Kae-Sa-Luk: Blooming Rose Technique

Lesson #3
Blooming Rose Technique
(Pam Maneeratana – Master of Kae-Sa-Luk)

As usual, I always have my helper, rotary plate and this is the watermelon as I had showed you the previous two lessons that I always have the foundation to support this carving flowers. So by this way, you will have longer time of the display of this centerpiece. So this technique of blooming flower is the rosebud then the scud of the petal around the rosebud. These flowers will sit next to each other. At this time, we do not have to make a circular cut next to each other because we will make one at a time. Let the petal go on and then next to that last petal then we will make the next rose. I will show you now. First of all, I always try to do at the bottom first. This will make the work easier. The route best always start with the circular cut. Skin off in order to make a nice dome-shape.

In Thailand, when we carved watermelon, the traditional way of carving is, you will sit on the floor and hold the watermelon very tight toward your body on your lap and hold the knife and try to carve a details on the flowers. When I come to this country and I find that all my student is not used to sit on the floor and hold the watermelon tight to their body. So I developed the way we cut watermelon western style. We will have this rotary plate to help you. You will be standing on the table and make sure that your upper body is on top of the watermelon. By this way, the force of your hand will be steady and be able to have a strength on the knife, cutting each petal.

I have been taught in Thailand to hold the knife like holding a pencil at all times, but when I carved watermelon and teaching the western students, it is very hard for them to hold a knife the way they did in Thailand as all time. So I tell them to hold the knife the way that they are comfortable by placing their three fingers on the handle of the knife and had their thumb on the top of the knife. By this way, you will be able to turn your wrist left and right, up and down, as the petal of the flowers will let you go.

Now we had the dome. I am going to make the rosebud inside. Once again, placing the tip of the knife perpendicular toward the bottom of the dome then make a swaying motion along the rim of the dome down to the bottom, skin off. You will see the petal. If you would notice that the tip of the petal is very thin, the bottom is very thick so there are different sizes of the thickness of the petal. This comes from the way you shape the dome. Can you see that? I shape the dome now. The dome is round. When I make a perpendicular direction of the knife toward it, can you see now, that inside would be thick but the top one would be thin and when I press the knife on the side make a swaying motion I tried to push the knife outward. So the knife would go along the corner down to the body, slanting your knife and skin off. So the technique of making a nice thin petal on the top is how you skin off and reshape your dome. You keep on making these kinds of reshape; you will make a nice petal around the dome.

Sometimes you do not see that I re-shaped the dome after I make the petal just because that I already re-shaped it while I am skin off. You can do that later on when you have more skill like I do. Did you see that? Instead of just skin off, I did round off the dome shaped already.

But sometimes that I skin off and does not make a clean cut is still have some edge over here. I still have to re-shape the dome to make this look nice and round.

Now, we come back to the center and I think that is time for me to make a rosebud center. So I will reshape this dome to make a point at the dome. We will start from that last petal that I left off. A little bit underneath place the knife in perpendicular and then make a swaying motion up like on the heel of the dome. Stop a little bit away from the top then skin off. Again, start where I left of making up off on the heel. Go around the corner and then a little bit more. Now we get the rosebud.

Once I had told you that this next lesson is about blooming rose. Now that we have done with the rosebud, we have to make the character of the blooming rose. The character of the blooming rose is mean that there has some petal outside the rosebud that blooming. So what it is. Now we can change the knife. This knife can work well but it is not the best that I would want it to be because I might have to commit the death of the flowers. So it is too short of the blade that will make me have to make a repeated cut again and again. So I changed the knife to the longer blade knife. At any between the petals, I will make a nice wriggling cut off.

Then I will place the knife in along the surface that I just make. Skin off underneath. You will see that the first petal is already shown. The second one again, you have to make the space of the petal first by cutting off some space. You will see the wavily surface that I had left. Place the knife in perpendicular; we will make the petal thin on the top and thick at the bottom. Along the wavily surface, that I just make is mean that your wrist would turn it left and right, up and down. Just come back to do word that I had told you. Do not hold the knife too tight and do not hold the knife too loose. By this way, you had the freedom of turning your knife in and out. Skin off underneath of what you just cut. We will keep doing this. Sometime one cut does not make the petal look nice. It means that you can make a mistake and correct it. So what it is, is that I had make three cut in order to make this space now that I make the petal on this space.

