Grinling Gibbons – Maine class 18

A small flower that opens like an eye is a round bud carved into petals that sit in layers around one opening, and that opening looks almost like a human eye. Here it measures about 10 mm (3/8 in). A V tool sets it, a micro gouge drills a dark spot inside, and eight petals overlap around it in one direction.

Look at the buds in that picture. Can you see the pencil eyes drawn on two of them? And the third one, already opened up into petals? That pencil line is where every one of these flowers starts, and it is where we start too.

In class 18 of the Maine course the panel is almost done. What is left is these small flowers, and I carve one of them on camera so you can follow along. They are simple flowers, but small tiny things like them add up, and they look great.

What each small flower needs

• An opening in the shape of a human eye.
• A V tool, the number 16, opens it, and a micro gouge of 1.5 mm (1/16 in) drills a plug inside it for the dark spot.
• Eight petals on this one, all overlapping one way.
• A skew of a quarter inch blends each petal under its neighbor.
• The deepest spots take a micro knife, or a micro gouge worked slowly.
• Waves along the edge and across the surface, with a small bulge in the middle of the petal.

How big is the eye-shaped opening?

About 10 millimeters point to point, which is close to 3/8 of an inch. I draw it first, right on the bud, so you can see what I mean. It looks almost like roses, but it is not a rose. There are still multiple layers of petals, and the opening in the middle looks like a human eye.

They don't all face one way. Each one turns a little differently, because I don't want them to look the same. At the school in Maine we pre-established the directions of the middle parts.

Which tool opens the eye?

My number 16 V tool, at 35 degrees, if I can find it. My bench got a little messy lately. I like to keep only a few tools on my workbench, but it's all right.

With the 16 I pre-establish the opening and attack it from two sides. Get the idea of this one and you will get all of them, on a smaller scale. The smaller ones just get a lot fewer petals.

What goes inside the opening first?

A plug cut, for the dark spot. I grab a number 9, a number 8 in my case, about a sixteenth of an inch, a millimeter and a half. Mine is a Dockyard. Not necessarily the best brand, but I like their micro tools. They look cheap, and they are not that expensive, but the steel is really good. It holds the edge.

Then I excavate inside, pretty much like drilling. Not too deep, but I am after a really dark spot. I don't go to the edges yet, just a little, to make it darker. What I am after is a human eye shape, and around it a really beautiful overlapping motion. When tools this small should come out at all is the question of class 13.

Where does the first petal start?

At the center. You really have to think about where the center of that small flower is. Mine was somewhere right there, which means the preliminary cut has to be brought to that center. It's got to start somewhere, and that's the logic behind it. You don't have to start where I did, but logically, for me, it just looks really good that way.

Don't worry about cleaning up yet. That is only the preliminary cut, and I open it up because of the flowers I already carved. Look at them and you will see spots where a petal goes to the outside, and this is exactly the same idea on a smaller scale. It is hard to see on camera, I know. I tried to zoom in as far as the camera would let me, and as long as you get the idea, it should not be a problem.

How many petals does a small flower get?

Eight on this one. I had four, and because of the Fibonacci sequence I went to eight in total. All of them overlap in exactly one direction, which means each petal goes right underneath the next small one. Which way carved petals should overlap is the question of class 8.

On one side I kept it simpler. Too complex a layering there would be too much, I guess.

With one of my Hashemi flowers I said that I like to follow the Fibonacci number, so after five it will be eight, and that one had to be divided in eight. It had six, so I had to find a couple more spots.

Does it have to be the 16?

A number 11 will do it as well. I just find that the 16 at 35 degrees expedites the job, and for me it is much quicker.

Which skew tucks a petal under?

A quarter inch skew, number 2 on the London pattern. Mine is an Ashley Iles, and they follow the London pattern, so in England it is a number 2. With European brands, it would be a number 1. I could have used a smaller one here, but that's all right.

With the skew I blend the petal right underneath its neighbor and remove the little triangle that is left, because it just does not look good. The space that stays turns into a dark spot, a shadow line, and I excavate it later.

What reaches the deepest dark spots?

A really nice micro knife, if you have one. I have a knife by Drake. I think it is one of the best knives, a beautiful little tool with pretty details. Production is limited, though. You have to wait a couple of months before you can place an order, and then you get your knife.

And it is an excellent tool for an operation like that. With this knife you can get really deep without damaging anything. You just keep excavating. At this point I highly suggest you not to rush anything. Take your time, and go little by little. From above you can see the dark spot, and that is what I am after.

