Today, Sunday July 18th is a nice hot and sunny day. I put the finishing touches on another of the monolithic-styled heads today.

This one was started a year ago and has taken "back seat" in priority until today! This is another which will be sold at an upcoming garden sculpture show.

The "Moonface" is one of my favorite forms... This one will also be sold in the upcoming garden sculpture show (TBA).

If you thought "Easter Island", then I say "you are right on target!"

This monolithic original design was an attempt to exercise my mind in abstract aesthetics. My favorite feature is the top brow line and its impact on the light cast upon the face.

This sculpture will be one of the featured in an upcoming garden sculpture show (TBA).

"Galagahm the Baboon"

From a nice, chalky piece of core, white limestone, the inspiration for this sculpture is the savage nature of the Baboon. At some point, I hope to mount this onto a body stone for this beast. This will depend on my finding a suitable rock for it!

This is the "Mon-on-Ghealia Gargoyle" just following the first application of wax. I am quite pleased with how this is progressing. There will be a bit of facial expression detail to complete...

One funny thing worth mentioning is that this is my first ever attempt at a gargoyle - and gave me so many more ideas for the next and next and... well, you get the idea.

The next Gargoyle will be from a larger base stone and will take the more traditional form.

Moving further along now (about 12 hrs of effort thus far) you can begin to see the transformation from the planar to the third dimension.

The difficulty now is keeping aware of "cross-cut" fractures which can occur when removing deep portions of stone. This particular stone is white limestone (likely from Indiana, USA) and is quite prone to easily fracture without changing the "ring" of the stone. This is quite deceptive and must be dealt with by keeping precise and sharp chisel blows without allowing too much surface area stress.

My eventual goal for the "feet" is to detail in a set of humanistic features fashioned to appear more as hands. The next step in progression is to bring about overall depth contrast by lowering the would-be chest cavity and allowing the knees, feet and middle of the face to stand out. This will then give me the perspective for bringing the inner portions of the wings way inward - giving a stretched 3D space.

Every sculpture starts off the same way in which it is finished - "very sloooowly". You can see in this photo that the painstaking removal process has begun. I often relate this to an archeologist removing centuries of debris from their subject forms with the excitement of revelation!

One noteworthy topic here is stone size. Traditional stone sculpture (sans machines) is most difficult when the stone is smaller. The lack of "real estate" leaves the sculptor with very little room for error. Also this presents a challenge with perspective in that often there must be intentional optical illusions planned to adjust for depth and light contrast.

This year has started out a bit slow due to the crazy weather fluctuations and general "business" of being busy...

Gargoyles are an art topic which have peeked my curiosity as of late. In turn, I have decided to sculpt a couple for an upcoming garden sculpture show (date TBA).

Unlike my normal process of sculpting, this time I decided to sketch out the scene - if you will!

Taking advantage of the PERFECT snow conditions for snow sculpture. This time, I decided to go "big" and and undertaking "Snowceratops" which is unofficially 6'5 and over 20 feet long.

I imagine that the total weight of this one is about 2 tons. Still some cold night work to do and maybe I will add some color! Stay tuned for more of this one :)