My first proper carving - in that I actually shaped the stone rather than simply engraved it. It's made from slate again, but this time it was a piece that had rather appropriately been worn by the sea. I have a couple more pieces like that that a re light green and thus even more suited for our octopoid friend, but they're smaller. The original stone (shown in the fourth picture) was also perfectly shaped to produce the effect I wanted with minimal work.
Minimal work being about three to four hours I think, maybe a little longer if you include finishing.
I started with the piece shown below, decided I'd use much the same design as before - half his head and one wing - and got to work with a file and my dremel, getting rid of the waste material (picture five is after an hour and a half or so, maybe?). Then I had to smooth out the wing piece and shape the head, which took a surprising amount of time.
I was going to do it as a relief, with the 'bones' of the wing raised, and then cut away for the wing membrane. It's at that point I realised I'd accidentally manage to (in my mind), mimic Inuit soapstone sculptures (which actually is been looking at yesterday), so I decided to run with it and go with a few engraved lines instead. Also it would take a lot less time and I figured I'd pick the simpler option for my first attempt. Some of the wing lines are a little wobbly, unfortunately it was tricky getting a good angle with the dremel where it wouldn't wobble.
After doing the details I smoothed out as much as I could to get back to the sea stone look (though really there should be a little more removed on the wing for that but meh), and sand it down. At which point I realised I had the wing section TOO smooth, rather than the smooth but dinged texture of the bits worn by the sea. So I tossed it around in a bit of gravel to add a few scrapes - it didn't look perfect but it looked believable.
After washing off all the dust I polished it with beeswax which made it look great and really brought out the purple colour. So I put another coat, but that just made it totally uniform and dull looking, so I scrubbed it off with soap and hit water, then scratched it a little more, then put a thin coat back on. End result isn't quite as good as it was after that first coat - and in some light is a little dull - but I'm pretty proud of it.
The camera won't pick up the right colour though, in the right light it's got a good dark purple look (though in the wrong light it's a little brownish, I think that's the beeswax).
The final picture is the Elder Sign pebble after I coloured the engraving silver, you can tell because the engraving is now silver. I couldn't find any solder to do a proper metal inlay, so I just used one of those metallic ink pens - I think it looks quite nice, albeit lacking the natural look it had before. I think it's got the reflective look to it that silver paint doesn't have, so to my mind it does look like a very small amount of actual silver has been dribbled through to coat it.
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