Chainsaw Bears

Well, first post in a long while, but...I have found yet another outlet for my quote, "creative outlet". Chainsaw Art. Its a little off the beaten path as far as normal outles...ie, reading books in coffee shops or watching movies whatever.
The history on this is as follows...In 07' we were at a fall festival in Elljay, GA and we were at, I wanna say the Apple Barn, and there was a guy right next store chainsawing up a bunch of bears. For about a half an hour I watched him and then grilled him on questions about it and said to myself..."i think i can do that."
The following week i went home, got a chainsaw, went into the woods and found an old fallen pine tree, cut a log section off of it and took it home. About 3 hours later a bear emerged from my old pine tree. So here it is to the right. Since that bear, I've made about two a year and just given them away as gifts.
So...with that said, this year I've taken it up a notch. Maybe there is something wrong with me, but I love trying to turn my goofy hobbies into a money making idea. Until now, that has been unsuccessful. I've put drawings up in coffee shops and tried to sell 'house portraits' to people. No bueno. But maybe a chainsaw bear will sell.
At Nellie Mae, which is our house, we have about 200' of road frontage. Being the redneck that I am, I rolled out a bunch of logs in front of my house, put a sign up and starting chainsawing up bears. I figured I might be able to sell a few, or at the very least, I can make people wonder who is the loser with the chainsaw in front of that house. To my complete and utter disbelief, I have sold 15 bears and one pig. At $75 bucks a bear, I've done pretty good for a hobby. Here are my 2012 Bear 3.0 versions to the left.
So for the time being, I am going to be posting my latest carvings, tell me what you think. I would like your feedback, ideas suggestions whatever. I'm starting to venture out into other things. I'll post my pig i did the other day soon and my failed attempt at an owl. You'll see.

Creepy

Is this image creepy? I think so. But it still looks pretty cool. The picture of the barn window came from my buddy's farm a little north-west of Canton. The creepy Tales from the crypt guy came from a picture i took at tales from the wax museum in Gatlinburg. I burned out the colors using a lomo photography effect. Next, I just cropped and distorted the picture to get the wide angle, roundish effect. I used a subtle layer mask to bring the creepy guy into the window. Thats about it.

David's Bridge

Here is my first photograph taken by me and edited in photoshop. I love black and white photos. Its funny, even looking through other peoples photo galleries, I seem to catch myself spending much longer looking at the black and white ones.
This picture was taken in color and converted to black and white. I added a levels adjustment layer to darken the corners and set the feather option to 80. Then, I adjusted the mode to Lab Color and copied the lab color channel into the layers pallet. Next I added 2 additional layers with the soft light option, added a warming photofilter and another levels adjustment layer to the whole picture and that would be a ball game. Oh yeah, there was another person on the bridge but i edited them out using the clone stamp tool....i love that tool.
I'm not sure i will go into this much detail for other photos, but its my first one and my blog there you have it.

Dahlonega on the square

This is a shop front in Dahlonega, GA..and yes i spelled that right. I spent four years going to college at North Ga. This is another pen and ink w/ photoshop airbrush.

Mr. Finley

This is Mr. Finley. I have no idea who he is. My brother had me draw him for his work. I even got paid. who knew? anyway, I love drawing people and i have spent a good portion of my time just messing around by drawing my teachers and the people that were in my class or now my bosses during endless meetings at work. If you are reading this and I work for you, i did that at my last job. Anyway, for this drawing, I sketched it from the picture and scanned it into photoshop. There i just airbrushed it which i think turned out to be pretty neat looking.

Random beach house. There's a lot of add-lib in here. Also, i did add a warming filter in photoshop. Thought it looked kind of cool.

Lake House

This is my grandparents lake house. I grew up going here and tomorrow i might be there again! Jen and I lived here for 6 months when we got married. I used a ball point pen on this one.