Relief wood carving. Types of wood carvings Relief wood
Blind relief carving
Blind relief carving- this is a carving with an uncut (blank) background, a high relief pattern, and almost no flat surface.
Relief carving is divided into:
-bas-relief carving- with low relief, if the convex image protrudes above the background surface by no more than half its thickness (Fig. 1).
Fig.1. Subject composition using bas-relief carvings
-high relief carving- with high relief, in which the convex image protrudes above the background surface by more than half of its volume (Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. Icon made using the technique of high relief carving
Relief carving differs from other types in its greater expressiveness, decorativeness, abundance of light and shade, free composition; in house carving it is usually performed on a large scale.
Relief carvings cover friezes of houses, frontal boards, platbands, elements of gates, entrances and much more.
Relief carving is considered labor-intensive because it requires the skill and experience of a wood carver, as well as the use of large quantity tools.
The technique of blind relief carving (see Fig. 3). First, a drawing is made in a flat-relief carving with a selected background, and then they continue to develop the relief on the plane of an ornament or other decoration. Sampling the background and cutting the outline often have to be done using a mallet.
Creating a relief of a floral ornament or an image of an animal and a person is impossible without certain knowledge of the proportionality of the height and depth of the relief, therefore, before starting work, you need to try to gain at least a little experience in sculpting three-dimensional figures from plasticine or clay. This skill will help you complete relief compositions on wood many times faster. Preparing the original pattern to scale allows you to copy a stucco sample and create almost any ornamental motif or detail.
The relief carving is made deeply. Its elements protrude high above the background, sometimes almost breaking away from it and approaching a three-dimensional, sculptural carving.
Fig.3. Technique for making blind relief carving: a - cut or cut along the contour; b - trimming to the base of the cut; c - background sample in rough form; d - rounding the ornament and cleaning the background; d - development of relief by excavations, cuttings
To perform relief carvings, the following are used: jamb knives, semicircular chisels of various widths, cranberries (curved semicircular chisels).
Literature:
1. Vetoshkin Yu.I., Startsev V.M., Zadimidko V.T. Wooden arts: textbook. allowance. Ekaterinburg:
Ural. state forestry engineering univ. 2012.
This type of carving makes it possible to create various compositions with plant or animal ornaments.
The carving technique is labor-intensive and requires a certain skill and experience.
It has several varieties: carving with oval contours, carving with a selected background (or selected), carving with a cushion background and relief-oval carving.
Carvings with oval contours and carvings with a selected background look strictly and graphically.
Carving with a cushion background makes the image of the design more rich and picturesque.
Relief - oval thread - a transitional step to a more convex thread - relief.
Blind relief carving is an improvement of carving with a selected background.
Before we begin to cover the issue of technique various types relief carving, you should know that this carving often requires the presence of significant working areas in order to place the intended subjects on them.
We are talking about gluing shields. Let's dwell on this issue.
Gluing of shields
In house and artistic carvings, wide boards are often required.
When drying, such boards often warp and crack very badly, so wide boards are sawn before drying, and the required width of the workpiece is obtained by gluing several narrow boards.
For assembly, several planed boards of the required length and thickness are taken, taking into account an allowance of 30-100 mm. The face and edge of the boards are jointed at an angle of 90°.
The quality of jointing is checked against light by placing the boards edges together.
The precision of the jointing must be very high, otherwise the shield will crack at the gluing site.
The processed and adjusted boards are laid out in such a way that the texture pattern and color of the wood of adjacent boards does not differ or is sufficiently close.
The difference in any one workpiece will greatly affect the quality of the product.
The edges of the boards laid out in this way are smeared with glue, the boards are placed in clamps or clamps and clamped with screws or wedges.
If the boards to be glued will subsequently be outdoors (used in house carvings), then synthetic or casein adhesives should be used, which are highly water-resistant and durable.
When using shields in artistic carving, it is best to use wood glue.
Sometimes it happens that glued panels come into contact with a surface that is highly susceptible to cooling or moisture, which causes them to warp severely.
In this case, profiled bars or slats are glued into the panels.
After drying, the glued panels are carefully planed and cleaned with a double-blade plane or jointer. Glued panels are not sanded before carving!
