Don’t Make These Mistakes Carving a Female Face | Beginner Lesson

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:04]Why is it that all of my female carvings end up looking like males?

[00:00:10]Uh, that's the question I hear all the time in the carving landscape. Uh, folks commenting that. I've got students that have that problem. They've struggled for years with making faces that look feminine. So, today I'm going to talk about how to do that and uh the mistakes that uh, you know, professional carvers tend to avoid. again, doesn't mean that we don't ever make them. Uh, so the title is uh a little, let's say, exaggerative, but it's true that these are some things that female faces have that male faces don't. This is a 1x 1x6.

[00:00:44]Uh, I've got a knife, a one and 5/8 5/8 5/8 inch blade, and um, I'm going to get started here. So, first thing I want to do is set up my proportions. Now, I've got a little mark here down right here.

[00:01:00]It's uh at the about inch and a half mark. Now, that is an inch and a half down because the face tends to be about one and a half times or 1.6 times taller than it is wide. So, I'm going to go in.

[00:01:13]I'm just going to define this will be the chin. And then the top of her head will be up here. So, we'll just kind of start by taking the corners off and rounding her head. Right. Taking the corner off the front and the sides like so.

[00:01:29]And I can keep rounding that head.

[00:01:33]Using a bit of a slicing motion here to kind of move through the material a little more quickly. But again, you don't want to rush. You want to take your time.

[00:01:41]That's a really great way of cutting yourself is rushing through a project like this.

[00:01:47]Okay. Now, I'm going to divide this whole thing up into thirds. That's our usual deal.

[00:01:53]uh once I've made a little hairline. So, let me make a little hairline. I'm going to make a little groove oh about quarter of an inch from the top of the block of wood. Like so.

[00:02:03]I wanted to say a shout out to uh the makaker experience. I saw his video on the wood spirit and it reminded me that there aren't a lot of videos on female faces. Of course, I've made uh many videos on my online school uh which if you're interested in this video, um I have a lot much more in-depth videos on the subject of the human face, male, female, you know, there various ethnicities, young and old, uh you know, over 130 project videos on the the carving school. I'll link that below.

[00:02:33]But the point is that there isn't a ton on YouTube. I've made some content uh for YouTube before, but there's just not a lot out there. going to make a little separation. And I really like his video.

[00:02:44]You should uh check it out. It's a very nice stylized simplified uh female face.

[00:02:49]And what this is going to do is kind of take a little bit more of a um naturalistic approach. Uh but I just love his artistic way of of uh representing it. So I wanted to give him a little shout out in this video uh and thank him for doing that. Okay. So I've made a little separation, a little groove in the top there for the hair.

[00:03:07]And uh like I said, now we're going to divide things into thirds. So from this hairline to the bottom of the chin, I want to do that. So I'm just going to kind of approximate. It doesn't have to be exact. I'm going to make a V-groove right on that first third.

[00:03:21]Okay.

[00:03:24]Um, you know, I might actually shorten this up a little bit. I said an inch and a half. Why don't we go let's see what is our what is our maximum width from one uh from corner. Sorry, from corner to corner. And the reason I'm doing this measurement, let's go inch and a quarter, is because the head is about as deep as it is long. So I want to leave enough room for the back area here. Uh so that what that means is, and sorry, I was out of camera frame. That means I want to have uh this be equal to this, right? The height be equal to the depth.

[00:03:54]So I'm going to actually make it an inch and a quarter. I lied.

[00:03:58]Let's do that. So I've made a little mark there.

[00:04:03]And I'll bring this down.

[00:04:06]Crazy, I know.

[00:04:08]Calling all kinds of audles today. And we'll just move up this line. So, we'll just cheat up our little our little thirds line.

[00:04:21]And then I'll make this bottom third line. Making another little groove at the uh the bottom third. So, in other words, just dividing this up into three equal sections.

[00:04:33]Sorry, just moving this tripod just for in a better position.

[00:04:37]All right, so anyway, three equal sections and consider that blocked in.

[00:04:45]Nice. All right, I'm going to uh take my forehead area, this this top third, and I'm going to cut it a little bit flatter. And the reason I want to do that is because I want the forehead on the female face to be a little flatter than the males. That's one maybe the first distinguishing difference we'll talk about. forehead is very important.

[00:05:02]So from the side profile, in other words, I don't want this to cut back, angle back. I want it to be more flat like it is now.

[00:05:10]Okay. The next thing I want to define uh the side planes of the forehead. So I'm turning the blade, turning the wood, sorry, slightly and then going and cutting in like so. Making a stop cut at the hairline like so. So this is going to be your hairline. I'm just kind of creating the again the forehead really. We might lose our brow ridge. So we'll go back in with a Vcut and redefine that little groove.

