On Tue, 27 Nov 2007 12:26:19 -0800, charlieb
wrote:

Found this amazing carver on deviantart.com (as in deviating
from the norm and not as in pervert). He has a site, in Russian.
I didn't think there were any carvers that could do this quality of
work anymore. WRONG!

http://www.firsanov.ru/

here's some more

http://mfirsanov.deviantart.com/

If you want the Russian translated to english - cut the
.ru address from this message then go here

http://babelfish.altavista.com/tr

and paste it in the "Translate a Web page" box.

Most if this mans work isn't turning - but some
appear to start with a turning.

Figure on spending an hour - at least - exploring
this man's work. To have the skill to make such
things is incredible. To have the soul to conceive
of them - astounding. To have both in one person
- almost unbelievable.

Well, that *is* some very impressive work- by why on Earth would you
have thought that no one could do it anymore? With enough practice, I
bet you could do it, too- there are any number of examples in wood,
stone, and cast bronze all over. I forget the fellas name, but
there's another carver in Europe (Venice, IIRC) who carves realistic
clothing from wood, for some reason I could never fathom. While it
doesn't make a lot of sense to me, he is able to carve a crumpled up
shirt draped over the edge of a table so convincingly, you have to
take a second look to make sure it's really made of wood.

If you think about it, it's not that surprising- any kind of realism
can be taught, and while it indicates a lot of patience and manual
skill to get to the level of the masters of the carving art, you can
still take classes that will teach you every technique needed to do
the same work. Same thing with drawing and painting- most art
students that I've met are perfectly capable of exactly reproducing
masterworks in thier media of choice. The trick is to make something
new under the sun, which is the real hard part- the rest is just care
and attention to detail.

Of course, that is not to say that the guy is not superb at his art-
he obviously is. I'm just not surprised that he is, someone has to
be!