Father Christmas

Hi all,
I managed to finish the carving of the Santa shelfie and gave it to my wife to paint. Here is the finished article.
Front view

He looks pretty good from that angle even though I do say it myself. However, the side view isn't quite so clever. The sack is alright but the face lets it down again.

The problem is that once again I have carved a flat face. I know I've said it before, but a flat face is the trade mark of a novice carver. The mitt, the boots and the rest are okay, but the face lets it down. The strange thing is, I carved a really nice Santa face on a piece of scrap wood for practise, so I thought I'd got it sorted. To be honest, I think the problem arose because I put the face too far back on the body which didn't allow me to take off enough wood on the face.

Well that's my excuse we'll see what the next one come out like.

I said I was going to turn a vase and I've got one on my lathe, but it is so cold in the workshop I've abandoned the project in the short term. To resolve the situation, I've ordered an oil filled radiator and when that comes I'm hoping my workshop will be toasty. I will do a review on it when I've got it running because I know a lot of people have trouble with cold workshops at this time of the year.

I hate the cold weather so here is a clip to a nice warming video of my garden which I filmed earlier this year.