Finishing up details on this hamsa 🪬 One of the things I love about Slate is that it’s a foliated stone, meaning it’s comprised of many layers. And when you carve into it and polish it up, those layers can be really beautiful..

Picked up some onyx and travertine yesterday. Some paid for, some free, as they were castoffs from larger blocks. I obviously love working in stone, but it really is a pain the butt sometimes. These are from a local supplier, but I also just ordered 250 lbs of slate from Vermont. And surprise surprise… the shipping cost is about the same as the cost of the stone itself.. Slate isn’t really found on the west coast so there aren’t any great options unless I want to salvage slate from old pool tables. I’ve done that before and the time it takes to split the large slabs and cut them down to workable sizes is no joke. I figure that ordering it direct will cost more now, but leave me with far more time to actually carve what I want…

Not quite done yet, but almost.. ⚒️🪬

Getting close to done with carving this eye. I want to try to deepen the carving more to enhance the Mona Lisa effect where the eye follows you.. But difficult with such a thin piece of stone. What do you think so far? ⚒️🪬

Lately I’ve been exploring spiritual and esoteric themes that resonate with me.. While I love larger scale works, they take exponentially more time and are harder to sell. And I’ve found myself enjoying the creative constraints of a smaller canvas. What do you think so far? Below are the Eye of Horus, an Ankh, a lotus flower, the om symbol, a merkaba, and a hamsa that is still a work in progress..

Carving a hamsa ⚒️🪬 Here’s a #timelapse of the first hour. I plan to deepen the carving a bit more, and then I’ll move on to carving a realistic eye in the center. Hopefully it’ll be a little creepy when it’s done…

GM 🕉️

Gold leaf applied… Waiting for the adhesive to dry is always the hardest part. I just want to remove the excess immediately. But I’ve made the mistake of not waiting too many times before. T-minus 24 hours…

Progress so far on the eye ⚒️👁️ This tile is quite thin, so there isn’t a lot of depth to work with. But I’m going to try to create the same effect here as with my Guy Fawkes mask…

Done ⚒️🪷 There are a few areas I may go back and fix but I’m going to move on to a new carving in the meantime.

Done carving for the day… didn’t realize it had gotten so late. Some more edges to soften and curves to refine, but this piece is nearly done. Then just sanding and polishing the background. ⚒️🪷

This is fun. ⚒️🪷

Making good progress ⚒️🪷 Now to refine the curves and work on improving the three dimensional perspective. Then I’ll likely smooth the petals slightly while giving the background a high polish. Or vice versa. TBD.

Today’s progress ⚒️🪷 Next I need to clean up the outline a bit, and then I’ll work on making the lotus flower three dimensional. Also finished carving the Ankh. Swipe to see.. planning to add gold leaf to that most likely. View quoted note →

Initial outlining done The plan is to carve this in low relief rather than as a simple design. Time to get chipping.⚒️🪷

⚒️🕉️

This “black lace” slate is proving difficult to carve. It’s much harder than other varieties, but it’s also the most beautiful and interesting slate I’ve seen. This piece is honed to a perfectly smooth surface but it still appears to have a texture because of all the inclusions and its metallic, varied coloring. I probably won’t carve this too often but it’s definitely worth it for some projects.

done and done 🕉️⚒️ I’ll take some better photos tomorrow with natural light.. hard to capture, but it’s pretty stunning in person.

Four more designs I plan to carve while testing out these new varieties of slate. Slate is an amazing stone not only because of its color variation but also the textures, from natural cleft to honed, and everything in between. Time to get chipping.⚒️

24K Gold leaf applied Now I wait for the adhesive to fully dry so I can remove the excess…