The Stone Dragon
About a month ago I started a stone carving class at the Creative Arts Center, and below is my project. I believe if you follow the picture/link you can go to Flickr and view the other photos.
I haven't mentioned this because there's been so much going on lately, but it has been something that I've come to look forward to a great deal. The class itself was around $200, I know, kind of pricey, but I figured I'd have a go at it. Mitzy is taking a pottery class, and that's how I found out about all of this. The classes take place on Saturday and the session goes from 9:30 to 12:30 A.M., outside, but under an awning.
My first day was pretty intimidating as people showed up and started working on all of these complicated and intricate sculptures, and the instructor was late, so I sat there thinking that I had really stepped off into something I had no business getting into. Fortunately, when the instructor did show up I found that there was another new guy starting out, so I didn't feel too much like I was all alone in this adventure. Art, my instructor, spent the next two hours showing us around the work area, explaining tools, going over technique, telling stories and basically getting us acclimated to the scene. At the end of all of this he gave each of us a slab of scrap limestone on which we could chisel around on.
When we showed up for the second class session we were to have thought about what we wanted to sculpt and how big of a stone we wanted. I had learned from my orientationing that I would need to purchase my own rock! Art said he could get a good slab of limestone for about 40 cents a pound, maybe less, I forget. My co-new-guy had brought in his own stone, and since I was unsure as to what I was going to create I told Art that I had been thinking of going with a stone of similar shape and size, and I really had been. I didn't want to start off too big, which is evidently a problem with the class, new students come in wanting to do David on their first try. In a very groovy turn of events Art let me have the scrap stone I had been hacking away at last session, and being the tight-ass I am, I eagerly accepted.
That first pic up there pretty much shows you the shape of the stone I started with, I didn't think to take a picture of it when I started, but you have to imagine it a bit more rectangled out. That pic represents about two and a half hours of going at it with a single-prong chisel and pneumatic hammer. Chisel and pneumatic hammer, it is every bit as much fun as it sounds, and there is a very real satisfaction one gets from shaping stone with power tools, not to mention the stress relief. I had started off thinking I would do some sort of small gargoyle figurine using only the first four or five inches of the rock, but as I started knocking chunks off of it I saw the shape of sleeping dragon, so I switched gears and that's what I've been going for. I'm not sure how successful I'll be, but however it turns out, the whole experience has been super fun.