Models

​This month I’m going to talk about having a reference model for your complicated carving subjects.
 
It is always best to have a model to guide you.  It can be a nice, full-sized model you have made up in Plasticine or modelling clay beforehand and ironed-out all the tricky parts, or it could be an accurate plastic model of about the correct size, if you can find one.

Or, if all else fails, it could be a number of pictures of the proposed subject, but these are often problematic because you can’t find the correct angle of a suitable subject, or you are carving something original and there are no pictures of it on the web!

Figure 1 Two koalas.  I've chosen to make my koala slightly more generously proportioned, whilst keeping to the layout, form and approximate size of the model behind.  This makes it look cuddlier, and allows for the limitations of the material.

​I’m sure everyone has tried to make something that didn’t quite go as planned and at some point you’ve decided to stop wasting your time and discarded the offending piece in the scrap box?  I’ll gloss over my own!  With a decent model you would have been less likely to have erred as far as that because you would have spotted any problems before they were terminal.
 
So this month’s key words are: model, model, model!
 
Happy carving!