Desirable Treatment in Carving
The treatment should evidence the direct employment of the tool, any attempt to efface or soften will result in loss of character and suggest the plastic effect incidental to modelling.
For convenience, and possibly in the absence of more desirable examples, students are often allowed in their early attempts at carving to reproduce casts of plastic origin. This is undoubtedly pernicious, as the model is probably unsuitable, and the student is thereby biassed. Examples should be selected in which the characteristic treatment is sufficiently evident if a true and thorough appreciation of the craft is to be instilled.
No. 276. Simple Jacobean Wood Carving. Direct gouge work.
In the design—which may occupy or fill the shape and can be symmetrically arranged on a central axis, or balanced—the effect is due mainly to Light and Shade. Further interest may be imparted by the sectional form or modelling of the details, groovings, striations or other textural suggestions.