Carving Stone

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

So many wonderful things happened today, I feel grateful. One thing is that I was able to carve stone again before the cold front expected tomorrow.

Normally, in carving stone, one works three of four sides. That way, if something breaks off, such as a nose, one can push everything back towards that fourth side. However, sometimes I feel blocked while attempting to preserve this “safety feature” in the stone carving process. And I must be an optimist because I find at some point, I need to cut away this stone so I can see better what I am doing.


In this first image, you may see how I changed the energy of the pose by pulling the legs and feet into more of a diagonal towards the head of “The Gymnast” in the pike position. I thought the more vertical position was a bit dull. The brown crayon is my new drawing upon the stone.

This second image only proves that I could get my work done faster if my camera did not have a timer on it and I was not so fascinated in documenting the process. I was afraid to leave the diamond blade running on an unattended tool as I ran over to my camera to start the timer, so please pardon the lack of actual cutting in this image.

I spent the rest of the day removing material until it was too dark to work safely.