Creative Woodworks & crafts 1997-12, страница 43

Fig. 2. The head and jaw are fas' tened with a 1/4"-Pia. dowel.

Chr/s Thompson resides in West St. Paul, Minnesota. She is a member of several carving organizations and teaches carving and knife making in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. For further information, write: Chris Thompson, 2 Langer Circle, V/est St. Paul, MN 55118. Cft

Fig. 3. The head with .details carved. Fig. 4. The painted gnome nutcracker.

curve around. Also, she cautions against carving too many teeth. Step 12. Chris has a fairly simple technique for carving ''squinty" eyes. First, with a No. 9-6mm gouge, she creates a hollow on each side of the nose to indicate the eye sockets just below the eyebrow line, then with a No. 7-4mm gouge turned upside-down, she presses in a convex stop cut for the main eye slit. With the same tool, she removes wood from the underside of that cut. Next, she turns the tool over and makes a cut in the corner of the eye to give it an upturned look (see Fig. 3).

Step 13. To carve the hair detail, Chris first goes over the entire hair surface with a No. 7-4mm gouge and then makes curved, flowing lines with a V-tool. Step 14. The head piece carved. Chris then turns to the jaw piece where she draws in f the lower lip, stop cuts that in, and then shapes the beard with V-tool cuts. On the top edge of the lower jaw piece, she makes a concave area where the nut would rest. | Finally, she goes over the entire surface of both pieces so that no surface is uncarved.

Painting

Chris covers the entire piece with a honey maple colored tung oil stain. (A waterbased stain would also work well). She calls this process of staining before painting "antiquing in reverse." For the colors, Chris uses a simple palette of acrylic paint. She thins the paint with water so that the wood shows through After applying the basic tones: Opaque Red for the cap, AC Flesh for the face, and White for the beard, she applies a little Gypsy Rose to the cheeks and lips. Once the paint has dried, Chris sprays a clear finish coat over the entire nutcracker (see Fig. 4).

Chris has carved faces of all sorts on her nutcrackers: witches, pirates, Dracula, Uncle Sam, Santas, and bunnies are just a few examples. And, in a somewhat ironic twist, she would never use them to crack nuts.

Fig. 1. Chris uses a drill to honeycomb the opening in the head which will receive the jaw.