Monte Walsh

Originally published on Sunday, March 28, 2010

Last night I watched the movie “Monte Walsh” starring Lee Marvin.  While I think the later version starring Tom Selleck is the better of the two this one still is pretty good.  I also liked the role played by Jack Palance but I’m saving him for later.  That character he played in Shane just begs to be carved.  Too bad these two great actors are no longer with us.  Anyway, I thought Monte would make a great figure to carve so I’ll use him as my next project.
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I’m going to do this one a little different than the previous  videos as I’ve already covered a lot of the techniques I’d use.  Also, it takes a lot of time to carve a figure while also making a video and in doing that a lot of my interest in it wanes toward the end.  Pancho was a good indicator of that Monte deserves my best efforts.  So, here is what I’ll do:
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-I’ll give you the patterns but they’ll be pretty generic and there won’t be many of them so you might have to make some modifications to accommodate a specific character.  Thats a good thing as you’ll be able to use these patters over and over for other figures.  I won’t give you all the patterns as I don’t use them, i.e., only a side profile of the body as I just draw on the front view directly on the wood.  Same goes for the head. 
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– Instead of showing how to do the carving from start to finish I’ll only cover certain aspects of the process like attaching arms, sidearms, things like that.   As I mentioned earlier, we’ve already covered the other stuff.
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When watching the movie I had my sketchbook handy to make a quick note or thumbnail drawing of things that set this character apart from the others.  Monte’s hat is something I want to capture as is his mustache, shirt, and sidearm.  I think I saw a knife on his belt too and he’s wearing batwing chaps. Cigarettes figured prominently in this film so there will be one of those hanging from his lip.   The pose of the figure is very important but as I’ll be taking you along for the ride I’ll keep it simple.

I will not post the new videos uploaded on the Blog as it will take up too much of the allowed memory on my site.  So just check Youtube occasionally to see the new ones as they’re uploaded.  Thanks

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