bigt carvings

On 2011-11-29 14:25, amate wrote:
That turned out great man! I love the contrast between the chisel marks and the smooth base. Then the white sets everything off. Very well done. Now, I'll have to go look up "dry brush".

Thanks! :wink: Was pretty easy. I went to Hobby Lobby and got some different colors of acrylic paint. And a fairly stiff brush. It helped to have a brush with the bristles not so dense. I bought one where the hairs were finely packed/dense, but the brush with the sparser amount of hairs worked better....eh, you'll figure it out! :lol: :lol:

Last tiki of 2011. Just put the clear coat on it today. This is a piece of spalted wood I picked up on the side of the road after hurricane Ike. It wasn't spalted when i got it, but it is now after sitting in my back yard for three years. If anything seems to be my trademark, apparently it's carving mostly rotted wood.

Happy New Year everyone!

Close up of some of the grain.

Looks great - Nice work! Have a great 2012!

Wow, that is a really beautiful piece of wood!

Nice carve, great style!

Sweet

Great way to finish off the year, look great! Def like the way the wood "turned out" after a few years of marinating :)

Captain Jack, thanks a bunch - good luck with the flexcuts! You're gonna love those.
PJC thanks! I don't know what kind of wood it is but it spalts really nicely.
4wd: thank you! Aren't you overdue for posting some new stuff? :)
hangt10 - thanks a bunch
Nixxon - thanks, yeah it marinated probably a year too long and was only barely just usable.

On 2011-12-31 15:41, TheBigT wrote:

[

I love that nose. I can't figure out how you always get your angles so precise.

Thanks allen. I don't know about precise, but there it is. You don't know how i fretted over it! :lol: It was supposed to be a larger nose but i messed it up. I forget what happened, but I had to shrink it down. And i adjusted the nose bridge a couple of times. Finally the nostrils weren't deep enough so i added some black paint for depth. Methinks I just found the reason for conga's shadow test!

Hey all, not a lot going on here. But I am working on another little kneeling tiki like the last one. Think I'll let him rest for a while now and start another.

Got a couple of new dudes started. These are made from a couple of Sweetgum logs.

Nice new work Big T-Really like the aged look of the sweetgum logs.

On 2012-03-11 10:41, TheBigT wrote:

Nice floor!

(Good start on them tikis too...)
Buzzy Out!

Glad to see you out in the shop Big T. It's spring and time to carve!

On 2012-03-11 11:08, cy wrote:
Nice new work Big T-Really like the aged look of the sweetgum logs.

Thanks! They should look old, been sitting under my carport for 3 or 4 years now! :lol:

On 2012-03-11 11:14, Bay Park Buzzy wrote:

Nice floor!

(Good start on them tikis too...)
Buzzy Out!

Thanks Buzz. Shoulda figured you would like that floor. :wink:

On 2012-03-12 08:25, amate wrote:
Glad to see you out in the shop Big T. It's spring and time to carve!

Yep, was rainy here this weekend so had the garage door down to keep out the rain and mosquitoes.

Started a 3rd tiki this month. Finished getting him roughed out this weekend.

Boom! 3 nice roughouts.

I love the marq!

I love all marqs!

Mahalo

McTiki

On 2011-12-31 15:41, TheBigT wrote:
Last tiki of 2011. Just put the clear coat on it today. This is a piece of spalted wood I picked up on the side of the road after hurricane Ike. It wasn't spalted when i got it, but it is now after sitting in my back yard for three years. If anything seems to be my trademark, apparently it's carving mostly rotted wood.

Happy New Year everyone!

Close up of some of the grain.

Nice piece of wood and excellent carving, Man,, I've been away too long, when I come back and see all you kidz grown up and carving like pros then I realize how much I have missed.
That spalting is the fungus which attacks the wood and begins the deterioration process. Every tree has a specific fungus that moves in to that tree only and they all bake different colors and patterns. Once you open up the log and let it dry then put a finish on it the process pretty much dies out leaving the beautiful colors and ppatterns forever. Of course if you wait too long the wood gets too rotten to work. Gotta find that happy medium. All by luck.
Lookin Good.

On 2012-03-25 16:11, McTiki wrote:
Boom! 3 nice roughouts.

I love the marq!

I love all marqs!

Mahalo

McTiki

Thanks McTiki! May have to do a fourth and a fifth before finishing any of these. I had a whole pile of those sweetgum logs and they are going to be unusable pretty soon. Loved the flowers on your latest piece! You nailed the "classic" vibe.

On 2012-03-26 03:41, Benzart wrote:
Nice piece of wood and excellent carving, Man,, I've been away too long, when I come back and see all you kidz grown up and carving like pros then I realize how much I have missed.
That spalting is the fungus which attacks the wood and begins the deterioration process. Every tree has a specific fungus that moves in to that tree only and they all bake different colors and patterns. Once you open up the log and let it dry then put a finish on it the process pretty much dies out leaving the beautiful colors and patterns forever. Of course if you wait too long the wood gets too rotten to work. Gotta find that happy medium. All by luck.
Lookin Good.

