Good bye holidays!

Great Horned Owl / English Walnut

The holiday season has FINALLY past and I can now get back to carving for fun and inventory. Holiday commission work is great for bringing in money but commissions have their down sides.

For starters, when I'm carving what the customer want's, I am not carving what I want to carve. Poor me, you're thinking? Well, an artist needs to be satisfied by the work in order to be creative and carving to order is rarely satisfying. That is unless the customer brings their own log and says, "Carve whatever you want to." Like that's going to happen!

But that's exactly what happened with this English Walnut... I was feeling an owl as I approached the log but was mid-way through the carving before I decided it was a horned owl. I doubt the species mattered to the customer because they loved the piece :-)

Bluto 2

With all of the commissions done, it's time to have some fun!  We have a mix breed bulldog with a blue merle color pattern.  Yesterday was his day to be carved.  He's short, thick, has a really big head and lots of spots.  I choose a log as stocky as "Bluto" himself for this "Bluto 2" sculpture :-)

 This may be a little more of an exaggeration than a true likeness but I expect it to be decorating our house or yard for a long time.

But business is business so the next bit of fun had to be something to sell.  A beaver sounds fun...

The Buck Toothed Beaver

Today I set-up a taller than typical sycamore log to carve this little beaver.  He's 38" tall, including the draped down tail, and his teeth are big enough to say they're buck teeth. ;-)  What really made this fellow fun to carve is the sign he is standing above which reads, "WELCOME To Our Dam House"

I suppose that's an appropriate greeting from a beaver.

WELCOME To Our Dam House