Full of expression and endless detail to discover, After a Rain is a surrealistic desert landscape, commissioned for a local art collector with a specific vision: capture a desert river bed after a recent rain, focusing on rich textures, and the effect of natural light on epoxy-filled surfaces. At over nine feet long, this piece has room to incorporate many epoxy techniques, and has its line forms inspired by Phillis Shafer, one of the client’s favorite landscape painters.
The image gallery below is an attempt to capture some of the steps that went into finishing this over-year-long project.
A beautiful slab of Box Elder wood was selected to be our canvas for this project; first shaped, with live edges cleaned and prepped.Vibrant stains are worked into the live edge to create just the right effects of light and shadow on a distant mountain range.A base layer of crushed walnut shell fills a large void in the wood slab, saving on volumes of epoxy resin required to fill the space.Any mountain staining is completed before the first large batch of foundation epoxy is laid, sealing the slab.Silicone dams allow for crisp lines between epoxy sky colors.Unfortunately, each set of silicone dams takes hours to remove and clean away before the next color can be laid into place.Detail shot of white accent line being poured into the color-banded sky.Clear epoxy is layered onto the sky next, allowing for three-dimensional cloud effects.Hand-illustrating the designs onto the wood surface allows the artist to follow the natural grain patterns, incorporating knots and voids into the carved features.To avoid removing illustrations during sanding, design lines are etched into the wood using a diamond-tipped carving bit.Large channels and scene topography is routed into the surface, following etched lines.After hours of sanding, the meandering dry river bed and deep accent lines are ready to be filled.Tan, white and neutral colored sand is carefully placed into the scene, creating perspective with fine grain in the distance, and course grain in the foreground.Detail shot of crystal clear epoxy flowing through a dry, sandy river bed.Abstract cloud details are laid out in the sky’s fifth layer, while accent lines are poured in the middle ground.Reflecting the sky’s line forms in the river’s surface requires silicone dams to divide the liquid epoxy into crisp bands of color.After sanding the surface smooth, middle ground Saguaro and Prickly Pear Cactus details are carved and then filled with colored epoxy.Over and over, the surface is sanded smooth, carved and then filled with epoxy, until all inlaid details have been added.Exposed wood surfaces are stained with dozens of different stain pen colors.Joshua trees are carefully shaped from Maple burl veneer.Yucca plants were made from a batch of thin-poured epoxy shapes, hand carved, and then placed into the landscape.One final flood coat of clear epoxy over the entire piece encases all of the delicate surface details.The piece is finally ready to be loaded into the trailer, wrapped and delivered to WoodLab.Installed in WoodLab’s showroom, the team can stand back and appreciate this collaborative composition for the first time.Details of a hot orange sunset, reflecting across the flooded river bed.Layering inlays in the distance with appliquéd tres and plants in the foreground creates a subtle perception of distance in the scene.Allowing the colored epoxy to be mostly transparent, creates natural shadows and views of detail below the surface.Close up shot of the mountain range, stained with expressive, colorful shapes and beautiful natural wood texture still visible.Artist signature in the bottom-left corner.Final shot of After a Rain, hanging in the WoodLab showroom.
