2nd Raven, cottonwood bark

Raven

This is my first raven, carved in March 2015

Faces

I'm forgetting to post my work. This is the first face I carved. With input from Rick. Now, when I find the next two I made for some friends.

Starting Carol's Critters

Just managed to create an acceptable Pug...it only took 5 starts and endless hourrs looking at photo's.

This is made out of cottonwood bark with a stone for the nose. it's polished using Kiwi Shoe Polish in dark brown and natural.

Applying shoe polish to to the carving is best done on a really hot day. It is easiest if the wood is warm and the polish is totally melted. I use a toothbrush to apply it. Let it sit for a while and then buff with a shoe brush or a soft cloth. The melted polish made it tricky to get the black applied in selected locations.

Starting work on a mask

This is very exciting. Rick just gave me a blank for a big mask. Its red cedar - yay. I do love carving red cedar. Every cut smells so nice and is so beautiful. And I've been wanting to start a mask. The only challenge will be to finish the birch platter and not totally focus on the mask. 

Here's what the blank looks like - its almost ready to start carving. I added a pop can to one photo because I was having a hard time showing the scale. The can makes it look ginormous. 

Catching up

It has been a long time since I posted here but I just have to catch up for the sake of my distant friends.

At some point last fall, I decided that I wanted my cedar log to stand up so the leaf design was not going to work. I struggled with it for a while and settled on a change to fish.

Here is one of the last photos of the project before I 'erased' it and started again.

I'm back - birch fish platter

Just downloaded a blogger app so I'm hoping my blogging woes will be fixed.

So, where am I ...stopped working on the log when I was diverted by  a piece of birch from my daughters tree. Although it's still not complete, I am astonished when I look at the current state and realize that it was a hunk of wood when I started...and I haven't used one power tool in getting all the extra wood out.

The final product will be a sushi platter resting on two salmon. These photos are not current but they give you an idea of where I'm going with this.

Before:

Worm damage visible once the bark was removed:

Top view, work in progress:

Side view: