Am making an attempt to carve the bottom item below, but am stuck on how to carve the hair/mane.

The top one is walnut (I ditched it, and started over): the bottom mahogany.

Clearly, the eyes/mouth, well, I need more practice.

In addition to the above disclaimers, I copied the graphic from somewhere.

So, can you all give me some guidance and or possible pictures on how to best represent the hair/mane?

Have a lot of Basswood/butternut, but it is not quite wide enough, and is rather bland, right?

I suppose there are two questions here:

How to carve the hair/mane

Desirability of such a carving in basswood/butternut-bland, but way easier.....a very talented master in the Renaissance did a lot of exquisite Lime wood (Basswood) carvings....I am not him.

Here is what I have, which is just carving strands of hair w a #12 or #16 gouge:

Walnut hair.jpg

Mahogany Hair.JPG

I guess what I have now is a sort of negative representation of hair?

All input appreciated!

Thanks, David