The Narwhal

Last year I had a request from my brother and his wife for a carved wooden mermaid, which I produced as a low relief sculpture in birch, hand colored.  Combined aspects of my long experience in whittling and my extensive training in woodcut printmaking, plus a little of my painting background.  Went into my youngest niece's room.  Don't know if she knows what it is yet.  This year the oldest daughter wanted a narwhal. Actually what I heard she wanted was for my father to go out in his boat and catch her one, but that's not going to happen for too many reasons to type here.  That's without even getting into the question of what she would do with a narwhal, which generally weigh at  least a ton.  Instead we settled for a narwhal themed artwork for her wall, and making use of some thin plywood my brother gave me.  Prior to a family event last week I did a series of sketches of narwhals based on photos on the internet, brought my favorite to them, and it was approved for this project.

Last year's mermaid was designed as a low relief sculpture.  Technically this piece will be, too, but on a much thinner piece of wood, and my woodcut printmaking skills will be needed more.  I'm still not quite sure what kind of wood this is, just that it's a 1/4" thick with a smooth surface, looking much like lauan.  There was a label on the wood itself but it doesn't really tell me anything, except that it was manufactured in China in 2013.  In a sense, this project is an experiment to figure out what this wood is.  I'm going to cut it as if it were a woodblock print, which will allow me to learn whether I can use the wood that way for any more significant projects.

Had some other business up at the Studio today, but it seemed like a good day to start making this narwhal.  Decided to keep the animal's orientation the same, so the first step was to work out a mirror image of the original sketch.  Then I started sketching it out right onto the block. Here's what I got so far:

Still needs a bit of work. Need to reshape the body in parts, and to check the proper spiral on the horn.  I was thinking of using ink wash to do the block drawing of the creature, in the way that I have often used it for large figure woodcuts.   Took a while but I located my supply of drawing ink and cups, not really needed since I last taught drawing at the college.  But that will wait for another day.