Two major lesson I learned in this video project are to change with the situation and to deal with the short time. It is always the case that the reality would not follow the plan, but this seems to be amplified in video making. We made the storyboard with the perfect setting we imagined, an actress sitting in front of a big mirror with a make-up table. But actually, we have neither big mirror nor a table. Not to mention all other minor settings and details that exist only in the plan. On the shooting day, we had to cooperate with all kinds of constrains, give up some initial plans and make up with new ones. For example, we have to choose different shooting angles and scenes because of the settings. And what I learned from this experience is that we should always be aware of the possibility of such situation. We cannot make plans about the last-minute changes, but we can be positive about it and not be afraid of it.
One other obstacle is the short time, we have very limited amount of time to finish editing. Also, since the video project is not very convenient to share and edit at the same time, it was a big challenge for teamwork. Therefore, we separated works in a manner that each does one part without affecting others work, and we all have the chance to review and make changes to the piece. Although this project is not the most perfect one, and I believe that we can make it better with more time, I think we overcame all challenges and finish the project smoothly.
“In the Blink of an Eye” talked about the edition of film, especially in the work of cuts. The excerpt provided me many cool ideas to think about. And there are two points I found most interesting and surprising in the book, one is the six criteria for making a cut, and the second is the myth of why does cot work.
Murch ranked the six important elements when deciding a cut, from emotion and story as the most important to the continuity of dimensional space as the least important. This ranking is very novel to me as I previously held the idea that the coherent in spatial is very crucial to film cuts. While Murch argued that when the film is conveying the emotion and story in the right way, audience may neglect the incoherence in spaces. I found this ranking reasonable when I read the article and also when I thought about the movies I have seen. As in many situations I did not necessarily notice the cuts when I was into the plot or the emotions.
Murch provided two answers to the question that why human accept cuts so naturally. One is that in dreams, we may experience discontinuous stories. The other answer, the more fascinating one, is that human blinks create such discontinuity in real life. Murch related film cuts to human blinks and argued that an editor can determine a cut when feeling it is a potential moment for a blink, and that a good actor would blink in the same pace with the emotion of the character. His theory of blinks strikes me a lot because I never thought about blinks in this way, that the blinking behavior can have such significance. Human would blink to separate dialogues, feelings, and thoughts, transforming our continuous life into discrete pieces. And such behavior is done unconsciously in our brain. The comparison of the film cuts and human blinks made me have a more natural feeling about cuts. That film cuts no longer represents a distinguishable difference between movies and real life, but they become a tool to bring movie world into reality. That the movie story is more alike to the experience we have in everyday life.
Reference
Murch, Walter. In the Blink of an Eye: A Perspective on Film Editing. Silman-James Press, 2001.
“Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art” by Scott Mccloud is a comic book discussing the origin, the form, the development, and the characteristics of comics. Reading this book, I learned a lot about art, not only the genre of comics, but also the concept of art as a whole. Mccloud talked about many things that strike me, including the history of comics, the relationship between image and language, the contract between reality and icon, the closure in comics, the presentation of sound and time in comics, the function of color and so on. Here are some thoughts about the points in the book that are related to the course materials.
Firstly, chapter three “Blood in the Gutter” talks about the closure, the space between panels. This topic is very related to the image sequence assignment. To some extent, the assignment requires the same as a comic book, that is to tell a certain story using a sequence of panels, while the difference is that no word is allowed. Mccloud’s knowledge about the panel-to-panel transitions are highly consistent with the story-telling requirement. He discussed what would happen in the audience’s mind between two panels, that the space between two images can be filled up by the reader’s imagination. Although nothing is shown on the paper, the audience could find the connection based on their experience. I keep thinking about this idea when doing the image sequence assignment, that how much blank space can I leave without having the story less clear. I cannot include every motion and changes to the limited images, so I have to capture the several most important moments and make them connected to each other. I want to leave the audience with as much imagination as possible, but still telling one concrete story. Mccloud’s moment-to-moment, action-to-action, and subject-to-subject scene concept really helped me a lot in choosing which moment and which movement to capture.
