Artist Creates Gorgeous Wooden Sculptures of Animals

By
Izzie S
-

A freelance art director from the Philippines named Patrick Cabral layers wood to create amazing 3D portraits of animals. He recently did a job for Starbucks Philippines, creating three such sculptures for the coffee shop.

“My goal is to provide people a new way to experience my work when they are not able to see it in person,” Cabral said to Bored Panda. “I am also trying to see how far can a 3D photo go. Each photo is consisting of the actual photo and a customized depth map to create the 3D effect.”

You can see his sculptures below and find more on Instagram.

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2nd of 3 animal I made for @starbucksph . Each animal represent the country where @starbucks grow their coffee. This one is a quetzal which represents Guatemala. Much of the stress on this went to finding the right shade of gold/brass. We hoarded a bunch of it and so far the best one we acquired was the Vallejo Metal Color. I remember we spent the entire All Soul's day visiting all the branch of this local hobby shop just to see if they had it on stock. We only managed to acquire 10 32ml bottles. It 's super tiny and I was so afraid that it would not be enough to paint the gold layers of the 3 sculptures. I was wrong though be use I only used around 5 bottles in the end. Another of my worry is how we are going to hang it on the wall. The heaviest of the sculpture that I made was only around 20kg. The tiger is already 30kg. Even in my dreams I was haunted by a mom nursing a baby and the artwork falling on the baby. I know I am crazy, but this is the level of how I get stressed on every details. It doesn't just have to look pretty, but it has to be really durable and safe. What I ended up using was a TV bracket that has a 60kg. capacity. I was also praying for my younger brother who is and engineer to come home early from his work abroad so he can help me mount these on the wall. He arrived from Korea 2 days before the delivery date and he even helped me stick the layers together. My brother Ian is the only person aside from @origamidreamer that I really trust in this world. We had built at least 2 bamboo huts when we were younger. We were partners in crime. He is my number 1 fan before Camy. He try to emulate what I do and some case even bested me. He is great at his job. He is the guy that you would want on your team when you get ship-wrecked on an island. He literally is the best. I was comforted when we came home because I knew that mounting these artworks on the wall would be really hard. And true enough, hanging the artworks was very challenging. I know it's quite scary because there are a lot of unknowns on this project. I am gratwful that there are people who help me. You can check out the artwork at @starbucksreserve SM North Towers

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Of course there’s a tiger 🙂 This is the third piece from my London commission. Thank god the client arranged shipping. It took 3 professional art logistic company from Manila, Hong Kong and Ireland get this shipped. It’s also my first time working with company that ships fine art. This is my most detailed tiger so far. I was worried making the forehead detail resemble like petals. So far it still looks like a tiger 🙂 I wonder how many tiger would I create in this lifetime. It’s amazing how common it is now to receive commissions. Six years ago I had my very first client @thordarson had me illustrate a children’s book. I did lot of illustration prior to that but it was the first one that I actually got paid like a professional illustrator. I have been dreaming to be a paid illustrator long before that. I guess that’s why it appears that my improvement is exponential because I had spent so many years contemplating what I would do if I had been given a chance to really do what I want to do. So when it came, I didn’t really waste the opportunity. And to be working as a full time artist now where I get paid to be my authentic self is nothing short of amazing. I have never dared to dream to become a working artist. There were just too many obstacle. But little by little I managed to overcome it, and now it’s finally paying off. I swear you would not believe how many times I stay awake at night thinking if I should go back to finding a day job because it took me 10 years to really make my passion profitable. More nights that I keep refreshing my email hoping that I would get more art projects, because if not, then I would have to be a corporate slave again. Many nights that I pray that my wife and I would not get sick because we don’t even have HMO. I make good living as a designer but unfortunately what I really want to do doesn’t make my clients more money:) I don’t want to spend my life working on other peoples dreams. I work with a lot of nice people but there were times that I feel like my days are so fast and most of the work that I only has a shelf life of 2 years. I wanted to make something that would be classic.

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Second of 3 pieces that I made for my UK art broker. I didn’t even ask where this would be displayed. All I know is they work with the world top hotels. I hope this gets to one of those places where Royalties stays and they would commission me to make similar piece, but in gold 🙂 Recently we had an inquiry from a hotel in Qatar for 500 pieces of artwork. I had to decline because I don’t want to flood the world with my work… and also I believe in the law of supply and demand. If I can do just 4-6 pieces of my work per year and charge premium, then I would very much prefer that than have millions of dollars but compromise the value of my work. I am always reminded by a Quincy Jones quote, “God walks out of the room when you’re thinking about money”. I never really work with money as main motivation. Any money that I make get spent on funding more expensive project and helping people around me. I don’t like keeping a lot of money. I grew up with so little that I am really uncomfortable around it. This is the third panda that I made. It’s also the biggest. I make big artworks now because I want my patrons to display it on the main area and not just on hallways as a friend of mine once commented because of its then small size. If I am going to spend a lot of time working on something, then it better be front and center. It’s amazing that when I started my endangered series, the giant panda was still endangered and when I launched the project, it got removed from the list. I am not saying that I single-handedly saved the giant panda 🙂 it just gives me hope for humanity.

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I had to reschedule a couple of solo shows to next year because of my current workload. I am also developing new work and thought I don’t really have to rush into it because I have more work than I can manage, and for some reason it’s quite hard to sell my work in my own country. I feel like the hardest part of the job is taste-making. To be able to sell something where people doesn’t usually spend money on. To make my work more than the craft. What I also did not expect after working on personal work is I would get more ambitious. My dreams are filled of huge version of my work these days. Work as big as mansions. Every day it’s marinating on my head. When I enter a new building now, my head is thinking of solutions how these engineers built something that doesn’t crumble. You know when I was in college I spent a short amount of time working on a small architecture firm converting old house plans into CAD files. And now since I am already doing big work, I get to revisit the skills that I develop during those days. And now my days are spent hoping that the universe would connect me to someone who could possibly fund it. This has exacerbated more when I saw that trailer of the new Aladdin where they show the cave entrance that looks like a lion. I was thinking of something similar to that already but something that has my style. I can already imagine it and I can’t wait for the day that it would become a reality. For now I guess an update Lynx would suffice 🙂

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