Welcome to Stenman Studios

Elaine and Fred Stenman welcome you to Stenman Studios website. We create low relief woodcarvings of rural and wildlife scenes. Our creations are usually a combination of very shallow relief augmented with wood burned and painted details. Come visit our studio.

Over forty years ago, Elaine and Fred developed a unique style of woodcarving. Elaine had an arts and crafts store background. She asked Fred to take a simple country relief carving class. Elaine loved this type of carving and started to produce pieces. Fred (a very good multimedia artist] draws all the details on each board when the carving layer is completed. His ability to sit down and draw on demand is the keystone of the finished designs.

Our designs concentrate on wildlife (loons, bear, moose etc.) and rural buildings (cabins, barns, lighthouses, and whimsical scenes). The major elements are hand carved. All the details are drawn in to tell a story. The details are wood burned and painted with acrylic washes. Each piece is stained and haloed before four to six coats of hand rubbed varnish is applied.

Initially, we used clear live edge boards which are easy to design. The boards with knots, weird grain or odd shapes were more challenging for Fred to come up with designs that worked. These boards create truly one-of-a-kind pieces of art. These unique pieces sell faster and for higher prices than the clear boards. We also found that the boards worked well for extra detailed flat wood burnings.

Most of our pieces are sold at art shows where customers can see and feel the textures. Our finished woodcarvings and wood burnings are also available for sale online. Each piece is an original and may have already been purchased. Please contact us directly for availability.

We also offer patterns for relief carvers and wood burners online. You can either download them or have us mail them to you.

International Woodcarvers Congress
June 9-14, 2025

We will be teaching at IWC again in 2025 year.

We have been creating and teaching low relief wood carvings with wood burned and painted background details for over 30 years. Our designs have evolved over the years with more refined details. During that time, we also started to do a number of pieces that are wood burned and painted with no carving. These have become very popular. Our class at I will provide an opportunity for several different projects.

 

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You can choose to burn the details on a board you have carved, or the whole project can be wood burned on a sanded flat board. 

We have collected many of these “challenge” (knotty, unusual shapes, etc.) boards and will again make some of them available to students. The knots become part of the landscape (rocks, cliffs or gnarly tree trunks). The wood grain around the knots adds to the unique finished design. We will be selling these boards to students. You can choose a board with a design already on it, or we can help you design your own scene.

Our wood burning style is different from traditional pyrographic techniques. We paint on wood that has not been sealed. Therefore, we use strong wood burned lines that will contain the transparent washes of paint we use. We use paint to develop shading and depth, not the wood burner.

See examples below:

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From this to this …

Woodburned only, no carving

and this to this…

Carved and wood burned 

Wood burned and painted

Traditional pyrography by Fred

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Paints and brushes are provided by instructors. A wood burner is needed. Contact us for
information on the burning tips and gouges that we use.


For information about the seminars check out their website:

International Woodcarvers Congress

www.woodcarverscongress.org

 

We hope you enjoy our art. Each of the pieces below has been created to take the best advantage of the wood. We do not sell carvings through our Shopping Cart since each one is unique to the piece of wood that it is on. The carvings that are marked available were not sold as of the last update of our website. If you have any interest in a specific design, please contact us and we will let you know if it is still available or we will email you a picture of similar works that we have in inventory. We can also create one for you based on the one you like or a custom piece. We will send photos of the piece, and there is no obligation for you to buy it.

Thank you,

Elaine and Fred Stenman