Secondly, in chapter four and chapter five, Mccloud talked about how simple lines have the ability to represent motion, sound, and even smell that audience should not simply see in an image. This reminds me of the sound video “The World Is Sound” by Christine Sun Kim, in which she made use of musical signs to present the sound of a certain event, even some events that should not have sound at all. Both comics lines and Christine’s work use one sense to illustrate other senses, use images to show sounds or smells that eyes can not see. While in Christine’s work that the musical signs might require some explanations to understand, motion lines and “smell lines” are just so intuitive in comic books. Without any explanation or background knowledge, a reader can easily get the idea that the food went wrong, the man was running, or the dog was barking. These examples provoke me the think the human’s five senses are not separate, without really “receiving the signal”, our imagination allow senses to be conveyed through other channels, and we can enjoy the information of multiple senses while using only one organ. This idea of sense sharing let me think about what I can convey within one form, can I show brightness with sound, or show pain with images. I think Mccloud’s comics book and Christine’s video expended my understanding of the information contained within one art form.
What’s more, the comics book also talks about content and form. Although the main topic is comics, Mccloud also paid some attention on drawing and writing, as they are two essential elements of comics. In the discussion of these art forms, he talked about the growth expressionism, impressionism, surrealism and so on. Some paintings in going in the domain of abstract, while some writings are becoming more understandable. But the mainstream of art critiques is still using the standard of the past to interpret and judge new arts. To some extent, it comes across with the idea in “Against Interpretation”. In the writing, Susan Sontag argued that we should focus more on the form, but not the content of artwork, and that we should not overthink the meanings of artworks. It seems that Mccloud and Sontag are talking about similar things, that we are using the same standard to interpret artworks in different times, so we might press too much irritant information to one piece of art.
In short, though this book is about comics, it also mentions many other art forms and presented many interesting ideas that are suitable to all art forms. Techniques and concepts used in comics can be adapted into other expressions. This is exactly the idea of storytelling through different kinds of media.
Reference
Christine Sun Kim. “The World Is Sound”. Youtube.Com, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vU4TCKxZlc&t=180s.
Sontag, Susan. Against Interpretation, and Other Essays. New York :Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966.
McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: Writing and Art. Harper Perennial, 1993.
“Christine Sun Kim: The World Is Sound” is one eight-minute video by artist Christine Sum Kim. In this video, she describes some artwork of her series “the sound of”. The video has no sound, Christine used sign language and caption to convey her ideas. She illustrated five artwork of series “the sound of”, including passing time, temperature rising, and waiting room, by showing the idea of each piece, the meaning of musical signs in the artwork and her feeling in such situations.
Christine used nothing but a sequence of three musical signs, f, p, and sfz, to represent the sound of different things. With the combination of musical signs, the amount, and the frequency of each note, she conveyed the tense and smoothing emotion. One novel idea is that she found a way to produce and represent sounds for those events that normally has no sound. For example, time passing, and temperature rising are events that does not have a concrete form, more like a concept rather than something we can actually hear or see. However, using merely musical signs on the paper, Christine presented these events using a combination of vision and auditory, the audience could understand the event by “seeing the sound”.
To me personally, I found two points most amazing in this video. First is that the video itself has no sound, no people speaking nor background music, while the video is talking about sound all the time. This contradiction separates the ideas of hearing the sound and perceiving the sound. Although I heard nothing, I can somehow feel the sound that is discussed in the video. This let me think about the form of sounds. Is hearing the only way for one to perceive sound, or if visions and feelings can also provide enough information for the audience to receive sounds. So that the sound does not come from the outside world but is generated from our brains. The second striking point is how sound is able to describe something abstract, something does not necessarily have a sound. As in “the sound of temperature rising”, she gives appropriate and vivid sound to the concept of temperature rising and showed the motion and changes of such an abstract concept. These artworks lightened the point for me that how senses can be used to describe seemly irrelevant ideas and events.
