How to Whittle a Cute Bunny - Step By Step Beginner Wood Carving Project

Hi everyone, I'm Brian from Carvings Fun. In this video we are going to make a

cute

and simple

bunny

. This is a quick and easy little

project

for

beginner

s and is a great place to start if you're just looking to get into it. carve and all you will need to get started on this

project

is your favorite

carving

knife, a pencil to make the lines, and a piece of bass

wood

. Now this bass

wood

tree started out as a 1 by 1 by 4 inch piece of basswood, but I went and cut it in half down the middle at a 45 degree angle, which makes this side up here about two inches and half and this side about an inch and a half, that way you already have the outline of the

bunny

set up right there.

Now I'll put the template for the bunny on the screen right now, that way you'll know where to draw your lines and I also have a little downloadable template in the description below for you to download if you want. Okay, to give you an idea. how this is outlined you have the line of the feet right there this is the bottom of your hands these are the sides of the arms this is the neck right here at the neck and this is where we are like tapering it for the ears and then this line This is the line separating the ears from the head, so what I like to do here is make a little push cut right at the neck and start making little notches for the bottom of the neck. on that side and do it here too.

I like to do it in the corners because the corners are always easier to cut than cutting directly into the side of the wood. There we go and now I have less material here that I need. Work out, so do little push in cuts, now I've got the lower neck formed right there and then I'll do pretty much the same thing here, I'm going for the ears, I'll do a couple of push sets. The cuts here simply remove small trunks, so we further define that ear again. I'm going in at an angle. It's easier to remove those corner pieces.

Then I'll start working on the flat pieces. Note that here we are also going to cut straight across the grain, so it will be a little difficult to cut in this direction. Make sure your knife is sharp for best results. There you have it and you can see here that we have the rabbit head. starting to take shape here and from here I like to start getting some of the other outlines uh everything is set up here that way you can uh in case the lines get blurred you don't have to worry about missing any of the lines at the bottom of the arms and then instead of making a cut like a wedge there, I'm going to make a stopping cut right here at the top of the foot and just go down, this doesn't need to be very deep at this point.

Right now, I'm literally doing it at this point to mark where the feet are going to be, there we go, so now you've got the tops of the feet sort of like legs and then the sides of the arms right there, all good, now . We already have this outlined, we're going to start shaping the head a little bit more, so what I like to do is take this part here and extend the line now towards the back of the head, so from here take it and we're going to do exactly the same thing we did on the front, on the back, create a little cut in the corner here and do the same on the other side, and then I'm going to create a little wedge shaped cut, just follow the side here since I have less material to work with and again I always cut the corners first, it's like cutting corners, you're removing a lot of material ahead of time that way you don't have to remove it later and it's less complete. having to push the sword through it makes it a lot easier now that we have the head outlined a bit, do pretty much the same thing on the back, just spread the head apart, it's a good way to index where the main bodies are , all body shapes.

Now that we have done this, let's start working on the ears. Notice that the ears go straight back. Actually, we're going to take the ears and taper them forward a little bit, so this point is correct. here it's going to disappear a little bit, so I'm actually going to shorten the ears a little bit and lean forward right there. I'm also going to take a good amount of ears here because I want the head. to be a little bit wider than the ears, it just looks better, that's mostly it, so here's like what we did on the back.

I'm going to make a small wedge cut that separates the back of the ears. Here do that for both sides and let's do on the back here, let's create a little bleed for now, we're going to remove some of the wood here, but it's good to index where that part is and then we're going to trim to this line. with just a couple of strokes here and mirror it on the other side. I would recommend that you use the pencil on both sides. I'm making a shortcut here without drawing on that side, but it's not necessary if you're sorry. comfortable doing it uh not doing it right and since we have the back of the ears formed, start forming the sides of the ears here, I like to cut the side right there and then cut upwards like that, your ears start to taper.

Take that a little bit more there so it looks a little tighter there. I may have this side a little further than I want, but you know what I'm going to do anyway, it's not necessary. perfect, I don't like to aim for perfection in any of my sizes, it kind of hurts the fun, to be honest I like a little bit of weirdness in some of my sizes, which makes each one of them unique and above all right there, okay, now my ears are a little off center, but that's perfectly fine, I don't care, in the end they'll look good, trust me, they'll look good, so a little indicator of where I'm at.

