Cat's Eye Carving

Ludlow Conservation Weekend.

What an amazing weekend, the weather was truly wonderful and I came away with both the prizes judged by my peers and the general public as best carving. Gibson tool company kindly donated the prize of £200 in vouchers which I was extremely grateful to receive and you will be glad to hear that I put it towards a Woodpecker-I will write a separate post about how great a tool this is!

We were all given a piece of local sandstone, it was reasonably soft but incredibly abrasive, which meant we were able to cut away the excess quite quickly but our chisels were blunted very quickly-the dust was like fine beach sand. Obviously it was important to wear a dust mask as sandstone dust is very bad for your health.

As I managed to suss out the stone last year, I was able to choose a piece that I knew was harder and drier than some of the other bits. I had already decided on the size I wanted-12x12x7 inches and therefore had my design ready before I started.

The theme was ‘releasing the angels and freeing the spirit’ so I settled on the idea of carving an angel blowing something out her hand. I made a preliminary sketch, to give myself an idea of the proportions that I wanted to use, but also so people could have an indication of what I wanted to achieve-alot in an incredibly short space of time, believe me.

As you can see I got straight on with roughing out the face and working out the depths.

I decided to add the second wing, I think it looks better than the original idea-this is why it is just a rough sketch! By Saturday afternoon I was happy with how the face looked, and I started to get all the other details in place.

You may be asking yourselves why I can’t create this kind of carving every day, well the simple answer is because it would probably put me in an early grave. The adrenalin, the pressure of knowing what you are creating has to be finished in time for the auction, being surrounded by all my peers. Also there is also the desire not to let anyone down. There is an extreme level of focus that we have reserved for this kind of event. It is incredibly exhausting and what we create is un-repeatable under normal circumstances.

As I had made such a good start on Saturday, I was able to concentrate on defining the details in order to cast shadows and give the illusion of depth. In actual fact, the face is only 3 inches in, but this is the beauty of carving a relief-also the challenge. Something I could only have hoped to achieve but I am extremely proud of what I did achieve and glad that what I created contributed £660 to the restoration fund of St Laurence’s Church in Ludlow.

I would like to thank all the organisers for looking after us all so well and keeping us fed and watered during the event-see you next year 🙂

Posted in Stonemason's Festival | 4 Comments »

Commission for a face in the flowers.

I was asked by a lovely lady who had been given a voucher for one of my carvings as a present, to carve an amalgamation of 2 of my other carvings. Arty who you may be familiar with and a very leafy, flowery carving.

Obviously this is quite a tricky thing to do as I can’t ever repeat what I have done-unless I work in the same manner as I did with the Cherub commission.

So I roughly drew on the surface of the stone what I wanted to achieve and started to cut away the waste. The stone stands 33ish inches high x 15ish inches wide and it had an incredibly hard shelly side and a lovely creamy side-so naturally I had to alter my way of carving to suit both types!

As I went along, more of what I wanted started to come to light and my progress became easier.

I hope you like him, and I hope my customer is happy with their very own Face in the Flowers!

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Highnam Court Spring Fair 2012

Well the great British weather strikes once more!

I am writing this on the day when I should be there carving, but the weather is horrendous out there-the event was cancelled.

Thankfully we were warned that this could happen and therefore I decided not to carve what I had planned but fail over to something I am confident in carving.

We had a small marquee-there were only 5 of us and we were situated next to the lake and the classic cars, excellent spot, shame the sun wasn’t shining.

The stone was a soft Cotswold limestone but when it’s dry I’m sure it’s lovely to carve! Thankfully my piece appeared to be drier than the others-I always have a good look at all the pieces to see which one is the best.

You know me I love to carve faces, and so I thought rather than be disappointed and not finish, I would carve Mother Nature herself!  Obviously I could have carried on for another day and I would have been much happier with the finished carving but I hope that you will agree she’s not bad for just 9hrs carving!

Because Sunday had to be cancelled, the competition side was called off, however people had bought raffle tickets, and mine was finished therefore it was not the winner but it was one of the prizes in the grand draw. I hope whoever won her will enjoy her and forgive me for not finishing her to the standard that I would have liked.

Next carving event is Ludlow in 4wks!

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Cherub Commission. X

Well here they are, I still have to carve the inscription and shape the stone blocks.

The inscription will be carved on a sunken panel. You will notice a hole under the hands at the front, this is to drain off the water that would otherwise pool.
I may put a lead spout so that the water is thrown away from the front of the stone. That’s it so far, there is probably another 2 weeks work I will put a post up when the whole thing is completed.

Thank-you very much for reading.

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Cherubs IX

Well here are the latest photos, as you can see I have started to carve more detail and there is a hand!

I decided to carve feathers between the wing and the shoulder in order to give strength but hopefully make it look delicate.

From mittens to fingers, I always shape the hands as mittens first so that I can get an idea of the shape without committing myself too early.

I hope that the way I have carved the hand on the face makes it appear that the fingers are pressing into the cheek.

I am coming scarily close to finishing these cherubs and the next stage is to put them on top of the other 2 blocks of stone and then to carve the stone into a more natural shape and finally the inscription.

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