2nd Week working on the memorial. 

After this weeks work I've come to the conclusion that this blog will go on for a fare few months, here a few picture showing my progress..

I did have an idea to change the memorial to increase the central area so to increase the space for the writing

 

Then on the next session I reverted back to the original design, I didn't think the changes improved the look of the memorial

 

 

Last session of the week starting to take shape

 

My mum died last year after suffering for 15years with Alzheimer’s, now I have a chance of creating a headstone memorial that reflects her spirit. 

The concept of the memorial was that it was to be natural smooth flowing sculpture showing the freedom of the spirit within us. I chose the Eagle to define this free spirit, my mum loved birds of prey and Eagles so this was quite apt for her memorial.  When creating the form I wanted to protect the inscription on the face of the stone to be protected from the elements, so I inset the face and wrapped the wings of the Eagle around the face of the stone.  this meant that I was going to need a lot of stone.

I'm developing the inscription at the moment.  I will post details later.

 

Last year I took a course on stone carving with Jude Tucker, I gained a lot of confidence from the course, and after discussing the concept with Jude she agreed to help support me in creating this memorial.

 

These are my early concept pictures

This is the maquette of the headstone

 

This is one of my practice pieces, the Love Heart, here I'm practicing carving embossed and cut letters on a curved surface.

Delivery of the Portland stone from Albion Quarry Portland

 Me on the stone, just to give an idea of the size of the stone

 Starting the process of reducing the stone to the correct size

 Still at it

 Eventually later I managed to split the stone

The end of the first Day