Metafiction, Myth and Language: A World in Words (and Pictures)

 Following on from the abortive attempt at carving the spear-maid/Gerthild design in wood earlier this week, I decided to try it on one of the smaller slabs of sandstone instead. About an hour or so later, I had a rough, usable outline to follow and chisel out deeper: The main problem was getting the image transferred onto the stone. For the first effort , black carbon paper did the trick - but not here. I had to redraw from scratch the loose design, in a 4H pencil, then carefully gouge the line with a small sharpened bradawl. No actual chiselling involved as the lines are too fine and fragile. This will be a problem for the more complex designs, such as the double portrait of Hretha and Maegtha , so I'll need to plan well in advance. The relentless gouging work, whilst saving my joints from impact, will cause a different range of pains and issues to my working hand so I need to limit my time spent on this over the coming weekend. As well as, I assume, consider how much of this kin

 Recent family emergencies will impact my ability to keep this blog updated as often as I had planned, and work will likely be progressing slower as a result. But I'll continue to plod on and do the best I can. Since deep critical thinking is not really an option at the minute, today I mostly returned to the practicalities of engraving - this time on wood, which seems much easier to work with than even the rather soft (and at times, flaky) sandstone which I explored last week. The problems with the stone are not so much technique (which I basically picked up as I went along) but rather my own weaknesses to RSI - I used the lightest hammer I have for the purpose, but even that left my hands sore and stiff for the next day or so afterwards. I've prepared a number of experimental pieces of wood to explore the process of creating primitive figurations in this medium:   These long, thin sections (from surrounding farm gates, fences etc.), with vertical grain, impose limitations on