Wood Carving 4 Basic Cuts to master

Hi, welcome to Sharon My Art, where today we're going to learn how to do the most basic cuts in wood carving. If you're just getting started, I'm going to show you how to do the sweeping cut, the stop cut, the V cut, and the pyramid cut. Once you have those cuts down and you see how much shadow they create, your carvings will improve. Well, welcome back to Sharon My Art. These are the basic cuts. When you first start wood carving and you have your nice piece of basswood, you have your good sturdy knife that doesn't have a bevel on it that comes to a wedge, then these are the cuts that you're going to use the most. Probably the most cut is the V cut. This is taking your knife at a 45 degree angle, cutting in, visualizing where that ended, and cutting up to it. Okay, that's a V cut. V cuts are open. They don't create a whole lot of shadow, but you use it a whole lot. One more time. This is how you do it. 45 degree angle, 45 degree angle. That's a V cut. From the side, you can see it could be an open mouth, it could be a place for an eye, it could be a sweeping little cut for a material fold, all kinds of things that you use a V cut for. Okay, this next one is a sweeping cut. The sweeping cut, you use your wrist a lot. I push with my thumb on the edge of my knife to give me more control. It's not a cut like this. You're not sharpening a stick. You're using the control towards the end of your knife, pushing it in and away. See that sweeping cut that it makes? And you usually do it off of the edge like this. If you do it here, you're going to run into the grain and it won't work as well. So if you're doing like this little hat, see that's that sweeping cut that you would use. The tip of your knife, pushing it in and up to where there's no wood up here. That's a sweeping cut. A nice soft, soft cut. The stop cut is underneath, like this cut right here, in and out. You're going to stop your cut. That's why it's called a stop cut. So we're going to cut in straight and come up to it. Straight in, come up to it. You should hear a little, hear that? That's what you want to hear. You don't want to undercut that. See how nice and clean mine is? You don't want to come up and have these little fuzzy things. So visualize where, let's do another one. Cut in here. Now see that's not very deep. Cut up to it. There's a fuzzy right there. Get rid of it. Cut in and up. That's a stop cut. That's a real important cut. Straight in and coming up to it. Bottom of the nose, bottom of a hat, this little cut right here for his shoes, his heel. That's a stop cut there and cut up to it. All right, right here's a painted one. You can probably see it a little better. Okay, the last one is a pyramid and I use this on the edge of people's nose right in here. Sometimes I use it in the eye. Look how deep her eyes are. That's a little pyramid cut and it looks like a pyramid or a triangle. You're going to visualize where the, you do change your hand grip first to a pencil grip. Poke it in and that's about an eighth of an inch deep. Don't rock your knife back and forth. You'll break that tip off. Poke it in at an angle. You're cutting those fibers that are going up and down. Poke this in and your pyramid comes out. See that little pyramid cut? Oh, that's a good one. You want to see that one more time? Pyramid at an angle. Visualize where that tip is at an angle. Cut the bottom of the fibers off and there's your pyramid right there. Okay, so you've learned the pyramid cut, the V cut, which is a pretty open cut, the stop cut, cutting straight in and coming up to it, and the sweeping cut. Those are probably the most, four most important cuts that you should practice and just get a little piece of wood like this and practice on it so when you go to your little person and you make a mistake you haven't already practiced this one and the nose comes off. You can always go in deeper but it's better if you don't cut the nose off. Okay, we've got our four basic cuts and once you have those down and you practice them, get a piece of wood and practice the V cut, the pyramid, the sweep. Remember, don't twist your knife. You'll break that tip off. You don't want to do that. Once you've mastered these, then you can go on and do my little people video. You can learn how to do a face. You can start where you would like to go. These cuts are used for animals, people, whatever you want to do, but they're very basic and you and beginners need to have them underneath your belt. Okay, this was my art. Remember to like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next video. Bye.