Cat's Eye Carving

Happy New Year!

I am sorry that it has been a while since I last put up a new post, but I hope that you all had a good Christmas and New Year. I am certainly looking forward to this year.

I have been quite busy, which is very good. I have been working on 3 new carvings, which are coming along very well and I hope to have some photos to show you soon.

Just before Christmas, I sold Meditation and The Elfin Girl, which was a huge boost to my confidence.

I have also started to organise this years Stone Carving Festival. This will take place on the 23rd/24th and 25th of May, at the Harts Barn Craft Centre. Lets hope the weather holds for us this year. The charities that the profits from the sale of the carvings will go to haven’t been finalised yet, but don’t worry we will choose some worthy ones. I will give you more details once they have been finalised.

I will be taking part in 2 other carving events this year , one at The Highnam Court Spring Fair on the 25th and 26th of April, there will be 12 of us carving Green Men out of Cotswold limestone, with a silent auction being held on the Sunday afternoon, this is to raise money for The Pied Piper appeal and Gloucester Cathedral.                                                                                Then in July around the 18th and 19th , I will be travelling to Trondheim in Norway to take part in another fantastic carving experiance. We will be carving local soapstone, the Cathedral there is built from it. It’s all very exciting!!

In the near future, I am giving David Smith from BBC Radio Gloucestershire the opportunity to have a go at some carving, this will be broadcast in the next couple of months. As soon as I know when, I will let you know, needless to say I am looking forward to his visit!!

Well thats all for now. Thanks for reading. Carrie.

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Art Nouveau Style stone carving

Well here they are, the final photos of my stone carving of my Art Nouveau style woman.

As you can see, the final stages are about creating more depth within the stone carving and refining features.

I use for this are the small tungsten carbide chisels for this, However it is at this stage that I can start using my Firesharp chisels, I have more of a range in these chisels and can create more precise features,

As I reach the final stages I start using my small rifflers files and rasps, The valuable lesson that I learnt from the stone carving, ‘Dancing in the Wind’. As you can see, I pierced through behind the Knee, starting with my small chisels and then moving on to my small rifflers to reduce the vibration on the carving. I used my firesharp gouges to develop the folds around her torso, then finished them off with my small rifflers. Portland stone is alot harder than the Tetbury limestone, so it was more difficult to file away at the finer areas. But it is easier to create finer details.

At the moment she is on my work table, I find it important to leave a carving that I think is completed for a while and look at it to see if there is anything else that needs to be done. But it’s that thing we artists get when creating, knowing when to stop, I tend to stop when I start fussing!! That is when mistakes happen. So yes she is finished.

I have started another carving, but you’ll just have to watch this space!!

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Portland Limestone Art Nouveau style dancing lady

I have found myself falling quite by accident into an Art Nouveau style of carving, with my ladies and their long flowing hair, the idea of carving a feeling, not necessarily a perfectly formed human figure. However I hope I never carve anything disturbing.

From this I have decided to follow this natural train of thought, the romanticism, the natural beauty of nature and the female form. Hopefully this is evident in Dancing in the wind, one of my previous carvings.

I am trying to create lightness, delicacy and movement in a material that is so obviously heavy and un-moveable, and trust me, sometimes I wonder how I move it!!

So anyway, this is my block of Portland limestone. I bought this stone among other pieces from Albion Stone quarry, on Portland in Dorset It is recycled from a dismantled building-I like to think that I am helping by not depleting the resources of this beautiful island!

Portland Limestone is incredibly hard and has been used on many historic buildings, obviously most famous for St Pauls Cathedral in London.

I mainly use my Tungsten tipped chisels on it, as it damages the edge on my Cold steel chisels. However there will be times as the carving progresses that I will need to use my finer cold steel carving chisels.

So I start with my Pitch to remove large amounts of stone quickly and efficiently. Then I start with my Punch, see later photos.

I use the Tungsten tipped Punch , I could use my regular cold steel chisel but I would have to sharpen it regularly, therefore wasting my metal.

The Tungsten tipped Claw to remove more material in a more controlled way.

The quarter inch chisel to create safety margins to carve up to, in order not to accidently remove stone that I want to keep.

 Chisels that have rounded ends tend to be used with a wooden mallet, funnily enough these are called mallet headed chisels, generally pitches, punches and some claw chisels are used with a hammer, and are called hammer headed chisel, they tend to have flat ends.

 These next pictures are the sculpture in progress. I start to develop the idea more and explore the movement of the carving, how does the hair move around the fabric? How does the fabric and the figure interact?. I could see that the legs didn’t work and so proceeded to move things around, I increased the depth around the figure. Started to carve the fabric and hair around the back so that it started to inter-twine, it began to look like it was plaited.

 Developing the back of the carving was as important as working the front, this is something that I have learnt from the previous carving, Dancing in the Wind. Obviously every time I create something new, I learn how to carve more efficiently, but also how to create a coherance in the carving between each feature.

As you can see there is still quite alot of carving to do, as soon as I have some more to show you I will write another post.

So you will have to wait and see!!

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My Workshop

For those of you unable to visit me, or who haven’t had a chance to come down lately, here are some photos of my workshop!!

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Meditation, A Tetbury Limestone Sculpture.

As you may have read from some of my other posts, not everything goes to plan when carving detailed sculpture.
This is an example of when everything goes right.

Meditation is a bust of a woman, she is wearing a scarf around her hair that drapes around her neck.
This stone carving was inspired by some of my charcoal drawings. Our model was a very elegant woman. She sat perfectly still and when asked how she was able to maintain her pose so well, she replied that she was meditating.

As with all my carvings I roughly mark on the surface of the stone where I want the features to be. The most important lines I mark on are the axis lines, imagine a line down the centre of your face and one from side to side through your eyes. These lines determine the angle at which the face is, whether her head is tilted to the side or the front.

The natural bed of the stone runs vertically through the stone to give strength to the carving, as the finished carving will be delicate through the neck.

I started with my punch, the chunky nail shaped chisel, and the pitching chisel-for removing large amounts of material. ( I will put some images of my chisels on a separate post!). Then my claw chisel for defining some of the features. Of course I had to leave enough material in order to create the scarf. But as with all my carvings knowing how much to leave on comes with experiance.

As the carving developed, I was aware that this carving was going to be something special.
The fabric was beginning to look as though there really were folds and the detail around the nape of her neck was beginning to take shape.

I just needed to soften the features to create a more reflective feeling to the carving, and put the finishing touches to the hair, neck and shoulders.

 This carving is of a more mature woman she looks as though she has a strong character, I believe that this reflects how my carving and myself are developing.

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