Still Busy

Most of the last few pieces I have shown here are now sold, I have been putting a lot more time into everything I do.

This gourd was given to me so I just had to see what I could do and yet again a lot of time was spent getting it just as I wanted it, the whole thing was a big experiment from the very beginning there was a lot of drawing which I am usually impatient about but realise more and more how important it is that I start off correctly, this gourd is very thin and weighed 38 grams when I finished it, the colour is guilders wax.

I will be putting it in an exhibition very soon.

This is kowhaiwhai and was started before I started the gourd so it was put on hold for a while, both of these were able to be done while I was sitting and recovering from the effects of chemotherapy.

Kowhaiwhai is the name given to carvings used on the rafter of Maori meeting houses however the pattern is now used extensively in all sorts of manner, in the 1940s Gordon Walters went exploring the caves of South Canterbury NZ and the ancient drawings done by the people of the time over the rest of his life he developed a repetitious pattern known as the koru it is this pattern that I have put my own twist on painting it red on a black background or is it foreground, the vessel is made of totara it stands 250mm high, it is hollow,   

 
 

 

 

A lot of excitment can happen

 I think its over a year since I posted anything, if that is slack there is no  other excuse than I have been busy.

This urchin is made from a lump of knotty rimu that had a few splits in it, the width is 240mm and 100mm high.

The carving was intense and took well over a week then the painting, now it graces the poster for our pop up art gallery.

An other challenge was this 3 in one piece, turned on the lathe in one piece

so there was many changes in how it was held whilst I worked on each bowl, the wood is eucalyptus that I was given just after the tree came down.

The design in the middle is my own but also well known as a Celtic knot, the overall width is the maximum I could turn on the lathe over the lathe bed, such a fun piece to make and see finished.

I saw another piece on The World of Woodturners by Bruce Jones that had me eager to have a go, yes all these have started by what I have seen on WoW.

I had almost finished this when I returned it to the lathe for a last bit of work it was at a fragile state, the kokopelli took to flying and crash landed smashing the lower part, a new and better stage was made so the dance and music will go on.

About 300mm high the top hollow form is eucalyptus and the stage is acacia.

Old, new here

 This is a piece that I made a while ago but did not show here.

This is a piece of Puriri  a tree that was cut down close to where I live it normally takes a long time to dry so this was still wet when I started the work on it, the yellow wood is the sap wood so the dark wood is the hart wood, there was some rot in it which I carved away.

The length is 240mm and the height is 70mm, painted with acrylic paints and finished with a rattle can of satin spray.

Just finished

 I wanted to see how accurate I could be at piercing a thin turned dish/bowl.

This is a piece of eucalyptus about 240mm wide and 70mm high, this eucalyptus was cut down about the middle of 2023 and turned to a thick walled piece till it dried then turned so the carved area was 3 to 4mm thick that was the easy part, the piercing, carving and pyrography took about 4 weeks to do.

Takes a while, but it's worth waiting for

 Yes I got despondent about blogging but here I am now.

And a lot has happened, everything I make now takes weeks though I mostly only work at it for a few hours each day more so now that we are in winter.

Forming the handles and the carving of the pattern were both new experiences for me, I seem to remember doing the carving twice as I learnt that I could do better the painting was a whole big experiment too that came out as good or better than I could have hoped for.

The wood is Rimu a native to NZ that had some big splits in it that were

all glued up using epoxy glue. 

The summer that wasn't

 It has been the strangest of summers, just so so wet, I had made the decision to put more effort into my turning so to take longer to make anything by exploring decorations.

This decision came about in a number of ways firstly I can now turn out a round and brown in a short time but what to do with them then, I had started to sell at the markets as a way of having less of them in boxes but it is not easy to sell and has become a frustration packing and unpacking and not selling anything, It was the right time to stop given that we have had such a wet summer and a lot of markets were canceled.

Sitting out in my man cave either carving or wood burning is something I can do no matter what the weather, I have jumped about from one design to another wanting to try all sorts of ideas I see and putting my twist on them, each one teaches me something or most likely more than one thing the possibilities are endless, time or maybe the cost of the equipment I use are the only limitations other than my imagination.

In order for the embellishment to be seen the bowl needs to be high sided so some of my recent bowls have been large, I had picked up this piece of pohutukawa that finished at 200mm wide and just suited having the inside embellished, the pyrography on all these pieces is a fairly clean thing to be doing this is in contrast to the carving that I have been doing, I thing the carving is more of a challenge as it is more 3D however I have carved away plan A a few times now and started on plan B so that is an advantage to the carving.

This piece started off by just showing the growth rings and carving the soft wood away between the winter growth then I wanted to explore what I could do between on those flat areas, paint is another medium that needs a lot of exploring and again the possibilities are endless.

One last piece that I have spent a lot of time on, the wood had a lot of cracks in it that I worked glue into for fear that it could fly apart as I was turning it, being such a deep piece of wood and having cracks around the base gave me reason to form 4 feet on it the same applied to the 2 handles they were the only bits of good wood around the top, the whole of this is carved and painted.

I am back at the lathe

 A few months ago I was asked to refinish a table top for a lady, then we had Art in the Garden a 3 day event that took 3 days to set up then another 3 to pack up, as soon as that was over I was asked to make an urn in a hurry, I then had a table and 5 chairs to totally dismantle sand off all old varnish glue it all back together and re finish that all took a while to do since I finished that we have opened the wood turners club room to the public each weekend hoping for some new members.

It was at the last club open day that someone turned up and gave me 2 blocks of wood, this is the result of what I did with the first one, it is 260mm wide and 90mm high the pattern is burnt on using a pyrography machine, the finish is from a rattle can.

Prior to being dragged away from turning I had done another piece that I have not shown here and is worth posting just for the record, carving feet onto the bottom of bowls was at first a bit daunting however now I have done a few it no longer seems such an ordeal and the result is rewarding, this piece is based on the Ginkgo leave, as part of carving the feet I also carved away leaving the leaf and stalk proud I then stippled the area and painted it the veins of the leaves are done with pyrography, the size is 205mm wide and 85mm high.