Carving Animal Caricatures

Elma Waltner, crafts designer from Hurley, South Dakota, has put together a series of specific instructions that will enable even the amateur, using the simplest tools and materials, to progress easily from raw wood to an interesting hand-carved animal. All that's needed is a small block of 2" wood — redwood, white pine, sugar pine, western pine, basswood, cottonwood or any other soft wood — and a simple pocket or carver's knife. Inexpensive watercolors or enamels, shellac and varnish are perfect for decoration and finishing.

Each step in the carving is clearly shown through photographs and angle sketches. There are profile patterns (to be traced on the block) for all of the 24 projects, ranging from Bolivar Bull through Casper Camel to Sammy Stegosaurus. Horatio Horse, Gulliver Goat and Esmerelda Elephant serve as teaching pieces, with complete instructions from start to finish for each. Once these have been mastered, the same methods are easily applied to the rest of the projects, and special steps in the carving of these are again shown in photographs.

These projects are only a beginning in animal caricature, and you will soon find yourself developing other animals and other poses.

Softcover, 112 pages, 2012.