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

Gone Fishing.

Occasionally an artist gets to discover something new in his work.  This week I was carving a bear on all 4 legs so was working down towards his feet a little at a time.  As you can see below, I never made it to the feet.  Instead I found the water's surface of a fishing stream and determined it was easier to carve water than it  was to carve legs, toes and claws.  And I needed a reason for my bear to be in the water,,, a large salmon.

This piece is about 38 inches wide, carved in red pine, and finished with burning, paint and oil.  It was also customer supplied wood so it's SOLD.  Customer hasn't seen it yet so I hope they like it :)

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Why is it always a bear?

I've heard that "Why is it always a bear?" question from Lookers.  Never from Buyers...

Why to chainsaw artist carve bears?  Because bears pay the bills!  Bears account for no less than 50% of sales. The mantra is, "carve a bear, carve what I want, carve a bear, carve something artsy, carve a bear, carve a dragon, carve a bear, etc..."  All those bears will sell before that one dragon!  But everything sells eventually.

Recognizing this, I have focused on improving the look of my bear carvings.  This first photo is of a bear I carved earlier this year.  Not bad and quite sell-able  but left a lot of room for improvement.  The following 2 photos are of the exact same carving after I reworked it using some newly learned techniques.  Not a lot of wood had to be removed to achieve a much more realistic, and eye pleasing, product.


The last photo (below) is of another bear carved with these improvements.  In addition, rather than simply burning to darken the fur, color was added after the burn to enhance the over all look.

Pets vs My Marketing Plan

The much loved pet is a very important segment of any artist's market yet one which I have all but ignored.  Lately I've been thinking about all of those dog and cat lovers who have browsed my carvings of bears and eagles only to leave empty handed... What have I been thinking?

People love their pets so I should selling carvings of pets!

This week I took one step closer to patching this hole in my marketing boat {plan} by carving my first house cat.  While it was easier than I'd expected, it did not come completely natural since I'm a dog-person.  It's well understood by sculptors that horse-people carve the best horses, fishermen carve the best fish, and so on.

So what if cats don't fly out of my saw?  I should be carving them anyway!  Carving dogs is second nature to me but I haven't been carving enough of them :(  And while I'm yelling at myself,,, how about those WSU Cougars & UW Huskies?  I live between these rival colleges yet have not carved either of their mascots.

Still, no matter what I carve for inventory, 50% of my sales are bears.

Eagle Update

It was a big adventure and it's FINALLY complete.  The size of this carving, and the size of the tools required to execute such a project, were hard on my old body.  Muscles ache, joints creak and pop when I move, and I have a couple of new calluses.

Today I will try to take it easy but it's going to be difficult because I can barely wait to start the next carving.

Old Tree, New Eagle...

A Sycamore tree in Pasco, WA had grown from a nice shade tree into a menacing giant next to the house and had to be removed this past spring.  Just before the tree was taken down, I went to consult on the possibility of carving the stump.  What a huge piece of wood!  The trunk was nine plus feet around and the first limbs were fifteen feet from the ground...

After discussing design and price, I marked the tree for the arborist and set my appointment to carve the stump in August.

Two days ago I started the job of releasing this huge eagle from his stump.  Using my Stihl ms-660 saw {the second largest saw Stihl currently makes} I removed pieces of wood weighing up to 2, 3, and even 400 pounds each!  The customer said they could feel the house shake when the biggest pieces crashed to the ground.

This photo was taken at the end of my second day of carving.  The beast is so large that when standing on the bench, I cannot see over the top of the wings.  It's an eagle but there are many details to add.  Feet are still quite crude, eyes and body feathers not yet carved, some small details around the beak are still missing, and an eagle next to the river needs a salmon.

Like most big carvings, this one taught me that I need another tool.  The long and wide ripping cuts required for the wings took way too long to complete.  Time to buy some skip tooth chains for the 660.