making a fiddle requires different skill sets at various stages. for the head, you have to be more wood carver, for the neck, you need to be more fiddler. the head is the most insignificant part of the instrument. but like in life, the least important thing happens to demand the most attention. you could lop the head off a fiddle and it wouldn't sound any different, but it would look darn funny coz everyone is expecting to see a familiar scroll there.
many players tend to like interesting and different treatment of the head. many makers like to stick to the same boring thing. i can't tell what i really like more, the traditional scroll, or anything but the traditional scroll. but check it out: its not a new thing, since Gaspar da Salo, fiddle makers have been adorning their instruments with carved heads like the gambas of the renaissance. other ethnic and folk instruments of many other cultures beyond Western civilization, some of which have changed little in a few hundred years are decorated by the makers fancy. i've done 2 traditional scrolls already, i'm not very good at it, and should carve more for practice, but they bore me, to be honest.
here you see i've cut out the suggested outline of the neck:
next i draw in some other lines. the thing is, i never learned how to use templates like a real maker, so i draw free hand what i want to carve directly onto the maple block and i cut, check, draw some more and cut again:
as the lines get cut off, i begin to rely on imagination:
and it just gets uglier:
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