Zebrawood Cameo

I entered a carving contest in Charlotte last weekend - first time I've entered something at that particular show - and THIS little piece got an honorable mention. Could've knocked me over with a feather; I only started carving this maybe a week before the contest. The linseed oil I used for a finish wasn't even dry. 

You can thank Anne Rice's book "Blackwood Farm" for this one. Most of the book was drek, but I was fascinated with all the information it threw around about cameos. The oldest ones were made out of a material that naturally had two different colors, like shell or some kind of banded mineral. The raised design would be in the lighter material, with the background made by carving down to the darker material. I've had some pieces of zebrawood waiting to be used for ages, and I thought it would make a neat cameo image if I made the streak of darker wood the background for a simple profile. It worked better than I'd hoped for a first try, and I carved it a LOT faster than I'd thought I would. I roughed out the profile with my Dremel, but after that I just worked on it with a carving knife.

It's VERY tiny, this one, maybe an inch and a half tall. I thought about entering it in the miniatures section, but I'm glad I went with the relief carvings instead. Someone in the miniatures category carved a spirit figure that was about the size of a pencil eraser. 

If you can't tell, this was supposed to be a sort of steampunk figure. The next one I make might need to have a clockwork design added just to make that a little more obvious.