
34th of Winter 514 AV
A deep breath brought with it the familiar smells of wood, both natural and cut. Ravenna stood in the back workroom of Laviku's Figurehead, a few basic sketches for an order in hand. Approaching the nearest workbench, she set down the sketches and placed her toolkit off to the side. Today she'd be working on a relief scene to be placed in a door panel on a ship. Ravenna spread her sketches out in front of her, placing the overall scene against the wall in the back, but kept the close up sectional sketches near her at the edge of the table. The scene depicted the ocean along the bottom, and a large ship in the center with an open sunny sky above save for a few small clouds. It wasn't anything she couldn't handle, though she was already fretting over the finer details on the ship. Her skills in fine detailing weren't nonexistent, but she still needed to improve in that department. She also knew that would never happen if she didn't actively work on it. She only hoped her current skill level for that section wouldn't displease the customer.
Next she moved over to her toolkit, emptying its contents and placing them on the table where she could grab any one she needed at will. She placed her charcoal, mallet, v-chisel, and several gouges closest to her workspace, and placed the rest behind them. Next, she went to the back backroom to pick out her wood. She chose a lighter colored wood, it would stand out a bit against the darker wood most ships were built with, and it appeared that luck was on her side, as there was a nice piece just about the size she needed for the taking. It was no wider than a typical door and was thick enough to give her a good base to work from but still thin enough to be set into a door without haphazardly protruding outwards. Returning to her workspace, she set the wood down on the bench between her sketches and tools and picked up her charcoal.
To make sure she didn't lose sight of the big picture, Ravenna copied her sketch onto the wood. The finer details of things were left out at this stage, as her only goal at the moment was to determine where all she would be carving to get the overall shapes of the design. She moved slow and took her time, making sure to keep her proportions correct and to ensure she didn't mess up her lines. They needed to be right or her carving would be misguided. A few minutes later, she stood straight and appraised her drawing, satisfied that she'd properly portrayed each major section of the piece. Next would be taking her mallet and v-chisel to begin the main outline carving.
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