ONCE UPON A TIME, THERE WERE FOUR BEARS

Truth be told, I'm not really a much of a bear fan. I'm more of a lions and tigers fan -- animals of the feline persuasion.  So how did I end up carving four bears, you ask. It all started with a little black bear.

BEAR NUMBER ONE

Being the parsimonious sort (I'm cheap), I glued together several scraps of wood that ended up being rectangular. For some reason, the wood suggested a sitting black bear. (Remember what I said in the preface of this blog -- wood spirits only communicate to those who are intimate with wood, and not the wood between your ears. And, this block of wood suggested what it wanted to be... Yeah, I know, I'm crazy. ) Anyway, after carving the bear, texturing the outside to look like bear fur, and painting it black, the carving declared itself to be good, so I covered it with polyurethane and set it on the table of my scroll saw to look at and moved on to other stuff.

Sometime later, number two daughter Cari called from Mesz, Az., and it sounded like she was a bit down in the dumps, so I mounted the little black guy on a stand and added the "beareth all things" scriptural phrase. I gave it to her hoping to cheer her up.

BEAR NUMBER TWO

 

In the mean time, I power carved the sleeping black bear cub for my sister in law, Maxine. I wanted her to have something a little more "artsy" than the wood spirit I did for her.

About this time, number one and three daughters found out about the bear Cari got. They hinted that they would kind of like having a carving of a bear but suggested that a Panda would do a better job of filling the bill.

BEAR NUMBER THREE

First came Sharon's (Sharebear) Panda cub holding a red ball. (That was fun to carve into the wood. Try it sometime.) This little bum took a while. I realized that I had misjudged the size of the bear and was running out of wood. So, I had to glue a couple of blocks to the bottom. Then, because it looked like the bear had been on a starvation diet, I had to glue a "slab of wood" to the back to make the bear look like he hadn't been mistreated.

BEAR NUMBER FOUR

Then came Lisa's stylized panda (which is also sitting on its tush). I had to power carve this little fatty -- large block of wood. I used the knives on the ears, eyes, nose and mouth, but the rest was done with the power carver.

Also, I'm sure that you've noticed that the snout should be larger to be a true Panda. Consider him to be a convert from a different bear religion...

Lisa didn't want me to burn a name into the wood. So, as far as I know, he's nameless.