[00:05:37]Once again, equal thirds here from here to here to here. Just about equal thirds. Okay.

[00:05:47]Now I'm going to take the chin and I'm going to angle it up a bit.

[00:05:52]In other words, I like to think of the chin or the bottom of the jaw profile as three angles. one the bottom angle and then the jaw angle up here. So kind of three angles, the center flap, and then these two that angle up. And on the female face, this kind of tends to be a little bit more angled, this area leading back to the jaw, making for a very kind of feminine and and smaller, not quite as wide and long at the jaw area. So this area is going to be a little smaller. Uh I do want to bring this uh mouth mound down.

[00:06:23]I want to create a downward angle here.

[00:06:26]Okay. Okay. So, I'm going to take this all back and down like so. Like that.

[00:06:31]Want this to be a downhill slope cuz the upper lip sits ahead of the lower lip which sits ahead of the chin, right? On the female face and on the face in general as a general rule.

[00:06:41]Okay. So, I'm going to bring this nose down. I don't need it to be quite so big. And I could even shorten it up a little.

[00:06:48]Bring this brow ridge down a little.

[00:06:53]And I'm going to turn my piece of wood and extend this angle for the brow ridge over. But instead of kind of going downward, I'm actually going to kind of cut up a little. This is called the Y of the brow. Why do we call it the Y? Well, because with the bridge meeting the brow ridge, we have kind of a Y shape here, not a T.

[00:07:16]A T would be a male brow where it's goes straight across or even uh downward.

[00:07:23]We can get into that more in a bit, but I'm kind of making these cuts slightly angled upward. Not a ton. I don't want to exaggerate it too much. And then I'll come in along the sides of the nose and establish that the sides of the nose. And I'm going to bring this brow ridge down.

[00:07:46]like so.

[00:07:50]I'm going to take my bottom of my nose and angle create a little bit of a V at the bottom of the nose. This will allow for the nostril flares to sit a little bit higher than the bottom of the nose, like so.

[00:08:05]And then we can come in and kind of define the sides of the nostrils for now. making it narrow and small because we don't want her nose to be too prominent. It's a classically feminine quality. So, we're going straight in for that nose. Get back over. Sorry. Off to the side.

[00:08:22]And then I'll go angle down. This is really called a triangle cut. And then I'll relief underneath. So, kind of along the side, along the bottom, and then along the side again to kind of get that nose to stand out a little bit.

[00:08:40]Just like so. Okay. And create a little bit of an upward turn here. Little scoop out of the nose like so.

[00:08:47]Beautiful. Then I'm going to take the the corners off of this mouth mound area. Just like that. So, now we've got a little bit. You can see these planes there.

[00:08:58]Okay, take a little bit more out of that chin.

[00:09:04]All right, now I want to divide up the nose from the bottom of the nose to the bottom of the chin. Divide this into thirds.

[00:09:12]Create a little V-cut at each intersecting third line like so. Okay. So, I'll make a little groove down at the bottom.

[00:09:22]Make one at the top here.

[00:09:25]In other words, uh I'm dividing this into three sections by making little V-grooves, right?

[00:09:33]Then I'll come across here, take the saw marks out of the wood, and I'm just going to go over, extend that edge over.

[00:09:49]So, in other words, I'm turning the piece of wood and I'm cutting that edge into the sides of that with that Vcut equal but opposite angles. So the same thing over here, turning the wood, extending that cut in like so. Okay, I'm going to take some of the squareness out of the head here.

[00:10:21]Okay.

[00:10:24]Take the sharp edges out of the jaw left behind from these planes and take those out if we want to.

[00:10:34]All right. Now, I'm going to take the nose. I want to turn the nose upward.

[00:10:37]This is a classically feminine trait. In other words, I'm going to take the blade and I'm going to cut angling the blade downward and just cut a bit of that nose so that it's it's called upturned because you can kind of see part of the tip of the nose. And the uh stop cut will go just above the lip like so.

[00:11:01]Kind of going back and forth there.

[00:11:05]Nice.

[00:11:07]Okay, I'm going to make a little stop cut along the nostril again. And then I'm going to make a cut. Again, we love threes on the face. We're going to create uh the planes of three on the upper lip. So, kind of meeting that stop cut we made along the sides of the nostrils. I'm going to come in, swoop down, and define the mouth mound. Just like that. Very nice.

[00:11:37]All right. So, I'm really defining the sides of the lips by doing that. Creating these three planes like so. One, two, three.

[00:11:51]That's good. We'll do the same thing down here.