Flat relief carving
Along the contour of the drawing, an incision is made from the drawing line towards the background. The cut is made with a slightly inclined cutter.
The tilt protects the edges of the ornament from accidental cuts when selecting the background. At the end of the work, the background is trimmed vertically and exactly along the line of the drawing.
After cutting, trimming is performed to a certain depth, which should be the same throughout the entire plane of the ornament.
Then the background is sampled with chisels. Depending on how the background is intended, such chisels are selected.
These can be sloping chisels and cranberry chisels (smooth, profile).
To prevent scuff marks from forming on the wood when stripping the background, it is necessary to take into account the direction of the fiber layer.
Carving with oval contours
In terms of its execution technique, it resembles contour carving (the contour of the pattern consists of dihedral recesses).
The design is cut along the contour using a jamb or the edge of a chisel. After this, the workpiece is trimmed from the background side.
In this case, chisels are selected so that it is possible to cut and trim the curved shapes of the ornament in one movement in the direction of the structure of the wood fibers.
After trimming, the edges are rolled up on the side of the ornamental elements.
In relation to the trim at the background border, the oval edge should be sharply rounded.
The result of carving is a relief image with smooth oval lines.
When making large ornaments on hardwood, the notches are made with chisels and mallets.
In this case, the notch should pass from the outside of the ornament at a distance of several millimeters from the line of the design.
Carving with selected background
A carving with a selected background is similar to a carving with oval contours.
The background is sampled to a certain depth, which will give special expressiveness to the drawing.
The inside of the background can be embossed or filled with profile slots.
Carving with pillow background
The technique for making carvings with a cushion background is similar to the two previous types, and the peculiarity is that the background does not have any flat lines and is completely oval.
The drawing slopes steeply on the side of the contour and more gently on the side of the background.
Relief-oval carving
In relief-oval carving, the background is oval, and the ornament is processed in relief.
When trimming, the contour lines of the design become steeper on the background side and somewhat less on the ornament side.
After this, the lines are cut on both sides with a sloping chisel.
Vertical shapes of the ornament are selected with medium chisels, resulting in the formation of recesses in the form of hollows.
Blind relief carving
First of all, the drawing is done using the flat-relief technique with a selected background.
After this, the relief is developed on the plane of the ornament.
Sampling the background and cutting off the contour on hardwood is done using a mallet.
This type of carving makes it possible to create various compositions with plant or animal ornaments.
The carving technique is labor-intensive and requires a certain skill and experience.
It has several varieties: carving with oval contours, carving with a selected background (or selected), carving with a cushion background and relief-oval carving.
Carvings with oval contours and carvings with a selected background look strictly and graphically.
Carving with a cushion background makes the image of the design more rich and picturesque.
Relief - oval thread - a transitional step to a more convex thread - relief.
Blind relief carving is an improvement of carving with a selected background.
Before we begin to cover the issue of the technique of performing various types of relief carving, you should know that this carving often requires the presence of significant working areas in order to place the intended subjects on them.
We are talking about gluing shields. Let's dwell on this issue.
Gluing of shields
In house and artistic carvings, wide boards are often required.
When drying, such boards often warp and crack very badly, so wide boards are sawn before drying, and the required width of the workpiece is obtained by gluing several narrow boards.
For assembly, several planed boards of the required length and thickness are taken, taking into account an allowance of 30-100 mm. The face and edge of the boards are jointed at an angle of 90°.
The quality of jointing is checked against light by placing the boards edges together.
The precision of the jointing must be very high, otherwise the shield will crack at the gluing site.
The processed and adjusted boards are laid out in such a way that the texture pattern and color of the wood of adjacent boards does not differ or is sufficiently close.
The difference in any one workpiece will greatly affect the quality of the product.
The edges of the boards laid out in this way are smeared with glue, the boards are placed in clamps or clamps and clamped with screws or wedges.
If the boards to be glued will subsequently be outdoors (used in house carvings), then synthetic or casein adhesives should be used, which are highly water-resistant and durable.
When using shields in artistic carving, it is best to use wood glue.
