Genius Hour Week 3

This week I bought some soapstone carvings that were cut into the general shape of an animal. I chose a wolf and a bear. I started experimenting on how to start carving them, using some of the tools that were recommended. It’s still difficult for me to make rounded parts, and for the first week I’ve mainly just been rounding out the edges for the animals and trying to replicate some of the soapstone displays on the interenet

Studiostone Creative Soapstone Carving Kit - Bear & Wolf – Midoco Art &  Office Supplies
Studiostone Creative Soapstone Carving Kit - Wolf – Midoco Art & Office  Supplies

Scupltures I’m using for reference. Currently I’m finding it the most difficult to fully round out the edges, I’m not sure if I’m suppoed to use sandpaper to round it out, or submerge the soapstone in water before I start sculpting, because the reference pictures are different colours compared to the pale white soapdstone I bought. For the fourth week I might do some more research and try to find out what the proffesionals do to make their scupltures look like the reference images.

I found a youtube tutorial that gives a good overall summary of what to do and the steps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlxuPbkiBxs

I used some water and realized it changed the colour of the soapstone, it also made it easier to carve.

In the third week I learned:

  1. Water makes the soapstone easier to carve, and changes its colour, from pale to greyish. The video also said to use a bucket with water to dip it constantly, and also to catch the dust.
  2. You need different levels of sandpaper, to rough out the edges, and to fine tune it. Theres several scratches left from rounding the edges and carving, so we need 3 stages of sandpaper to polish the carvings.
  3. I should start using the tools to make the shape more 3D instead of just 2D, currently I’ve just been rounding out the edges and maybe making the shape smaller and seperating the legs of the bear. However the body is still just smooth and flat.

Wet Soapstone

One thought on “Genius Hour Week 3

  1. Your seem to have made many discoveries showing that you’re doing lots of research. It’s cool that water changes the colour of soapstone. Whats the main tools you use for general carving?

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