Wooden Gifts Tutorial: Sculpting Human Poses with Precision

After learning to carve wooden figurines for a while, are you ready to take on a more advanced challenge? Today, Wooden Smile will show you how to carve a figure with its hands in its pockets, using simple techniques — and we’ll also add more clothing details to level up your piece. The figure you carve by hand can even become a thoughtful wooden gift for a friend.

Start with Shirt and Tie Details

Let’s start by deepening the cut at the very bottom of the tie so it looks like it’s tucked into the shirt. Take a closer look — the shirt in the middle of the figure overlaps right over left. Use your carving knife to slice from top to bottom, then gradually deepen the cut. Visually, this makes the right side look like it’s sitting slightly above the left side, as if it’s really overlapping. Once that’s done, do a bit of cleanup by trimming off the extra little corner pieces at the bottom of the shirt. Then use your knife to define the connection between the pants and the jacket.

Add Realism to the Jacket and Pocket

On the right side of the figure, part of the shirt is tucked underneath the jacket. Carve that transition area to make it look more natural — shave off any extra wood fibers so the whole edge looks smoother.

And don’t forget the pocket on the left side! We already drew a guide line for it earlier. Even though there’s a deep fold in this area, that’s no excuse to skip over the pocket — it still needs to be clearly carved out.

Follow the direction of the fold with your blade. If you take a look at your own clothes, you’ll notice that pockets stretch and shift along with the folds, but the creases often disappear underneath the pocket flap — they don’t extend all the way through.

Quick Tip: After carving the pocket, use a small brush or a nylon brush to clean off any burrs on the surface of the figure. The wood we’re using here is fairly soft, so it’s more prone to leaving behind tiny fibers.

Define Sleeves, Hands, and Proportions

Next, we’ll define the relationship between the hand, the pants, and the sleeve. Based on our reference design, the bottom of the right sleeve should align horizontally with the bottom of the left pocket. Use that reference to draw a new guideline on the wood — the old line has probably shifted after all the carving we’ve done so far.

When carving this part, follow the same sequence: angled cut → stop cut → angled cut.

The sleeve sits on top, and the hand goes underneath it. So, we carve a second stop cut to show the hand. Since we’re representing the hand as a rounded shape, slice off the sharp corners to make it look more curved. Cut from the side, following an arc, so the hand still looks round from a side view.

Finally, thin out the wood just below the pocket to create a height difference — this gives the pocket a puffed-out look, as if the hand is really tucked inside. To push this effect even more, you can also thin the hand a bit further.

Adjust Arm Position and Add Natural Folds

Looking at the side view, you might notice that the arm doesn’t really look bent. So what’s causing that? A quick comparison of both arms reveals the issue — the upper part of the bent arm is longer than the straight arm. That tells us the elbow joint is sitting too low right now, so we need to shift the elbow up a bit.

Here’s another tip for making your woodcarving more realistic: Use your blade to lightly shave upwards, removing a thin layer of wood. Because fabric is soft, this technique makes folds appear more natural and less stiff.