Ruth Robinson - Stone Carving Projects
  • Home
  • Blog

Summer Term 2016  -  Crow Carving 1

18/4/2016

0 Comments

 
My next project was crows. Birds seemed to be a very popular subject for carvings in the group that summer and I like the look of crows.  Unfortunately I couldn't get near enough to take a good photo.  The nearest I got was a pic of one on our garage roof through a window (rather blurry and not very useful), so had to rely on lots of photos downloaded from the internet.

The alabaster piece intended for the crow was a smallish offcut from the abalone shell carving, sort of triangular, but not symmetrical.  My main focus was on the head with its long beak and strong 'brow' line, so I attempted to make a maquette in clay.  It didn't start too badly, but by the time I'd trimmed bits off it, it ended up looking rather strange with big beak and tiny body.  So I decided to mostly forget the body, or rather stylise the whole thing to fit my rather small bit of alabaster.


Picture
Clay head early stage
Picture
Wing sketches
Picture
Wing sketch

Picture
Fired clay maquette and alabaster piece with design drawn on for carving (pic from Paul's blog)

Picture
Finished alabaster carving
Picture
Finished alabaster crow
Picture
Wax moulding to send for casting

When the carving was finished I made a latex mould with plaster jacket and in class we cast a wax version to send off for casting in bronze to Castle Fine Arts Foundry in Wales, who have a special introductory offer - they send a free block of casting wax and will cast the returned sculpture in bronze for a substantially reduced price.  (See link in Useful Sites). As I've found previously, alabaster carvings are really difficult to photograph successfully, but the detail is clearer on the plaster of Paris cast.  Initially I asked for the bronze to be finished in black, but when it came back the detail was really hard to see, so I sent it back and they removed the black patina and refinished it in verdigris which looks better. 

Picture
Bronze crow with Verdigris patina
Picture
Bronze crow
Picture
Plaster of Paris casting
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    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.

    Archives

    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    April 2016
    September 2015
    May 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Useful sites

    Castle Fine Arts Foundry
    Tiranti 
    Society of Wildlife Artists' 'The Natural Eye' exhibition
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.