Moroni carving

A few months ago a friend of ours was asking if I could" pretty- please" carve her an Angel Moroni.
She has been working on her part time business called Heaven's White Wings, where she releases white doves for your wedding, funeral ,valentine's, anniversary, military event ect. She has beautiful cages for the birds with a cross on it for these events, but wanted a statue for LDS events.I was a little non committal ,but said I would give it a try .
I sort of put this off for the last couple of months because the techniques I would need to do this I hadn't tried before so I was a little panicky.
First off there is no pattern I could buy to cut one out, also nobody I know of has a roughout to buy. I would have to make up my own pattern. So lots of time spent searching for a picture of the statue that I could use. Most of the pictures I found were from an angle (,which from a photographic standpoint is a better view), But to make up a pattern you need a good side and front view . I finally found a few that I thought I could use, but I was still struggling.
I then made up some paper profiles .Then spent a couple of hours cutting these out in various sizes and putting them together with brads. ( My husband thought I was losing it). I was then able to come up with a pattern of sorts.
I needed to cut the arms separate of the body as well as the head.( never done this before) As I was working on the details I was going to put a sash on the waist that was in one of my reference pictures,, when I noticed that the next pic. didn't have a sash it had a gathered waistand the next one had a completely different robe, and one picture had a hat. More investigation was needed.
so after lots of wandering on the internet,( I tend to get distracted) I found this article that tells about the history of the many Moroni statues there have been over time. You can read about it here.
I am feeling so much better about this project now, cause anything goes. (Whew)
I finally finished carving him ,glued him together, a little wood burning and some sanding, then a couple coats of gold metal spray and this is how it turned out.
Patricia picked it up on Saturday and they were quite tickled with it.
I learned a lot doing this project ,both about carving in general and many things about my
subject matter. Its good to try something new once in a while. I may have to try this one again, now that I got some of bugs worked out.