After a lengthy bout of lack of self motivation, today I picked up my walnut carving and began working on it again. Forgive the lighting. I left it a bit late to photograph.
The hole in the front of the carving will hopefully have a piece of Jade/Nephrite inserted. The hole in the back is for natural light to shine through to enhance the variations in the greenstone, I hope. I still need to shape the semi-circles and add a v-groove design before I focus on sanding and staining.
The hole below looks off-center but I think that's more to do with the illusion created by the smaller hole along with the angle I took the photograph.
BACK
FRONT
Here are a couple of photo's of my newest carving I'm working on. I'm unsure of a title yet but am aiming somewhere in the region of 'Hazardous Waste', Radioactive.....?. You get the general idea.
I have found that this piece of wood (walnut) has a lovely grain to it. I think this is due to me previously using driftwood which doesn't show the grain as well due to being submerged in water for long periods. I'm only about half way to finishing this piece so still a bit of work to do. The back (top below) was a challenge to add a curve to it but it's either beginners luck, which probably means i'll never be able to do it again, or I might be a natural (lol).
I thought I would share this carving of a local waterfowl, in abstract form. This particular waterfowl would use his colouring and extension of it's head pointing upwards to blend in with the reeds. I carved it from Tasmanian Blackwood. The base is a native timber Totara. I donated this carving to the community for them to raffle off.
Today I started working on this carving again. I'm terrible at working on one carving at a time which makes it seem like it takes forever to finish one. This has been a struggle. As I am teaching myself I keep making mistakes and it takes hours upon hours to bring everything back into some sort of perspective. I hope to work on this tomorrow so hope to be closer to completing this difficult, learn by your mistakes, carving.
Although my progress is slow I am getting there. As you can see from the comparison there has been a reasonable amount of progress. I think the name of this particular piece of greenstone is Kakotea. Forgive me if I am wrong. I am trying to teach myself the differences of greenstone in New Zealand. The photo background on the right shows the carving sitting on a Brisbane river nodule.
This is my latest carving. It took approx 10 hours to complete. It is deer antler that is very old and was buried for several years. The colour gives the illusion that it has been stained but I can say it has not. There could be something very special happening with this particular carving and I am waiting for a reply before I reveal anything on here. The leaf-side of the carving is the back and carving itself is titled Únity'. I hope you like my newest piece of art.
Here are my latest bone carvings. One was based on the outer shape of a tear/raindrop so it's title is rain droplet. The other one I'm not sure what it looks like to others but it looks like a particular part of a male appendage. It is actually a contemporary designed fish hook (Hei Matau).
It has been a long time since I have worked on this piece of Pounamu. I've spent the last few days shaping it. I believe I am not far off of going through the sanding process. Exciting stuff!!! This will also be my first Pounamu carving.
I've included the early stage (right),which I have placed on here before to refresh your memory. As you can see I have made some changes above.
Here are a few more Gecko designs. I've done my dash for these. I'm going to work on some new bone carvings over the next week and also a sculpture. There are some little light blurs happening on the top image created from the gloss surface the image was resting on for the photo.
I'm house sitting for the next week and it looks like I might not have internet access for that week. Merry Xmas everybody.
I'm nearly at the sanding stage. I had to fill a small area today and as I'm out of town during the day for the next two days I will have to wait until the weekend to tidy up the filled area and begin sanding from there.
I bought this mannequin torso a few years ago for displaying my T-shirt designs and Jewelry but the other day decided to transform it into it's own piece of art. Covered in Maori design to fit my other works I've been working on to form a collection of artwork I'm left wondering whether I need to add to the design. I'm going to leave it for a while and see what I come up with. I do have an idea of what to do but am unsure at present.
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