Fruit and Vegetable Carving Class: First Week

In my fruit and vegetable carving class, we got right into carving from the first day. On the first day, we learned to make basic carrot flowers. It is a fairly simple process. You want to use the biggest carrots you can find. You square up the carrot. You next sharpen it like a pencil, cutting along the sharp edges to form a point in the center. Then, you cut along the four corners down to the center to form the petals. When you cut the last petal, you slide the tip of the knife inside the flower to cut it away from the carrot.

We then used half an onion as a base, and created a bouquet from them. We arranged them with the largest in the middle, then worked outward with smaller and smaller flowers. The spaces between the flowers are filled in with parsley to hide any visible toothpicks.

On the second day, we did a lot more practice with basic techniques. We made more elaborate carrot
flowers, by first incising lines on the faces of the carrots before cutting the flowers from the squared carrots.

We also made more elaborate bases, by cutting steps in a turnip and a potato.With the turnip, we just cut broad gradated platforms. On the potato, we cut small, spiralling staircases.

We then made some simple characters. We made a fish from a lemon, and frogs from limes.

For the fish, we cut a simple mouth, took off thin slices to form eyes. We used slices of black olive for the pupils. We cut for the gills, and  used carrots to make fins and the tail. We cut strips of cucumber skin to make seaweed. The fish was mounted on the turnip, then some of the carrot flowers and some parsley was added to finish the scene.

For the frogs, large mouths were cut, and small patches removed to make the eyes. Again, slices of black olive were used to make the pupils. the skin of the section removed for the mouth was used to make the feet. A bit of radish skin was used for the tongues. We used carrot to make hats. I made a top hat and a winged helmet for my frogs. The frogs were mounted on the potato, and additional decoration of carrot flowers added.

This is turning out to be a fascinating class. I am curious to see where this takes me.