In short, I think this video and the several artworks in the video very creative and inspiring, as they provided me many new thoughts about auditory and sound.
Reference
Christine Sun Kim. “The World Is Sound”. Youtube.Com, 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vU4TCKxZlc&t=180s.
La Jetee is one 28 minutes French film directed by Chris Marker in 1962. This film is made up with sequential black and white still images along with the voice of a narrator and other background music. La Jetee presents a story about a man who was forced to make time travels in his dreams to the past and the future because his unique strong memory of a certain moment. During such time travels, he met a destined girl and made a choice between the future and the past. The story ends with the main character going back in time and dying in front of his younger self.
The film starts and ends with the same scene of the airport, where the protagonist died in front of himself. This scene is also mentioned and showed several times in the middle of the film. This repetition illustrates the time travel core of the film, that he jumped back in time to repeat this memory. The continuous emphasize of the airport scene also provides the idea that the whole story is based on this certain moment; the story would not go very far without pointing back to the origin. This feeling of foundation is just in line with the story logic, that nothing would happen without the main character’s memory about the scene, and everything goes back to this very scene.
Besides the scene setting, I am most fascinated by two aspects of the film. The first is the story of time travel. Without knowing any plot before, I was amazed by the story and the twists in it. There are several moments that I felt striking, for example, the moment when the main character succeeded in travelling back in his dream, the moment when he chose to go back instead of to the peace future, and the moment when he died at last. Such twists involve not only the idea of time travel, but also the emotion and feelings of the character. The film succeeded to present a whole and detailed story in less than thirty minutes. And this led to the second aspect, the story telling.
The film used only black and white still images, such images could provide much less information than moving ones. However, I feel that the film did a great job in providing everything the audience need to know, while left some marginalized details to be imagined by the audience themselves. I think one important feature for the film to deliver massage besides the still image is the audio. There is light music in peaceful scenes and strong heartbeats in tense situations. The audio conveys exact emotions and flows of the story, providing sensual information that the still image failed to achieve.
In general, I do personally find the film La Jetee very fascinating and inspiring.
In the video, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie illustrates single story with examples such as her impression to the house boy, her American roommate’s impression to African, and her impression to Mexico. All these impressions are single sided, with only one characteristic, which forms a seriously biased stereotype. The only story brings no benefits to both the stereotype holder and the one who lives in the single story.
Though not deeply explained, Adichie links the reason of single story to power. She argues that power has the ability to decide what to tell and how to tell, thus creating a single-sided story and making it to be the only story. I do agree that power can be an important factor for single stories, just as all those samples above involves a difference in powers, Adichie’s family owns power over the house boy and America owns power over Africa and Mexico. However, I do think that the word of “power” might be too vague as the factor of single stories. Time can be one reason of single stories, a story being told repeatedly over a long time could be convincible; lack of information can be one reason of single stories, one is exposed to nothing but a single piece of knowledge about another might just take it for granted.
But no matter is power, time, or lack of information, they are not easy to deal with, to avoid the single story. It might seem that information would be solvable, as Internet contains everything. It is true for big notions like Mexico, but when it comes to a person, or a small incident, we might just have no other information source but that single story.
Adichie promotes us to have “many story”, to break the danger of single story. This must be the first right solution for single story, but I think that we do not necessarily have the chance to gain “many story”. We are exposed to millions of news and information every day, there is no way for us to distinguish every piece whether it is single-sided and then try to find the other perspectives. I think the easier way to deal with the danger of single story, is to presume every piece of story I heard to be a single-sided one. Without further confirmation, I should not conclude the single characteristic or single reason to be the only one and the definitive one. If I hold the thought that every random story can be single-sided, then I would not spread them without confirmation, and I would not be reluctant to face other perspectives of the event when I met them. I shall be happy to know that I am no longer single sided, but maybe in a situation of “two story”.
