Our Stone Carvings: By Louise Daw-Smith

Firstly Mrs Mcniven brought our stones from the local builder’s merchant’s downtown and we all paid £1.50 each for a stone. Our first step was to design it in our sketch books, our topic was portraiture and our inspiration was Picasso. In this lesson Mrs Mcniven taught us what bas-relief was (where it rises) and what intaglio was (it means something going in). We worked in the sculpture studio and began by marking out a profile line in chalk on our stones. Next we put on our goggles and got a chisel and a mallet then tapping three times all the way to the bottom we created profile lines. In addition to this we carved all of the facial features in weird places because that is what Picasso did. Those of us who were good at creating form put steps into our work and followed lines onto every side of our sculpture. After that we refined our stones using a surform and at the end sandpaper to create the finished effect. We really enjoyed stone carving and hope we can do it again when we choose GCSE Art and Design. Mrs Perrott looked at our stones and said that all of year 7 had produced amazing work with this stone carving project!

- Louise Daw- Smith, year 7