Back in the swing, almost

Hi all,
I've been trying to keep up with my wife's requests for improvements in the garden, one of which included relaying 9 wonky slabs. It isn't the sort of work I enjoy at my age and it has left me a bit on the wrong side of knackered. Anyway, the worst is over now so I'm hoping to get back to a bit of crafting.

The weather is warming up and last year I enjoyed doing a bit of wod carving cum whittling whilst enjoying the sun in our back garden. My wife said she wouldn't mind another shelfie, so whilst have a tea break during the slab laying process I drew one that I would like to make. The following day I even managed to make a rough model of it out of Plastacine.

If you are thinking of taking up woodcarving it really is worth making a model  from Plastacine before you start cutting wood and making mistakes.

You can see that this shelfie is going to be an old chap from years gon by. I can imagine him sitting on the dock of the bay waiting for relatives coming over to America to live the dream with him.

I like big hats on my shelfies and the long tailed coat at the back will help with the stability and and balance when it is sitting on the shelf. I am looking forward to carving it over the next few weeks.

I have also got a lump of wood on my lathe that I'm going to turn into a vase with a turquoise inlay; so that should be fun.

Other than that I'm still painting on the ipad and need to catch up with a couple of videos. I my last Blog I posted the wrong picture of the video I had uploaded so I have corrected that. If you want to take a look here it is. In it you will see how I created a painting of some harebells and a butterfly.

Trellis

Hi all,
I'm afraid I haven't done any woodturning or carving this week because my wife has had me busy in the garden. Our neighbours cut down a lovely big hedge that gave us a lot of privacy.  Despite us putting up a new tall fence we still had a view of other people's washing and trampolines.

Here is picture that shows the hedge on the right.

To get some privacy back we decided that I would build a free standing trellis a couple of feet from the fence. This would be covered by growing the very rampant Belvedere rose over it.
Here is the trellis.

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You can see how this will work, even without the rose it feels a lot better to not be overlooked. Digging the holes for the posts was the hardest bit of the job. I enjoyed cutting all the lathes because it gave me a chance to use the cheap chopsaw I got recently from screwfix. Very good it was too.

Anyway, I've had little time for anything creative except for a bit more digital art that I do in the evenings.

Here is my latest painting of some harebells and a blue butterfly that I have done for my youtube channel, "The Armchair Artist."

I hope you enjoy watching it. If you do please consider subscribing because I want to share them with as many people as possible.