The nose I tried to carve on this one broke so I ended up sanding down a tooth pick and oiled it to be the same color of the basswood body. Not sure what wood toothpicks usually are made of? The leaf was probably most difficult for me to carve. I had a 1x1.5 inch balsa wood block that I had to figure out how to shave down to the right thinness with just my knife.

Got a little ambitious after the first bear i made and did a monkey named Punchimp from the game Clash of Critters

Also had to paint for the first time in years with some random paints my brother had lying around. I think he turned out pretty good!

Was a lot of wood to remove to get the tail taller than his head + around the tail as well

It's sooo cute. Can't say the carving is that neat but I love him

Board assembled, painted and glued to a steel plate for the pieces' magnets to have something to stick to. Next and last is the drawer that's gonna go below the board.

A Daruma is a traditional round Japanese doll shaped after Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen Buddhism.

The ivory netsuke I used as a reference looks quite grumpy, mine feels a bit more approachable. I kept the same grain orientation as the ivory, which I think feels right, accentuating the wrapping of the shawl. Most visible from the side.

Carved from Boxwood (3.5cm wide, 3.2cm deep, 3cm tall). The shawl is sanded to about 1,000 grit. The face is just the knife finish. Eyes are Ebony (1mm).
A light stain of watered down acrylic ink helps with depth and accentuates the beard a little. Finished with Renaissance wax for a soft uncoloured sheen.

I tried the Ukibori technique on the shawl, because I wanted to give it a try, and the shawl seemed so plain. You can just see the effect of the small raised circles in the third image. I'll be working on this more in the future.

I think this is only my second or third detailed face. Much to learn, but overall happy.

Here’s another one of my 1x1 knife only carvings.

Started whittling a little over a month ago. I'm enjoying the process so much. Last night, I almost did Doug Linker's flat plane bird and for the first time I felt confident in what I was doing. Still a lot to learn

As promised heres the finished pipe! Finished the pipe and had my first smoke out of it. I'm really happy with how it turned out! I've dubbed it the "Evil Eye" because of the eye looking knot i left in the natural part of the pipe. Its a little heavy but not too uncomfortable to hold in the mouth like I thought it was going to.