I'm separating the ears and then we're going to start separating them. Now what I like to do is start to separate them and make a little sort of V at the top here because the ears are going to be in a spot where they don't go. to be like block ears and then make another little v going down the side to have a little bit of separation and then when I get to the base, what I like to do is make another little triangle, so let me draw that. So it would be easier for you to see what I'm about to do, so I'm taking a little triangle right here.

That little triangle is where I'm making like a little piece of charcoal cut out, so the triangle is at the top of the triangle. there, at the top of the triangle, there and then up to this line and I'm pushing in a little bit and creating like a little pyramid cut and if you connect all the cuts correctly, that should come out now, make sure they're not. like using it on the pry bar or using the blades for leverage, you could break the blade doing so, so if it doesn't come out on its own, it means you haven't cut it completely, so be patient and pull it out. pull it out slowly there we go now I have a little cut there and it helps distinguish those ears makes those ears separate a little better I want a little more definition between the ears remember when you're

carving

these things You don't have to all the bumps, uh, the blade strikes are done right there and then there on the first try.

I like to take it easy. You can always remove a little more wood later if you keep enough wood there, so I have. the ears are almost done now I'm just going to round the back here and smooth it out, bring this one down a little bit more, yeah, yeah, that's good, take this corner, you can keep it as symmetrical as you want. I'm not going to worry too much about that, there you go, that's getting pretty close, yeah, that's good enough, so you got the back of your ears done, the ears here and then we're going to work on the part. front of the ears, uh, and in the front. the face, okay, okay, so you've got the back, the ears, let's round the back of the head a little bit so it looks a little more natural, since you're already back here, let's remove some of the rough.

The points where you go, the back of the head looks pretty good, so let's work on the front here, since we have the back finished, it only makes sense to do the front. We're going to make very similar cuts to the ones we made on the back of the ears to help separate the front of the ears, so there we go, the ears are pretty far apart. I'm going to make the same little triangular cut here and you have separation there now for me, since I used a certain saw to separate the wood, I'm just going to soften my saw cuts here a little bit so it's less blurry.

If your knife is nice and sharp, it will create a nice smooth cut for you here and this one here even. this a little bit more, we're going to round some of the ears a little bit so they look a little more organic and then kind of blocky and if you want, you can make little slits inside the ears pretty quickly. with your knife it's pretty easy to do if you want, otherwise you can leave it flat, it doesn't really make any difference, it's completely up to you, so I'm going to round this up a little bit here at the bottom.

I'm going to take a little bit more off up here just to make it look a little better, it's not too thick looking. Here it looks like a little wedge that I made before, a little deeper, like I said, you can always take a little more wood off to make it look better, that's why I like to leave a little more wood than normal, it's like a peace of mind extra so you have something to work with if you mess up a little bit, but if you want to To make some small cuts in your ear, you're basically going to make two cuts that intersect like a gouge, so you're removing a little bit of that wood in the ear, basically these two cuts. they're going to cross each other and remove that wood, it's pretty easy to do if you have a smaller detail knife, it might be a little bit easier than using a slightly longer knife, so this is one of those where Since a smaller knife will be more Ideal for doing this, let's trim that one down a little more and I'll take it for granted for now.

Now we are going to start shaping the front of the face. You can see it's starting. So it has a nice shape on that side, but let's bring it in a little bit closer and round the face up a little bit here, bring it back here to start narrowing it down. I like to start at the bottom. come up at an angle because you're making the face point a little bit forward, so a little bit more forward and here lower it a little bit more and then start rounding the face, here we go. I like to keep my faces.

A little simple in my carvings if you can create a charcoal, some eyes or a little nose, but I find that generally adding these details, especially like smaller details on the bunnies' faces, would be easier to put on with paint if you wanted to move around. part of the blocking this on the side of the face and that's pretty much done for the head there and in my opinion that's the hardest part of the whole carving because you have all these little smaller details there, the rest from here. It's pretty easy, so I'm going to call that head finished.

Now let's start working on the chest for the chest. Here you see that the arms are bent inward a little bit and then you have a little bit. of a proud pouf on the bunny's neck, which is what we're going for, so what I like to do here is create a little triangle that will outline both the chest and the inside of the arms. a little bit here, so the easiest way I found to do this is to first press with the blade, create a little push cut on that line, just go in from the top and bottom to start outlining that gap and do the same with the other. side there we go, now you've got it pretty defined and then we're going to refine these cuts even more because as you can see, the front of the arms are not completely out here, they come back a little bit past the um. the chest test sticking out over there, so we'll probably bring the arms, let's say right here, so come in and be a little careful here, you don't want to take off too much of the material, so I've got a little bit of arm cut back, Do the same on the other side and make these cuts more slowly if you want.

