Keith

Just a really cool guy.

Behind the carving

About this piece

This is the first portrait I've ever done of a person I know in real life. Keith is a family member whom we were expecting to join us for a pumpkin carving activity. It ended up that he couldn't come, so as a joke, I carved his face. Naturally, one of the biggest challenges of converting a photographic human into a carving is the lack of distinct shape edges, but like with other stencils that have that problem, you just have to generalize gradients into shapes the best you can. That kind of decision making is the hardest part, but afterwords, I was surprised at how accurate it looked. I'm sure I'll do more of these, but it's not my preferred type of carving.

Carving tips

When making stencils for portraits of photorealistic subjects, generalize gradients into shapes by outlining them with a pencil on your stencil. Save your stencil so you can reference how you marked it during carving.