Songbird Carving With Ernest Muehlmatt: World-Class Ribbon Winner Teaches You How to Carve and Paint 10 Favorite Songbirds

Rating:
Summary: Useful book for ideas and patterns for bird carving.
Review: Written by Roger Schroeder, this book is a summary of Ernest Muehlmatt's carving techniques that takes the reader through the steps of carving song birds using a power carver. Mr. Schroeder's writting style is difficult to get used to. He uses many un-necessary adjectives to describe the process of carving. Much of the first part of the book is devoted to reviewing Mr. Muehlmatt's personal opinions in bird carving. The reader gets a sense that Mr. Muehlmatt is quite egotistical. Nonetheless, the book does go over a few techniques useful to aquire for both carving and painting birds. Although geared toward people who use power carving tools, much of the information can be used for those who utilize knives and gouges. The second part of the book includes patterns of some common song birds and a pictorograph showing how each one was carved and painted. This turns out to be the most useful part of the book. Overall, readers will gain some knowledge of song bird carving and painting and a lot of insight into the thought process of Ernest Muehlmatt, albeit at the expense of sifting through the cumbersome writing sytle of Roger Schroeder.