Elma Waltner, Crafts Designer from Hurley, South Dakota, has put together a series of specific instructions that will enable even the amateur, using the simplest tools and materials, to progress easily from raw wood to an interesting hand-carved animal. All that's needed is a small block of two-inch wood — redwood, white pine, sugar pine, western pine, basswood, cottonwood, or any other soft wood — and a simple pocket or carver's knife. Inexpensive watercolors or enamels, shellac, and varnish are perfect for decoration and finishing.
Each step in the carving is made absolutely clear through photographs and angle sketches. There are profile patterns (to be traced on the block) for all of the 24 projects, ranging from Bolivar Bull through Casper Camel to Sammy Stegosaurus. Horatio Horse, Gulliver Goat, and Esmerelda Elephant serve as teaching pieces, with complete instructions from start to finish for each. Once these have been mastered, the same methods are easily applied to the rest of the projects, and special steps in the carving of these are again shown in photographs.
The poses and animals represented here are only a beginning in animal caricature, and the hobbyist will soon find himself developing other animals and other poses of these familiar friends to add to his wooden menagerie. They will find in these and in their own projects an almost inexhaustible source of gentle relaxation and delight.