The Beardless Wonder and The Fearless Wonder

First, The Beardless Wonder. He's not my first beardless face, but he is my first beardless wood spirit done in found wood. He turned out nicely, but I did some things I'm going to do differently next time. They aren't mistakes, they're learning experiences!

Overall I'm pretty happy with this guy. The biggest improvement I think I could make is going deeper into the branch for the chin. Most people's profile shows a convex curve when drawn from the hairline to the tip of the nose to the tip of the chin.

The other thing I would do is move the smile line on the left side closer to the corner of the mouth and smooth out the transition up to the cheek.

And now for The Fearless Wonder. Now you have to remember that this guy doesn't exist, never has, living or dead, in reality or in effigy. We've all got a bit of fear when it comes to our work. As you may have noticed, I've been trying to get more emotion into my faces. As I was coming down to the finish line on Beardless here, I was really happy with the way he was turning out. I got to the place that the only thing I needed to do to call him finished was to cut in the eyebrows.

He sat around for a WEEK before I could bring myself to finish the eyebrows. I started thinking (and this is not unusual for me) that I was going to screw up the eyebrows and ruin the whole thing! Never mind that I know how to fix such a screw up. Never mind that I had already fixed several things in the carving that I didn't like at first. I was going to screw up the eyebrows and that would totally ruin the entire carving. Have you ever heard of such a ridiculous thing?

Now admittedly this comes as a result of some self-examination. I didn't think specifically or rationally that I was going to screw it up. This was all some sort of subliminal gut type of feeling that didn't come out until I sat staring at the eyebrowless wonder yesterday.

This isn't the first time this gut-delay has happened, nor is it the first time I've come to this particular realization. I've got a potentially beautiful lovespoon WIP laying around that I've been ignoring for almost a year. One day I'll work up the guts to finish it.

This is all to illustrate that we all have these kinds of feelings to one degree or another, and that it is OK to give in to them on occasion. But you have to recognize that there is no rational reason for feeling that way and that sooner or later, preferably sooner, you're going to have to bite the bullet and finish the damn thing!

Until next time, let the chips fly!