Whittled Owl

Circa: 2024

Medium: Avacado Pit

An owl I whittled from an avacado pit using a tutorial in a book from my library. I can't remember the title rn. The coloring is mostly just from oxidation but I did even out a few spots with gouache

Here is a pendant that I've whittled out of an avocado pit and then applied some gouache to. The dark red coloring is mostly an oxidation reaction of the more superficial layers of the avocado pit. Though I have used gouache to even that out a few places on both pendants.

The main benefit for me when it comes to using avocado pits, is how soft they are when first retrieved from the avocado flesh. Then as they dry they will take on an almost woody texture. But as someone with hand pain, it has been nice to be able to experiment with whittling in a medium that wouldn't aggravate that pain

Avocado pits naturally split down their seams. So for both of these, I carved them, waited for them to dry enough to see where that natural split would occur, and then cut along that split and hollowed out the pit before (gently) clamping the pit back together so the two halves could continue to shrink together as they dried. It is not an ideal method, the split is still very obvious and I had to glue them together. But it works if you want a larger pendant the full size of the pit rather than half of it.

This pendant was made following the instructions in this book (that was at my library): https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/96f68c65-7d9a-4564-9802-94fcbd6ebdd2