[00:11:56]One. kind of turning going underneath the lower lip with these side cuts under underscoring the bottom of the lower lip. Just like that.

[00:12:14]All right. So, before we get too far, I want to do a little bit of uh design of the hair. And I want to have the hair come down. and I want it to kind of flow.

[00:12:27]All right. So, let's do let's talk about this quickly. The the female face um the heart shape is the ideal very a very very beautiful shape. What that means is that the cheeks widen out, narrow at the top, narrow at the bottom. And so, I'm going to come in with with my knife. I'm just going to narrow the jaw before we get into the hairline. I'm just going to come in along the sides. And I've gone in about uh this is probably just a little under an inch there actually.

[00:12:55]More like uh 3/4 of an inch. Yeah.

[00:12:59]Or 7/8.

[00:13:02]All right. Now that I've done that, I'm going to connect this area with with my hairline coming in.

[00:13:13]Same thing here. going along making a little bit of a wave in that hair and then going along creating the stop cut.

[00:13:30]I'm going to take more out of the forehead and start to turn that forehead a bit so it angles back. But again, we want it to be a lot flatter than um than the male forehead.

[00:13:44]doesn't want to turn quite so much quite as quickly.

[00:13:48]We don't want a prominent brow ridge here though on the female. We want to soften it. So, I want to take this brow ridge, take this the sharpness out of it, just kind of use my blade to soften it up.

[00:14:06]Just like so.

[00:14:10]All right. You know, I'm going to take a little bit more out of this jaw. I'm going to angle his jaw up a little bit more aggressively.

[00:14:18]Excuse my microphone.

[00:14:23]Angle this back like so.

[00:14:31]And put a little wave in the hair, especially as it goes down. Take a little scoop out of the side here.

[00:14:42]just look. So, a little wave is nice.

[00:14:45]I'm going to take some out of the cheeks getting the hairline here and here.

[00:14:53]A little bit of a scoop underneath the cheekbone.

[00:14:58]A little bit of a scoop underneath the cheekbone. Like so.

[00:15:01]And then I want to soften the sharp edges along the top of her head.

[00:15:16]Get rid of some of the bulk on the top of her head as well. Tighten it up to her face.

[00:15:33]Okay.

[00:15:35]Very nice.

[00:15:40]I'm going to go in on either side of the nose and kind of take a scoop cut and narrow the tip and the bridge of the nose a bit.

[00:15:54]Open up the mouth a bit more as well with a with a V-cut along the mouth mound to make sure that we've got some nice full lips.

[00:16:04]And I'm going to open up the mouth just a little. A little bit of opening. Just coming in. Just creating a little bit of separation.

[00:16:22]And now what I'm doing here is I'm just extending those lines over, opening up that mouth. Just like that.

[00:16:30]Getting those lips a little bit more defined.

[00:16:33]Looking good.

[00:16:37]Okay. And I want to soften this jaw area a bit. Take some of the squareness out of it. A little bit of the squareness out of it.

[00:16:46]Just like so.

[00:16:53]Nice.

[00:16:57]Getting there.

[00:16:59]And not very much time.

[00:17:03]Okay, let's go ahead and make some very, very subtle cuts on the inside corner of the eye. Now, I'm going to take my knife. I'm going to make a little stop cut along the bottom of the inside corner of the eye. Going in like so. I'm going to go equal but opposite at the brow ridge. Little cut there. And I'm going to lay the tool flat and then go into that corner and just take that little edge out. Little edge for the eye. See how it creates that hollow? How nice is that? Same thing here. Slower now. This time along the bottom of the eye.

[00:17:37]Along the top of the eye.

[00:17:41]Laying it flat. Going across.

[00:17:45]Should come out. If it doesn't come out, don't worry. Just do it again till it does.

[00:17:52]Just a little closer. Excuse me. Getting my focus back. All right.

[00:17:57]I'm going to take this jaw area in just a little bit more. Again, if we're going for that heart shape, we want to make sure and narrow the jaw a little. Nice and feminine looking.

[00:18:10]Remember that that Y, take the corners of the brow up a bit so they're not quite as square to that nose.

[00:18:22]Okay. Okay, I'm going to take my knife in the corners of that little uh triangle cut and scoop out either side of the nose to make that little nose pop as I bump my camera.

[00:18:39]Just like that. See that?

[00:18:44]Okay, I'm going to take that chin back a little bit more because it's looking a little protrusive.

[00:18:53]I'm going to cut that lower lip underneath that upper lip just a bit because we really want that upper lip to sit above the lower lip.

[00:19:22]Okay, nice.