I'm making bigger cuts here at the same time in the video, but you can do that if you want to just take small chips. All the way, you don't need to make cuts as big as I'm making here, now you know I'm going to start rounding it off a little bit and cutting inwards to separate the arms. from the chest basically creating a little V cut that separates there, we're going to soften this a little bit there and the arms are mostly done from here, I like to trim the neck up a little so it's not big. a gigantic triangle right there at the neck and then taper this end a little bit more towards the body so it's not such a huge piece of wood, there you have it and it looks a little better, we can touch it up later once.

We removed more wood, so from here we will begin to define the bottom of the arms. There are several ways to do it. You can remove a lot of wood like I have underneath here or you can just be. It's more simplistic, which is what I'm going to do with this one if removing so much wood is a little intimidating for you, soso I'm just going to remove some wood here and create something like that. On a chubbier arm, you can see I'm cutting a little bit under the arm here and then I'll trim it on the side, the easy way.

A little cut there, so it doesn't need to be as deep as I show it on the small side image or in my other examples, it just creates quick little cuts that go up under the arm and basically shows that there is arm definition. it comes this way, there you go, you have arms there, pretty simple, trim that up a little bit and then we're going to separate the hands, so what I'm going to do here is get that little piece of wood over there making some little lines of separation there and I'm creating a try with another little triangular cut right there to help define where the hands are so I'm going to push at an angle right here going down to that line comes at another angle right here and then hopefully , if I do this right, I can create a little chip cut right there and it just defines where those hands separate and helps find the section, so there you have it, you have a quick little chip cut right there and you'll see where they are. the hands, so from here I'm going to separate the hands from the body, there just make a little push cut right on that line and just go up and down and then you get your hands. completely done, super simple, super easy, okay, so from here let's start working on the legs, this one is pretty easy to do.

You can do it in several ways if you want. I like to do it a little bit like it's almost like. a triangle shape on the bottom here, kind of like a rounded triangle, we'll put that on the back here in a second, but basically rounding the corners is all I like to do. This one will be a little bit simpler than uh. than the one in the picture, um again, just give me a different option of what you can do if you want, so let's see, we go up here below a little bit further apart and then we go up here again, let's go pretty easy, just round up. the front here and again we can touch up all these things later, but since it looks a little rough here, so this is where we start to get interesting, I'm going to start separating the bottom here, I like to do a little push. cut into the face and then just a slight wedge cut going down to that push cut, we're not going to go up at an angle, but I'll do that a little bit later, but now all I'm doing is just creating. a parting from the bottom of the legs to the feet, you can complete this if you want, there we go, a quick little parting there and then for the feet we're going to do something a little simple, I like it here. to create little uh vs for the feet so they're not two parallel feet next to each other, they're like making a V right here, it just makes it so you have less with the carving and you don't have to do too many. complicated cuts, so here we go, so you're just creating a couple of little v's, these go up and you don't have to get a perfect straight cut all the way.

I like to start simple, basically create a sweep. v cut, so I'm pushing my blade back here and then sweeping the tip forward into the wood a little bit more, a little bit there and then I'll come back at the opposite angle and then you should be able to remove that little piece of wood that you're going to cut along. along the grain here again, which will make it more difficult if your blade isn't sharp, so be patient with this point, here we go, take it easy. make little cuts, here we go and here I don't like to leave the back completely flat until here.

I cut mine on an angle so you can see that my blade goes into the angle of wood, the tip of my blade. It's still a little bit lower than this surface here, but you can see the back of my sword is going towards that line and this is just creating a little wedge, we're creating the illusion of feet, here's what we are. doing a little bit more here we go let's take it easy and you can see it's not exactly perfectly flat but it's leaning down a little bit which is what we want so from here I'm not going to either If you have your legs straight back like this , I'm actually going to have them fall on that inside wedge that we just made there, so by tilting them down, it gives the legs a sleek look and makes the bunny look a little bit chubbier than it actually is. es, so we're going to create a little push cut and a wedge cut here and then we're going to take this part very slowly because we don't want to cut into the foot, so just slowly push your blade in. take your time with this on the legs, otherwise you might have a bunny whose leg has been turned into a lucky rabbit's foot or something, there we go and then do the same on the other side here, create a little cut of thrust and It comes in two intersecting angles, I'm not hitting the angle, there it goes and it separates you, I got it, so now you have your legs there, pretty simple, pretty easy, and then from here we'll start rounding this square here back, um.

