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Chris pye 14 pc letter carving tools11/24/2023 ![]() First letters and numbers, then beads and flowers. We do think that the more people learn to carve systematically and efficiently the more enjoyable they will find the craft.)Īfter my first year apprenticing with my Grandfather which was spent entirely learning by doing sharpening his chisels and plane blades. ![]() We do not get any commission or anything from this link - it's just a favor for a friend. For the next few months (I don't know the end date) Chris and Carrie are offering a FREE two-week pass to their video instruction. Note: If you have interest in carving, you will find Chris Pye's video instruction well done and very useful. And probably what has kept me, and many others, carving all these years. A lot of carvers will tell you about the ‘flow’: the focussed attention when time seems to stop when the tool becomes an extension of your hand and the good stuff appears. That comes when I stop thinking, and talking. It’s crucial to pass these fundamental insights on to students and I’m doing good work - but I never feel that I'm doing my best carving work. I talk about what I'm doing, the process how I'm holding this tool or making that cut, and so on. On the e-learning website that I run with my wife Carrie, ( ), I'm being filmed with my teaching hat firmly on. Here's one last weird, but wonderful, thing: My best carving comes when I stop thinking and ‘just do it’. So the odd thing here is that my finished carving often surprises me! And that in turn surprises many who see what I’ve made and who assume I had this actual carving in mind all along. It’s like a painter who may well start with an idea of what they want but in the very creative act of painting - the brushes, the paint, their technical ability - stylises the result in ways they never could have guessed. I’m standing not in front of a block of wood, but at the start of a process that I’ve learned through experience a path, if you will, that I will walk step by step, both creating and finding at the same time. All I have to do is take away the wood that’s not needed, yes? And somewhere in that block I’ll find the final carving itself, like Stanley finding Livingstone in the jungle. A blank canvas: the initial block of wood in front of which I’m standing, gouge and mallet in hand. My brain took a quantum leap when I understood that.Īnd there it is. What you see when you look at my finished piece is wood that I haven't carved! If I’ve touched it with a chisel, it's on the floor… So, as I carve, I'm sort of splitting my attention between taking and leaving, with far more concern about the leaving. So I'm more concerned with what I'm not carving. But consider this: Even as I am carving wood away, what really matters is what I’m leaving behind. Then again, the process itself is an odd thing: I start with the block and remove wood. How cool is that? (Search for the Shigir Idol, a totemic sculpture found in the Ural mountains in 1890.) I mean, in these days when you can print a 3-D heart valve, I get to continue a tradition that’s over 11,000 years old. Here are a few:Īside from teaching and writing about carving, a substantial chunk of my income over 40 years has come from, and still comes from - think about this: me cutting into a chunk of tree with a piece of metal! Two of earth’s great materials. In fact, there are many odd things that strike me about it. What's it like to be a woodcarver? Well, it certainly feels a privilege and that I've been extraordinarily lucky. Does this passion live up to the promise? What approach does Chris use so that he can continue to balance the creativity of his craft with the obligations of commissioned work? I'll turn it over to Chris: So even staking out as a carver requires some boldness and optimism. Nowadays traditional carving is an outlier in the decorative arts and there certainly not many people who could make the claim of working as a carver professionally. I have wondered, "How do you sustain yourself as a professional woodcarver?" ![]() But interestingly, as Chris says below, he supports himself not only as as a teacher of carving but also substantially as a working carver. Chris is an acclaimed teacher, author of many books and the star of the excellent online school ). Guest Blog - Chris Pye: What's it Like to Be a Woodcarver?Ĭhris Pye is a master carver whom I have known for years.
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