Where’s the fire?

 

This beautiful gem can be found in the Town of Cary and it’s more than just a looker. If ever there’s a fire or a dog in need, we’ve got you covered.

p.s. More stone carving next week. We had a break due to Memorial Day weekend.

Fo Shizzel My Chizzel

 

 

Second day carving this stone and I am having a blast. My teacher, Paris Alexander,taught me to use a point chisel to clear out more stone and to do some shaping with a tooth chisel. I was supposed to round out the tip of the nose (/me points to the square flat thing which is not rounded in the middle of the face) but I was bad and got distracted playing around with the rest of the face. He really has his work cut out for him, being stuck with me as a student. I can hardly wait till next week.

Part 1:  Turned to Stone -preliminary sketch for this sculpture

Part 2: The Cure for Stonliness is a Friend with a Chisel – image transfer and initial carving

Loose Leaf Logic

 

 

I found this old scribble while I was cleaning today.

The cure for stonliness is a friend with a chisel

 

The post Turned to stone contains an image of the preliminary sketch for this carving. We used a hammer and chisel to roughly outline the major parts of our design in limestone. I jumped the gun by chiseling around the mouth, nose and eyes a bit, but hopefully I didn’t do any serious harm.  The next step will be removing lots of stone from the low areas in the design. After the high and low areas are roughed in, we get to start really shaping and refining things.

The high parts of this carving will be the hand, the tip of the nose, the *picture* right cheek/brow and the hair on the top right portion of the image, which is X’ed out so it will not be touched till later. Underneath the ear area will be one of the deeper parts of the carving so lots of stone will be removed there. The hair/fabric I have just roughed in so that I can fine tune the design in stone as I work.

It’s nice that we do not have to wear a respirator while carving limestone. A respirator is required for granite and marble.

I’m excited about trying out stone carving with Paris Alexander here in the Raleigh area. He’s great at patiently showing us how to use and hold the tools for good results. Without this, I would probably abandon stone. I woke up last night holding an imaginary chisel in my left hand just the way Paris taught me.

I still have high hopes for something that looks human when I’m done. I have a lot of stone left to remove and I can hardly wait till Saturday rolls around again.

Turned to stone

Here is my preliminary pencil sketch for my first attempt at relief carving in limestone.

This sketch was my second choice of the two designs I came up with. My instructor gently advised me that my first choice is too difficult for my skill level at this time.

The method of image transfer we used involved punching holes through the lines of the sketch with a nail and rubbing blue chalk into the nail holes. I didn’t punch deeply enough so only a few blue dots showed up on my stone, but they were enough to use as points of reference and fortunately I was able to quickly redraw the image in pencil on the limestone.

My instructor is Paris Alexander, a well known artist living in the Raleigh area. He seems at peace with himself, which makes taking this class from him an absolute pleasure.