In the long river of history, Chinese sons and daughters invented one craft after another with wisdom and hard work, and created one treasure after another. Root carving is an excellent example. Root carving is based on local materials, and on the basis of exerting one's own talents, it is processed into works of art with self-shaped roots. This art requires not only imagination, but also decades of carving skills. Next, Bian Xiao will introduce how to make root carving.

Introduction of root carving

Root carving is one of the traditional carving arts of Han nationality, which adopts the autogenous form and twisted form of roots (including tree body, tree tumor, bamboo root, etc.). ) is the object of artistic creation, and works of artistic images such as figures, animals and utensils are created through conception, artistic processing and technical treatment. Root carving art is a plastic art that discovers natural beauty and shows creative processing. The craft of root carving pays attention to "three points artificial and seven points natural", which means that in the creation of root carving, the artistic image should be expressed mainly by the natural form of root wood, supplemented by manual treatment and modification. Therefore, root carving is also called "the art of roots" or "the art of roots".

processor

1. Collect root wood. Root carving is precious in nature, and good root wood is not everywhere. Cliffs, mountains, rivers and even ordinary people's woodpiles are all raw materials with certain natural shapes.

Second, peel and clean. There are two ways to peel: fresh peeling and soaking. The fresh peeling method is to wash the roots with water and leave them in the open air for 2-3 days to evaporate the water in the roots, and then pry out the bark from the cracks with a knife. Soaking method is suitable for dry root materials that have been placed for a long time. The method is to soak the root material in water for several days until it can be peeled off. Be careful not to damage the roots and destroy the texture.

Third, the concept of modeling. Don't rush to carve, but carefully ponder and observe its shape according to your life experience.

Fourth, carving and molding. After the conception is completed, the processing can be started, the redundant roots are cut off, the cross section is processed into a natural cave with fire pouring, and the convex surface is processed into a tumor shape to achieve a natural and beautiful effect. We should use abstract, exaggerated and hazy images to reflect the natural image of roots. When some root materials are incomplete, you can choose the root materials with the same texture for splicing, and the technique should be delicate and do not leave traces.

Fifth, polishing. Use coarse emery cloth to polish the root material, smooth the wound marks, and then use fine emery cloth to polish the surface to make it bright and recognizable. When polishing with emery cloth, the force should be even to avoid destroying its original color and texture.

Sixth, color. The raw material for coloring is varnish, which can be applied to the root material repeatedly for three times. Practical root carving crafts, such as flowerpot brackets and TV cabinets, can be put into ready mixed paint to make them antique. The last step is naming. A good root carving work with a good name can add a lot of value to it.

The above is the introduction of root carving and its processing technology. Generally speaking, a large-scale root carving work needs at least 2-3 years of practice, and a lot of time is spent on conception, because the key to the quality of root carving works lies in conception. But the hardest part of root carving is how to find a valuable root, which can only be encountered but not forced. As a kind of inheritance art, we hope that root carving can inject new era culture into the new era and continue to create one rare treasure after another.