A well-rounded artist from the Ukraine knows how to paint and sculpt in the traditional manner—but after watching chainsaw virtuosos transforming wood on TV, Vlad Yaremenko found his new niche.
When the 48-year-old artist from Novograd-Volynsky, Ukraine, first picked up a chainsaw 15 years ago, and began turning wood into wildlife, there was no looking back.
“I decided to try it, and it was right,” Vlad told The Epoch Times, speaking Russian. “I realized it was mine.”
Although he has a passion for portraying animals, such as bears, wolves, and lions, he’s also a skilled portrait artist.
In one of his more recent works, Vlad started sketching out an aged face of a Native American man, accompanied by a wolf motif, and set out to create a larger-than-life-size scaled sculptural representation from a large hunk of wood.
Describing the spirit of the Native man Vlad hoped to capture, he said, “He is unshakable, proud of his people, and he is rooted in nature.”
However, the artist prefers to let the wood speak for itself, adding that he tries to “show everything that is not said” through his work. He recorded a time-lapse video in which his creation emerges out of the wood. His chainsaw works in both broad strokes, blocking out the main shapes, and light touches to shape eyelids and wrinkles on the face. Roughness is skillfully utilized to portray the fur of the wolves. Eventually, finer tools are employed to hone the details. Lastly, a tinted varnish is applied, along with frosty dry brushing to finish off the piece.
Here are more chainsaw woodworks by Vlad Yeremenko
