The Part Where Some Stuff Happens

Several days of staring at the stone delivered nothing in the way of ideas or inspiration. I was just stuck.

So. I got out the tools, and did stuff that needed to be done anyway. Much of that consisted of tapping away at the stone above the cut lines at the base of the sculpture. Breaking the scrap away left me with some shaping, and cleaning up to do. Then I needed to shave down the face of the bulbous section on the lower 'front' side. (see pic #2)  I don't use power tools, and there are some drawbacks to that. There was a considerable amount of material to remove, so I got out the wide point chisel. The point chisel is a pain to use with alabster. Alabaster cuts easily, but it scars easily, also. A 'bruise' appears as a white splotch or stripe along the line that the point chisel cuts. It  can take some serious finishing work to get the bruising out.

 But doing the necessary work, and the follow up has moved the project along. Here's where we were at the beginning of the week.

I had planned to cut into the blue line in the top photo. The idea was to cut deep into the stuff inside the "C"-shaped area, and separate the sort-of pyramid shape on the right side of the second picture into a wing, bifurcating the whole 'back' side of the stone. But I held off on the shaping work, Monday, and instead gave some much needed attention to the surface irregularities all around the boulder. There is a reason that clearing those pits, gouges, and lumpy areas is normally the very first thing to do. By the end of the session, much of the surface material was acceptably smooth, but the 'wing' idea didn't look  as good as I thought. Time to take a long second look, and  maybe change direction.