Читать книгу Woodcarving Illustrated Issue 77 Fall/Holiday 2016 - Группа авторов - Страница 20

Woodcarving Illustrated

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SPRING 2017

18

A CHIP-CARVED

Optical Illusion

A clever geometric design and careful

carving make this flat plate look 3-D

By Bill Johnson

I

came across some interesting examples of

trompe l’oeil

, or “fool the eye,” pencil

sketches while searching for inspiration for a new project. A circular design made

up of many darkened triangular shapes caught my eye. I was fooled into seeing the

flat drawing as three-dimensional. The surface appeared convex, giving the illusion

of seeing a photograph of a ball. I decided to try carving the optical illustion.

I sketched the design on paper before trying it on wood. After a lot of erasing,

I slowly developed an understanding of the geometry that made it work. The order

in which the various steps had to be taken took a little longer to figure out. The most

important lesson of all, after having multiple lines overlap where they shouldn’t and

others not meet at all, was that close enough was not good enough!

This project requires attention to detail, starting with

three critical steps: (1) marking the exact center of the

wooden plate, (2) accurately marking the halfway point

between the center and the outside edge of the plate, and (3)

drawing two straight lines through the center that intersect

at exactly 90°. This article focuses on the design and layout

of the piece more than chip-carving technique. Technique

is always important, but if this particular layout is sloppy, no

amount of good technique will make it

look right.

The majority of the three-sided chips that you will

remove are fairly wide and therefore deep. All three sides of

every three-sided chip are curved, and the position of the

chips, relative to the grain direction, changes each time.

There is not a single straight knife cut in the entire piece.

This layout is unaffected by project size. The instructions

here will yield the same result no matter the size of the plate.

The chip-carving creates the illusion of

three-dimesionality. A side view reveals

that the plate is completely flat.