Peanut form

A lovely crisp winter morning with clear blue skies and no wind allowed me to start the new larger version  in marble. I cut the outline from the front out which took most of the day and now looks like a peanut husk. Everything takes longer of course on this bigger scale. I also took a couple of hours out to try and source some clear plastic sheeting for my rain shelter. The corrugated sheeting is quite brittle but the alternatives are expensive. I shall think about it some more before buying anything. I found a few small sheets at the dump which will be a start.

test

testing 2

Still polishing

Not much to say about today except that my fingers have lost their prints because of sandpapering all day. Most of the work is done with an electric sander but the final edges are still best done by hand. All those little wobbly bits and chips have to be removed. Towards the end of the day I cut a big block of marble in half to be ready for starting a new piece next week.

Fine tuning the shape

I have been tweaking the shape of the sculpture all day. I did not like the flat form at the top and back. The bottom half was big and bulbous but the top looked a bit mean in comparison. I try to avoid too many convex areas in my sculptures. Although there was no convex area at the top of the carving there was certainly a flat part. I have removed the flat area and cut back some of the excess bulbous-ness at the bottom. I am much happier with the overall shape now and all that remains is some painstaking sanding to remove all the lumps, bumps and irregularities. I remember my old friend Michael Black of Oxford telling me to spend a whole day on a piece that I considered finished. What brilliant advice it was.

Heat cracks onyx!

I spent all day digging out the interior of the sculpture and discovered that the stone will expand and crack if allowed to get too hot. Luckily the area damaged was small and i was able to cut the damage away. Onyx seems to be much more sensitive to heat than marble. The sun shone all day although it was too dark to continue at 5pm.

Change of plan

Standing before my new work this morning I had a change of plan. The square front to the piece looked unsatisfactory and I chopped out a new shape rather impulsively before I changed my mind. The new shape is better with the sides pulling in at the middle.This ‘waist’ gives a little nod towards figuration and the curves now flow in and out really nicely.  In this picture I have not yet rounded the bottom half but have left it squared as it is easier and more stable like that. Digging out the inside will be a big job with the dust spitting up in my face.The translucence is already visible.

I would rather work outside but the frequent showers keep me undercover. I am thinking of making a movable structure that I can work beneath but one that allows the wind to blow through to blow away the dust.

This is a sketch of the idea for my movable shelter. I could get some big wheels so that it could be wheeled out of the way if the sun shone.

New ideas

Partly because of threatening skies I started work on a new sculpture indoors today. I normally work on one piece at a time until it is completed but I am full of ideas at the moment and am never quite sure if they are any good until they have been made. I am therefore in a hurry to get them out! I think I have the direction of this new series but am not totally sure. I will have to finish these unfinished works off at a later date. I am remembering one of the delights of my 100 DAY series was that the ideas were turned out daily whereas normally sculptures in stone take much longer to make. I am trying to recover a little of that speed of turnover and the fluidity that comes with it.