How to Select Wood for a Wood Sculpture

Series Summary

Carved wood figures always present an aura of mystery. From the fearsome tribal masks of Africa to the towering totems of British Columbia, indigenous peoples have long created wooden guardians to channel their spirits and protect their peoples. Puppets can even move like us, mock us, or in the case of Pinocchio, come alive. Be careful wood carvers, for in your hands you possess the power of the gods, the power to create, the power to give life, and hopefully the power to make a cool sculpture that will attract buyers, or at least the interest and appreciation of your friends and family.

Husain Abdul Alim, an accomplished wood carver who sells his work at art festivals all over the U.S, now shares his secrets for carving his fascinating figures. In these free art instruction videos, he takes you all of the way though the creation of a figure, beginning with such basics as how chose the right piece of wood, how to define the lines of your wood carving, and how to drill holes in the face. He also discusses how to putty and sand your figure until it is exactly the shape that you want. Our Expert Village artist even includes such handy tips as how to attach hanger hooks for displaying your work and gives you guidelines for pricing your figure.

Video Transcript

"On behalf of the Expert Village, my name is Husain Abdul Alim, and I'm here to tell you about carving figurines. Yes, so we picked out a nice piece of sycamore. Actually it was a hallow log, put together like this. Remember earlier on, it looked something like that. What we did was we sliced it off and put some lines on it. Here we still need a few more lines. We could use a mouth down here and over there, a mouth. So thats stage two. We've split the log to decide what kind of a shape, and we could only make a mask out of this, or possibly make a female form. Now this is some sycamore, it was a hallow log. We could have done a couple of things with the log. Not just make faces, we could have made an incense burner by hallowing it out. But it's going to make a perfect mask, all it takes is a chainsaw. So that's what our decision is for today."