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How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus, taught online
How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus is mostly drawing. You set the leaf out full size in pencil, cut around the edge, sink the background, then model the lobes from the highest one down. The Greek leaf sits shallow and it holds a stiff, formal shape, so the layout decides the carving long before the mallet does.
The leaf has been on my bench a long time, and the start has never moved. A pencil and a board. The gouges wait.
A lot of you land here after typing Wood carving mentorship programs into a search box. Fair enough. Before you weigh up anybody's course, here is the leaf itself and the order the work goes in.
How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus starts with a pencil
Draw it on the board, at the size it will be cut. Your pencil belongs on the wood, because the wood is where the leaf has to live anyway.
Your hand picks up the curve from the drawing, long before the gouge shows up. When you trace somebody else's line, your hand learns nothing, and the first time a lobe runs into the grain you will not know which way to turn the tool.
Box, then the center line, then the two arcs. Those three things hold the whole leaf up.
Why draw it full size when Wood carving mentorship programs can hand you a pattern?
Take the pattern. It helps. Then draw the leaf yourself until you can do one from memory.
I was sixteen when I started my apprenticeship with a fine art master in Russia, and the thing he beat into me was not how to hold a chisel. Design is not drawing on paper. Design is the laws of space, rhythm and repetition, and knowing what the tool in your hand can and cannot do. He taught me to think like a tool. All these years later it is still the whole of my teaching.
A pattern is a shape. A drawing is an argument. You want both, and most stop at the shape. A printed sheet is usually the very first thing Wood carving mentorship programs will hand you.
Is the Greek acanthus the same leaf as the Roman one?
Same plant, different leaf. The Greek one is narrow and it points. The Roman one opens up, curls over on itself, and asks for far more depth than a beginner has any business trying.
One of my students at a woodworking school came up when the class broke. He said it had never crossed his mind. For him, acanthus meant the thing he had seen a hundred times on Chippendale chairs, and that was the end of it.
The differences are small on paper and enormous under a gouge, so they get their own courses. Carving Greek Acanthus Leaf runs 16 lessons. Carving Roman Acanthus Leaf runs 17. There is a Corinthian one at 7 lessons, a Byzantine one, and one built from a design somebody drew in 1903.
Watch for it and you will see it everywhere. I went down to St. Augustine in Florida, the oldest city in the country, and walked around the old fort, Castillo de San Marcos. Cannons. Cast iron, sitting outside for three hundred years. And there is the acanthus, right on the barrel.
A short answer to "How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus"
Six steps in all. Five are about depth, and the order is not optional.
- Draw the leaf full size, on the wood itself.
- Cut a stop line right on the outline with a V-tool. Keep the cut just outside the pencil line.
- Take the background down to one even depth. Everywhere, before a single lobe gets shaped.
- Rough the big masses. Start high and come down in stages.
- Model the pipes and the eyes. Now it starts to look carved.
- Undercut the edges. Last. Early undercutting breaks lobes.
The trouble almost always lands on steps two and three. They shape before the ground is flat, and then the ground can never be flattened without eating the shape they just made.
The honest answer to "How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus" is that list, repeated until your hand stops needing it.
How many gouges do you need before day one of Wood carving mentorship programs?
You need three. A shallow gouge, a deeper gouge, and a V-tool. The mallet is for your wrist.
Sharp always beats costly. I have watched a man with one honed chisel outwork a room full of people holding four hundred dollar sets, and it was not close. Sharpening is the skill that takes years. Nobody wants to hear that, so I say it early, before you pay a cent to Wood carving mentorship programs.
Spend your money on the wood instead. Basswood, lindenwood, limewood, whatever your part of the world calls it. Take a gouge to a two by four and you will be done with carving by Thursday. It costs money, and I would rather say that now. You have to be real.
If that sounds like your kind of trouble, shall we carve?
What the wood decides for you
Basswood will forgive you. Oak keeps the receipt. Thin lobes run every way, so half the cuts oppose the grain.
Teaching wood, in other words. The fibers are short and even, so a lobe that runs the wrong way still slices instead of tearing out. That cut in red oak tears out a thumb of wood.
Later, when your hand knows the leaf, move to walnut. Lovely wood. It will find every shortcut you took. By then you can afford the argument.
What should Wood carving mentorship programs show you before you pay for it?
Ask to see the drawing stage. Not the finished piece, and not the best bits. The boring part where somebody puts a pencil on a board and explains why the line goes there.
Anybody can film a finished leaf. Nobody hides at the layout stage. Put that test to Wood carving mentorship programs, mine included.
Two more things worth checking. Does the course go all the way to the end, including the parts that go wrong? And can you see the tool in the cut, close, at the angle the carver sees it?
Ten minutes of anything you found under Wood carving mentorship programs will tell you whether it can really answer "How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus".
The School of Woodcarving is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Tuition is $25 a month and it opens all 48 courses and 621 lessons, the entire set. It renews automatically every month and you can stop it whenever you like. Part of it feeds orphans and widows, and that is what I am proudest of.
Frequently asked questions
Can a beginner carve the Greek acanthus?
Yes, and it is a better first ornament than most. The leaf is shallow, the shapes are large, and there is very little undercutting. Start with a panel about 6 by 8 inches.
Do I need the pattern, or can I draw my own?
The course comes with the full size pattern as a download, so you have it either way. Use it for the first leaf. Draw the second one yourself.
What wood should I use for a Greek acanthus leaf?
American basswood, or lindenwood and limewood if that is what your country sells. Avoid construction pine, and leave oak alone until the leaf is familiar.
How long does one leaf take?
Two or three evenings is normal for a first leaf. The drawing is often the longest part of it.
Where is the school?
Online. You watch and carve at your own bench, at whatever hour suits you, so there is nothing to drive to. Alexander also teaches in person at woodworking schools through the year.
What is the short version of "How to carve using different types of wood for Ancient Greek Acanthus"?
Draw it full size, cut a stop line on the outline, drop the background to one even depth, then shape the lobes tallest first and undercut them last.
Who teaches these lessons?
Alexander Grabovetskiy, a master carver and International Woodcarver of the Year, who has been carving for over forty years.