Soap Gnome
I was quite intimidated when I discovered we had to do a carving project for this weeks demo. I have never really worked with the subtractive method before. As most people in the class, I had an extremely hard time finding soft foam. I decided to challenge myself a bit and work with soap! I knew that I wouldn’t be able to achieve a very complex form, so I went for a character with a very noticeable silhouette.
I knew that a gnome could be recognized by very simple planes. I started carving the head of the gnome using a bar of dial hand soap. I used mainly a box cutter and a bone folder to carve out the soap. I surprisingly really enjoyed the medium, but had trouble finding out how to connect my head and body pieces. What I ended up doing was showing thick wire all the way through the three pieces of soap when I was finished carving all of them.
I’m pretty happy with how it came out! I was surprised at the detail I was able to achieve at such a small scale! It was a bit challenging to think backwards in terms of carving, and I definitely wanted to give up a few times. Carving certainly requires a lot of patience and trust since it starts off very general and gets more specific.
