To slide a off topic...
Rad, remember JJjireh's post "Amazing Woodcarver?" It referred to a guy named Tim Racer. I was looking over his work yesterday, and noticed a few things that would help any carver. First, he is really good at drawing. And there are a few examples of how he lines up his figures. I couldn't understand exactly what he was measuring, but it is standard practice to frame a figure in a bounding box, and draw lines connecting certain features. Helps getting the proportions right. He has a method peculiar to him, but evidently it works.
Also, on the pieces that he had not yet painted, I could see that in many places, the cuts were quite simple, altho' exact. The lineaments of most things in life are "quirky." It can help to smooth those out. Eventually, lots of smoothing will result in a particular decorative style, such as Art Nouveau.
At any rate, if you really would like to carve, I'm sure you could make progress. Most likely, if you have no previous experience, getting started might be frustrating. For example, when I tried to learn to make sourdough bread a few years ago, I had dozens of failures. One was so bad that the loaf really could have been used as a brick. To me months to get everything right enough that the bread had an acceptable crumb and a good crust. But I was really happy that I managed to get that one recipe right.
