Process?
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musket
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It'll take awhile to sort out all the photos, and I don't have one for every step. But here's the same as above, in profile. Everything I'm doing here is completely trad decorative bird carving (they're called decoratives to distinguish them from working decoys--it all began with ducks). A piece like Misha or Laura, not done to replicate nature, is quite different.
stlukesguild
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David, what kind of paper do you use that will stand up to all of that?
It's a crap paper... a heavy weight brown paper... which worked for Klee and Toulouse Lautrec and Vuillard... but is also another reason I need to make sure the paper is primed. It can take a lot of abuse: repeated erasures, sanding, etc... I used to use ANW Lennox which came in sheets up to 38" x 50". It could take a lot of abuse to the surface: erasing, sanding, etc... put it tore easily from the edges. I see that they now make rolls. Here is Zaria Forman working in pastel on a sizable sheet of Lennox. She's one of the few artists I have ever seen who work in pastel on a scale as large... or larger... than I do.
It's a crap paper... a heavy weight brown paper... which worked for Klee and Toulouse Lautrec and Vuillard... but is also another reason I need to make sure the paper is primed. It can take a lot of abuse: repeated erasures, sanding, etc... I used to use ANW Lennox which came in sheets up to 38" x 50". It could take a lot of abuse to the surface: erasing, sanding, etc... put it tore easily from the edges. I see that they now make rolls. Here is Zaria Forman working in pastel on a sizable sheet of Lennox. She's one of the few artists I have ever seen who work in pastel on a scale as large... or larger... than I do.
musket
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I've actually done quite a bit here for which I have no WIP photos. The focal point for any bird carving, especially of a raptor, is the head. By now I've switched to bits and burs in the Gesswein.
A raptor's beak is an extremely complicated shape. I often spent over a week on that alone. I have not yet cut in the nares (nostrils), which have a unique shape in Harrises. The Harris itself is a unique species, the sole member of its genus. It has the broad wings of a red-tail, but the long tail of a goshawk. These are the world's only social raptors and as you might expect, are the most intelligent of all hawks. In the most northerly part of their range, in extreme southern Texas and Arizona, they hunt cooperatively in packs, like wolves.
A raptor's beak is an extremely complicated shape. I often spent over a week on that alone. I have not yet cut in the nares (nostrils), which have a unique shape in Harrises. The Harris itself is a unique species, the sole member of its genus. It has the broad wings of a red-tail, but the long tail of a goshawk. These are the world's only social raptors and as you might expect, are the most intelligent of all hawks. In the most northerly part of their range, in extreme southern Texas and Arizona, they hunt cooperatively in packs, like wolves.
musket
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Then comes one of the most difficult aspects of the whole thing, the setting of the eyes. Raptors have a forward eye angle of about 45 degrees. Getting everything symmetrical on both sides isn't easy. I used the trick of looking at the piece upside down in a mirror, which helps. But if you think about the nature of a glass eye, it's easy to see, so to speak, how easy it is to screw it up.
I've also done some shaping and preliminary texturing on the head, and cut in the nares on the cere (the leathery portion of the beak). The sharp vee cut that bisects the head is one of the very few things I did with a knife. The pocket of hard grain revealed itself suddenly and proved to be a major nuisance, but I wasn't about to abandon the piece because of it.
Harrises have a sort of Roman nose beak profile, very different from any other hawk. Almost no one gets this right.
I've also done some shaping and preliminary texturing on the head, and cut in the nares on the cere (the leathery portion of the beak). The sharp vee cut that bisects the head is one of the very few things I did with a knife. The pocket of hard grain revealed itself suddenly and proved to be a major nuisance, but I wasn't about to abandon the piece because of it.
Harrises have a sort of Roman nose beak profile, very different from any other hawk. Almost no one gets this right.
musket
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The gape, as it's called, where the mandible meets the maxilla, is also extremely complicated. The line itself is burned in with a pyrography tool, but you have to get in there with a tiny hand burnisher and actually lift the upper edge to get that nasty look. Just above the gape, the cere is deeply concave, and then starts heading towards being convex again as it approaches the nares. Unfortunately I don't have a full head on view. But this view of a Siberian goshawk will get the point across, though much of the lower cere is obscured by the rictal bristles. The beak of a true hawk like this is less sturdy than a Harris's, more like a scalpel.
Not sure whatcha mean, but I can tell you this, I intuitively half killed myself getting this stuff right.
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musket
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Up above the eye is a ridge of bone called the suprarorbital ridge, which is fixed, covered with leathery skin and is what gives them that tough guy look. Here's a real Harris, on my fist. You can see it in the carving, though it's somewhat obscured by the lighting. It's much more visible in hawks and eagles than in falcons.
The eyelids are even more of a pain to get symmetrical than the eyes. They change the expression quite a bit.
Artyczar
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Couldn't agree more. I too have a lot of wip pics that I sometimes lay out on my blog, but I suddenly come up blank? What's up with that? I'll round them up.
musket
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I have now put in the eyelids with epoxy putty, done texturing on the head and nape, "landscaping" on the breast, and begun cutting in some contour feathers.
Texturing is done with the edge of a small aluminum oxide cylinder stone in the Gesswein at high speed, around 45K rpm.
Texturing is done with the edge of a small aluminum oxide cylinder stone in the Gesswein at high speed, around 45K rpm.
