Frustration City, Arizona.

Yester-evening, as promised, my Dad gave me what was to be a quick, beginners tutorial on carving. 4 hours later and I'm crying, shaking, vomiting from being hunched over for so long and can barely move my fingers.

Okay, so it was that bad, just not what I expected.

Dad getting me started:



One of his carvings he made earlier:




He isn't interested in carving letters - but he picked out a book which had some information about letters and numerals;





He also got out a piece by my late Grandad whittled with a penknife over 20 years ago - It's a sign for my parents house, but never got used.



My turn!



I used the bottom half of the wood (actually a chopping board) as a practice area. I picked up the basics quite quickly, but started to get a bit cocky - and ended up loosing my creative focus and was absolutely stumped for ideas and different ways of carving.



The top half was used for more of a final piece;



It was most certainly exciting to learn about this craft. There's so much to remember, so many precautions, and it requires a lot of practice, skill, and patience. All 3 things, I figured I don't have right now.

I asked my dad why he does wood carving. As its a hobby, he said he isn't that motivated to do carving, but likes the finished piece. Once he gets set on a project he gets absorbed by it and enjoys the time spent in his 'workshop'.
I asked about machinery which is used for carving - and he said that there are things in carving that you can't program a machine to do.
The thing which concerns me about carving is when working on a large piece and you make a mistake in the final touches - there's no chance of correcting it and you've ruined some really hard work!

Another thing which occured to me is whether this is how you do block printing. I'm carving at wood, and if the letters were the back to front and inked up, I sure could make a print from it!