Response to Trans Women and The Danger of a Single Story
In Cassie Blighter’s writing, besides other discussion towards gender, she points out that Adichie fell into the trap of single story. It seems very irony that the very person who illustrated the danger of single story failed to live up to it. Adichie took it for granted that trans women has better childhood experience than cis women as they once preceded the privilege of men. Adichie did not thought about trans women who were abused in their childhood for not being masculine, and all other suffers they experienced.
Adichie made one response based on the knowledge she had, however ignored that possibility that the knowledge is a single story. This behavior brought back to the previous point I mentioned, that if we assume the information might be single-sided at the first place, then we might not just jump to a conclusion so quickly without thinking about other possibilities.
—- by Alan Guo, Instructor: Oliver Steele & Andy Garica
Inspiration and Design
This project intends to make a deer head using only wood. The initial inspiration is out of my personal interest, as I like the sculpture of deer horn a lot. For this project, as I could have the opportunity to make something with wood, I chose to make one deer head as one sculptural decoration. For using the real deer horns as decoration are cruel and inhumane. Using wood as substitution conveys the signal of animal protection and appeals for the attention to profitable animal killing.
More detail information about the inspiration could be found in the previous blog post of “initial plan for final project”.
After doing research on the Internet about the design, I decided to use wood boards for the fabrication. I was inspired a lot from one art piece from Kalalou, I referenced his idea about the assembling and designing.
art piece from Kalalou
The first thing to do is to find out how would the whole piece be constructed. As the project would be made of wood boards, I did some sketch to design how should each board be used, and the outline shape of each piece.
As shown in the sketch, I separate the project into several parts. Face, neck, cheek, ear and horn are all make separately and joined together later on.
After deciding the outline, I started designing and drawing shapes for each part. I found some photos of deer from different angles on the Internet, and used Adobe Illustrator to trace the shape.
With each shape drawn, I then 3D modeled the whole sculpture using the stretch from illustrator. The process of 3D modeling is really important for the whole project as this is where I shall figure out how big each piece should be and how could different pieces be assembled together.
3D model by Tinkercad
I used tinkercad for this step, however it turned out that tinkered wasn’t the best option for woodworking model. Tinkercad is easy to use, but with limited functions. With other modeling applications, I might could try with different texture, joints and so on. Luckily, the most important goal for the modeling is to find out the proportion of each part. And Tinkercad gave me an rough idea about how big each part should be.
Wood Choosing
After the initial design, the next step is to choose the right kind of wood for the sculpture. My plan was to find some wood board with width of 20 – 25 centimeter and thickness of 2 – 3 centimeter in light color. I reached out to one lumber yard that we once paid a visit to. The manager there said that the size I wanted isn’t so popular, so there might not be wood that could match all my requirements. He then recommended me with one wood called Jatoba, which satisfies my size requirement. However, after consulting with professor Steele, he told me that Jatoba might be too hard for this project, based on what we found in the wood database.
Professor recommended me with some other kinds of wood, including teak, ash and beech. After finding out that teak is much more expensive than other wood, I turned to white ash, as the lumber yard had some white ash boards that meets my size requirement.
I asked the lumber yard to send one sample piece of white ash to test first.
The test piece wasn’t so big, but I did many tests on it, including most of the process I would work with, cutting with band saw, table saw, sanding with different grids and also finishing.
After the whole test, I found out white ash is easy to work with, it is not to hard for cutting and sanding, and not as soft as pine wood. Thus, I ordered all my wood for this project. The manager sent me seven pieces of wood board, their size varies a bit, but larger than I expected.
Fabrication
Preprocessing Wood
wood from lumber yard
I used the miter saw, power planer and table saw to preprocess the wood. The wood I got from the lumber yard were around 1.5 meter to 2 meter long, which is definitely too long for any process. So I first used the miter saw to cut down pieces, then the power planer to plane smaller pieces. Miter saw and table saw might be used again after plane to cut exact length that I want since pieces too short can’t go through the power plane.
