Stone Carving and Letter Cutting
I had been given an indication of what my customer wanted and so I made a few sketches, this drawing is the one she settled upon. It is called Mother and Child.
I chose to carve in Lepine limestone, it is a very dense, fine stone and a joy to carve. Click on the link to find out more about this beautiful French limestone.
The base is a piece of Oak that I have oiled to bring out the colour.
This commission was quite difficult but it incorporated the creativity that I have and the stonemasonry element of my training.
The brief was to carve a bowl of flowers that could be put onto a memorial. It will be cemented into the vase hole in the base, which is why it has the cylinder at the bottom but this won’t be visible. It will look like a bowl of flowers on the grave but will never die, blow away or fade. It will change colour and blend in, hopefully it will look beautiful in situe.
There are so many traditional flowers that I could have carved but I chose wild flowers as that is what inspired me on my walks to work each morning.
I used Portland limestone as this is a good hard wearing stone but it it also very hard and brittle in places so I had to be careful of the undercutting.
I am very pleased with the final result and look forward to doing another one.
Sorry that it has been such a long time since I last wrote a post, I have been busy organising my stone carving festival which is only a month away now.
I have been developing my paintings and drawings and I have just finished 3 paintings of my Arthur Bell Rose which are all available to buy in my shop at Taurus Crafts.
Last weekend I had 2 students carving Tetbury limestone for the weekend, here are a few photos
My Summer activity programme has just started and I hope to see some budding young carvers over the next month.
My commission list is growing so if you would like to commission a special carving for your home, a new house sign or something as a gift please be aware that I now have a 5 month waiting list.
I am currently working on some letter carving commissions and a sculpture in French limestone, I hope to have some more photos of my latest pieces to show you soon.
Thanks, Carrie.
You’ll be pleased to hear that my festival organising is coming along very well, I have a dedicated website with all the regular updates and details about my participants, the sponsors, pop up shops and activities.
If you would like to get involved either as a stall holder, participant or sponsor then please get in touch
I thought I had more photos and here they are. I have also been sent some photos of me drawing which I am very thankful for.
While I was down in Kent, I visited to Dover with my parents. I took the time to sit and draw the iconic landmark, the Dover Castle so here are a few sketches that I made while I was there.
My sketches are not meant to be works of outstanding art, they are a snippet and a reminder, I take photos of things that I would like to come back to. My sketches are a training tool for me to become a more accomplished artist and with every drawing my eyes become better trained to observe perspective and to understand what it is that I am looking at. I recently visited Tintern Abbey and didn’t take my camera at all, I started several sketches which I look forward to going back and continuing with my studies. I will put these in another post.
