Part III

Just finished another four hour session with this stone carving project.  I failed to mention where the lab is, where I'm doing this work.  I'm working at the Creative Arts Center of Dallas.  http://www.creativeartscenter.org/  It's a repurposed elementary school built in the 50's that was purchased by the CAC and turned into an artists lab.  Metal Sculpture, Ceramics, Stone, Glass, Painting.  Fantastic environment with lots of other artists around to share ideas with.

In the photos below, you can see where I started to rough out the shape.  I removed some major parts of the stone across the front with manual and pneumatic chisels.  I used a diamond studded grinder to create slices in the stone, then used a chisel to punch out stone at those weak spots. 

In this picture you can see the basic shape of the beak, brow, forehead, and neckline coming into view.  This process is about using violent tools (Grinders, Three-Tooth Chisels, Heavy Hammers) to remove as much as the bulk material as you can.

 

In this picture, you see where I'm roughing out the base (this statue looks over a church corner, with an architectural base) chest, starting to make progress on exposing the beak while maintaining the neck structure.  It's important to not go too deep into the neck or base points now, these are now weak spots.  They need to be carefully carved from this point on or you run the risk of the piece breaking at one of those weak spots.