[00:19:29]See that side profile? I want to take a little bit more out of that side profile. Just like so.

[00:19:42]In other words, just a little bit out of that bridge.

[00:19:45]So it lifts up like so.

[00:19:54]Nice.

[00:19:56]Really important that you pay attention to that profile. You make sure you've got that lift of the nose that that lower lip comes beneath the upper lip.

[00:20:03]So I need to bring this back yet even just a little bit more.

[00:20:09]And that that chin sits below the lower lip. So again we want that kind of cascade of form there. Upper lip sits above lower lip sits above chin. So bring that lower lip back.

[00:20:46]Okay, nice.

[00:20:48]Brought that chin back. That's looking good. Bring it back just a little bit more. And like a little more separation between the lower lip and the chin just to make sure we're not losing the separation between the two.

[00:21:04]That looks pretty nice.

[00:21:10]All right. Now, let's go back in that inside corner. Go back over those cuts.

[00:21:14]Really emphasizing the very inside edge.

[00:21:16]A little bit more. Going a little deeper at the inside edge.

[00:21:21]Now, as far as distance between these two cuts, um you want to be able to fit uh four eyes across from from temple to temple. And uh I've got about an eyes width in between each eye. So, that's kind of a good indicator of the width if you've gone uh too far or not far enough between the eyes.

[00:21:44]Okay, it's looking pretty good. I'm going to make a little bit of a stop cut, real soft, in other words, not too deep, uh underneath the eye with my blade. Just a little little stop cut going all the way underneath what will soon be the eye. So going underneath here just like so.

[00:22:26]Bring a little point to that nose. And then once again taking the tip of that blade. If it's not behaving or cutting well, you can try starting from the top and going down and taking a little bit out of the side of the nose that way because we want to narrow that nose a bit. We want it to be a smooth transition of form. So that's why we like to use these scoop cuts for that.

[00:22:47]Okay. I'm going to connect go the outside corner of the eye like so. outside corner of the eye here.

[00:23:02]Little stop cut along the bottom of the eye.

[00:23:07]Very nice.

[00:23:14]Just kind of breaking up these little flats, flat areas.

[00:23:22]And we can create some separations and some flow by making S patterns. We really want to make sure that when we're going in to cut hair groupings, even for straight hair, that we have a little bit of a flow to it. Otherwise, it's just going to end up looking stiff and and not like hair. It'll look more just like a I don't know, a bunch of lines, grooves.

[00:23:42]So, little bit of that happening here.

[00:23:46]And then a Vcut matching it. So, going along like so.

[00:23:54]It'll make a little bit of a neck area just by scooping out underneath the chin. Again, using that scoop cut.

[00:24:15]Nice.

[00:24:17]And we'll continue the hair over.

[00:24:22]And even that cut was a little bit too straight. I can always take a little groove out of that. Nice. That's better.

[00:24:35]Make a little stop cut along where the neck ends and the hair starts like so.

[00:24:40]And I'll just cut that neck into that little V. That'll kind of be the the spot that I make those cuts land.

[00:24:56]And we'll keep them coming a little bit further back.

[00:25:14]digging out the this back area behind the jaw. Little bit of a stop and relief cut there.

[00:25:25]Nice. Now, I'll say this. When you're working on a carving of this size, um it's so much easier to close the eyes than it is to open them. And uh I really like that um about the carving that the makers maker experienced it or makers experience. And I've done that for years, um on carvings. It's just it's really nice, too. Less imposing, I'll say that, when the eyes are closed. And so, let's go ahead and I'll I'll show you guys how to do that. Uh, if you want to learn how I carve open eyes on a project like this, I've again, I've got tons of content on the carving school and some stuff here on YouTube as well.

[00:26:00]So, anyway, that said, I'm going to go in. First of all, I got to get this uh stuff off my fingers. I got the stropping compound um on my blade. There it is. Okay, back to it. All right. So, to do that, I want to just go underneath the eye. And this is not quite halfway between the brow ridge and the nose. A little above. I'm just going to go in and make a little kind of half circle.

[00:26:30]All right. And it's kind of I've got it draw carved in a little big. Can always shrink it though. Then I'm going to come up to that point with my blade.

[00:26:45]and really just carve underneath that like so. And I'll do the same thing over here.

[00:27:00]Okay. I can turn it upside down. It's a nice trick to see if things are symmetrical. Looks pretty decent.

[00:27:10]Okay, I'll go in and just meet that line with my blade.

[00:27:20]Okay, I can go in and deepen it just a little. Make a little bit more of an undercut. But just like that, it kind of indicates closed eyes. I'm not totally done yet. I'm going to go in with that stop cut and use the tip of my blade to kind of scoop out this inside edge.

