The new tiki is coming alive. There is something sad and very earnest about the eyes that I like, and the big grin might end up looking cute.

And yes, I am giving him bangs. HA!

The thing is… and in art, there is always a thing… that when I began to chisel out the mouth, the lips started to peal away. This is the first… no, second… time I ever tried to carve a tiki from a Mexican fan palm, which a cool guy who carves tikis down near the beach here in San Diego gave me… I mean, not a whole Mexican fan palm tree, but some logs from one. I usually use scrap logs that I find various places, of all types of wood. This wood is nice and soft, but that also means that you might not be able to keep the bark on if you aren’t really careful.

It also means that I will just have to carve much deeper, which I didn’t do on the first tiki I carved in this wood…

That is a picture, as you may recall, of the first one I did, not so long ago. I actually glued a few pieces of the lips back on that one. This time, I will just go deep, and see what the inside layers are like. Maybe they won’t be so fibrous, and might even be better for carving. I guess I could Google that, or watch some videos, but I like my art to be original, even if it is wrong.

When painting, you add layers to cover a mistake. In carving a tiki, you just take more layers away… I hope… because one of the eyebrows is coming off too… sigh…