Wood spirit and stick integrity

I'd like to explain why a detailed wood spirit carving leaves plenty of integrity even on small diameter shanks (wood type dependent).

Of course I didn't have my jack with me, so I had to use my big honking pocket knife without slicing a digit.

10 min carving photographing. So this is quick and dirty, I may make a more detailed one later (there are an abundance of these out there)

To begin with I have a 3/8 inch piece of holly.

To get a nice depth for the face my rule is to use a radial width (half the distance front to back of the face of the stick)

I create an angle which will determine the width of the face.

I then mark off 3 lines for the eye, the bottom of the nose and the mouth (a good understanding of facial planes is nice to have).

I make a straight cut down on each of these lines.

I then make an angel cut to create the nose bridge and the bottom lip

Draw in the eyes and mustache and beard.

Stop Cut down the sides of the nose

Then remove the cheeks at an angle back towards the eye.

Stop cut the mustache and remove inside beard at an angle and around the cheeks on the oustide.

From here you can detail out eyes and hair and beard etc etc.

But what I want to show is the amount of wood remaining is plenty for stability of the stick and decent amount of depth and detail can be added.