July 2026
Welcome Bear’s Makeover
This cedar woodcarving was my first sculpture of a bear, painstakingly detailed with slicks, chisels, and other hand tools in 2015. Considering he spent most of his time outdoors, summer and winter, with only a little protection under the eaves, this carving actually weathered pretty well. He had originally been sealed with four coats of oil-based Helmsman Spar Urethane finish, with a few more maintenance coats applied over the decade. Mr. Bear was ready for a makeover! In contrast to the beginning of my carving journey, my power tool collection now meant resurfacing and repainting him would be a four-hour job, rather than four days.
For his new monochrome airbrushed look, the bear's wild-rose welcome sign was traded out for a simpler live-edge birch slab, which should be easier to maintain and eventually refinish. This time he’s been clear-coated in five layers of Diamond Finish Varathene water-based outdoor satin. With a maintenance coat every year or so, this refinishing should buy Mr. Bear many more years! Now he’s back on the job welcoming clients into a local business.
November 2025
Sawwhet Owl on Burl
How to showcase the gorgeous grain in this birch burl was a question which delayed this project for many months! I eventually had to commit to a design so the burl wouldn't just gather dust in my collection of extra-special materials. The saw-whet owl, carved out of yellow cedar with homemade glass eyes, fits into a carved-out section of the burl, with a routed slot in the back for hanging on the wall. This carving is available for sale: $300 (PST included in price)
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October 2025
Whitetail Buck on Cedar
Western red cedar has a colour range varying from light blond to patchy red-and-yellow to deep dark brown. My favourite for woodcarving is the latter: old, close-grained red cedar that looks like it's been treated with walnut oil-base stain. If I succeed in collecting enough of these slabs, it might be fun to produce some more wildlife in this line: moose, elk, caribou, etc. Hopefully this mule deer is just the first of a series! Available for sale: $260 (PST included in price)
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July 2025
Screech Owl Pair on Cedar
This 2025 project marks a small update in my observations of owl species, when I finally noticed eastern screech owl eyes are not nearly as bright a yellow as their western species. (Guess that means all my previous screech owls with big yellow eyes are western screech owls.) Here are my new eastern screech owls with accurate pale grey-green eyes. The eyes are round glass cabochons backed with a layer of acrylic paint, then set into the basswood carving. This carving is sold… I hope the new owner is enjoying this carving as much as I enjoyed making it!
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July 2025
Hummingbird on Driftwood
This project lived on my workdesk for a couple years, overseeing many other art brainstorms during its gradual development of driftwood grafting, air-dry clay vines and flowers, and the clay hummingbird with iridescent paint. The beak was originally a metal knitting needle I used for clay tooling. A fun project to explore colour-shift and metallic paints, I think Mr. Hummingbird is ready to leave the nest! Available for sale: $185 (PST included in price)
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December 2025
The Princess and the Moth Dragon
Princess Linette’s drop-spindle adventure has been reformatted for digital distribution! 🥳
The Princess and the Moth Dragon remains one of my favourite illustration projects, and I really enjoyed the challenge of redesigning all the landscape spreads to fit Kobo Rakuten’s portrait-dimension requirements for ebooks. Pensignia Publishing has beautifully formatted the new design into a fixed-layout full-colour ebook.
An audiobook version has also been released! The lyrical fairy tale takes on charming new life narrated by Grace Reimer. Check out the audiobook and the ebook now available for purchase on Rakuten Kobo.