Whittled figurines and why I chose this hobby
Some years ago I went to see an exhibition organized by a professor from my university. It was about shamans and shamanism in Asia. The exhibition per se was really interesting, but there was a piece exposed that made me pause and chuckle. It was this figurine made of wood, under it the description read "Figurine against headaches" and it was a crude, quite funny, depiction of a person in T-pose with a square head, it was basically a somewhat-cylindrical cross with a face.
Now, I've always loved art and always longed to be able to draw or paint or something but my studies led me in a direction that was not artistic at all and I had no self-motivation to practice on my own. Well, when I saw that figurine I thought "really, could I not do even this?". The next day I bought a whittling kit.
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Here are some of the first whittled figurines I made:
The first one, could not be anything but a cat :)
Something I tried inspired by ancient Chinese bronze reliefs I was studying at the time.
Tried to paint one with acrylic paint, unfortunately the acrylics were old and the black especially did not take on well. This one I gifted to a friend.
A friend outlined the shape of this bird for me and then I detailed it, because I said that I could not make a shape without following a tutorial yet.
The same friend cut the shape for this fox too. It is made of three pieces, then glued together. The separate pieces made it somehow hard to do since I had only done figurines from a single piece of wood. This one was made as a gift for another friend. Its name is Mimi.