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.
First panel in progress
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.
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.
I really enjoyed carving this cheeky shy moorhen
The beginnings of the kingfisher panel
Everything starting to come together
Blending stones, more below
An the finished piece which took over my postage stamp garden for quite a while
Tuesday, 19 June 2012
Had a great day last Friday in a carve off competition with two french sculptors, with plenty of music, and cider. The sun came out and the rain mostly stayed away. It was a pre-launch for a huge event next summer - Festival of stone Bristol 2013 which will involve 50 or more sculptors.
The venue was Spike Island, Bristol. Both teams started with a piece of stone 400 x400 x 600 kindly supplied by Phidias Neo-classical Ltd.
I had the privilege of being partnered with Ben Dearnely (above) who produced the carving of the Mark Foster torso now sited in Southgate, Bath.
We shared the block of stone and Ben carved the man, myself the woman, on the theme of 'Amour'.
Time was limited, we had only six hours, and sketched out our design on the way over from Bath, so all in all it was a success.
Congrats to both teams, many thanks to all the people who gave up their time to make the day a success and for providing some lovely food, and oodles of beer and cider. And thanks to the accordion player who kept us going!
I have placed my Art Deco dancing lady to one side and decided to start on an easy project for a break. I will return to her later. Sometimes when you have been staring at something for days, a step back is needed before you can carry on.
Below I have started the preparation with an incised circle, and the drawn the details needed to begin, what is essentially a small component part of a tracery window, and a carved item in in its self.
All the items and sculptures that I am carving at the moment are for a local exhibition in the city of Bath, the Newbridge Arts Trail, and I only have three weeks left, arrg...running out of time. After the exhibition, all the items will be on sale on both Ebay and EtsyEtsy
I am going to try adding a video of this work in progress. Not sure how that will go, fairly new to the blogging world.
