Archive for December 2015

2015 Santa And Friends Gallery


TBerrySantasign

Welcome to the 2015 Santa (And Friends) Photo Gallery. 

DaveSabol-02

San­ta Bak­er by David Sabol

This is the four­teenth annu­al San­ta Gallery, and I am always pleased by the vari­ety and qual­i­ty of the carv­ings includ­ed.  Tip ‘o the hat to all those who sub­mit­ted carv­ings, and a reminder for every­one else to plan on par­tic­i­pat­ing in the gallery in 2016.  To vis­it the 2015 Gallery click HERE, or click on WOM in the menu above, then click on WOM Gal­leries.

Thanks to Tim Berry for use of his San­ta Carv­ings sign.

 

Review: Concepts to Caricatures

Concepts To Caricatures — Celebrating 25 Years of Caricature Carving

The Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of America

Reviewed by Matt Kelley

CCA Book 01

The Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of Amer­i­ca (CCA), as many of you know, was found­ed in 1990.  In this, their 25th anniver­sary year, they have released their sev­enth book, Con­cepts to Car­i­ca­tures; Cel­e­brat­ing 25 Years of Car­i­ca­ture Carving.

Unlike many of their books, this vol­ume from Schif­fer Pub­lish­ing is not cen­tered around a spe­cif­ic project; rather, each CCA mem­ber cre­at­ed a carv­ing in their own style.  Some of the projects are indi­vid­ual fig­ures; some are set in scenes — no restric­tions were placed on style, size, or sub­ject matter.

Con­tents

  • Who Are The Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of America?
  • His­to­ry of the Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of America
  • Overview
  • Step-by-step with Chris Hammock
  • CCA Chap­ters — a chap­ter with each of 25 CCA mem­bers over 97 pages
  • Pat­terns - 13 pages worth
  • Mem­bers Gallery — anoth­er 13 pages

Chris Ham­mack Step-by-step — The Pitch

Chris Ham­mack, who is know for his west­ern art, decid­ed to do some­thing dif­fer­ent and carved a base­ball play­er.  Actu­al­ly, he carved five car­i­ca­tures of a pitch­er on the mound, one each for:

  • The Sign
  • The Look
  • The Windup
  • The Stretch
  • The Release

While there are pho­tos of all five carv­ings, the step-by-step cov­ers the every­thing from con­cept to fin­ished carv­ing for The Windup.  The first set of pho­tos include the final design sketch, cut­ting out the pat­tern and trans­fer­ring front and side views to the block, and bands awing the blank.  Chris then spends the next 25 pages cov­er­ing the carv­ing and fin­ish­ing of the piece, con­clud­ing with some great gallery pages.  Along the way he salts the pho­tos with lots of com­men­tary and hints.  There is a lot of detail in this sec­tion, and an expe­ri­enced carv­er should have few prob­lems fol­low­ing the steps-by-step.  This is not for the faint of heart, how­ev­er, as there are a lot of skin­ny limbs and thin cross-grain sec­tions to deal with.  As Chris notes ear­ly in the intro­duc­tion to the step-by-step, “I rec­om­mend leav­ing those [cross-grain] parts ’til last and not being far form a tube of super glue and some accelerator.”

CCA Chap­ters

After the step-by-step, you’ll find almost a hun­dred pages devot­ed to the addi­tion­al 25 CCA mem­bers includ­ed in the book.  Each chap­ter includes a brief biog­ra­phy of the mem­ber, an dis­cus­sion of the devel­op­ment and carv­ing of the piece, some tips and a selec­tion of in-progress and fin­ished photos.

CCA Mem­bers and carv­ings Included:

  • David Boone — Are You a Hat­field or McCoy
  • Mitch Car­tledge — Big Daddy’s Big Night
  • PJ Driscoll — Let The Games Begin
  • Gary Falin — Lance Boyle
  • Gene Fuller — Check­mate
  • Dale Green — Don’t Drink and Drive
  • Bruce Henn — Dia­mond Dev­ils — Lit­tle People’s League
  • Eldon Humphreys — Gui­tar Man
  • Randy Lan­den — Pull
  • Pete Leclair — Mornin’ Ladies
  • Don Mertz — Windy Win­dale
  • Kei­th Mor­rill — San­ta Chess Set
  • Ryan Olsen - Still Fits
  • Steve Prescott - Cow­boy Wisdon
  • Doug Raine — Vaque­ro
  • Floyd Rhadi­gan - The Old Salt
  • Joe Schu­mach­er — Squin­ten Clinten
  • Sandy Smith — Mel­on­Col­lieBa­by
  • Dave Stet­son — Female Fig­ure
  • Den­nis Thorn­ton - Eagle Eye
  • Bob Travis - You Are My Sunshine
  • Rich Wether­bee — Back Forty
  • Jack A Williams — Pickin’ and Singin’
  • Tom Wolfe — Home Deliv­ery
  • Joe You — Feed­ing The Prince

Won­der about the carv­ings behind the titles?  You’ll need to get the book to see!

Pat­terns

Here you’ll find a pat­tern the carv­ing includ­ed the CCA Sec­tion.  Some are sim­ple out­line pat­terns; some include much more detail.

Gallery

A taste­ful selec­tions of pho­tos of oth­er carv­ings by CCA members

In Con­clu­sion
The lay­out of the book is good, the pho­tos excel­lent.  A tip ‘o the hat to edi­tor Sandy Smith and her asso­ciate edi­tors Randy Lan­den and Bob Travis.  Anoth­er tip ‘o the hat to Jack A and Car­ol Williams for the cov­er and stu­dio pho­tos, as well as Chris Ham­mock for the step-by-step pho­tos.   The lay­out and pho­tos, as well as the humor present when­ev­er CCA mem­bers assem­ble, all com­bine to make this an enjoy­able book to read and use.

If you are a car­i­ca­ture carv­er this book should be on your Christ­mas list (It’s still not too late).   If you are a more gen­er­al carv­er, you still should con­sid­er this book, as learn­ing more about how a carv­ing is con­ceived and cre­at­ed will be of benefit.


To learn more about Car­i­ca­ture Carvers of Amer­i­ca, their oth­er pub­li­ca­tion and the annu­al CCA Car­i­ca­ture Carv­ing Com­petion, vis­it their web site at www.cca-carvers.org

CCA Book 02