A New Year

Well, it is a new year; 2011. What does everyone do for the new year? They make resolutions that they never keep. I stopped making resolutions years ago, at least ones that I knew I would never keep.

What I resolved to do this year is to post a blog at least once a week. I heard that posting a blog once a week is the minimum that is expected of any blogger. I might do more than that but I am sure that I can do at least one blog a week no matter what I am doing or where I might be in the world. I should be able to honor that commitment.

Secondly, I resolve to carve every day that I possibly can. There will be days that it will be impossible or impractical to carve but when I can, I will. Because of an injury, I could not carve for almost a year. It was very frustrating. Right now, I have so many ideas and so much motivation that I could carve twelve hours a day. I know that is not possible but that is the feeling that I have.


Thirdly, I resolve to complete some of the projects that I have in process. Some of the pieces that are unfinished have been sitting on a shelf for three, maybe four years. It is about time that I finished those pieces. Besides, they will give me plenty of things to talk about in my blog and make it really easy to carve everyday.

For instance,  The pictures below are of the rabbit that I started before I the three Christmas figures that I made for my children. This was before I started this blog so I do not have pictures of the initial stages fo the carving. This is where I left it off before Christmas.

 

Now that Christmas is over and I have finished those carvings I can get back to the rabbit. The rabbit is intended to be the top of the newel post of our new staircase that leads from the side door entrance to the first floor of the house. The staircase is not there yet but I want to get ahead of the curve and have the rabbit done before hand. It will also give me an idea of what the rest of the staircase might look like.Why a rabbit, you might ask. Because we live so close to nature I like to incorporate animal themes whenever I can.

You can see from the picture that I have one ear roughed out and the rest of the rabbit looks pretty rough as well.

You can see in this second set of pictures that the ears are done, the nose is roughed out and I have drawn in where the eyes will go. Because this will be the top of a newel post i decided that I did not want too much detail so it is more stylized than realistic. 

The last step has been to rough out the eyes. You will notice that the eyes are closed. I thought that is would be better if the rabbit appeared to be sleeping on top of the newel post instead of looking like it was going to leap out the door as soon as it was opened!

Now, the step will be to sand it and finish it but that will be in the next post.