Stormcarver
 
 
Outwest Trade Company, from whom I get my Pipestone, was nice enough to send with my last order a couple pieces of scrap stone for me to work try. One of these was this beautiful piece of Pink Lace Alabaster.http://stores.ebay.com/Outwest-Trade-Companyshapeimage_2_link_0
Friday, January 19, 2007
Pink Lace Alabaster Rose All images are the physical and intellectual property of Barbara Minnick, aka Stormcarver. Unauthorized use prohibited. After looking at it for a while and taking into consideration it’s unusual shape and the natural end, I decided I could relief-carve a rose into it and leave most of the interesting parts of the stone intact. I started with a knife-point outline and defined it a bit by taking a small amount of stone from the outside of each planned petal. Studying the piece as a whole, I thought it best to remove the top left natural corner. There was just too much blank space which drew away from the work area. I further defined the petal outlines and started adding a bit of depth to the center area, which will ultimately determine the depth and height of the rest of the rose. With an idea of what type of depth I could work with and what was possible with the dimensions of the stone, I began adding depth and downward curves to individual petals. This is just preliminary shaping. This stone is different to work with than most I have used. The striations you can see in color also affect the way it carves. Each color is a little different hardness, which could make shaping difficult. Also, looking at it from the bottom, you can see that it grows in vertical striations. This means that if I carve a line from top to bottom on the smoothed carving surface, I cross hundreds of lines of compressed stone. If I carve from side to side, while I am “going with the grain,” I am in danger of uncovering a small gap between layers. Also, I found in carving the edges of petals in the last step posted today that smoothing along the top edges of multiple lines of stone, I get an effect like the third figure below if I am not careful.
 
 
 
 
 
I am going to have to stay very aware of this stone during the course of the project. Today, I am going to continue shaping petals for the fullest 3-D effect possible with the stone size and shape.