Not as long as you probably think, but long enough.

As fuller answer would take into account the time I spend drawing, prepping the wood, tracing out the design, prepping and carving the frame, shellacking and painting — as well as the several years I’ve spent practicing the craft so that I can work as quickly as I do. Which still is not quickly.

There’s no undo button in woodcarving, but there are different kinds of mistakes. Some cuts (leaves, flower petals) can be moved or changed slightly without any consequence, so my goal is to make clean, flowing lines rather than to follow the pencil line perfectly. Often cuts that aren’t perfectly placed or smoothly made can be corrected — but of course only by making them wider. Bird feathers, by contrast, have to be pretty much perfect the first time. Occasionally the wall of one feather will blow out into the next — usually because my knife needs sharpening — and in most cases I decide it will never be noticed, and move on.

I don’t make many really big, unfixable mistakes at this point. But just in case, I carve the fussiest parts of a design first — the parts where an error will be most noticeable and hardest to fix — to minimize the time lost if I have to start over.

No. Chip carving is not just 2D art; it’s the third dimension that gives it life — the interplay of light and shadow. Take that away, flatten out the design, and what’s left just wouldn’t be that interesting. (Not to mention the inkable surface would be the reverse of the image.)

To design woodcut or linocut for printing would require other kinds of detail and visual interest. They would also make different kinds of detail and visual interest possible. If I wanted to take one of my carvings and rethink it as a linocut, I’d almost have to start over.

I think the reason I get this question so often — besides the fact that people are more familiar with linocut than with chip carving — is that digital tools give the impression that “design” is something that happens in your brain independent of physical media. And that is simply wrong. When I sit down with a pencil I draw, design, and compose with my chip carving knives in mind: breaking a bird, for example, into shapes I can make by carving chips, keeping in mind that the widest and therefore deepest chips will draw the eye, and so on. The “design” and the execution are one process, not two, and certainly not separable.