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In this chapter from Del Herbert’s bird carving series, explore how pose and attitude help bring a carved bird to life and communicate its story. Del explains how subtle changes to the angle of the head and body can create an inquisitive, alert, relaxed, or confident expression, and encourages carvers to step back frequently to evaluate the overall pose. Learn how to experiment with angles and positioning to create a more natural, dynamic composition and establish the personality and attitude you want your finished carving to convey.
Transcript
Again, in this chapter, we’re going to talk about pose and attitude.
Every piece you design should have a story to tell.
You may want to show a bird that’s peaceful and relaxed or alert or looking at some far off object, or any one of a number of different things.
You’re going to communicate this to your audience mainly through the pose and the attitude of the bird.
We looked at this before when our block was still square, and I’d like to look at it again now that we’ve got the body and the head roughed out.
I really want to emphasize this because I’d like to encourage you at various times during your carving process to stand back from your bird and to look at it from a distance and look at the different poses and attitudes. Since we have the neck area is still oversized, I can change the angle of the head, and I can give it a more inquisitive look, or I could move it straight on and give it more of a decoy type look.
I rarely carve the birds with a straight on attitude.
It appears too sterile to me.
Likewise, from an artistic point of view, we never want to have anything at ninety degrees.
It’s not pleasing to the eye. So, I want to be somewhere in between, and I can vary the angles that I do until I get the story that I want.
I think this is the attitude that I’m going to settle on. And to me it says, I’m standing proud.
I’m the king of all that I survey.
From here, I’m gonna try that part to portray that attitude as we carve the head and the eyes.