Eat,Sleep,Carve

[Colin-Partridge]

Hi gang,
Well I am out of my carving slump and boy its a good job I am the phone has been ringing off the hook with people wanting me to carve their stumps and tree's. I cant believe how busy I am as soon as spring arrived the phone has been ringing steady. I am now up to five commissions and working on two and have to go price another four this week. I am presently doing a double carving in two tree's in front of a private residence. I thought it might be interesting if I shared the carving with you from the raw tree to the finished carving. I started yesterday and I will post pictures in the woodspirit gallery of the carvings from start to finish. Of course as usual any constuctive critisim is always welcome. I mean that let me know if there is anything that I could do to impove the carvings in your opinion I value all the comments of the members here.
Colin

[Irish]

Oh, Cool! Another WIP! I'll be watching.

Perhaps you could post the photos to this thread also so that you can add writen comments and notes for us as we watch you work?

Susan

[Colin-Partridge]

Susan,
I will try to post to this thread but sometimes I fail to be able to reduce small enough to post here. This work into its second day now I have to go back and finish up tomorrow. I will post pictures of the two carvings tomorrow when I get back. I have a bunch more to do so if everyone is interested I could post progress pictures on them as I go. I carve pretty fast one tree usually takes me about a day to do. That is the carving part then there is the finishing that I usually have to go back two or three times, because I have to allow for dying time. When I carve I usually carve straight through without stopping even for lunch once in a while the customer will bring me a drink but other than that it work till I am done.
Colin

[squbrigg]

Colin, I'm happy that you have put that slump behind you! It sounds like you're going to have a busy summer. Good to hear that you are enjoying yourself once again too. The commissions, are they local, or are you carving far and wide over Ontario? Looking forward to lots of pictures! Wink

Bob

[Irish]

COLIN!

You can do THAT, those gorgeous faces in the trees, in ONE DAY! OK, now I'm jealous! And envious too!

Susan

Glad your tools are back in action and looking forward to seeing the results, have a great active summer.

[Colin-Partridge]

The first carving is complete with the stain and everything and the second carving is all but done just needs to be stained. I have attatched the picture of the first carving, will take some pictures of both and send them this week sometime.
Colin

[Hugh]

Hi Colin, I noticed that often you comment about not getting your photos small enough. Something you might not be doing, when you resize your photos, in Adobe photo shop, click on VIEW, and then click on Actual Pixels. this will give you the actual size of your photo, then you can resize the photo, and the resize will be accurate. By the way, that tree carving is nothing less than fantastic.

[mdallensr]

Go Collin! Great work! I thinks it's great that so many people will be able to see your work for years to come. Keep up the good work and keep on posting! Mike

[Irish]

Stunning work!

May I ask, is this tree living or dead? It looks as though you have carving about 1/3 of the diameter of the tree truck, how does that effect the tree's growth and potential life ... that is if they are living trees when you carve them? Plus, what do you use to seal them from both the sap dripping out from the cuts and from insects and desease?

Thanks, Susan