[00:27:38]And this is probably where um my carving varies from a lot of the more stylized carvings um is I tend to try and get the mound of the eye carved in with that triangle cut. So I'm really trying to push that in. I'm trying to get that mound to come out and that gives it a little bit more of a naturalistic feel to it having more of the form of the eye in. But it is it is different and it's a little bit more challenging. So, I definitely would recommend that you start out um by doing whatever you prefer really. I guess really what you prefer. So, I'm going to make a little little V cut at the outside edge of the eye here.

[00:28:33]And then I'm going to connect that little groove.

[00:28:37]And if you have a little gouge, that can be really helpful, too. I'm going to go into the edge of the eye.

[00:28:44]Take this cheek material out to really emphasize the the the eyes being closed on the outer edge. Same thing here. Just take a little bit of extra material out from the cheek area.

[00:29:07]Here, and here.

[00:29:10]I'm going to narrow the sides of her face just a little bit more, especially up at the temples because I want that um heart shape again we talked about earlier.

[00:29:40]rounding that forehead.

[00:29:43]Beautiful. I take the cheek down just a little bit. The the cheekbone.

[00:30:04]Nice thing about having those eyes closed is you can kind of make those cuts stop at the eye lid like so.

[00:30:33]Take the corners of the brow ridge and raise them up just a little bit. Again, giving it a more feminine profile.

[00:30:43]Beautiful.

[00:30:47]I'm going to go in with the nostrils and just go define those a little bit more.

[00:30:54]A little bit of a a cut into the side.

[00:31:01]Just kind of exposing the nostrils. A little V-groove like so. Just like that. I'll do the same thing on this side.

[00:31:11]Little bit of a V-groove up here.

[00:31:17]Compare left to right.

[00:31:24]Soften it as we need to.

[00:31:29]And just take the tip of the nose down a bit more.

[00:31:44]Nice. I'm going to grab my brush.

[00:31:48]Get all the little wood chips that are lag hanging in.

[00:31:56]Nice.

[00:31:57]And you know, we could get carried away with this stuff, details and stuff about hair and all that. I'm going to create a few more little grooves to kind of indicate hair, but I'm not going to get too carried away with hair here on this project.

[00:32:35]Now, hair tends to get um further apart.

[00:32:38]The groupings tend to separate more as we get away from the origin or the root.

[00:32:42]So, I'm going to deepen these cuts as I move downward here.

[00:33:10]Nice.

[00:33:38]Okay, making some separation.

[00:34:11]Use the tip of the blade to just take a little bit of these edges back that need to be taken back that look a little too um well specifically the mouth mound area I'm seeing here needs to be brought back a little bit more.

[00:34:25]There we go. We can do a little bit of a dip in the center of the top of the lip above it. That is for the filtrum.

[00:34:33]Little groove there.

[00:34:44]You can just kind of use the knife to clean up the remaining cuts. Make little tiny cuts to clean things up a bit.

[00:35:15]Can even make little nostrils if we want to with the tip of the blade. Little bit of an undercut under the nose for that.

[00:35:37]You really want to be careful here not to cut yourself as you're moving closer to your hands.

[00:35:50]Okay.

[00:35:53]Beautiful.

[00:35:58]Okay, take a little bit of this.

[00:36:28]All right, and there you have it, guys.

[00:36:29]Thanks for tuning in. Per usual, if you enjoyed this video, um I, you know, I really enjoy teaching and I I have an online school where I teach carving in-depth projects like this, but um you know, broken down in a lot more detail about technique and stuff and some of the things that I kind of gloss over in these videos. is I I kind of take the extra time that I do have because I have um you know captive audience of folks that are really serious about carving, you know, uh and they they go longer and there's more information about uh faces, all the the stuff that I think about when I'm carving and uh that's in the link below. There's male, female carving uh people uh that I carve their faces, young and old, all different ethnicities, and just a whole lot of uh resources on the carving school for folks learning to uh carve this way. So, if that uh intrigues you, if this is something that's been interesting to you, you can check that out there. But uh all right, so here's where we ended up.

[00:37:35]And of course, there's a little bit of tuning up and cleaning up that you can do if you have more time with it. But um what I did do off camera just a little bit was uh take the sharp edges off of this transition, this corner right here from the forehead flat to the temple. So I just took that edge off using just a little cuts like this with a knife, stopping at the hair. And that just makes her forehead a little bit more feminine looking. And again, we talked about the importance of that. We don't want our forehead to be too too incredibly square.

[00:38:12]And uh there you go. Hope you guys enjoyed this video and we'll see you in the next one. Bye.