Hi Paul, I always look forward to reading your updates, after a spell away. Very nice work on your carvings. Your relief work presents some great perspectives. Whenever I've done reliefs, I've learned to stencil more than one base piece. I usually take all 3 pieces to a very rough carved state. Reliefs, in most cases, in my experience, present better when they are thin relative to scale. I've found that the thinner the work, the higher the risk of breaking the piece. If that happens, I have 2 pre-carved pieces in reserve. A small waste of material, yes, but this allows my brain to maintain momentum, as I don't have to completely start from the beginning.
The other key step in carving reliefs, which I'm fairly certain you already do, is the grain and quality of the piece of wood you will be carving. Once small area of wider grain or imperfection, your relief looks more like a Ritz cracker crumbs than a carving.
If you allow me a small critique of your mermaid. I think her physique looks great! Her face might benefit from one or two small efforts. Her head is a little round and from the side, her face a little flat. You can safely create some cheekbones by removing a small amount of material under them, to create the "concave hollows" of her cheeks. The one other thing is her brow is a little flat. Anatomically, the brow and forehead protrude out more than the lower 2/3 of our faces, except for our noses, of course.
I've had a thing for mermaids (easy guys) since I saw some Walt Disney movie when I was a kid. I want to be attracted to her Paul. In her current state, I don't want to kiss her. Make a couple of changes and I'll pucker up.
My carving talent is probably very close to yours. Carving for me is much like the golf swing. I know exactly what a great golf swing is and looks like. I just find it terribly hard to achieve myself.
Again, like the golf swing, "practice makes perfect"? I do practice, I hope with purpose. I've already carved 4 figureheads for my current ship and I've not yet started hull planking. Each new version is a little better than the last. My carving skill may produce a figurehead a year from now with continued practice, who knows.
Keep up the great work!
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. I may have even asked her to 'strike a pose' in order to decipher a certain angle (though we will both deny that in a court of law 
