Chipping.

Here's the wood as I left it overnight, with a new block glued onto the nose to provide the necessary length:


This new block eventually revealed a brutal knot and some fatal internal cracking, and had to be replaced with yet another block. After a sold 10 hours today, mostly spent on the nose, here is what the piece looks like now:


The nose is still too long, and is low relative to the eyes. It's also still too voluminous, relative to the rest of the face. Due to the lowness, I took off too much of the upper parts of the nostrils, and now I have a serious departure from the clay maquette. It will not be the same face that I made in clay—but I suppose that was pretty predictable, given that it's my first carving job. It may still play well as a mask. There are still a thousand things that could go wrong...

Sigh.