Carving an Avocet: Part 9 (Final Head Shaping)

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In this chapter from Del Herbert’s bird carving series, learn how to accurately position and carve the eyes and bill of a shorebird. Del demonstrates his method of establishing eye placement and alignment before carving the surrounding head, using patterns, dividers, reference points, and careful visual checks from multiple angles. The lesson covers carving the eye, eye groove, upper and lower mandibles, and important feather details around the bill, while emphasizing the precise shaping and alignment needed to capture the character and anatomy of the bird. The joint area is left oversized for final shaping after the head is attached to the body.

Transcript

In this chapter, we’ll talk about carving the eyes and the bill.

When I first started carving, I had a major problem with getting the eye placement and alignment correct.

As I worked with this over the years, I discovered that as often as not, it was the carving around the eye that was skewing my view of my eye as it was the eye placement.

So I developed a process where now I carve wooden eyes in every bird, and I get the eye located where I want it, and into the correct dimension, and then I’ll carve the head around the eye.

Let me demonstrate how I do that.

First, I’ll take the pattern and I’ll place it on the head until I get it perfectly aligned with no parallax.

Then I’m going to take my dividers, and I’m going to stick the point right through the pattern and into the wood.

Likewise, I’m going to mark the junction of the lower and upper mandible, and I’m going to mark the bottom of the lower mandible on the head.

And you can see that I’ve got marks in the head for these points.

Then I’m going to go ahead and turn it over and do the same on the other side.

To be sure that I’ve got these aligned properly, I take my fingernails and put them on the mark, and I look at them from a distance.

That way I can tell if I have one higher than the other or lower than the other.

And I’ll do this until I get the marks correctly aligned in this dimension.

And then I’ll rotate my head and do it from the top view until I get them correctly aligned.

And you can see if I move my finger just slightly, it’s very easy to tell if they’re out of alignment.

Once I’m satisfied with the alignment, I’m going to go ahead and take my dividers and put a fairly good indentation in there so I don’t lose it in all of these points.

And on the other side.

Then I’m going to draw in my eye, And I’m just going to draw in, I’m not going to draw a round eye, I’m just going to draw a diamond shape.

I’m going to draw the junction of the upper mandible on the head.

Junction of the upper mandible and lower mandible, and this little tuft of feathers that we have at the junction of the lower mandible, and bring the lower mandible in to the head.

I’m also going to draw on the underside of the bill this little tuft of feathers that projects out onto the lower mandible.

Now to carve my wooden eyes, I take a detailed knife.

I’m going to start by making a cut along each of the four sides of the diamond.

I’m going to make these cuts fairly deep.

Okay. Then I’m gonna do stop cuts behind the eye.

And pop that piece right out of there.

Likewise, I’ll do stop cuts in front of the eye.

Pop that piece out.

Now, continue carving.

I’m not really concerned that I have a round eye yet because my eye is still too far out. I’m just getting the eye in the proper location.

Likewise with the bill, I’m going to make a stop cut at the junction of the lower mandible, and a deep stop cut at the junction of the head and the upper mandible.

I’m gonna go ahead in there and pop that piece right out.

Likewise, I’m going go underneath, put a stop cut at the junction of the lower mandible on these feathers, then the outline of the lower mandible.

Pop that piece out.

Now this line is going be the junction of that feather group.

Now I’m gonna come along and define the upper mandible.

I’m gonna slowly continue this carving on both sides of the head until I shape the eye, the eye groove, and the junction of the feathers and the bill.

Likewise, underneath, we show this little tuft of feathers.

And we can zoom in here and show you just how that lower mandible comes back into the head. That’s one important thing that when we first start carving, a lot of people try to put the lower mandible on the bottom of the head and ignore this little feather tuft of feathers here. It’s very important to show the overall character of the bird.

Now keep carving.

Both sides until I get the eyes to where I can look at it from in front of the bill, and I can see both eyes, and I’ve got them to the outside diameter that I desire.

That measurement, you can go to the patterns in the book.

I’ve also put in I’ve used a little veiner to put in a junction of the upper and lower mandibles.

On the bird.

At this point, I have still left the joint area oversized. I’m not going to shape this area until I have it attached to the body of the bird.

This is our detailed carved head.