Ski Pulk

One of my latest projects has been the construction of a ski pulk.

SKI PULKS: sleds towed with a harness and rigid poles

I have to say I'm quite impressed. I made mine a bit more heavy duty than usual but it is for pulling my daughter not supplies, so that can be forgiven. The Main benefit of doing it myself is that it would have cost me between 250 - 300 dollars to buy one and I got mine done for about 80 dollars. And it is not a hard thing to put together.

If you live in a snowy area and you would like to try to build one. Here is a link to a make your own ski pulk booklet. I have to give a tip of the hat to the ski pulk company for offering this booklet. They obviously understand not everybody has the money to buy their products which have a very specialized audience.

The harness is a backpack waist strap bought for 25 dollars from MEC. The carabiners combined cost about 8 dollars. 50 cents for the D rings. 4-5 dollars for 15 meters of Paracord (which has a little too much give) which will have to be replaced with another kind of cordage. And last but not least the sled (hunting/icefishing sled) cost 40 dollars. All you need is a drill to make some holes in the edge of the sled and lace the rope through.

I have not had a chance to try it with skis yet. I'll do that this weekend hopefully. but with snowshoes with crampons I can pull my wife and my daughter, at least for a little while.

Hunting Knife Sheath

This is a hunting knife sheath that I put together as a gift for a friends brother-in-law. I used tooling leather and neats foot oil for a natural finish. I sewed it using nylon sail thread and some rivets.

I moulded the leather for a friction hold. which means the knife will not slip out of the sheath if inverted. I did however ad a safety band with a snap just in case.

I think it looks really rugged. I have posted a shot of the hatchet and the hunting knife together. The hatchet sheath uses a much lighter leather and it did not take the oil anywhere near as well as the tooling leather. So note to self, vegetable tan tooling leather is the bomb.

I have one more craft project to post and then I am back to artwork and such.

Refurbished Hatchet

I like to fix up old tools, especially old axes. I also like to make stuff out of leather. So when a friend had a beat up old hatchet with a smashed handle covered in paint. I took the opportunity to replace the handle, re-sharpen the head, and remove the paint on it. I then made a Gransfors Bruks style sheath to protect it. It was a fun little project. I have also refurbished a felling axe and made a scandinavian forest style axe. I have not taken photos of those yet.

Friar Tuck Finished Painting

So here is the final product, I'm pretty happy with it. Still a lot of work to do but I can feel my sense of being able to create depth in an image using colour value. This makes me want to do some more Robin Hood characters. I can add it to the list of things I would like to do I guess. The chicken sure does look delicious though.

E.T.

Just a picture of E.T. Done in my spare time. I don't particularly like the movie E.T. I don't hate it either. I like the look of the little extra terrestrial though. So I drew him. Please disregard the fact that Elliott is spelled with 2 t's.

Voyageur

I have recently become interested in the romanticized existence of the voyageurs. Their life in reality was a brutal existence of never-ending servitude that often resulted in a broken human being. But if you take all the pain and strife out of it and think about getting to canoe all day it seems pretty cool. The truth is actually somewhere in the middle of these two statements. Either way, voyageurs are a fascinating stereotype and I have been drawing them lately.

more to come.

Sloth

I have a bunch of sketches to post from my moleskin. Just kept forgetting to scan them into the computer. Here is one. It is not really a representation of how I was feeling since lately my health has been good, and I have been feeling rather un-slothful. It has more to do with being saturated with images of Sloths. Strange but foe a week or so I just could not escape them. Be it facebook posts, David Attenborough documentaries or novels like Life of Pi.

So I ended up sketching one.

More to come sketch-wise, and soon some progress on my Dr. Grorbort's creature.

Stay Golden Pony Boys and Girls.

Dr. Grorborts Creature Contest

So I'm on facebook the other day and I happen to have liked Weta Workshop. One of their posts is for a contest put on by none other than Dr. Grorbort himself. Create your own alien. I thought it would be fun so hear is some early progress of some different silhouettes I could work up into some different concepts. If anyone wants to join in the competition you can sign up here.

I just scanned a bunch of sketches and have the final of my Friar tuck to post so I'll start all that up in the next little while.

Stay golden Pony Boys and Girls

Friar Tuck Drawing

The Winnipeg Art Group started another art project Similar to the monster poster that I did the Ramnoceros for. This time I am drawing Friar Tuck. Although this is the original medieval Friar Tuck I have modeled the feast he is having after the "Rocket Robin Hood" Friar tuck. I am in the midst of painting him and I will post the finished product as soon as I am done. I will try to post some more sketches soon and some samples of leatherwork and carving I have been working on.

That is all for now.

Stay golden.