1 Welcome to the New Newsletter!
Or perhaps it's more 'Welcome back'. I hope you like the look: it's certainly brighter than the old text newsletter, and a lot easier to navigate around.
Because of the effort to compile this newsletter, it's likely to be anything from bi-monthly to 'irregular'. Once I've settled down, I'll be adding more pictures: these would be small obviously for the file size and within, say, an article, or they might be thumbnails for new items in the galleries.
Please feel free to email me any comments, feedback (positive!), or suggestions.
2 Master Woodcarving Secrets: New Free eBook
Or: 101 Things I Have Said To Students And Wish Someone Had Said Them To Me Before I Learned The Hard Way...'
I compiled Master Woodcarving Secrets in 1999) originally as '101 Master Woodcarving Secrets') exclusively for subscribers of an online journal called Slipstone, and I was sorry to see this distillation of my teaching experience languish when this project ended.
I am very pleased to thank Joel Moskowitz of Tools for Working Wood for making this important material available again; this time to everyone.
Please take a moment to visit his website and view the sponsor page at the rear of this ebook.
Click here for your FREE copy of
Master Woodcarving Secrets!
There's a full list of the Slipstones woodcarving manuals below: here.
3 Chris Pye Gallery: New Work
Just 2 things to show you:
 The Prince of Wales Perpetual Trophy for Woodland Management
AKA: 'The Horseloggers Trophy': Workhorses can enter and help manage environmentally sensitive woodlands where conventional logging would be damaging.
It was quite tricky to carve because of the acute perspective - at it's thinnest point the head and legs of the horse are only a bit over 2mm thick.
In the next issue of this newsletter I'll describe how I carve very thin and delicate pieces like this.
Gilded Sign: Linden
This is my new house sign which I have now gilded and placed on the wall.
The amazing thing about gilding is how gold picks up and glows in the least amount of light.
See the full galleries here:
4 Green Man Gallery: New Contributions
Watcher by Ronald Carmichael
Mystic Mahog by Richard Davies
Green Man MK.I by Terry Ross
Green Man MK.II by Terry Ross
And, while you are in the area, take a look through the full list of our green friends - 28 altogether now!
Does it temp you to submit your own carving?
Go on - we're all waiting to see it!
5 That Magic Word: "Bosting"
'Bosting' is a word I have been fighting to keep. It's one of the few that is quite specific to carving and contains a lot more import than, say, 'roughing out'.
Bosting comes from the French meaning to 'sketch'.
Sketching means making a rough but evocative drawing, one that might be used assist in making a finished picture. A sketch is a brief outline of salient points, or a draft. Sketching is a way into a work.
To 'bost', then, is to block out the main skeleton of your carving, the masses and planes and their relationship; the flow and rhythm of the piece. You work evenly over the whole and you don't put in any detail at this stage.
Why all over? Because every part of the carving is dependent on every other - a basic relativity. An element is only in the right place, or the right shape, because of it's position to everything else.
Why no detail? Detail is the last thing you do, along with undercutting. The position of detail depends on the modelling of the surface being correct, which in turn depends on the bosting in.
The idea of bosting is so important because of what comes immediately before and immediately after the stage of bosting in:
Before you bost in, you have a blank block of wood with your subject hidden in it somewhere.
After bosting, you have found, sketched in, your subject and know what you are doing.
All carvers will have come across that hard line that separates 'I can't see what I am doing' from 'I can see what I am doing'. Bosting is the means of crossing it safely.
Bosting is also, to my mind, the most difficult phase of a carving.
It's exploratory and a mixture of rationalising and feeling where you are going as you decide what wood to remove. Bosting and often a concentrated, uphill struggle.
But when I have successfully bosted in your carving, I feel it's downhill - the carving's in the bag and I can move, more relaxed, into modelling; refining the masses and surfaces, and finally into details.
By-the-way, I do use the term 'roughing out' but meaning an even earlier stage - bandsawing and the like.
I then go onto bost in the carving.
So, do give this crucial notion of bosting in a good deal of thought. And remember to drop the word into conversations with other woodcarvers when you can!
That's it!
Please forward this newsletter to a woodcarving friend, and anyone else you think might be interested. Thanks!
Joy and success with your carving.
Chris Pye
PS: One for the Bench:
"Truth comes out of error more readily than confusion."
Francis Bacon
6 Miscellaneous & Useful Website Links
BACK ISSUES of this newsletter:
http://www.chrispye-woodcarving.com/intro/pastnews.html
including zipfiles for 2001 - 2005 text-style newsletters
TUITION/TEACHING 2006-7
UK (1-TO-1 PERSONAL TUITION)
The best way to learn or improve your carving is to join me in my studio for intensive, custom tuition, tailored to exactly what you need. Easy to arrange; dates to suit.
Full details here:
http://www.chrispye-woodcarving.com/tuition/t_custom.html
USA 2007 (Center For Furniture Craftsmanship, Maine)
| June 18 - 22 |
Wood Sculpture |
| June 25 - 29 |
Relief Carving |
| July 2 - 6 |
Intermediate/Advanced Carving
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Details on the CFC website: http://www.woodschool.org
CANADA 2007 (Rosewood Studio, Almonte, Ottawa)
| August 13 - 17 |
Relief Carving I |
| August 20 - 24 |
Relief Carving II |
Details on the Rosewood website: http://www.rosewoodstudio.com
SLIPSTONES WOODCARVING MANUALS
Help yourself!
You are free to copy any or all of these ebooks, send them to your carving friends, or have them available on your own website but you must not charge money for them.
Full list and details here:
http://www.chrispye-woodcarving.com/slipstones/index.html
Master Woodcarving Secrets (pdf)
(Sponsored by Tools for Working Wood)
Quick Carving Questions - 1
(Sponsored by Tools for Working Wood)
Quick Carving Questions - 2
(Sponsored by Classic Hand Tools http://www.classichandtools.com/)
Quick Carving Questions - 3
(Sponsored by Preferred Edge Carving Knives & Supplies)
Quick Carving Questions - 4
Selecting & Sharpening Your V Tool
Learning to Carve
Learning to Carve 2
A Guide to Safe Woodcarving
Mistakes and Woodcarving
Fundamentals of Woodcarving
Slicing, And The Value Of The Inside Bevel (pdf)
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