Carving Hashemi Flowers 39

At the level of the tool, yes. He says it out loud, or rather I do, in the third part of this lesson, between two passes. Every gouge either digs a hollow or leaves a round, and a finished carving is that pair arranged so light has somewhere to sit. Everything else is decoration on top of that.

Ever wondered what you are actually doing when you push a gouge? Forget the design and the subject for a second, and look at the physical act. Two things are on offer. No third exists.

Lesson 39 of the Hashemi flowers panel is where that becomes obvious. Four parts of hollow, round, hollow, round, plus berries that were not planned, tiny leaves that were planned even less, and one gouge whose label lies about its own size.

What this lesson is made of

• Two shapes. Hollow and round.
• A spoon gouge at seven millimetres, a little over a quarter inch.
• Berries, argued about on camera, three of them and then four.
• Leaves nobody planned.
• A gouge whose label lies by a whole millimetre, which is normal.
• One sixteenth left to the floor of the panel.

Is carving really only hollows and rounds?

At the tool, yes. My own words in the third part are that carving is all about concaves and convexes, and then I add I would say, because a claim is not a law.

Take any pass in these four parts and it lands in one camp. A sweep rolled hollow-side-down scoops. The same sweep turned over rounds a shape off. Deep sweeps make strong hollows, shallow ones make gentle rounds, and the parting tool gives the sharpest hollow of the lot, a V. Nothing else is available to you.

So the two words come up constantly in these lessons, and why a beginner who learns to see every shape as one or the other stops being a beginner faster than one who memorises tool numbers.

What is a concave, and what is a convex?

One curves in. The other curves out. On wood that is a hollow you can lay a thumb into, against a rounded shape a thumb slides straight over.

Worth saying plainly, because the words get used loosely. The tool does not have a concave or a convex; the tool has a sweep. What it leaves in the wood is one or the other depending on which way up you hold it and how deep you go, and a carver who thinks in those terms picks tools faster than one who thinks in numbers.

Why does the pair matter more than either one?

They make each other visible. On its own a hollow is a dent. Put it beside a round and the pair becomes a form.

Light is the reason. A concave gathers shadow in its floor and throws a bright line at its rim, a convex does the reverse, and where the two meet there is a hard change of tone the eye reads as depth. Carve a panel of nothing but hollows and it goes muddy. Carve nothing but rounds and it goes soft. The alternation is the carving.

Which tools made them here?

Eight, and the smallest is smaller than a grain of rice is long.

Is a gouge the size its label says?

Close, not exact, and I say so in the fourth part about a tool in my own hand. Marked six millimetres, really nearer five.

Normal, and not a complaint. The number on a carving gouge describes the sweep, the curvature of the edge, and the figure beside it describes the width, which makers measure slightly differently and stamp before grinding. Buy by shape and by feel. A tool that says six and behaves like five is still the right tool the moment you know which it is.

How small can a detail be and still count?

Smaller than you would believe. I reach for a thirty second of an inch here to prove the point.

What counts is the size of the shadow it throws, not the size of the cut. A tiny undercut under a leaf edge puts a dark line where there was none, and dark lines carry across a room while surface texture does not. Right after making one I ask the camera whether it can see that shadow. Shadow is the whole measure.

Do you have to plan every detail?

Several of the best ones here got decided about thirty seconds before they were carved.

The tiny leaves around the berries were not in any drawing. On camera I admit they were not planned at the beginning, and the reason they went in is that there was material to spare and the area was reading flat. Every one of them adds a shadow and a light point. More shadows, more design, if you wish.

A limit exists, and it is not a number. Detail earns its place when it creates a shadow the eye can find from where people stand. Past that it becomes noise, and a busy panel is harder to read than a plain one. How much detail is too much in a carved panel is the argument on the other side of this one, and both are true at different scales.

How round does a carved berry need to be?

Part way, and I say exactly that while making them, because a bead turned perfectly on a lathe is a machine part rather than fruit.

The method is a rotation. Pick a 9 whose width matches the circle you drew, poke it down gently, then walk it round the shape in steps. Pressure is the danger. By this stage the surrounding wood is thin, so a firm push splits a petal you finished an hour ago. One of the berries in this group deliberately sits lower than the others, because four beads at one height read as a row of dots. Whether a carver has a favourite gouge gets answered here by the shape being carved, as usual.

