Some advice for a beginner

[dave346]

This is my first real attempt at anything other than mushrooms, not to happy with it so looking for advice on what I could do better. Did this with my 346xp and standard 15 inch bar and tidied up with a sanding pad on angle grinder.

Edited April 21, 2012 by dave346
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[dervishcarving]

Hi Dave. I dont have all that much carvign experience either but i like your hand, it shows you have the right 'eye'. I dont know what it is that you are not happy with but from a biology point of view the finger joints between first and second metacarpals tend to remain slightly bent when the joint between the second and third are bent (hold you hand and see what they do) plus the hand dosnt tend to go quite so 'flat' (ie rightangle to the wrist) but these are minor things. When i try to carev soemthign 'realistic' (and most of my stuff is animal realism, smooth-finish not rough so you cant hide things quite so easy) I spend a while looking at the bones. Use the interwebs for this and you can get nice anatomy pictures so you can understand the framework. Don't go kicking yoruself tho, i think us beginners all tend to do that and its daft. As a first piece its great, be proud of it. Personally i would think about removing the wood on the base to make the arm longer, cut the end of teh arm into a 'spike' and plant it amongst the flowers in teh garden just to freak out the postman

[dave346]

Thanks, I was thinking of taking the fore arm right down to the bottom but was going to drill the base and stick a length of rebar in but I like the idea of shaping a spike

[dervishcarving]

As part of an installation-piece thingy i made a load of mushrooms (liberty-cap style mushrooms) with long stems and a spike on the end that i just 'planted'. I found it easier than messing about with drilling etc