Dec 21

Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

“Spider-Man: Miles Morales” is finally complete! Over 250 pieces of wood from 5 species, hand-cut on scrollsaw. No paints or stains – only natural wood colors (except the web). Built from bloodwood, wenge, walnut, purpleheart, and holly. The web was cut from high-density polyethylene (HDPE).

This piece is based on the final shot in the @insomniacgames Miles Morales game (it’s amazing!), which I screen-grabbed myself many months back. The moment I saw it I thought it would make a great wooden piece, though it took a while to convince myself I could pull it off. I initially intended to include a background with Peter’s version of Spidey swinging behind him as well. But once I realized how complex and time-consuming Miles would be, I decided on a solo no-background piece. This work took almost a full month to complete. Ihave no idea how many hours total, but it was in the many dozens. Obviously I took some artistic liberties with the suit; I really wanted to include some purpleheart.

I made the blurred New York street background just for fun, from an in-focus photo from the Wikipedia entry on William Street in Manhattan (credit “MusikAnimal” Creative Commons license 4.0)

Dec 12

Chewbacca, Daniel D. Brown, 2022

Chewbacca! What a wookie!
Ever since I made “Punch it!” a few years ago (piece showing Han and Chewy on the falcon with programmed lighting and sound), I knew that I wanted to make a more complete “solo” Chewy some day. I decided to go with sequel trilogy Chewy since the previous piece was from the original trilogy. His “aged” fur is also a bit more dynamic, which I figured would play well with multiple woods.

I designed this piece by combining a couple different photos of @joonassuotamo posing as Chewy on magazine covers. The design alone took quite a few hours. However, when I started this project I did NOT know it was gonna take me a full 14 weeks – and I’m glad I didn’t, as I almost certainly would have said “e chu ta that!”

This work came out to 653 individual pieces of wood, all cut by hand on a scrollsaw. I have to give a huge shoutout to all my @saburrtooth rotary bits – I could not have shaped and sanded all these pieces without them. All the wood is natural color, except for the irises of his eyes, which were stained blue. 16 species of wood were used (below), some of which were interesting reclamations, such as the 1970s era African stinkwood chair I’ve mentioned in several projects (it’s an endangered tree and no longer available). A lot of the wood was scavenged and milled by me from firewood and storm-felled trees.
All in all, I’m incredibly pleased with how it turned out. It was impossible to tell beforehand if the color/wood choices were going to actually look alright in the end – there were just too many pieces to fully visualize it. It isn’t perfect, but I think it does the job!

Not for sale and I don’t take commissions!

Woods: catalpa, walnut, elm, mahogany, stinkwood, wenge, holly, ebony, limba, bloodwood, purpleheart, yellowheart, chakte viga, maple, rosewood, leopardwood

Dec 05

Doctor Strange Clock, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

I saw a random image of this Doctor Strange symbol while surfing the interwebs last week and thought “that would make a cool clock design.” Appropriately, this symbol also adorned his pendant holding the Time Stone. I had an old clock left in our house by the previous owner I’d been saving for just such a project. However, it turned out the clock mechanism didn’t actually work – so I bought a new super cheap set of hardware. 😂
I cut the background from partially spalted yellowheart, the symbol from walnut, and the frame edge from mahogany (which is actually from a very thin piece of scrap, cut and glued to the yellowheart).
I don’t have the tools or practice for cutting precision angled segments like this on a table saw (e.g. a good miter gauge or sled). So I just designed all the cuts in Illustrator and cut everything on my scrollsaw.

Aug 03

Freddie Chirpury, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

May I present “Freddie Chirpury” the song sparrow! Named by @tam_a_ryn, he’s ruled our backyard since we moved in 4 yrs ago. He lives a hard life. He’s been forced to raise many a brown-headed cowbird (obligate brood parasites). We’ve seen his chicks brutally snatched by our resident blue jay Hunter multiple times. He always looks rough and disheveled by the end of the summer from trying to raise 3 broods of chicks. One year he tried to do it alone after his lady disappeared. He only successfully fledged the cowbird that time, who was twice his size.

But despite the failures, loss, and constant work just to survive, he keeps on keeping on, singing right outside our bedroom all year, year after year.

Unlike the ubiquitous and non-native house sparrows, song sparrow couples are solitary and tend to pick a territory and stick to it, defending and constantly shouting their ownership (the male anyway). This is their “song,” a repeating glorious aria declaring “this is mine, bitch, so stay the hell out!” Of course there’s some love song mixed in there as well.

One fascinating fact I learned from watching them: once they’ve begun nesting/chick-rearing, the male and female make constant little “Marco”… “Polo” squeaks, basically pinging each other to maintain contact and location awareness. “Right here. All is well,” back and forth all day every day. I’ve also learned that their voices are distinct. The others in the neighborhood just sound different to me now.

Based on a beautiful photo by Jared McCall @jaredm871@ingrainednaturecreations, I initially designed it to have branches and a full background. But this clef design popped into my head. My wife’s excitement when I showed her cemented it, and I ditched the old version.
Built from 11 species, all cut on #scrollsaw: black walnut, Peruvian walnut, spalted maple, curly maple, tree of Heaven, wenge, sapele, black locust, holly, ebony, with a cherry clef.

Jun 24

Squirrel Bill, Daniel D. Brown PhD, 2021

“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).