There always comes a stage when working with stone that you start to become paranoid about breaking edges and corners. I am at that stage now!! The process of carving the Zebra Rock requires a lot of delicate lifting, moving separate blocks, stacking, lining edges up, measuring, drawing on the stone and lifting off again. You can remove most of the waste when the single stone blocks are back on the bench and then adjust the lines when it has been offered back up onto the block below. The process gets repeated until I am happy with the lines and curves. The Portland is very soft to work while the Irish Blue Limestone is extremely hard, so there is a certain treatment each stone requires. When you place one on top of each other and attempt to carve them together you have to alter your carving technique and the weight of your touch. Otherwise, you find yourself carving, applying force and weight to one stone and then you hit the soft stuff and there is a tendency to remove too much stone as you are applying the same pressure! Things are definitely progressing with the sculptures construction and the two opposite stone types are proving to be a very effective visual combination to reference Sir Gerrard’s fascination with the zebra!
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