Sometimes it happens that glued panels come into contact with a surface that is highly susceptible to cooling or moisture, which causes them to warp severely.
In this case, profiled bars or slats are glued into the panels.
After drying, the glued panels are carefully planed and cleaned with a double-blade plane or jointer. Glued panels are not sanded before carving!
Flat relief carving
Along the contour of the drawing, an incision is made from the drawing line towards the background. The cut is made with a slightly inclined cutter.
The tilt protects the edges of the ornament from accidental cuts when selecting the background. At the end of the work, the background is trimmed vertically and exactly along the line of the drawing.
After cutting, trimming is performed to a certain depth, which should be the same throughout the entire plane of the ornament.
Then the background is sampled with chisels. Depending on how the background is intended, such chisels are selected.
These can be sloping chisels and cranberry chisels (smooth, profile).
To prevent scuff marks from forming on the wood when stripping the background, it is necessary to take into account the direction of the fiber layer.
Carving with oval contours
In terms of its execution technique, it resembles contour carving (the contour of the pattern consists of dihedral recesses).
The design is cut along the contour using a jamb or the edge of a chisel. After this, the workpiece is trimmed from the background side.
In this case, chisels are selected so that it is possible to cut and trim the curved shapes of the ornament in one movement in the direction of the structure of the wood fibers.
After trimming, the edges are rolled up on the side of the ornamental elements.
In relation to the trim at the background border, the oval edge should be sharply rounded.
The result of carving is a relief image with smooth oval lines.
When making large ornaments on hardwood, the notches are made with chisels and mallets.
In this case, the notch should pass from the outside of the ornament at a distance of several millimeters from the line of the design.
Carving with selected background
A carving with a selected background is similar to a carving with oval contours.
The background is sampled to a certain depth, which will give special expressiveness to the drawing.
The inside of the background can be embossed or filled with profile slots.
Carving with pillow background
The technique for making carvings with a cushion background is similar to the two previous types, and the peculiarity is that the background does not have any flat lines and is completely oval.
The drawing slopes steeply on the side of the contour and more gently on the side of the background.
Relief-oval carving
In relief-oval carving, the background is oval, and the ornament is processed in relief.
When trimming, the contour lines of the design become steeper on the background side and somewhat less on the ornament side.
After this, the lines are cut on both sides with a sloping chisel.
Vertical shapes of the ornament are selected with medium chisels, resulting in the formation of recesses in the form of hollows.
Blind relief carving
First of all, the drawing is done using the flat-relief technique with a selected background.
After this, the relief is developed on the plane of the ornament.
Sampling the background and cutting off the contour on hardwood is done using a mallet.
If you want to make your project special, add eye-catching elements. To do this, try your hand at relief carving using simple methods and inexpensive tools to carve this elegant “royal lily” with your own hands in a couple of hours.
Sharpness in wood carving comes first
Cutting wood with blunt tools is almost the same as driving a car with a faulty steering mechanism. Both are possible, but the outcome will not be good and you will be in danger. If the material is chipping away in small slivers instead of easily coming off into thin shavings, it's time to sharpen your blades.
If the tool is relatively new, sometimes a quick dressing of the cutting edge is sufficient. But if you want to restore the functionality of an old chisel, you will have to work a little longer. First of all, using a router, make roundings on the edge of the cutting board that correspond to the radius of the chisel groove.
Apply a strip of 120-160 grit sandpaper to the rounded edge.
Sand the surface of the groove until it is smooth and has an even shine (Step 1). Continue the process using finer abrasives (up to 800 grit) until the groove is perfectly smooth. Once this operation is complete, align the cutting edge at right angles to the edges of the blade using a coarse diamond insert (Step 2). Then at low speed sharpening machine Using a water cooler (called a “wet” sharpener), re-shape the bevel (Step 3).
Use a medium-grit abrasive stone to sharpen the cutting edge. Keeping the bevel in contact with the abrasive at the same angle, move the blade from side to side to sand the entire surface evenly (Step 4). Then do the same on a fine-grained water stone. Finally, polish the cutting edge to a mirror finish on a piece of leather belt with polishing paste. Now you can start carving again!
