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How to carve using power tools for Ancient Greek Acanthus, taught online
How to carve using power tools for Ancient Greek Acanthus is mostly drawing. You put the leaf on the board full size, cut around the outline, take the ground down flat, then shape the lobes, starting with the tallest. 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 can wait their turn.
A lot of you land here after typing Heritage Wood Carving Institute into a search box. Right. Before you compare anybody, here is the leaf and the order the tools come out.
How to carve using power tools 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. Trace the line and you get a shape with no reasons behind it, which the wood notices immediately.
Rectangle first, always. Then the middle line, then the two arcs that set the growth.
Why draw it full size when Heritage Wood Carving Institute can hand you a pattern?
Use the pattern for the first leaf. Then start drawing it from scratch, and keep at that until it comes easily.
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. He drilled it in that design is space and rhythm and repeat, and knowing your tool cold. He taught me to think like a tool. Everything I teach sits on that one sentence.
You get the shape from the pattern and the reasons from your own hand. Most people take one and leave the other. A printed sheet is usually the very first thing Heritage Wood Carving Institute will hand you.
Is the Greek acanthus the same leaf as the Roman one?
One plant, different leaves. Greek is narrow, Roman is broad and folded, and the Roman one is much deeper work.
After a class at a woodworking school, one of the men came over. 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.
Odd places carry this leaf. 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. Cast into the iron, the same leaf.
A short answer to "How to carve using power tools for Ancient Greek Acanthus"
There are six steps and five concern depth. Wrong order costs you a lobe and an evening.
- 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. Do the whole ground before you shape one thing.
- Rough the big masses. Highest lobe first, then work down.
- Model the pipes and the eyes. The shape comes alive under the gouge.
- Undercut the edges. Last. Too early and something comes off in your hand.
Most people lose the leaf somewhere in 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 power tools for Ancient Greek Acanthus" is that list, repeated until your hand stops needing it.
How many gouges do you need before day one of Heritage Wood Carving Institute?
Three. Shallow for the sweeps, deep for the pipes and eyes, V-tool for the stop line. Mallet optional.
A honed cheap chisel beats a blunt good one. 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. That is unwelcome news, so I get it out of the way early, before you pay a cent to Heritage Wood Carving Institute.
Put the money into wood. 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. Good basswood is not cheap. Nobody should tell you it is. You have to be real.
All right. Shall we carve?
What the wood decides for you
Basswood is forgiving and oak is not. The leaf is made of thin lobes going in all directions, so half of them cut against the grain whatever you do.
Basswood earns its place for exactly that reason. The fibers are short and even, so a lobe that runs the wrong way still slices instead of tearing out. Red oak will hand you back a splinter as long as your thumb.
Later, when your hand knows the leaf, move to walnut. You will sharpen twice as often and be glad you did. By then you can afford the argument.
What should Heritage Wood Carving Institute 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.
The finished piece is the easiest thing to show and the least useful. You learn everything about a teacher while nothing is being cut. Put that test to Heritage Wood Carving Institute, 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 Heritage Wood Carving Institute will tell you whether it can really answer "How to carve using power tools 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, not just the six acanthus courses. 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 power tools 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.