figure carving -- eyes

[MattR]

I mentioned this in my post on the critiques board, but this is probably a better place to ask specifically. I'm having trouble with eyes.

Here's a carving I did a few days ago (this was my first attempt at a human), and the body's great, but the face is terrible. I've gotten some good advice on the face and pretty much fixed my problems there, except for the eyes. These were attempted with one of the Stohlman books right in front of me, and I followed his directions step by step, but apparently I didn't understand them correctly or something, because they're pretty bad.

I looked over the eyes in all of the tutorials on the front page, and those are very helpful as far as how to properly round out the eyeball, but none of the tutorials have pupils, which are pretty important on a recreation of a person, especially in a comic book style piece like this one. I'm finding that if I round the eye and then do the pupil (like I tried to do here) the pressure flattens it out, but if I do the pupil first it squashes the whole thing just enough to make the rounding process a LOT more difficult and still doesn't end up looking right.

Can anyone give me some pointers here?

Thanks,

Matt

[TwinOaks]

You might try cutting the pupil first......gads that sounds icky......that way the leather of the pupil can lightly compress without the grain pulling everything else with it. You don't mention the scale of the piece you posted, so it's kinda hard to say. The smaller the scale, the more you'll have to rely on 'one dot carving'.

One possibility is that you've got the moisture content of the leather wrong-at the eyes-. Too wet and it squishes, too dry and you have to push too hard. Properly cased, even the lightest tough with something hard will leave an indentation ( ask around and see how many folks have had mysterious 'half moon' dents caused by fingernails). The rest looks pretty good, but I do suggest a little more time on eyelids. The eyeball itself is just a round thingy. The eyelids express the emotion. Here's a detail of a carving I did, where I used a swivel knife for the pupils, then used a very fine stylus to widen the cut. The tool I used is actually supposed to be an embossing tool for brass- I picked it up at Hobby Lobby on clearance for $.50. Notice that I used the suggestion of pupils, without trying to get too detailed.

Edited June 12, 2009 by TwinOaks

[MattR]

You might try cutting the pupil first......gads that sounds icky......that way the leather of the pupil can lightly compress without the grain pulling everything else with it. You don't mention the scale of the piece you posted, so it's kinda hard to say. The smaller the scale, the more you'll have to rely on 'one dot carving'.

One possibility is that you've got the moisture content of the leather wrong-at the eyes-. Too wet and it squishes, too dry and you have to push too hard. Properly cased, even the lightest tough with something hard will leave an indentation ( ask around and see how many folks have had mysterious 'half moon' dents caused by fingernails). The rest looks pretty good, but I do suggest a little more time on eyelids. The eyeball itself is just a round thingy. The eyelids express the emotion. Here's a detail of a carving I did, where I used a swivel knife for the pupils, then used a very fine stylus to widen the cut. The tool I used is actually supposed to be an embossing tool for brass- I picked it up at Hobby Lobby on clearance for $.50. Notice that I used the suggestion of pupils, without trying to get too detailed.

Man, that REALLY helps, especially being able to see how you implemented it. The eyelids look like you beveled them without cutting, is that right?

Thanks!

[fishguy]

Another point when doing faces is that the old cliche "Less is more" really counts. Keep the features, especially eyes, loose and don't feel that you have to reproduce every wrinkle and fold. You should be able to do a lot just with embossing tools and no cutting. The secret to representing people's faces is study and practice.

Actually as humans we face (har har) a tougher chanllenge with doing faces than almost anything else. This is because we are programmed to recognize not only individuals from their facial features, but all sorts of subtle nuances of expression, etc. We are all facial experts from birth. Thus, if anyting at all is wrong on the face it will really stand out and look weird. If you did a face and a flower of equal quality and representational accuracy, the flower could look perfect to you, but the face would look weird. This is also part of the reason why it is good to stay loose when doing faces and features, an overwrought attempt at photo-realisim is much less pleasing than an loose or even cartoony face.

[TwinOaks]

Man, that REALLY helps, especially being able to see how you implemented it. The eyelids look like you beveled them without cutting, is that right?

Thanks!

Say hello to my lil fren.....the modeling tool.

I did the lower eyelids and the top of the upper eyelids with a spoon modeling tool, and very light embossing. I figured the best way to represent 3-d was....well, be 3-d. Around the actual eye, it's cut, then widened with the itsy bitsy ball stylus- like the ball is the width of the cuts you see in the pic.

The brow, bridge of the nose, and nose are all pushed out very slightly. Our eyes notice depth very well (binocular vision) and shading can only go so far. The shading is done with a t-shirt, I think. Maybe it was a sock on this one....I don't remember. It's basically light surface burnishing, nothing more.

Don't have a modeling tool? You can do the same thing by using a smooth beveler like a pencil. Get some scrap, case it, and try dragging, tapping, pushing, poking, slashing,.....well, you get the idea. There is no rule that says a stamp can only be placed on leather and smacked in one way.