It's pretty easy to do, I mean, it's nothing too big, so I'm basically going to taper this part down from where the tip of the legs are and then taper them down towards the neck on this. angle so I'm going to do the same thing on the other side that way it blends in and I'm not going to do anything with this section yet because I want to make sure I leave enough room for a simple little tail there just leave a little bit of extra wood back there like this that from here where that corner is I'm going to go back towards the feet and remove the little corner that I made, do the same on this side and block that little corner now your The bunny is starting to take a better shape here.

I also like to incorporate the shoulder a little bit, since I have a more defined back, so you can incorporate the shoulder, just the hair, make sure everything is good. rounded to your liking on this part it looks like I accidentally cut a bit of my foot, which is perfectly fine. Anyway, we're going to tilt it back, so if you accidentally remove the foot piece, it's not the end of the world. you know, let's fix it or just make it a little bit slightly uh, it doesn't take perfection differently, let's tilt it a little bit more, let's go to the other side, here, okay, I'm going to round this side over here.

What you want to do with this

step

is make very quick little cuts, round this corner of the foot and make it more rounded instead of square like the other side and I've seen my cuts there, pretty much the front is done now there's an optional

step

that you can do if you want, if you notice that the feet are different heights on these two, this one is a little bit higher than this one, what I actually did was cut the bottom plane right here at a slight inward angle. and it is very slight and what this does is make the bunny lean forward only the hair while sitting otherwise it will sit straight up this is completely up to you keep in mind you are cutting straight along the grain of the wood. and you'll want to make sure your knife is very sharp for that step.

I don't really recommend it for

beginner

s, but if you're a little more advanced and want to give it a try, go ahead and give it a try. It's a try, you're basically scraping the bottom here to make it a little bit so that it's angled a little bit more forward and again you need a very sharp knife to do this step here and I. I'd like to go in at a separate angle just to check the flatness, there we go and now it's just going to sit slightly leaning forward instead of straight up and down and clean up some of the feet.

Looks like I took too much from there. It doesn't matter, for now, the tail has a pretty flat back and I didn't remove too much of the back on purpose yet, so I'm going to say I have a tail right here and to the right. Up here it's going to be a diamond shape for what I'm doing here, it's just a simple shape, you don't need to get too fancy with it, so make a snap cut in the wood right there, go back to the other angle, another push to cut the wood right there and then what I like to do is start removing a little bit of that wood by going down here, so if I can get it on the angle, you see, I lowered it by myself, just a little bit. a little bit there and we're going to do the same thing on the other side at about the same angle, so you see, I took it off a little bit right there, making a little triangle now that I have what I'm going to do. a snap cut on the top, snap cut inwards and we'll do pretty much the same thing.

Keep this part of the wood grain in mind, if you make it too flat you can probably end up splitting more wood. that you and want, so take this part slow and take into account the grain of the wood. I'm cutting at a slight downward angle, so instead of going in a straight horizontal line, I'm cutting at a slight angle into the grain of the wood to help try to prevent the wood from splitting where I don't want it. Let's clean this up a little bit and then I'll start to round off the rabbit's butt nicely and then the tail to finish.

Make a quick and simple little angled cut there to give the tail some definition, but it makes it look a little more organic on the tail, so it's not like a block just sitting there on the tail, so it's a little bit more of a mound, clean this up a little bit, chew, use the tip of your knife, make small shallow cuts to clean it up, you don't need to make big cuts, a little bit more right there, looking at the camera a little bit. a little difficult here, I think I messed up a little in the queue, but so I have to look in the camera, there we go, that's good enough, it's just in the back, no one will see too much, from here on out.

Go ahead and just clean up all the little wood cuts you made and voila, from here you can sand it or paint it. I think what I'm going to do is just put on some beeswax, I like the way the beeswax paste brings out the natural colors of the wood and this is just a beeswax base, nothing too fancy , just take it and then rub it on like a lotion. Make sure you get into the nooks and crannies and then go ahead and polish off the excess and voila, now your wood carving is a little more protected.

If you want to see more wooden clothing ideas, I have a small list of them. here, go and check them out, thanks for watching everyone, have a nice day.