Working on legs

As you can see I still have quit a bit of work to do on the legs...lots of shaping and sanding to do. Trying to give each scale the right shape and depth.

Progress

Well here's the progress I made on the tool box before my injury. As you can see, I hollowed out the entire grid. I was in the process of removing another 1/4" from the bottom. As soon as I'm able I'll be working on this again.

Roadblock

It's been a while since I've posted anything. I've been a little under the weather lately. Saturday night I was feeling better... enough to start working on my tool box again. I got a good six hours of work in before I called it a night. Sunday, I awoke to a very swollen right wrist and a ton of pain. Hoping I just slept on it wrong, or maybe just sprained it a little, I continued on with my day. Monday rolled around and I had to go to work. Slapped a brace on it and actually work for a couple of hours before it swelled up more and a lot more pain. So I went to urgent care clinic where they gave me some pain meds, and sent me to get an x-ray. Yesterday morning I get the news - fractured wrist. What?!? I've never had a broken bone and I've had some really bad falls (fell down a flight of stairs once head first and just got bruises). I don't even know how I could have fractured it, very odd... Today I'm off to the bone and joint clinic to see what exactly they are going to do. Will keep you updated.


Well the good news is no cast. The bad news is that I have to wear this thing for awhile. That means I won't be able to work on any projects for at least 6 to 8 months, or until I get an okay from the doctor. I have to go back for another evaluation in two weeks. I was going to attempt to work on stuff anyway but my wrist simply hurts to bad to do any kind of serious work. I still plan on posting some older works and maybe do a couple of reviews of some of the equipment I use.

Tears for Red Earth

 Here is another older piece of mine. I think I carved this around the age of nineteen. The woman is carved from a solid piece of bass wood. The stone is a hard sandstone taken from a creek bed. My intention was to have the woman looking into a pool of water and have an image of a mountain lion staring back through the water. At the time the idea sounded great but I just couldn't figure out a way to actually pull it off. In the end I carved the mountain lion in her hair. I may end up trying to redo this piece the way I originally intended.

Hands of Unity

 I carved this piece when I was around 18. The top part is a grape vine from my parents garden. The two people that I carved on the grapevine were created by chipping away at the grapevine bark until I got the desired shapes. The middle piece has a old woman carved into it with her arms outstretched, holding up the two figures. It was made from driftwood that I found. The base is made of sandstone. The design was created with some small hand chisels. Please feel free to comment, share on facebook, or subscribe.

Totem

This carving, I believe, is the second one I ever did. The body of the totem is a broom handle. I first drew the design onto the broom then started carving. There wasn't enough wood to make the headdress or the wings so I had to make those from a 2'x4'. The turtle base was carved from the same 2'x4'. The wings, headdress, and turtle are attached to the broom handle with wood glue. I then stained the entire piece dark oak. This piece stands approximately 11".

Meeting in the Woods

Still carving away on the wood tool box, but here's another picture of my earlier works. There are several creeks running through my parents land and were the perfect place to go looking for rocks and driftwood. On different trips I found some smoothed out pieces of wood which I used to carve the owl and the rabbit. I found the base during another outing and I already had the turtle carved. My family has always had a garden and one year my father decided to try and grow pumpkins. I took the pumpkin stem off one of them and thought "That kinda looks like a tree stump." So I stained it brown then arranged my woodland creatures around it and fixed it to the stone base. The whole piece stands around 6 1/2 inches tall and has a nice home in one of my sister's curio cabinets.