Redesign I
In previous designs, I calculated the width as 25 centimeter, thus I planed different ways to join the head with the neck together (options 1 – 3), since the contact surface between two parts are not straight, the joinery would be very difficult.
However, after receiving the wood, I found that there are several pieces have width of 35 – 40. Thus, I redesigned the joinery of head and neck so that I don’t actually need to join the two pieces together as I made it one piece at the first place (option 4). Thanks to the lumber yard, the wider wood saved my day from difficult joineries.
Gluing
Gluing is really one big part of this project. I designed the head and neck to have three layers of wood board, thus the head along has nine pieces of small boards, and all of them have to be glued together. I first glue the three layers together as the surface is big, then the side face with three board would be thick enough for another gluing.
I practiced and learned a lot during the whole gluing process. I practiced about how to do a dry test that clamp everything together without applying glue to see how could everything work best, I learned how to clamp for best force and use other wood to help spreading the force. Also that since the gluing process would take up to twenty-four hours to dry completely, planing what to do everyday becomes so important cause I need to leave the night for glue to dry out.
I also did some testing about the gluing. If pieces are well glued, then one can’t really see the trace of glue from the cut surface. So I was wondering whether there is a way to actually show the audience that these two wood are glued together as part of my design.
I tried to sand the edges of each piece before gluing them. This method works well through I still have to clean up the glue squeezed out from the edges. And during the process, I found out the most easy way to show two glued pieces, by not matching the wood grain.
wounded 🙁
sand the edges grain not matching
Redesign II
In the process of gluing the “nose” to the head, professor Steele told me that the side surface used for gluing is the end grain, which would not perform well in the gluing process, and it might fall apart later. So, other joineries has to be applied for these wood pieces.
I chose the dowels for the joinery, which is one wooden stick inserted into the holes made in each piece of wood. The difficulties of this joint is to match the holes in exact position so that the wood could fit together, also holes need to be straightly vertical or the two pieces wouldn’t be at the same surface after joining.
There is one jig for dowels, but it didn’t fit my pieces so well, I then reassembled it in a way that could work on my wood board. The jig helps to make parallel holes on both pieces of wood to match. The Drill press is used to make holes.
jig for dowels
However, just before I clamped and glued the pieces with dowels, the wood fall down accidentally, and the wooden sticks broke inside the wood. Luckily, the plier helped to take out the dowels so I don’t need to drill holes all over again.
The similar technique is also used when joining the neck to the head part.
Redesign III
Right after I glued everything together, I found out that my piece too big and heavy. I followed the size in my previous design, but only when having the real piece of wood in front of myself I could figure out how big the sculpture really is. Thus, I reduced the whole design for about one-third to one-fourth, though it turned out later that this reduced size is still too big for a deer and myself.
Band Saw Cutting
Almost all shapes for this project are cut by the band saw. Using a wider blade, the three layers of wood could be cut through easier, though smaller curves are more difficult.
One major problem I met when using the band saw was that my piece was too big, even bigger than the band saw platform. And the wood is too heavy for one person to hold and cut curves at the same time. For some tricky cuts, I asked friends to help me lift the wood a bit.
Since this project is about the deer head sculpture, the face should be symmetric at least to some extent. After trying to sand them into the same shape, I found out the better way is to cut one first, then follow the exact trace of the first one to produce the second part.
Router for edge cutting
Since the cheeks has different shape with the head, they can’t be cut at the same time but to glue later. The edges wouldn’t match perfectly after the gluing process, so professor Steele suggested me to use the router to get a flat side face.
The router isn’t one that is easy and pleasant to use. After setting up for more than one hour, professor Steele and I figured out one way for the router to have more reference surface so that the machine could be more stable. Though hard to use, the router removed the extra wood efficiently, leaving one flat side face.
before router after router
The only unpleasant thing with router this time was that it teared out one small piece at a large curve. But I think I could only live with it. My deer is now a wounded one.
wounded 🙁
Sanding
Sanding is one of the most time consuming process for the wood project. I used nearly all the sanding tools in the wood shop for the sculpture. The one I used most is the random orbital sander, it helped me for the surfaces. Sanding blocks, papers and disc sander are also used for side face and edges.
In order to prepare for finishing, I also applied water to my project in order to raise the grain and then sand it again, though it turned out that the piece is still rough after the finishing.
Redesign IV
In my initial plan for horns and ears, they could just insert into the gap on the head or use wood glue for joints. However, I made the slot a bit wider than the horns, so that it’s not tight enough for insert and even wood glue. And I also thought about making the horns and ears removable, since having those parts on the head would occupy a much larger space and difficult to carry or store. Professor suggested me to make dowels on the horns and the head, so that I could just insert horns and ears into the head.
However, after trying to measure everything and testing, I found it too hard to get exact position for both pieces of wood given that they are all in very curved shape that is hard to work on.
making holes on the ear
I then decided to make dowels joining not the head, but the two horns together, since the dowels could prevent the force pulling down the horns and ears from the head. Making holes on the horns are much easier than having them on the huge head piece. As I practiced the dowels before, making these joineries on the horns and ears didn’t take a too long time.
Finishing with Shellac
After trying and testing different types of finishing on white ash, I finally decided to use the light color shellac. The shellac makes no color different after applying to the wood. When I tested it on the offcuts, the shellac worked very well. But when having it on the final piece, surfaces become much more rough than I expected, even after I sanded again with water.
The process of applying finishing itself is quite easy, as always. The only thing I worried about is whether I was wasting too much shellac since I applied a lot worrying about that I might miss some part.
Also, since the finish would make it harder for wood glue to work, I covered some parts that I might later use glue when having further improvements with blue tapes. But some shellac still got inside the tape, I might need to sand those parts again if glue is to be applied.
Reflections and Improvements
reflections at current stage
For the whole project, I met two major problems. The first is that the wood piece is too heavy. Though I followed the exact size as I designed on illustrator and tinkercad, I didn’t expect the piece being such a big one, and only after trying to lift and hold it myself I found out how heavy the wood is.
The size and weight made many operations difficult, since the piece is larger than the band saw and other sanding machines. Cutting and sanding are much difficult. The weight also makes the piece hard to carry around. According to one classmate, the too large size even makes the deer head looks more like a bear than a deer if without the horns.
However, I figured out this problem too late and there wasn’t enough time for me to turn everything over again and remake it.
The second problem is with the wood choose. I chose white ash as the color matches, the wood board has the right size and it is easy to cut with. After working on this wood for weeks, I found that white ash is a little bit too soft and loose. As I put the piece on some not entirely flat surface, the wood could easily get markers and pits. For some delicate shape like the horns, I’m afraid of breaking it as the wood isn’t that tight.
But if I got some other kind of tighter wood, it would also make my piece even heavier than what I get now. So neither these two problems would be easy to solve.
1. Knowing what you know now, if you were to start over again, would you make any changes to your original design design? What is advice that you would send to your former self?
I would definitely tell my former self to make the sculpture smaller, and maybe choose another type of wood if possible. As these are the problems that troubled me the most during the fabrication process.
Also that in the fabrication, I had made quite a few redesign decisions. Though the final product looked really similar to the initial design, these redesigns really changed my project a lot. As I substituted the joints between head and neck with one larger piece of wood, used dowels for some joints, all these changes makes my piece stronger and more stable.
Thus, if to start over again, I could have knowledge about all these changes before starting, saving me a lot of time struggling with different plans and trying to figure out which could fit my project the best.
2. If you were to build a similar project, what would you keep the same from this project? What would be different?
I think I really learned a lot about many woodworking skills in this project, such as gluing and joints, also the experience about handling large size and cutting symmetric shapes.
