“Fingael ”
This is a sculpture i have been meaning to create for quite a few years and i have had the selected piece of
Oamaru Stone sitting around waiting for maybe the better part of 10 years........... yes it’s been that long
at least.
The history of this work goes back to the mid eighties when i was bone carving for a living and one of the
works i created for myself was a ring made out of a small deformed whale tooth. As soon as i saw the tooth
i knew it would be a ring and sure enough one day it felt right to carve it. i had a particular idea for a
dragon ring, a winged dragon at that but on the day it wasn’t going to work so i just started carving and the
ring popped out a while later. A dragon ring, one that spoke to me, literally, he said one word “Fingael”, he
is a Three Tailed Finger Dragon.
Click the images for bigger versions
Right then...... the stone has hit the bench, a 75kg block of creamy limestone and all these years i had an
idea of how i was going to layout the sculpture but on the day......... it wasn’t going to work, can you say
déjà vu. No matter i had the principal of it and that would work in a different way, worry about the details
later seemed the way to go, just get something drawn on stone as a start point and this is what i drew.
First step as always is to delineate the form somewhat, get a sense of the deepest points and a feel for
the stone, as it turns out a quite soft block of stone. The work had started finally.
So with the basic form underway i was getting the idea something wasn’t quite right, it wasn’t Fingael,
clearly something was amiss, it was more like his cousin, twice removed maybe. i did some checking
and the proportions were wrong, drat!! (said impolitely). Sloppy inattentive drawing on my part not
helped but the size of the block of stone and the angle i was seeing it from. Wise words whispered in
my ear “tilted work bench” Ha!! i now have a titling workbench and my back is loving it.
That just left trying to redefine the form within the work already done, i do tend to oversize things as i
sculpt so i have wiggle room if something goes astray, i used it. This is where it is taking me.
The next while will be devoted to adjustments and defining the new shape, then from that working out
what comes next, as yet just a direction only.
The final result after a lot of “adjusting”, finer detail, and the all important eye.
