A challenger appears. . .

. . . S T O N E . . .

This is my first attempt at a stone sculpture. It's something that I've wanted to try for a long time and it was really challenging. It took me quite a long time and I made plenty of mistakes, but this one was all about learning the process. It didn't really turn out the way I wanted it to, but I'm pretty happy with it. It's made from Texas limestone which is a very soft stone. It could be very crumbly and chalky at times. Here's how it started off:


Pretty much just a cut piece of limestone. Very grey on the outside and also very chalky.


Starting to rough out the general shape



I really wanted to get rid of the blocky shape. I feel I didn't do this enough at the beginning and it kind of hurt me towards the end.





Starting to define the chin some more. I think this really starts to make it pop.


Kinda looks like Sloth.


Happy with the cheek area, I started to use the flat chisel to get rid of all the cuts.



Pretty much done using the point chisel. Now its all about getting it refined enough to start sanding.




Almost finished with the sanding process. You can really start to see the layers of the limestone.


Rinsing it off with water.



Not too bad for the first time.


The finished product. In retrospect, I think I was a little ambitious trying to make a human head. I also didn't have a clear enough vision of what I really wanted in the end. I started out wanting to make a more simplistic, stylized human face. . .but got it too close to being proportional. I think that makes the flaws stick out a lot more, but I learned a tremendous amount from doing it.