Poupou

Our next project involves us looking at poupou distinctive to Te Tai Tokereau. A body form typical of Ngāpuhi has a serpentine body with a Ngāpuhi style head. I will try and duplicate the wheku in our last project and look at other features such as fingers and feet.

This is the piece I will be working on: It will be a self portrait telling the story of my first encounter with a kaitiaki when my whānau moved back to the birthplace of my Dad, Tangiteroria way back in 1990. The manaia sitting on my shoulder is Tirarau. I'll be trying to recreate the wheku I just finished carving (project 2)


Ko te mea tuatahi - Dropping the levels using a router.

    
I used a router to drop down the levels of the manaia, back arm and also the tail. I learnt that it was best to router back from the outside so you always had a flat surface to keep the router flat. There were a couple of parts where the router dropped slightly and I just used a flat chisel to smooth it out.

Ko te mea tuatoru - Shaping

I started shaping the head in the same fashion as my wheku. I tried to figure out the grain and made a few mistakes on the left side of the waha so I had to take out some of the right side so it looked symmetrical. The gouge chisel became my best friend.