This is the picture of the completed stone carving of the palm tree relief in-situ in Portugal. The design process for this piece took almost as long as the carving itself. The client said palm tree, I thought, Beach! No, she was near a lake, oh and there were terrapins, and egrets and moorhens and kingfishers and dragonflies. I was worried that carving a palm tree in relief would be an impossible task, but I love a challenge and I think it turned out alright in the end.
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| First panel in progress | |
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| First carved panel with Egret and terrapin |
The first panel took two week and I though uh oh this is going to take a lot longer than I thought, but I did speed up, not much but a little. The most difficult thing was getting everything to line up and near the end I took the entire background back on each stone, but it had to be right.
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| Small palm tree carving with water plants |
The second panel was harder. It had to meet up with the carving of three neighboring panels which hadn't been carved yet so I had to leave so much of it un-worked until those were in progress.
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| I really enjoyed carving this cheeky shy moorhen |
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| The beginnings of the kingfisher panel |
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| Everything starting to come together |
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| Blending stones, more below |
An the finished piece which took over my postage stamp garden for quite a while