Three berries or four?

Four, in the end, and you can hear me change my mind twice getting there.

Three felt right, then I said maybe three, then yes let us do three, then even four, then four it was. That is not dithering for the camera. A cluster of round details is a rhythm, and rhythm only tells you the right count once the other shapes around it exist. Decide too early and you are fitting the panel to a number instead of the other way round. How many petals a carved flower should have runs into the same wall from the opposite direction.

When do you stop yourself mid pass?

When the shape you were about to make turns out to be the wrong shape. It happens once here, plainly: I pick up a bigger spoon at five eighths, start a concave, and say I should not do that.

Nobody edits that out. Changing your mind with a tool already touching wood is not indecision, it is the last cheap moment you get. One second later the hollow exists and you are living with it. Where a hollow goes when the detail is already carved is the same decision made a beat earlier.

What does a second layer change?

Any shape sitting on top of another one, and it changes how carefully you work.

Halfway through the second part I note that what I am carving is a second layer, and that every little thing on it will be visible. Wood in the back of a panel is read as texture. Wood on the front layer is read as shape, so every ridge, every stop mark and every rough patch is on show. Slow down when you climb a layer. Any gouge that was good enough for the background looks coarse the moment the same surface sits at the front.

Does a detail nobody sees head on still earn its place?

It does, and this lesson has one I admit is almost invisible on camera.

From directly in front you cannot see it. Step to one side and something is there, a small separation with a leaf growing past it, and that is the angle most people will actually look from. I call it a wow moment while carving it, which sounds like a big claim for a cut the size of a fingernail. Hardly. Panels get looked at by people walking past them, never by somebody standing square on with a lamp. Making a carved leaf catch the light starts from that same observation.

How much wood is left down to the background?

About a sixteenth of an inch, and I check while the tool is in the hollow.

That number is the floor of the whole carving, and everything in this lesson has been cut down toward it. Knowing it is what lets me undercut hard without going through. No gauge exists for it. You look at the panel edge on, remember what you started with, and subtract. How thin a carved leaf can go is the same arithmetic run on a single shape rather than a whole board.

What does a knife do faster than a gouge?

Outlines, separations and any undercut in a corner too tight for a sweep. I reach for one repeatedly here and say out loud that a knife does a lot, and does it much quicker.

A knife was also the first thing I was handed. My teacher started me on knife technique before anything else, on the grounds that the knife was the original wood carving tool and everything since has been a refinement. A knife cuts a line rather than a shape, which is exactly what a boundary is. Why the parting tool goes in first covers the gouge version of the same job.

Why does rushing cost more than it saves?

The wood does not give the time back. Something goes wrong late in the fourth part, and my response on camera is short: that is unfortunate, that is okay, I am not going to remove it, I am going to keep it. Then, a minute later, I should not rush it.

Both halves are the lesson. Accept the thing that happened, then slow down so the next one does not. I have been carving for over forty years, the school gave me the International Woodcarver of the Year award, and the wood still catches me when I hurry. Why a mistake in carving cannot be undone explains why the arithmetic is so unforgiving.

Why go against the grain at all?

A flower runs in a circle while the grain runs in a line. In the second part I note that I am working against it and have to be careful, and then that this still does not make it impossible.

Careful means a light pass, a supported shape and an edge off the strop. In the fourth part I take on an area where the grain runs the unhelpful way and say I should be fine anyway, which is a judgement built on knowing how sharp the tool is that morning. Sharpening is what turns an impossible direction into a slow one.

Where this leaves the panel

Hollows and rounds all over one corner, four berries, a scatter of leaves the size of a fingernail, one keeper of a mistake, and not much thickness left to the floor.

All 49 lessons sit behind tuition at the school. The panel is basswood, the American lime every panel course here uses, carved with Ashley Iles, Pfeil and Henry Taylor tools. Relief carving is built out of this one pair of shapes, and the sculpture rooms at the V and A will show you three hundred years of people proving it. Read what to do when carving rubs out your pencil line beside this one.

Shall we carve?