25.
26.
Then cut straight in under the nose at an angle from the center up to the side of the nose, on both sides. Study Photo 25, right at the point of the knife and in Photo 26 too.
27. Put stop cuts alongside the nose on the lines that have been drawn. Take care to not undercut the nose. You will have to make an effort at this point. For some reason, the most natural thing to do when making these cuts is to undercut the sides of the nose. Don’t do it. See how my knife blade enters the wood in this shot. Do both sides of course.
Also in Photo 26, there are some guide lines drawn to help with the next few cuts. The outsides of the nostrils are sketched in. Always make noses bigger than you think they should be. They have a way of getting smaller as they are worked on, so start big. Notice that these lines for the nose are not straight up and down, but angled up in the direction of the bridge of the nose. The lines that mark the hairline up the sides of the figure’s face are also not straight up and down and are slightly curved. There are very few straight lines in nature and parallel lines are even more rare. If you see these (straight an/or parallel lines) showing up on your faces, you know that something is wrong. You will, of course, notice that I have drawn in some straight lines to mark out the moustache in apparent defiance of my previous sentence. Those lines are temporary and the moustache will be rounded up later. Observe that the top of the moustache line is from the corner of the nose to the lower hair notch. The bottom moustache line is making for a pretty wide moustache. This is by design. Skinny moustaches are for later in your whittlin’ career. They tend to break. 110
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