Votive stone #2? Work in Progress
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