All About Pocket Knives

kootenay joe wrote: ↑Fri Feb 14, 2020 3:29 pm Mr Watch you have skill as a carver of wood and the vision of an artist. You can see where a face could be and then create it with expression.
I have zero of these abilities.
Do the faces seem apparent to you right away ? or does it take time, many hours, of looking at the stick to see an area that could be a face ?
Do you know what the face will look like before you start ? Or, does the wood 'dictate' the face as you carve ?
And, is Cypress easy or hard to carve ?
I have 2 Yew sticks that might be related to Cypress. Yew is very rare here in the interior of B.C. I have a small stand of Yew trees in a moist gully, deep in the woods.
kj

Thank you for the compliment. I did not know that i have talent but, sitting two years in watchmakers school learning to make things like a balance staff freehand on a jewelers lathe helped. Plus counting the number of coils in a hairspring and finding and fixing errors he put in hair spring coils. Plus a good friend had a painting studio. After I joined the seniors center I got active with a few wood carvers and joined area clubs. and they had a lady teaching water color painting. Then lot's of other carving classes and painting lessons in oil and Acrylics. It was a great help to have a man at the center who encouraged me.
Cyprus is fairly soft, and he gave instruction and had examples to look at. It is mostly your artistic license. As for Yew wood, I believe it is more common in Europe? and used for vernier, we looked at buying a curio cabinet with it. Related to our evergreen bushes I think? Northern Bass wood is the preferred wood for carving. Bob