I’m never sure how to tackle human skin in wood relief… Either you carve it away clean so it is just outlines or colour, you block it in as shadows, or you texture it- mostly making it look like zebra flesh!
As the characters I am harking back to for these carvings are from the 16th century or earlier, and because the majority are actually from wood engravings not wood relief blocks I am left trying to replicate the delicate stripes of etched shadow, except a 1,000 times larger and in relief. So I tend to let the different tool shapes define the kind of line. Thus you have a large spoon shape that makes it look like fabric stretched at the seams, or fine triangular blades giving straight lines of textured tape. On the neck and bare hands for this piece I’m going to try keeping it mostly straight cuts and pretty rough, occasionally mimicking the fabrics, but hopefully so you can still tell which is which.
I’d appreciate any comments or input on these themes :-)