Drake knives show up in my butterflies plate course too, a right hand and a left hand knife. There I said that sometimes it's a really good idea to invest in good tools, and I told you I'm not even affiliated with Drake and don't get paid for that. They are nice tools, USA made, and they just have some soul. That knife has a curvature, so it lies right above the work, and with a deep butterfly it was much safer not to damage it.

Can a micro gouge do the same job?

Slowly, it can. Micro tools are worth having for these flowers, and a Dockyard micro gouge works too. Same idea, we are after that shadow. Excavate as deep as you can, really slowly, and it gives a really dark shadow.

Where it doesn't blend in nicely, I take my skew again, a smaller one this time. Dockyard also makes a tiny V tool, a parting tool. Because it is so small, you can work your details with it upside down and remove the triangles where the petals overlap. Cleaning and refining can take a long time, but that is the idea.

Why do tiny petals need a wave?

Straight lines are no good, and I don't like to see any. This petal was just an arch, and I don't like that, so it gets the same idea as the big flower, only on a small scale. With a micro tool equal to a number 8 or 9, I work the edge bit by bit until it waves. Dockyard doesn't even mark the number on those. It's just the gouge.

My apologies for the sound in that part of the video. Landscapers decided to trim my trees right at the moment I was filming. When I'm trying to film, somebody is always working outside. It is what it is.

The wave goes along the edge, and across the surface too. The middle of each petal bulges out a little, with two concaves at its sides and one bulge in the middle. For the concaves I use a slightly bigger micro tool, about an eighth of an inch, 3 mm or so, and I follow the movement, never straight down. To blend the bulging part, any tool will do. A number 3 works, or even a knife. Here a spoon gouge takes the sharp ridges and facets off and brings everything to the edge.

I used the same idea in the floral panel course on another piece, on its outside. Concave, convex, concave, with the middle part convex. Not big, but still. There I took just a number five for that concave movement, and that's going to look lifelike, I said.

How far under a petal can you go?

Right to the extreme, as long as you stop before the petal breaks. Inside, I get really close with the tiniest number 8, only 1 mm, and excavate all around for an even darker spot. You can go to the extreme with the tool upside down, under every petal, little by little. Just don't overdo it, because you can make it so thin that you break it.

It kind of becomes harder. But that's the way it's done, obviously everywhere. Sharpening tools this small has a lesson of its own, on micro tools.

Should you carve these before gluing the second layer?

If you still can, yes. It would be much easier to do while you work on the first layer. In the class in Maine we were limited on time, five days only, so we left it for later.

By the time you get to this video, you probably glued yours already. If not, get these done before you glue the second layer. There is a gluing spot right underneath them, which makes them really stable, and from the side they go all the way to the background. Why one spot on the back stays uncarved for the glue is class 6.

Which tool does which job on a small flower?

What does the whole panel look like now?

Almost done, and in my opinion there is no such thing as a hundred percent done. I agree with the famous da Vinci. A work of art never gets to a stage called done. You just abandon it.

Some areas still look rough, and there is still a lot of work to be done. My mindset goes like this. If I spent too much time at the beginning cleaning everything and making it look perfect, and then wanted to change something, I would get frustrated. So I work on the whole thing first and make it look how it is supposed to look. Then I spend a lot of time, I mean a lot of time, cleaning up. Even at this stage it looks really good, in my opinion, of course.

I added a couple of flowers that replicate one I already had and excavated a lot more openings. Some of the new work sits on different levels, and you can't even see some of it, but from the side it looks really complex. One small stem goes really low. There's no end, of course, and I will probably refine some of it a little more.

I did not show you how I did it. That work is easier on separate layers, before gluing, and mine was glued long ago, back at the school. Try those overlapping movements yourself if you want.

I rotated the piece for you, slow motion, like in the movies, so you catch how the shadows and lights fall on it. Flowers stick up above a lot of parsley leaves, exactly the way Gibbons did it. I excavated inside the two lilies too. Inside one flower I did what I showed you in another flower course, where the middle bulges out, and that gives a beautiful shadow. I introduced a slight texture there too. Those excavated spots make a huge difference. And it doesn't look like a pancake now, does it?

Do you have to make them this complex?

You can leave them simpler. I am not going to show you the whole process on every one, because there is absolutely no reason to. Complex work on these is not required, but if you introduce some kind of waviness, it will help you. And the more details you introduce, the nicer it is going to look. This one I finish off camera.

My approach to wood carving is just my approach, and there are a lot more approaches. If the rotation helped you, let me know in the comments. It makes a huge difference.

Where does class 18 sit in the course?

Class 18 is the last class of the Maine course. Before it come class 17 and class 16, and after it comes the final assessment.

Every class of the Grinling Gibbons course comes with tuition.

Shall we carve?