Flotilla

This small flotilla of a schooner and some sloops all came together in days.
I found that I had a terrible itch to carve. I’d been working on some designs in Illustrator, and I am no maven when it comes to graphics programs. So the frustration built up until I had to go out to the shop and get my hands on real tools and make chips and shavings.

The little sloops are all variations on the same sketch. I felt no great compulsion to interpret it just one way, so each is different. The dark one was carved from a scrap of Alleghany cherry. Cherry is hard, and you can do techniques with it that wouldn’t work in the softer pine. But the pine has a nice crispness of its own and is fun to work with as well.

The sloop on the right side was carved from a small piece of western sugar pine. You can see how fine the grain is compared to the fast-grown pine from which I carved the other two.

These miniature carvings are probably destined to top small signs and such. After finishing them, I felt refreshed enough to wrestle with Illustrator again.