Old-World Wood Carving Classes

DAVID CALVO has been a professional woodcarver for forty-five years. He was fortunate to be trained by professional European woodcarvers and sculptors. He has been a featured master woodcarver at many International Wood Working Trade Shows where he has given workshops on woodcarving technique and designing skills. David has also been a featured TV guest on the national PBS Television shows: "The Woodwright's Shop" with Roy Underhill and "The American Woodshop" with Scott Phillips. In addition, David writes articles for national publications to promote and share his skill. He is a sought-after teacher because his unique apprenticeship training is a rarity. In addition, he is also a natural speaker who has the ability to articulate the mechanics of the skill of wood carving in an easily understood fashion.

TEACHING PROCESS: Over the years, David has honed his step by step teaching process to its simplest form. He teaches his students using one of the most important factors that excelerated his own personal training. His teachers had to be very efficent because they were making a professional living at scupture so they taught him in a straight A-Z line, meaning no detouring from what is essential. Each step in the workshop will be made obvious to you in a logical way and reinforced with muscle memory excercises for your benefit. Equally important, the group structure creates an environment that allows David to continually repeat and reinforce key points which are so important in advancing each student's learning curve. He has time tested and refined his teaching approach over the years and it is highly successful for adults. You will be happy with your results.

Five and Six-Day Bare Bones Wood Carving Workshops

We have a lot of fun but this is top tier training to give the beginner and intermediate enthusiast a solid foundation in woodcarving. No matter what your carving style preference is, you need to know these fundamentals of carving technique and you need to know them well. You might ask what is the difference between the five and six day workshops? Historically, I have run five-day workshops, however I always find myself saying "if I only had one more day" because there is so much information I need to instill in you. What happens is we get bottle necked "time wise" and I start to look for ways to squeeze in topics that you really need time to digest. And to that point, you have to understand that my workshops are not just about the information that I am teaching in class. More importantly, it's about what you will retain when you go home, that's my high priority and end game when I am teach woodcarving.

For sport athletes, (I consider woodcarving part sport) they train in body mechanics. The importance of this is akin to a tennis player who has trained his volley to be "on point" with both efficiency and grace. He then takes great pleasure in volleying the ball back and forth across the net. There are equivalents to this for a woodcarver with a tool in hand that are "absolute necessities" that you will learn at my school too. This is the romance of the skill. Hence, what I teach are the techniques to encourage your interest and desire in carving. So again to be frank, this is a serious beginner's training to make you a better woodcarver so that your creative dreams can come true.

WE WILL STUDY AND EXPLORE THE FOLLOWING:

• SHARPENING WOOD CARVING TOOLS: 

  Learn how to design and sharpen your tool edge so that you have better control and a more versatile woodcarving chisel. I will show you how to sharpen with the proficiency that was used in the European apprenticship programs. I will also incorporate some Japanese sharpening theory because it comes from the samari tool making traditions and you just can't beat it. Having sharp tools that easily "bite" into the wood and do not "skate" are an important ingredient for an avid woodcarver.

• GAINING HAND CARVING TECHNIQUE: 

  Learn how to handle your carving tools in the wood; from roughing out the beginnings of your project to the final delicate detailing. In my approach, I teach "body mechanics" and it is an integral part of good hand technique. Wood carving is a skill that incorporates the body to better assist you in your hand technique with the gouges. It is like being a baseball player, bat in hand at the plate and the pitcher throws the ball. As you swing the bat you use your body to help step into the hit which helps in the effectiveness of the action. The same is true in woodcarving. You use your body strength and weight, in addition to your hands, for the cutting action in wood. Simply stated; You don't have to be a physical giant to handle woodcarving tools; it's all in the technique.

• THE ART OF SEEING AND VISUAL MAPPING: Learn the mechanical steps in the process of carving. Just like driving a car, you put your key in the ignition to start the car and move the shift from park to drive and as drive you obey traffic signs. The same is true in woodcarving. There are repeated mechanical steps that you do "always" with each project no matter what the design is. I also work with an approach method I call visual mapping. It is an activity that helps you to move through the progressive steps of your carving project. It is teachable and gaining this skill is critical for the beginner's eye. Often I hear my new students say what I call the beginner's mantra... "What do I do next? This is the most repeated words in the beginner's vocabulary and we will address this too!

• DESIGN SKILLS: 

  Learn how to design your wood carving projects using references that many of the great artists used. There are many basic mechanical steps to designing that are unknown to the novice woodcarver. This approach to building your design skills will expand your imagination and the steps to creating your own projects will start to come more easily to you.

Beginner Student at work:

Advanced Student at work:

Weekend Wood Carving Workshops

TWO & THREE DAY WORKSHOPS

Learning woodcarving is a lot like learning a language. You need to know the letters of alphabet, what is a vowel, and what is a consonant. You need to learn how to put together a word and understand the meaning of it. Then you need to learn how to form a sentence and a paragraph that carries a theme. These are absolute necessities that you need to know in order to write. The same is true in woodcarving, there are absolute necessities you need to know in order to carve with intent and confidence. So in all truthfulness, I really need five days of your time in order to get the complete set of fundamentals into both your hands and your head.

I often get asked if I have weekend courses due to time restrictions. For those of you who cannot find time for five or six consecutive days, this is what I do. If you take a two or three day course you are taking the first two or three days of my six day workshop which is broken up into daily learning chapters. So three days brings you to chapter three, two days to chapter two. The weekend workshops will give you the basic understanding of the skill of wood carving which includes hand-carving technique, sharpening and designing skills among other topics. However, the full training takes six days. You will also do the carving projects to reinforce the hand techniques that we talk about so that you gain much needed muscle memory in your hands.

Some students may be satisfied with the information learned, others may choose to find their way back for another weekend to finish the last two or three days and get all necessary techniques and insights.

If you choose to return, (it can be during that calendar year or the next) everyone else will be at the beginning point on the start of the weekend, but you pick up where you left off to finish your training. Call me if you are looking for more info. I am happy to answer any questions.

Intermediate Five-Day Carving Workshops

MAKE YOUR CARVING DREAMS COME TRUE!

Here is an opportunity to develop your woodcarving skills by becoming more aware of technique and design through progressively more challenging skills. We will work with either a next step technique project of my choosing or a project of your choice to keep you moving forward skill wise. It could be a mirror design or almost anything. Mature carving is built on learning the subtleties of the skill. We will build on the fundamentals that you learned in my beginners course. Among many things, we will work more with the mechanics of your hand technique focusing on intentional controlled cuts. We will continue to train your eyes in aspects of visual mapping or address what I call the mantra question of the beginner woodcarver - "What do I do next?" Generally speaking this course will focus on the next set of techniques that are key for you to unlock a new door in becoming a better woodcarver.

Intermediate Student Gallery