Blog Posts

Cenerino Alabaster piece

10/7/2017

Some more shaping and smoothing done today. I think this is going to be some sort of pod with contents. I've just realised this is another piece of Cenerino alabaster like the one I carved my second crow from. I'm really pleased as this has layers of black and ochre colours which should look very good when polished. When you're carving it's hard to see exactly what colour the stone is when it's covered in alabaster dust, until you smooth and wash it and then the darker colours show clearly.

Fish and alabaster..

3/7/2017

This side is nearly done

This side needs more work on the eye and the mouth

I decided that the fish is looking a little 'cartoony' so am working on the eyes and mouth to remedy that.

Meanwhile.... I'm also starting on the bigger piece of alabaster that I had intended to carve a head from. It's cut from a larger slab, so is smooth on one side and very rough and craggy on the other.

Soapstone shape

19/6/2017

This is a little bit of soapstone that I'm carving some organic shapes into. The inside will be hollowed out and some worm-like shapes will, hopefully, be carved through from the outside into the inside.

Fish progressing and nearly finished!

15/5/2017

Just a little more shaping to do, then sanding and finally the polishing.

A new term and back to the fish!

11/5/2017

Well, it's been a long break - 5 weeks because of the Bank Holiday, but we started back on Monday and the fish is progressing, while I decide what to do with the larger bit of alabaster that was going to be a head, but now isn't!

I'm working on the fin detail now, but having to be careful as it's getting very thin and fragile.

end of the head! (at least for now)

6/4/2017

The head has not been going well! I'm not happy with the shape or with using soap stone. It's time to give this project a rest and maybe come back to it later or use the stone for something else.
Meanwhile I'm going back to using alabaster and for now continuing with my small alabaster fish.

Photos of head by T K Robinson

Head - some progress..

14/3/2017

Got a better shape on the eye and jaw yesterday and the whole look is softer. I sawed off some of the bulk on top of the head. The left side is very flat with no bulk to make it look realistic, so not yet sure what I'm doing with that.

Head + fish

9/3/2017

The head is still progressing, but rather slowly! Unfortunately it doesn't look much like the person it's supposed to be, which is disappointing. Altering it now would mean trying to reshape the whole of the profile (the nose, forehead and chin are wrong - and actually that doesn't leave much else!) and involve cutting deep into the stone which would be difficult as there's not much depth to it from back to front.
So I think I'll carry on with the existing profile and see if something reasonable is salvageable, even if not what I had in mind initially.

Meanwhile, I've also been working on a small fish carving from a little bit of alabaster offcut from a previous project.

Fish in very early stage of carving

Head continued...

14/2/2017

I did quite a bit of shaping on the stone yesterday, but haven't got the profile right yet. This stone is definitely not as nice to work as alabaster.

Some more radical, deeper cutting probably needed. This piece is rather tall and thin - Easter Island statues was one of the comments!

Crow 2 - update

10/2/2017

I've just found out from Nigel Owen Stoneworkers, who supply the stones for the college, that the black and brown stone I used for my second crow was alabaster after all and not soapstone. They identified it from photos as Cenerino Alabaster from Italy. It certainly felt like alabaster to carve, but I'd expected it to be less opaque when polished, but apparently not all alabaster is transparent. So I guess it's not surprising that I'm finding the black soapstone I'm working on now so different in texture. It's the first soapstone I've used, so I'll see how differently it behaves when carved and if it's possible to carve details clearly as the texture is much more crumbly than alabaster.

Author

I 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.

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Useful sites

Castle Fine Arts Foundry
Tiranti

Society of Wildlife Artists' 'The Natural Eye' exhibition