I'm working on a lovely piece of green soapstone. It started out as a mass of elvers (young eels), but when I realised how small elvers are in real life - rather like live spaghetti, but actually even smaller - I changed my mind and these will now be transformed into young snakes! The carvings below are still at the 'elver' stage, but I've since been shaping the heads into something more snake-like.
0 Comments
Almost finished - holes have been drilled in wooden base and underside of carving and a steel peg inserted. The peg fits very snugly into the wooden base, but it's a bit loose in the crow head, so it needs a little araldite to secure it.
The pod is nearing completion at last - I seem to have been working on this for ever! Now there's just the polishing. I say just, but it's very fiddly with lots of indentations and grooves that have to be polished with Wet & Dry paper, then a little T-Cut until it's finally ready for its waxing. Quite a bit of work still to be done - all those white bits in the grooves have to be polished away. I've just started working on a head using a very small piece of English alabaster - a lovely gingery colour with brown swirls which looks lovely when polished. The head is in a very early stage and looks pretty awful at the moment, but hopefully will improve - heads are not my best subject, but I live in hope! The magnolia pod took a back seat while I was concentrating on the chameleon, but recently I've been working on it and it's beginning to take shape. I've spend a few hours using wet & dry paper on my crow and my chameleon; rinsing them off, letting them dry and waxing. Then starting all over again because they weren't right yet... and again...and again. Ended up with a coat of Liberon black patinating wax to enhance the dark feathers of the crow, but have since taken most of this off. Still not sure what looks best as there are lots of fault lines on that side which don't look great, so may try just a little black wax again. The chameleon alabaster also has fault lines running through it but on this they're not quite as noticeable as on the crow. |
AuthorI started writing this blog in December 2016, but it covers projects started in spring 2015 onwards, so it was written retrospectively until I caught up with the current term. Archives
December 2019
CategoriesUseful sites
|