carving

thumb|The ceiling of Dilwara Temples|Dilwara Jain Temples famous for its extraordinary marble stone carvings and architectural design. Carving is the act of using tools to shape something from a material by scraping away portions of that material. The technique can be applied to any material that is solid enough to hold a form even when pieces have been removed from it, and yet soft enough for portions to be scraped away with available tools. Carving, as a means for making stone or wooden sculpture, is distinct from methods using soft and malleable materials like clay, fruit, and melted glass, which may be shaped into the desired forms while soft and then harden into that form. Carving tends to require much more work than methods using malleable materials.

==Usage== Carving particularly durable materials, such as stone, may be desired to make a display long-lasting, as in the case of reliefs of Ancient Egypt.