Tools and materials for wood carving
Although you can cut any material, we recommend starting with species that have a soft wood with a uniform density that lends itself particularly well to cutting, such as basswood or walnut. For the first steps in mastering the technique of carving, you will need only a few tools, but, as with any hobby, as your skill grows, the number of tools you use will also increase.
First of all, we advise you to purchase a 6 mm corner, 12 mm shallow and 10 mm semicircular chisels, which will successfully cope with most carving tasks, as well as a sharpened needle file for processing narrow recesses. Keep your tools sharp; Dull cutters leave a rough mark and require a lot of force to cut material, which leads to breakage and can cause injury (see section “Sharpness First”).
Transfer the drawing
To transfer the contours of the design onto the wood, use carbon paper (photo A). Secure the workpiece by placing a non-slip mat for car trunks underneath.
Protect your left hand from scratches and cuts with a durable glove. Note. When carving, consider the direction of the wood grain, as the tool tends to follow the grain rather than the intended contour line. When working across the grain, make shallow cuts to avoid chipping.
Cutting Outlines
Using an angle chisel, first mark the outline of the band and cut to the final depth (about 3mm) (Photo B). Left hand guides the tool, and the right one pushes it forward, overcoming the resistance of the wood. Try to keep the cut surface smooth and uniform.
Note. Take your time and don't try to cut too deep. By cutting the material little by little, it is easier to control the process and avoid chipping. Never point the cutter blade towards yourself. If necessary, rotate the workpiece so that the cutter moves away from you or parallel to the chest.
Once you have cut out the outline of the band, move on to the central petal of the lily, starting from the top point (photo C), and then to the remaining petals above and below the band (photo D). Level the depth of all contour grooves, cut the material above and below the band (photo E). Deepen the contours of the sling with an angle chisel.
Round the petals
Using a narrow semicircular chisel, make grooves about 2 mm deep on either side of the center line of the top petal (photo F). Begin to shape the volume of all the petals with a shallow chisel (photos G and H). Soften the transition between the flat areas and the vertical grooves of the upper petal by cutting away the material a little at a time so that small depressions are formed on either side of the central vein, smoothly blending into the convexities at the outer edges of the petal.
Thread cleaning
Even if you try to make precise and precise movements with your cutters, it is almost inevitable that you will find a few rough spots that require refining or cleaning (Photos I and J). Quick tip! Wipe the threads with a cloth soaked in mineral spirits to reveal minor defects that may go undetected. Having completed the processing of the form and making sure that all defects have been eliminated, you can begin finishing.
The clear coating preserves the natural color of the wood, but you can emphasize the relief by enhancing the contrast with the help of stain, applied several times to areas that should appear deeper and shaded.
Do-it-yourself relief wood carving - master class
Blind relief carving is a carving with a non-cut (blank) background, a high relief pattern and almost no flat areas of the surface, with the exception of those left, perhaps for utilitarian reasons or for compositional design. And one more difference from flat-relief carving is the different height of the carved elements from the level of the background plane. Blind relief carving is divided into bas-relief carving - which has low relief, and high relief carving - i.e. accordingly with the higher one. It must be said that relief carving differs from other types in its greater expressiveness, decorativeness, abundance of light and shade, and significant freedom of composition. This type has especially taken root in house carvings, especially since such carvings are performed there on a significant scale.
The order of its execution is as follows. First, a drawing is made in flat-relief carving with a selected background, and then they continue to develop the relief on the plane of an ornament or other decorative decoration. Sampling the background and cutting the contour often have to be done using a mallet, so you need to carefully monitor the progress of the layers of wood.
When creating a relief of a floral ornament with the inclusion of stylized images of birds, animals, or maybe even a person, you need to try to gain at least a little experience in sculpting the volumes of a stylized ornament from plasticine or, at worst, from clay, so that without gross mistakes, and most importantly, several times faster make relief compositions in wood.
Preparing the original pattern to scale allows you to copy a stucco sample and create almost any ornamental motif or detail.
In relief carving, the main role is played by the development of the relief on the part, therefore, when working out the drawing, the master must be able to navigate the location of high and low areas that ensure the play of light and shade. Sometimes a relief carving is made into an invoice for simplicity.