If to build a similar project, I could still use these knowledge as I’m satisfied with the way of gluing multiple wood pieces together for larger ones, I would also use dowels for tricky joints. And I find out that shellac is really great when I don’t what to change the color of wood itself.
For differences, I would probably try different kind of woods. And I also want to practice some real sculpture skills. Since I’m using only boards for this project, I could have everything cut with band saw and table saw. However, things would change a lot if I have one large piece of wood at the beginning, and I definitely want to try that out.
Improvements for Future
This project is only partial done due to the time limit, there still remains many parts I could improve on.
First, after applying the shellac finishing, the wood becomes rough again, especially on the side face. As suggested by professor Steele, I could sand off the finishing and applying it again. Or I can use higher grid sanding tools to only sand off the top layer of the raised grains without getting rid of all the finishings.
Also, the project now has a straight back cut with table saw and left unfinished, and it can’t really stand on the ground or hang on the wall. I can make one backboard and attach to the straight back of the project now. Maybe using screws to join the backboard and head tightly together, I can really hang this deer head on the wall, letting it become a real “wall mounted” sculpture decoration.
Finally and Most importantly, I should give one pair of beautiful eyes to my dear deer. 🙂
For the final project, I would like to make a wooden sculpture of a deer head. The sculpture is made by multiple pieces of wood. The wood boards in two-dimension are assembled in the way that can make up a sculpture in three-dimension. Larger piece of curved wood can also be used for the horns of the deer head.
Motivation:
I personally really like the sculpture of deer horns, and dreamed of having one on my home. For using the real deer horns as decoration are cruel and inhumane. Using wood as substitution conveys the signal of animal protection and appeals for the attention to profitable animal killing.
Examples of Object:
1.
This is one deer head sculpture using solid wood, much effort is used to cut the deer shape out of the big piece of wood, as well as the other details like the fur and bones. This project is mainly about cutting and carving one piece of wood into the shape of deer head.
2.
This project is one wood deer head sculpture made of several piece of wood boards. The wood boards make up the head in a simple and understandable way. The design and assemble of different wood would be the major difficulty for this piece.
3.
This deer head looks more like a cardboard project rather than a woodworking project. It used quite a few very thin wood boards for the different layers of the sculpture. Since it has more pieces of wood, many joints are used in this project.
These three projects are all wooden deer head sculptures, but is made up by different amounts of wood pieces. With fewer pieces, the project focuses more on the carving and shaping, and with the increase amount of wood, the project pays more attention on the assembling process.
Inspiration:
There is one artist named Roger Kentish who did several animal head wall mounted using wood.
stag head highland cow head
He had done several wooden animal head sculptures, the left one is a deer and right as a cow. One characteristic on these two projects is that the heads are consist of several pieces of wood with the clear appearance of distinct pieces. He didn’t try to hide the joints of each piece to make the project more like one piece. Instead, he emphasis the different pieces. This style makes his work distinctive.
Build Plan
Stock:
I would like to use several pieces of solid wood boards as well as two or three larger solid wood pieces for the three dimensional shaping as the deer horns and nose. I want to work with some wood with lighter colors like white or light yellow.
Building Process:
1. Design. I think the design process might be the most difficult part of the whole project. I have to decide the exact shape and size of each wood board as well as the deer horns. I also need to make sure that each piece can join together later. It might not be a easy task to guarantee the deer shape and at the same time having feasible plans for each wood piece.
2. Cutting. After deciding each piece, I would cut out each one. I would probably mainly use band saw for the shaping. Templates might be necessary to guarantee that I could get symmetric shapes for different pieces. I may also use table saw for the jointing parts.
3. Assembling. Having each piece cut and sanded, I would then need to join them together. With proper design, there should be corresponding joint shapes so that I could assemble them easily, wood glue would also be needed for this process.
4. Finishing. The last step should be applying the finishing on wood. I think I would not add colors or other paintings to the wood, the color of wood would be just fine.
