Carving Tips:

Turn the carving over and over in your hands as you work. Mark, measure, compare the doll to pictures, and to other dolls quite frequently. Look at it upside down and in a mirror. Compare parts of the doll to other parts. Compare the spacing between the nose and chin to the spacing between the nose and eyes, and see if those proportions are similar as the spacing in your model. This is how people compare things visually when drawing or sketching, and is a basic technique taught in art classes. A similar technique applies to sculpture.

Keep a pencil and ruler handy for quick comparisons, and mark your carving frequently to help guide your cuts. A clear plastic ruler such as a quilter's rule is VERY handy.

Keep your tools sharp.

Don't be afraid to carve as many realistic details as you can into your Hitty. While her body is a little crude, Hitty's face is suprisingly nuanced and subtle in its carving, and when people see her in person they are often struck by how realistic and detailed her lips and even her nostrils are, in comparison to the way they appear in photos.

Study real people, especially children, for the proper appearance and arrangements of features and face shape. If you pay attention to a lot of people's faces, you will begin to notice and remember what is similar or the same in many or most faces, and what kinds of variations can occur. You might notice that noses, eyes, mouths, start to seem to you like they fall into 'types' that occur on different faces than you sometimes expect. You might notice unexpected similarities between people who look quite different at first glance. Pay attention to family resemblances to learn how the same features can look on different people and at different ages.

Pictures are useful but ...remember if you are studying a picture you're doing an essentially different exercise. You're studying a 2-D rendering of a 3-D subject, and attempting to reinterpret and reproduce it from a 2-D source into a 3-D sculpture again. This is harder in many ways than studying 3-D subjects to render 3-D objects, but of course some pictures, such as pictures of the original Hitty, are very important to our carving. I recommend studying a combination of real people, dolls, and pictures to guide your carving. When using pictures remember to study the contrast between photos taken at several different angles.

Remember that most people's faces are not symmetrical and we rarely notice. Measure frequently, try to keep things balanced and even as you go along, and focus on making the doll look good. Don't hesitate to touch things up, or rework your carving a bit after waiting overnight for a fresh view, but don't ruin a good carving trying to make it perfect at the end.

Keep several different knives or blades at hand. Try several different shapes of blades if you can, and figure out what works best for you. Experienced carvers differ widely in their favorite shapes. I keep several handles so I can have any of my favorite blades at hand and switch quickly to the best one for each job. I don't waste my finest, tiny face carving blades on heavy body carving, or attempt to carve the face with a heavier blade suitable for the legs.

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