Careful of tool sets advertised online. Good tools for beginners are Drake, Mainly for their knives, although all their tools are good. I use their Standard Detail Knife, mine is the egronomic handle at 1 3/4 though you may want a smaller blade. There are other good knife makers, Morakniv etc. Flexcut, Not fond of their knives, but their chisels are good, also I always recommend flexcut for beginners because they aren't very expensive yet will not let you down. I own the interchangeable, namely the 11 pc. and 21 pc. deluxe set, although they do smaller sets.
Good chisel makers are Ashley Iles, Pfeil, Two Cherries, Henry Taylor, Auriou, Stubai, Addis (antique, can find them on ebay etc.), Dastra. There's more but these names are fairly common among woodcarvers, especially Pfeil, though I prefer Ashley Iles. These are considered professional tools and can be quite pricey, last tool I bought was a Pfeil short bent V Tool that ran nearly 50$. You can see why I recommend Flexcut (For chisels, if you go beyond just knives) to start, you get more bang for your buck and can round out a set of chisel profiles (Or sweeps) fairly cheap. Then acquire more professional tools a little at a time. Avoid cheap no name chisels, most likely crappy steel Chinese junk that will just make your woodcarving experience piss poor.
You'll need a sharpening stone and strop, with some strop compound. I use a Norton Wide Soft Arkansas stone with their oil. And a Horse Butt Strop. You can use either Flexcut gold compund or Green Coumpond , either are good. I also have a Slick Stick Strop that helps with stropping the various contours on woodcarving chisels ( I've had this thing for like 11 years). Slip Stones are helpful as well to hone the inside of curved or v tool chisels, again I use the Soft Arkansas.
Wood you can get online, Look for Basswood on amazon or even Ebay, you can also find Butternut (White Walnut) on ebay which is a great carving wood.
Mind I'm not trying to overwhelm with info, most folks are happy with just a knife and wood to carve (with the sharpening supplies of course) I would actually recommend you start that way, if you find you enjoy it you can dive in further.
I started with flexcut interchangeable sets. I personally have the 11 pc. and deluxe set . Note that the image on amazon for the deluxe set is wrong, it looks like this. I still use them everyday alongside my more expensive tools and a benefit of the interchangeable blades is you can get an adapter in the future and use it with a powered reciprocating carver. Note also that these sets dont overlap, so if you got both the 11 piece and the deluxe you wont have duplicate chisels. It's a good way to initially round out a wide range of gouges and v tools and then later on you can start buying the more expensive chisels a little at a time. Good brands are Pfeil, Ashley Iles, Two Cherries, Henry Taylor, Auriou, Dastra, Addis (Antique, can find them on Ebay) and there are others that I cant think of atm.
You'll also need a sharpening stone and oil, and a strop. I personally use a soft arkansas stone and the norton oil, I also have a set of soft arkansas slip stones for honing the inside edge of gouges and v tools. And this is the main strop I use. And stropping compound, you can use flexcut gold or some green compound.
Iv'e also heard good things of ramelson tools, but personally have not used them, so maybe someone else can vouch for them.
As a way to work up to figure carving, what helped me start was simple decorative relief carving. You can do celtic, norse, or chinese knot patterns on knives, boxes, furntature (I've done cradles and work benches), wooden labels and placards, etc. It's a comparatively fast form of carving that doesn't take much skill to look professional. I followed videos like this and started embellishing random wooden things I had.
When I started I followed the usual advice to get the simple carving knives and they just...didn't really work for me. Mainly, I think, because they didn't let me do the kind of carving I wanted. You could whittle or chip carve, but I wanted to do reliefs, figures, and text.
Eventually I got this set of gouges and chisels and that's when things really came together for me. I made a tiny mallet out of a large nut and some wood and things really flowed. Using the v gouge I could do beautiful traditional text and the various round gouges allowed me to do figures, floral designs, etc.
I think an important thing to recognize about carving is that there are actually a lot of different traditions out there, and they are all pretty unique. You may enjoy one and not another. So it's good to have a vision of what you think you would enjoy doing.
