Direct Carving: Sheep for the Year of the Sheep!

 In my Rules for Direct Carving the block can't have any marks on it when I start carving-- no tracings or transfers or even sketches.  The carvings that I did tonight started out as sketches made from life in pen.  To carve them I referred to the drawings but did all marks with a carving tool (starting with a smallish veiner and moving to a larger gouge and then going back in with the veiner).

What could be better than big fat fluffy sheep laden with drapes of wool, standing around in a pasture, not only full of wool but pregnant?  These girls were being raised for their wool plus getting ready to pop out lambs at any minute.  I liked making the carvings even better than the drawings because it was a lot of fun to wiggle the veiner and gouge around making wooly marks.  Did you know this is the Chinese Year of the Sheep?