Art inspired by biology, created by a biologist
Nuthatch & Chickadee.
Handmade wall art to adorn our bedroom wall along with my previously made song sparrow.
All cut by hand with a scrollsaw and chisel from a variety of wood species. No paint or stain. See my previous posts for more details and the story highlight on my profile, which documented the whole process.
“Squirrel Bill” is complete! As most of you who’ve seen any of my stories over the past year know, my wife spent the pandemic becoming a Disney princess. It took a while but she eventually got the squirrels eating out of her hands. We’ve fed them an absolutely ridiculous amount of walnuts and pecans over the past 18 months, so we have quite the healthy population in our backyard now. Obviously it was time to make a wooden squirrel intarsia piece. Squirrel Bill (who she named after our Pittsburgh neighborhood of “Squirrel Hill”) is constructed of mostly wood I scavenged myself from Squirrel Hill. Some elm, crab apple, spalted holly, walnut, and a teensy bit of ebony and mahogany (neither from here of course).
This thing started out just as an excuse to 1) finally use my Xmas gifts from @tamarynart (an @arbortechie minicarver and bowl gouge) and 2) just carve something random outside from a chunk of cherry firewood I had lying around. I also used pretty much all of my @saburrtooth rotary burrs on this thing. It’s not the best thing I’ve carved – pretty lousy anatomical accuracy and the suckers aren’t nearly as detailed as I would have liked. But I just sort of sketched it as I went. After putting a couple weeks into it, I was ready to call it done. Overall, I’m pretty happy with how it turned out for a one-off bowl to hold the TV remotes in our “Lair”. 😂
These earrings are hand-made, one-of-a-kind pieces made from cherry, padauk, and purpleheart woods. The colors are the natural colors of the wood (no stains or paints). These are finished with a food-safe mineral oil/beeswax mix.
This pair of earrings is available for purchase on the Laughing Mantis online shop.
The wood is initially cut to size and glued in the desired pattern. I then sketch out the design and cut it out with a scrollsaw. Finally comes a LOT of sanding by hand and then finishing with mineral oil/beeswax.
