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. 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. 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.
I spent this afternoon sawing pieces off the main lump to get the shape roughly as needed. Got a few useful small offcuts. I realised that this piece of soapstone is much more brittle than alabaster and even seems more brittle than the previous soapstone I worked on. Change of plan.....The piece of alabaster didn't feel quite right for this carving, so looking through the college store of stones, I found this bit of soapstone which is black with little flecks of white and should look lovely when polished. It's quite narrow, so I'll use the last maquette as the main source, and possibly elongate the face on the stone. I made a start on the rough shaping, rounding one of the facets and starting to saw off a piece to form the chin. Ran out of time so will have to finish that bit next week. And several maquettes later, plus rough eye carvings on alabaster offcuts..... and I'm wondering just why am I doing this????? |
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
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