Finishing the 2nd World War soldier.
19 October, 2021 – 11:58 amI drew the soldier on the surface of the stone by scaling up the image that Harold’s son sent me. (see previous post).
The soldier on the WWII side was drawn out and carved in 3D bas relief. I carved it in a precise manner using the grid to assist me in scaling up the details. This was to emphasise the more mechanised and clinical nature of this war.
The overall size of the stone is 8FT x 4ft by 2ft at it’s base gradually becoming thinner towards the top where it is roughly 1ft. The weight if the stone was estimated to be almost 4T so everything needed to be scaled just right so that it looked right.
The 1st thing I need to do is chisel an outline in order to start chopping the stone away, I had to use my angle grinder here as the stone was harder than the WWI side. The soldiers were both roughly 3ft tall.
Once I start to create depth around the soldier I can start to chisel in the outline of pockets and belt etc. I have to be restrained at this time as it is important to leave enough stone to create the full pockets, detail on the belt and creases in the uniform.
I don’t spend much time on the face and beret until I have chopped enough stone away from the rest of the body. It is harder to get the face right as everything has to be taken back from the tip of the nose, if I mess up the nose then I have to work the whole body back again.
Once I have the correct depth to create the features then I can start to carve the finer details.
The face of my WWII soldier was Harold Edwards and I used a photo of him and the clay maquette to get his likeness right.
The last thing to carve was the poppies and although I thought about putting them elsewhere on the stone, they looked just right where I had originally planned them to be.
Thank you everyone for you support through this amazing project.
A special thanks to Reid Lifting of Chepstow for lending me this amazing 5t Porta Gantry to hold my stone and enable me to lift it when necessary.