Benz! Wow! Thanks for stoppin by. Great to see you around and appreciate the kind words. Hope to see some new stuff from you soon!

yeah man, those roughies are lookin' good already...

Love that marq!!! That is going to be beautiful. Looks like plenty of timber waiting in the wings as well.

The spalting is almost overwhelming the carving - almost! Looks great keep carving.

Cant wait to see more pic's of these guys,the natural colouration looks fantastic!

Finally finished something... I was going like gang busters this year until late March. Then we took a 10-day vacation to Puerto Rico! That pretty much wrecked my carving groove.

But one can't complain about 10 days of this kind of stuff:

Don't know what kind of wood this is. Was a very white wood, heavily spalted now after sitting around my yard for 4 years! Wanted to see the grain so finished it in Tung oil. With a little Minwax wood hardener thrown in.

Close up of some of the grain pattern:

Very cool.. I love wild grain patterns in the wood. Your carving shows it off nicely. What did you fill the lower patterns with? Paint or colored resin?

On 2012-05-29 11:07, anchorfish wrote:
Very cool.. I love wild grain patterns in the wood. Your carving shows it off nicely. What did you fill the lower patterns with? Paint or colored resin?

Thanks for asking. I used acrylic for both the eyes and the designs on the bottom. The eyes are dry-brushed on. The bottom designs were cut out with a flexcut carving/whittling knife then painted in (very tediously..).

x2 on the grain...

like the little base flower too...

Sweet

Nice carving and nice use of rotted wood, it's definitely gives your carving a special finish. Congratulations

Man you've got a trove of beautifully spalted wood down there! Everything is lookin really nice.

ditto about the grain, I think the way you leave some nice flat plains in your carves really shows that off. cool.

ps like the subtle painted areas too...

[ Edited by: Atomic Mess 2012-05-31 11:02 ]

amate, cljha, atomic, hang10, PJ: many thanks for the comments!

Finished up one of the sweetgum pieces. It came out darker than i anticipated - even after testing in a small spot. This is one of the well spalted logs that everyone was raving about... oh well. I need to experiment with brushing stain on as opposed to wiping it on with a cloth. I used the brush this time and I think that put much more stain on the wood.

And I caught two newly formed beetles emerging out of their holes right when I was about to put the stain on. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo. Little ba$$tards.

[ Edited by: TheBigT 2012-07-05 09:42 ]

Really nice Big T, the painted highlights set it off!

Wow...what a great looking tiki. I love this one a whole
bunch, and the colors are just right. The orange is perfect.

really neat little details on this one...

and he stained up nice.

well done!

cy: thanks, it really did make the whole thing pop.

conga: much appreciated. glad u like. funny, i wanted red eyes like some i saw here on TC that look really awesome. but they looked terrible on mine. Then i painted over with a light brown. Result: orangey!

jeff: thanks - i used your favorite: golden peecan. Plus one coat of amber shellac diluted 50%.

Wow
This one is awesome

Nice!!!! I see stars!

It was a shame to lose the spalting but he turned out great anyway. If you had not mentioned that this was the spalted log you showed earlier, folks would still be saying "What a great carve". And those orange eyes turned out great. Bad luck losing the spalting but the eyes turned out nice.

me too, love those eyes...

On 2012-07-05 20:46, hang10tiki wrote:
Wow
This one is awesome

Thanks h10!

On 2012-07-05 21:36, Captain Jack wrote:
Nice!!!! I see stars!

Thanks. Don't know if he's a mystic or what, but felt like I wanted to do something different this time.

On 2012-07-06 04:40, amate wrote:
It was a shame to lose the spalting but he turned out great anyway. If you had not mentioned that this was the spalted log you showed earlier, folks would still be saying "What a great carve". And those orange eyes turned out great. Bad luck losing the spalting but the eyes turned out nice.

Thanks Allen. Yep, shame on the spalting. At least I have two more of these spalted logs coming along.

On 2012-07-12 06:54, Atomic Mess wrote:
me too, love those eyes...

Thanks AM!

Well, this is my 2nd attempt for this post. My PC flaked out the 1st time around. So, I got started on the Marq again. And was sorta getting in the groove...

When this happened.

That was my backyard a week ago today. Swamped the shop pretty good.

It's all drained out now. Left a hell of a mess though.

Wow,
sorry to see your set back.
Good start on that Tiki.
Lovin the crack.
Can't buy those.

My heart sank when I saw your situation Big T and am hoping for a quick recovery.

[ Edited by: cy 2012-07-21 18:48 ]

Mother nature can be a bitch. Good luck with your recovery.

Oh my gosh...hope you have a speedy recovery from the flooding. Mother Nature can indeed be cruel. Sending good vibes your way and hope you are back to carving soon.

Last year we couldn't buy a drop of rain! Texas weather: "drought interrupted by occasional flooding". We only got about 3 inches here. Speedy recovery my friend!

[ Edited by: amate 2012-07-22 10:17 ]

Wow. I grew up down the road from Houston in Victoria and I've had to do the clean-up when the home becomes a temporary swamp; best wishes for a speedy recovery and a quick return to your beautiful carving.

Greg