Sculpture
Heads or Tails
In the workshop today I’m working both – putting detail into beak and bottom! I’m aiming to carve out the feather shapes in particular, a little on the wings, but especially on this bird’s rather elongated tail – the rump feathers are called rectrices. The primary role of these feathers is to assist with […]
Owl Sculpture – finishing touches
Following Guiding Lines to Help me on my Way and Owl Sculpture – Carving Progress I’m now getting to the stage of finishing the sculpture. This means being steady with the chisel, and precise. I’m also finishing the surface of the stone smooth, cleaning up all the curves and carving away any lumps and […]
Owl Sculpture – carving progress
My owl sculpture is beginning to take shape – from the initial drawing on the stone I carved out the rough shape and it is now ready to have some detail and refining. It is when the owl’s real character will emerge and when I make sense of the irregular surface, carve in the […]
Flutter in Flowers
The time of the singing of the birds is come, and flowers appear. When I was carving this sculpture, which I call Flutter, I thought of it being in a garden surrounded by spring flowers. Flutter sculpture in Tadcaster Limestone – details in my brochure.
Guiding lines to help me on my way
In the workshop today – I’m beginning an owl sculpture. Before I start carving into the block of stone I quickly sketch an outline of my idea – the drawn lines act as a guide so I don’t take off stone where I shouldn’t! I’ll keep you updated as I go along.
Recumbent Rabbit
There are four favoured digging spots for the rabbits at my workshop, each showing regular fresh excavation and soil scattering. One is behind the greenhouse and leads under the hedgerow, another (shallow) is at my bonfire site, a third at the corner of, and into, my stone store shed, and the last out in […]
Ground Bird
I’ve been watching ground feeding birds, it astonishes me how acute their vision is and how quickly they peck up tasty morsels. There have been lots of blackbirds feeding in wet ground nearby, pulling worms – they sort of bird prance about, looking with focused intent, then dart forward head down, wings hunched, tugging […]
Tranquility Garden update
A little while ago I promised to share images of the Swan sculpture and Birdbath once they had been installed at the Tranquility Garden, Evesham Road Cemetary, Stratford upon Avon – so here they are. Yesterday I spent carving the feather motif on the plinths to complete the work for Hilary and her team […]
As light as a feather
Sometimes when I’m unsure about how a carving will look, or indeed whether I can achieve the result I would like, I have little practice runs. In this case I’ve had a trial run carving a feather – I wanted it to look light, and floating – not a quill sort of feather, but […]
Red Bird
These little treasures of red pebbles and my other thoughts on red stone recently, have inspired me to carve a piece of red sandstone that I had in the workshop. It was a slim slither of quite course grained stone, with areas of differing textures and it somehow became a bird – Red Bird. […]