Book Carving

I wanted my book carving to have meaning and show many different emotions in one piece. I thought that although it was important to have a very clear idea of what you wanted to do, you cannot plan everything because then there would be no emotion in the art whatsoever. I realized as I was cutting that my design was extremely intricate and I also realized the book was a little too thick, which caused some problems. In order to overcome these problems I adjusted my design slightly to make it simpler and then I added more things to be cut in my design to help get deeper into the book. I wanted my design to be symbolic in a variety of different ways. First the eagle carrying a watch is mean to represent American life draining the time we want to spend on ourselves and the eagle chasing after the butterflies shows how life hunts down the free-spirited people who are still trying to chase their dreams and forces them into the reality. Yes, I used acrylic paint which would cover the words and I wasn't sure if I wanted to take that much of the book away but I watered some of it down so that it is visible and I also created minuscule figures of butterflies which were terrible to cut out. I feel this project was overall successful because I'd never worked with books before and my designs were trickier than they needed to be.