I'm still working to clear off the partially finished carvings setting on my work table. One of the best way to do it is to add a bust body to one of the many heads I've done. I think I've mentioned before that on our Tuesday carvers gathering at the Senior Center in town I can usually manage to pretty well rough out a new head in the two hours we're there. So, these things build up after a while. While Bottle Stoppers are a good way to mount them I think this works out much better by making a something fairly simple turn out to be a really nice presentation. The base is walnut and it, with the figure, stands at 12". Now to paint it! Comments welcome as always.
Added the hat feathers yesterday which completed this piece. I had my worries about whether the solid color capote would work but I think it turned out pretty well. Not every Mountain Man in the Rockies was fortunate enough to have a Hudsons Bay blanket and had to depend on just what was available. I spent some extra time letting the waist strap ends hang down over the base to tie the two areas together. The two pieces were attached but reinforced by epoxy on the back side. As long as they are not purposely fiddled with they should be fine.
In sun, he turned out great...He might be an old codger but up there under that hat is a wealth of knowledge on how to live in the mountains and, most importantly, how to stay alive. I hope you like him and look forward to a your comments. More photos in the photo gallery section.
Today I worked on the lower half of Old Gabe. He's wearing a blanket capote, loosely modeled after one we picked up at a Mountain Man Rendezvous last year at the Woolaroc Museum. I ask Judy to come down and model it for me so I could actually see how it fit. Photos are nice but an actual item and model can really make things a lot easy. I hope to have the ends of the blanket strap hang loosely down from the piece but that's a hurdle I haven't solved yet.
