When I arrived to view the tree stump for the first time, Sarah showed me a design she liked ~ a row of owls, two large and two small, representing a family ~ and asked if I could do something similar for her, her husband and two children.
It was a nice straight trunk, with a lean to the right giving it some interest; the design was to be facing in the direction of the house, so anyone strolling down the garden would see it. The girth, although average, wasn’t enough to be able to do a decent sized carving of the owls in a row, so I worked on some designs using the vertical rather than the horizontal.
Once the design was agreed upon, I roughly drew on the positions of the owl family after stripping the bark.
I wasn’t worried about too much other than establishing the positions and shape of the owls, working backwards from the foremost bird.
With each owl sitting slightly further back as they progressed upwards, it meant there would be a large amount of waste wood to clear every time just to get the correct level, before starting the carving of the owls.
The final owl at the top required some heavy mallet work to set him back behind the lower three. I’d thought this tree was sycamore, and was becoming more amazed and exasperated at the hardness of the wood ~ it turned out the tree was in fact crab pear, something which became more obvious as the freshly-carved timber changed colour to a lovely pinky-brown as it dried.
So, once the top owl was in place, I could start on the finishing touches of the eyes and feathers ~ note the difference in colour of the freshly-carved white owl, and the older owl with it’s newly-carved eyes and face-feathers.
The unusual colour was enhanced (once dried out) with the application of the oil.