How many cut did I make, five, just to make the space look nice for the next petal. Now that I just go along with the space that I just made that, the knife would go this way up and down of the space that is allowed. Skin off. You had the first layer of the skirt. This starts to be a blooming rose. You may do a second layer if you wished for. So the second layer is again you have to organize the petal. Did you see that? This petal is going to be in the middle of the two petals above.

As you can see that, the petal that I make is not the same size and is not the same shape. You had the freedom to turn your knife back and forth, left and right, as you are comfortable with. The more you practice doing this, you will be able to produce a petal that have a vividly look and looked just real. So we get the first blooming flowers right here. As I told you from the beginning we are going to make more flowers that sit next to each other. So you see this space, this is the petal. So we will let this petal to be a mutual petal of this flower and the next flowers. So let us try to make this one as the rosebud. Sometime you run out of time and you want to finish these flowers faster maybe you make less petal and more bigger rosebud like I will show you now.

Once the rosebud is done, we will come to do the blooming rose. Did you see this is the rosebud? This is the mutual petal from this one and this one. Now since this has a corner here, I only make it look like the petal sit next to each other. Again, you have to make some wavy look so you can place the petal in it. To me this one is enough, one layer of the blooming petal. We had this part to be another flowers.

I always start where the previous petal that I had just left off by this way it look like that the petal can be on mutually on one or the other. I get a lot of question about what size of the petal should I make, should I make only two inches wide, should I make one-inch wide? It does not matter. You can make any size of the petal that you see it fit your dome.

Now that the third dome rosebud had done, we are going to make the petal by making the third blooming flowers sit next to each other; you will see the idea of how you place the petal. Did you see that I placed the petal right here between the two rose. This kind of carvings is that it does not hard as it looks. You can make a lot of mistake and no one know about it. You can make it wrong cut and repeat the cut on and on. For example, if I had made a mistake on the petal supposedly I make this, and I just happened to cut it off. Do not worry about that, you just make a touch up on the surface and start the petal again.

When you see I am carving and I take a big chunk off underneath of the petal is mean that I know what I am doing. For someone that had just begun to learn how to carved and not sure that how much should they take it off. You can always start a thin one. Now that you can see that we had three flowers sitting next to each other, some petal in the middle look like that they are belong to this one or if you look another way it look like it belong to this one. But actually we make this petal. We planned to make it mutual petal between the two, so it look like that one is sitting next to each other. So now that we are going to make the fourth one. This is only the first layer. Let us go for another layer.

Did you see this, that when I cut the chunk off it looked like that I make one cut but exactly I know what I am cutting off and what I am going to do because I am experienced one so I cut one time is to be able to place the petal on. But if you are the beginners and learned how to carved this and not sure that how much should you cut it off underneath, you maybe just skinned off like this and then take a look maybe the petal, if I put the petal in would be too crowded. Let us cut some more, then you keep doing this until you are sure that how much space do you want each petal to lie next to each other. For me, I already know that how I want my petal to be on. So I just go ahead make a nice chunk off. See, did you see the petal now that I make? You can always go to the next flower as the space allow. There is no certain rules that how many flowers you can make and how big is the flower. If you see it fit then put it in.

When you work on a tighter spot, sometime you have to learn how to cut backward and be able make this one forward, toward me, able to do this nice thin cut. But then when some spot like this, maybe you have to do it backward.

Now we are done with the last rosebud. There is no space left for me to put any flower in it. At this time, you may do some touch up underneath. This touchup will make the flower look like that they are connected at the center.

It look like that I made a very nice touch up and you see that the flower look like it is floating not connecting to the foundation of the watermelon. Now that we are done there is no space left to make any flowers. This one, we call blooming rose it because that we had a rosebud and we had a blooming petal. As I told you that, we had two sections of carving. We have to do the rosebud then we start the petal from the out the side of the rosebud to put outside and the rosebud will sit next to each other with the blooming petal in the middle. By this way, you will see that each rose will sit next to each other and there is no space left. And we will make it look like this is a bouquet of flowers that you propped together and at the center of the watermelon.


Transcription by: Scribe4you Transcription Services