Portrait Wood Carvings by Norah LeClare

Grandson Daniel

This portrait carving of grandson, Daniel Little, turned out to be a happy accident. After hours of work, it was finally ready to stain, starting with a dark stain for the hair.... a dark stain that splittered and splattered all over my pretty carving!

Oh woe is me, woe is me - what to do, what to do? Paint it you say? Well, okay, perhaps it will save the day. Woe turned to delight and a happy ending to the tale, for I can tell you true that painting is fun to do!

The PS to this tale is that while the carving made Daniel look older than his 5 year old portrait, at 8 years old he looked very much like the carving.

Hubby James

This relief wood carving of my darling husband, James, is the first carving I did after more then 6 years. It took 3 tries and a whole lot of doing, but in the end it is just a bit of alright. James likes it.

A relief wood carving of Malcolm Scoble, Department Head of UBC Mining Engineering, set in a scene of Cornwall. This was my parting gift to him when I took early retirement in 2005 to move to Powell River.

The buildings and foreground are textured using 8 different minerals; the sea is blue agate.

Old Man of the Sea

I saw this gent in a magazine and just had to bring it to life in a carving - the first face I attempted. It's hard to describe the delight I get sculpting faces out of wood.

The animal in his arms was another thing entirely. It was supposed to be a cat - a fox maybe?

The Sullen Warrior

The quality of this photo is quite poor, but I wanted to include it to show what can be done with just a belt sander. While I did actually finish off the carving, Terry McKinnon did most of it in an hour with said belt sander.

The Twins

A relief carving portrait of our granddaughters (now adults). They’re not identical twins, but when they were younger it was pretty much impossible to tell them apart. To do this carving I measured every part of their face in order to capture the subtle differences, but each measurement was within a millimetre so it wasn’t much help.

The Elder

A relief carving based on a line drawing of Chief Dan George - or so I thought. Looking on the Internet, I see I was mistaken. James swears it is a portrait of his grandmother so I gave it to him as a Christmas gift long before we got together.

Can you see the buffalo shape in the burl?. I see a buffalo, but some see a lion.