Woodcarving a pointer dog

[Micktoon]

Hi All , I have finally got around to finishing the carving of the pointer dog, its ended up more of a German Shorthaired pointer rather than a Wirehaired like my dog but that was mainly down to time to try and get it finished . I am planning at some point on doing a bit larger carving of my dog with the rough coat.

From the point I left off, I just had to refine the shape and contours of the dog, you can not see that much in the photos probably but more or less every part was altered. I used carving tools , riffler and needle files dremel type tools and lots of careful sanding.





Once the main body was done it was time for the head and the worst part the eyes, this is the head ready for the eyes to be done.



First I drew the eyes on making sure they looked even and spaced in the right place each side, as you can see in the background I am using a tablet to view a photo for reference.



They came out ok but I needed smaller tools than I had really so I think if I did them again I would like to have done them not quite as deep set but overall they look pointer like and the face still has the right look about it.





This was the dog ready for final sanding but I was not happy with the base , the dog is standing in what should be long grass or heather, so I decided to re do the whole surface of the base so it looked more like flowing long grass, this is it before.





This is the new base with the grass like texture, I think it looks much better than the tooled finish it had before.



A mix of beeswax and pure turpentine was then scrubbed in with an old toothbrush, then the carving warmed with an electric heat gun so the wax went liquid and soaked into the wood, this is it before being heated.



This is the finished thing after buffing up, the first shots are in the shed and the last are in the house where I thought the light would be better but I am not sure it was really.













So job done in the end, I have lost track totally of how long its taken but I bet a full week say 40-50 hours ? The main problem with the woodcarving is there is no going back once you take wood off its gone , so you spend a lot of time deciding if its safe to remove more and which bits need to be reshaped, no doubt the longer you have been carving the faster you will be able to decide.

Cheers Mick.