Many of you are aware of my "Couch Carving" series, the smaller works that I carve while spending time with my wife. Well, this week I spent some couch time working on a little animal head that I am adding to the gear section of a new "Mechanical Head".

I had worked for a bit on this little surprise, but wasn't getting the "mouse" look I was going for. I decided to ask AI what animal it identified the carving to be. Rat is what came back. I then asked what would make it look like a mouse.

The answer: bigger, thinner ears with the inner-ear hollow actually carved in instead of just suggested. The snout was too long as well.

I did some more work, sent three new photos and asked the plain question: what animal does this look like now?

This time the answer came back mouse, not rat. An ear isn't a flap stuck on the side of a head. It's a hollow with an edge, and once you carve that hollow and undercut behind it, the whole head stops reading like something else.

He's going into the gears — a small living thing tucked in among the stone gears. The machine with something alive in it.

One thing left: from the side he still leans a little rat. I'll take a touch off the back of the head — not the snout — and see if the profile catches up with the front view.

I'll shorten the back of the head, set him in among the gears, and put him up for another read.

Profile view

A Mouse in the Gears

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