Cat's Eye Carving

Dog portrait

My latest commission was to carve a portratit of Marley, a Labrador/Rottweiler cross.

My clients were bought a voucher for a wedding present and chose to have their beautiful dog immortalised in stone!

The first stage was to model him in clay, I worked from photos and from Marley himself, however I only observed Marley!

As soon as my clients were happy with the model, I cast it in plaster. This involves several processes, the first is dividing the model into two halve with small squares of metal.

I then build up layers of plaster over the clay model, once this is completely dry I separate the two halves and dig out the clay.

The two part mould is cleaned and sealed using soap, plaster is poured into the two halves.

It is important to leave the mould with the plaster inside for long enough to dry out, I then start to cut away the outer mould.

The next stage is to use the plaster cast to take measurements from and start cutting the stone.