Aug 27

Guillermo, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

“Guillermo”, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2020

Wooden intarsia art. 23 species of wood, no paint/stain.

Im happy to finally post the final shots of this piece devoted to everyone’s favorite Vampire familiar/slayer!

After watching “What We Do in the Shadows” (@theshadowsfx) on @fxnetworks, this idea randomly hit me one day and it was one of those “well I guess I have no choice but to make this now” deals. I felt compelled. After I began, I must admit that a big motivation came from the Guillermo actor himself, Mr. Harvey Guillén (@harveyguillen). It turns out, Harvey is a pretty rad guy in real (virtual) life and gave me tons of private encouragement and funny little quips he’d rather I not share for reasons that would be obvious 😜. Needless to say, my inner geek was pretty stoked to be chatting about an artwork with the actor who inspired it! Harvey is easily 1 of the 4 funniest characters on the show and everyone should watch it. 😜

The best part? Harvey Guillen himself now owns this piece!!!

This piece is is roughly based on a promo from FX marketing. I wanted to add a little more detail to highlight the duality behind Guillermo’s loyalty as a familiar/desire to become a vampire and his apparently inherent penchant for slayage. The sun, fire, and door represent his first hilarious kill. Of course I added the stake bandolier and a crossbow. But astute fans will note that the bandolier also contains his trusty “Tide to go” pen for clean-up duties. The promo had the bat wings as sort of a looming presence. But I see them here more as Guillermo’s desire to become a Vamp and “BAT!” away with Nandor (@kayvan_novak). The font is based on “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”.

Constructed from maple, zebra wood, Brazilian rosewood, bocote, wenge, katalox, ebony, holly, sapele, mahogany, walnut, chakte viga, redheart, purpleheart, yellowheart, mesquite, bloodwood, honey locust, elm, ash, yellow pine, Douglas fir, luaun ply.

Jul 19

Bandit, Daniel D. Brown, 2020

“Bandit”, Daniel D. Brown, 2020

Bandit (AKA Bandaman, Bandito, Bdog, Bandy, Sweet Pea).


I’ve been wanting to make a wooden Bandit ever since I started creating intarsias. But as some of you know, Bandy hasn’t been doing so great lately. In fact, while making this, he began coughing a lot and was subsequently diagnosed with congestive heart failure (So far the meds seem to be working, though they will exacerbate his kidney disease). He’s almost 14 and already has chronic kidney disease, 1 blind eye and 1 deaf ear. But he’s had a pretty sweet life and almost zero health problems until the last couple years. @tamarynart got him as a gift from her ex when she was 19!! And I’ve now been his daddy for half that time. And he’s been the absolute best fur-son I could ever have hoped for. He pretty much has to be cuddling one of us at all times, and I’ve never met a friendlier dog.

Made from sycamore and crab apple. This is the second time I‘ve actually stained one of these pieces. But I wanted the colors to be pretty close to correct. I used @chestnutproducts Spirit Stains.

Oh, and just to preempt: I’m not particularly interested in doing pet portrait commissions. Unless you’re like super rich, then maaaybe. 😂 But @ingrainedmoments_woodcraft makes amazing pet portraits a step or 10 above mine!

Jun 19

Carved Octopus Bowl

Octopus bowl hand-carved from cherry firewood

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”. 😂

Apr 08

Wooden Plaque for PhD student

Wooden Plaque for graduating PhD student Dr. Zheqi (Vaciry) Lee

Several years ago, I started making little plaques with names and degree for students in the @leeoesterreichlab after they receive their PhD. Today I can finally say congratulations to Zheqi “Vaciry” Li (@vaciryli), who had to defend his dissertation via Zoom this week. But he nailed it! This plaque is made from walnut, ambrosia maple, and cherry, and the design is roughly inspired by architecture from Huishan Ancient Town near Vaciry’s hometown of Wuxi, China. I have to give special thanks to @chelseachen655 and @kaiding568 for providing and proofing the characters.

Vaciry defending his dissertation (via video thanks to covid-19).
Mar 06

Carved walnut seahorse

Walnut seahorse carved from an antique chair arm

Last summer I started this little carving from an antique walnut chair arm (2nd pic), given to me by my step-father-in-law @freetimemike. I had no plans when I started – it was just an excuse to whittle outside. Eventually I saw this shape inside it. Once it got cold, I threw it in a corner and got distracted. This past week I decided to finish it up. Most of it was carved by hand with @flexcut_tools knives, then finished with some @saburrtooth dremel burrs.