Happy Life Wood Creates the 100% Electric BMW i5 Out of Wood
I’ve always looked at BMWs as a piece of art and you know looked at the level of detail and craftsmanship that goes into the cars so for them to you know have the trust in me to complete a project for them and and you know have their
Logo on it to me is um really a dream Project My name is Steve Thompson also known as happy life wood and I partnered with BMW USA to create the I5 out of wood this project took me over 2 months and was created out of 535 total pieces of wood and 10 different species of wood when I
Started this journey with BMW USA I was so excited to create the I5 because I had never created a car out of wood before I try to elevate my craft each time I take on a new piece and this was the perfect opportunity to continue to
Do that my art process is made up of many steps I use a variety of techniques to try and bring the wood to life over hundreds of hours with the ultimate goal of creating the most realistic looking art without using any paints or stains I start by sourcing exotic and domestic
Wood species that I think will best represent the colors of the subject that I am creating there is always a limit to matching color because wood only exists in so many colors I do my best to utilize the tones of these wood species to recreate the colors in my
Reference the 10 different wood species I used in this piece were bloodwood paduk Cedar red grandis maple Holly Walnut blueo Wang and popler the vibrant red color that makes up most of the vehicle is paduk and the trees in the background were created out of a wood called popler which has different shades
Of green in it after I choose the different species of wood I begin to hand cut the wood into pieces on a scroll saw for this I cut 535 pie pieces of wood to bring the art together I usually work in small sections so I can
Assemble them while I’m doing that I use an inlaying technique to place tiny pieces of wood into larger pieces of wood this enables me to achieve the detail that I’m looking for once I’ve cut and assembled I go into a detailed carving process this allows me to create
Depth throughout the piece and produce a realistic look this part of the process is most critical in bringing realism to my work 7 5% of the shaping process is done by power carving and the rest is by hand sanding this produces a smooth finished texture I spent a lot of time
Focusing on this in the headlight and the wheel because I felt like those were two parts of the car I could bring to life in this piece with the right amount of sanding and shaping this piece forced me to take a deep look at my work and
Approach it in a totally new way you know in working on this piece I had to really dive into a lot of the detail and the lines and the different aspects of the the car but in the end it it it made me a better artist um for you know
Taking on something different and knowing that you know I can I can complete things that are a little bit more technical it’s definitely the most challenging piece that I’ve created thus far
“I’ve always looked at BMWs as a piece of art.” – Steve, from Happy Life Wood. It was an absolute honor to see how art imitates life as world class artist Steve Thomson partnered with us to make the 100% electric BMW i5 entirely out of wood.
Happy Life Wood on social:
IG – https://www.instagram.com/happylifewood/
TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@happylifewood?lang=en
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@happylifewood
Filmed by Chris Washington
