I spend a lot of time looking for interesting things to carve. One of my favorite subjects is traditional decorative carving. The acanthus has been one of the most popular motifs for hundreds of years. While searching internet for images of acanthus leaf designs I found a drawing for the carving in the photo below. Instead of the typical relief carving I carved this almost in the round out of basswood and mounted it to a scrap piece of walnut I had. It is about 10″ tall and a full 1 1/2″ thick.