Cat's Eye Carving

Visit to Sudeley Castle

What better way to spend my day off than a visit to a magnificent historic building. The Sun was shining and it was so lovely and warm that Sudeley Castle and landscaped gardens seemed the perfect choice. I hadn’t been here before but the photos on their website intrigued me. The castle has a rich history and has a beautiful church in it’s grounds. A lot of the original property was destroyed in the civil war but there are some ruins and full buildings both old and Victorian additions to explore.

I was able to make some very rough sketches, while there are mistakes in my drawings every time I make a sketch I am understanding more, it’s about training my mind and my eyes to draw what I can see. Drawing also helps me to understand form and perspective helping me in my carvings.

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Highgate Memorial Sculpture

I have been busy carving this Portland limestone memorial sculpture for Highgate Cemetery. Here are some more photos of the development.

As I have been carving this I have had a live model to take some dimensions from, she has what I imagine an Art Nouveau frame to be which helps me to work out how to develop the body.

It is important when working on a figure to check proportion from where it will be viewed, so in the 3rd picture I stood on a stool at what will be the natural ground level. This is something that I have done at regular intervals to keep an eye on my progress.

As you can see I am getting closer to finishing this sculpture and so the amount of stone that I remove gets less. and the detail gets tighter.

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Memorial sculpture for Highgate Cemetery

It is always an honour to be given the responsibility of carving a memorial to help remember a loved one.

This commission is giving me the opportunity to use all of my training as a stonemason, artist, sculptor and letter cutter.

I was asked to design a sculpture memorial incorporating an Art Nouveau style woman. Due to restrictions the stone could be no wider than 14inches.

I decided to use Portland limestone it is excellent for letter cutting and detailed carving. It will show off the curves and form of the dress. Importantly it is a hard durable stone.

Here are the photos showing the design and the starting process.

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Final installment of our trip to Breckenridge.

Well here are the final photos. As you can see despite the altitude and climate we were able to complete our dragons.

We had to have a shade put up as the glorious sun was melting our carving and detail was being lost. On Wednesday Ed carved the ice we had made from some of our melted snow into teeth, they looked amazing when we attached them late on Friday night but by 10am on Sat they had melted slightly so weren’t as effective.

On Friday I worked primarily in the shade as I was carving the belly and under the neck. It was so cold, I felt like a child again when we used to play in the snow. After a while though I realised just how cold I had become. Thankfully there were hand dryers in the rest rooms, these helped me thaw out a little so I could continue. I think you can get an idea of this from the photo of me sitting up just how cold I had become. Eventually however I had to find a job in the sunshine my poor frozen butt couldn’t take it any more! I moved into the sunshine to work on re-shaping the second dragon’s head and neck.

We worked until 11pm on the Friday night but we became too tired to carry on and didn’t want to make anymore mistakes so we decided to get back to it on Saturday morning. There wasn’t a lot more we could do and we finished in plenty of time. Sadly the German’s sculpture collapsed due to melt and I am really sorry but I didn’t get time to take photos of the other sculptures. These can be seen http://www.gobreck.com

Unfortunately I developed acute bronchitis and ear infections and so our day off on Sunday I spent in bed. I was naturally very disappointed as my partner and team mate Ed Francis and I were going to explore and take photos and generally enjoy some free time. It also meant that I missed out on the farewell dinner and the lit up sculptures. The level of skill was incredible and if I were ever to do it again I think I would want to spend a bit more time acclimatising before getting stuck into what can only be described as the hardest thing that I have ever undertaken.

Thank you to everyone for following and your continued support, I really hope that I did you proud.

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Breckenridge part III

The glorious sunshine was lovely to see, Colorado has 300 days of it, the sky is so blue and so big. I really glad that my boyfriend Ed was on the team not only as a great team mate but also for moral, physical and mental support (all of these were being tested) as well as to experience this incredible country.

Even with the dry, thin air we were making good progress and once I could visualise what Marie’s design looked like in the snow I was able to work faster. My struggle with the altitude was more manageable but it was still such hard going. At sea level this would be so much easier! The challenge and learning how far to push oneself in such extreme conditions was a real learning curve.

Luckily for us some of the other teams pitched in when this 2 ton block of snow needed to be removed.

Once this large block was removed and Ollie had roughed out a space for me to work, I was able to get up on the what was going to be the belly.

I bought my tools from Dean Mowers in Blakeney, they are Wolf Garten gardening tools and the handles are interchangeable which was so useful, I had two favourite ones, the dandelion puller and the edge cutter, and with red handles they couldn’t get lost!

They’re finally taking some form, let’s see what the rest of the week holds for us.

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