Dune Sandworm Relief Carving

I made this landscape relief carving to commemorate the new Dune movie, since I am a long-time fan of the franchise and have read 21 of the Dune books.

The wood is sapele, which I don't recommend using, since the interlocking grain makes it hard to carve without tearout. A better alternative would be mahogany without an interlocking grain.

This same process will work for any landscape relief carving.

You can see more of my projects on my YouTube.

Supplies

• Sapele board (36"x14")
• Carbon paper
• Water-based polyurethane
• TransTint dye
• Black Sumi ink
• Titanium dioxide powder
• Graphite powder
• Mica powder
• Wall hangers

Tools

• Carving gouges
• Woodworking chisels
• Carving mallet
• Pencil

Design your carving in the program of your choosing or on paper. I used Adobe Animate with a Wacom drawing tablet to draw the design (since I was planning to animate it). Photoshop or Illustrator would also work well. Another option is to just draw it by hand on paper.

Transfer the design onto your piece of wood. I printed mine out on several sheets and taped them together.

Important: place a couple pieces of tape on the top of the design, so when you are transferring it there is no movement. The top pieces of tape also act like a hinge, so you can check on the design as you're transferring it.

Place a large piece of carbon paper under the design and trace all of the lines, occasionally lifting up the paper to check on the progress.

Using stop cuts (see video for how to do stop cuts) remove material around the border and all the main features near the sky.

The next step is to remove the sky area, so you want to get to the desired depth (1/4") on all the borders of the sky.

Using a large carving gouge remove or relieve (i.e. relief carving) the backmost area, which is usually the sky. This is best accomplished by going perpendicular to the grain.

In this carving I want the sandworm to be a main feature of the foreground, so I did stop cuts all the way around the sandworm, to about the same depth as the sky. Do this with whatever element you want in the foreground, whether it is a person, a building, an animal, etc.

Trace the outside of the other features using a V-tool. This will give you a starting point as you add depth.

Using gouges, shape and relieve each element of the carving to create different layers. In a landscape relief the depth is mostly an optical illusion. You shape the wood to utilize light and shadows to simulate depth.

I like to clamp a lightbulb to one end of my workbench (see pic 1 and 2 and video) while I carve. This makes it clear which angles will catch the light and which ones will create shadows. Smooth transitions make it look like things are close to each other, and hard edges make it look like there is separation between objects.

Focus on the details of each layer, the foreground being the most detailed.

I sprayed two layers of water-based polyurethane that I thinned with denatured alcohol, to seal the carving. This can also be done with shellac or gesso.

Sealing the carving is important, so the paint doesn't seep into it.

You can add coloring using acrylic paint or whatever method you want.

I made tinted polyurethane by mixing TransTint dye with polyurethane and alcohol.

It took about six layers to achieve the color I wanted. The poly dries very quickly when it's mixed with denatured alcohol. I intentionally made the color require multiple layers so that I would have a very even coloring.

I used walnut tinted polyurethane to make the sandworm more brown. It was not as pronounced as the red color, since wood is already very brown.

To make the carving look good even when the lighting is less than perfect, I added "baked-in" shading. I mixed black Sumi ink with thinned polyurethane and layered it on in all the areas that should be darker.

Originally I wanted to make the moons translucent as well. But I soon realized that the color white is not possible without opacity, since it needs to reflect all colors.

For a base coat on the moons, I mixed titanium dioxide powder with graphite powder and thinned polyurethane. The titanium dioxide is a great white pigment, and it also has a shiny reflectivity like a metal. The graphite also has some shine, and adds more grey color.

Caution: you DO NOT want to breathe titanium dioxide powder. Use breathing protection until it is mixed in.

I also used mica powder and more graphite to complete the texture on the moons.

Up until this point, all the polyurethane has been gloss, because that is the clearest kind. This many layers of matte or satin would become cloudy.

The gloss polyurethane is way shinier than I like, so I brushed a layer of satin poly on top of everything to dull it. I also painted the teeth with a pearlescent white acrylic paint.

I hung it on the wall and mounted some cordless art lights above it. They're operated by remote, so the hanging makes a nice night light.

Thanks for reading!