpose perfectly.
I like that the characters are dynamic - not just posing, hands at sides - another issue I want to tackle.


The book has been laying on my desk for a month now and yesterday, I took it out and started browsing through it for ideas. Yesterday, I was in a local bookstore browsing the woodworking books and I found Tom Wolfe's book "Carving Wizards". On sale! I took that as a sign. My next area of endeavor shall be a wizard. I want to use this as a project you can follow along with on this post and not just a before and after photo. I have a few interesting ideas for bring this character to life as a unique piece and using a couple different techniques for developing a form and creating a front/side pattern to work from. This should be interesting.

Gnome Gets Paint Job

Here is my little Gnome with a coat of paint.

I'm pretty happy with him.