Soapstone Hound Part Four - Final Details

In an earlier post, I talked about the importance of carving an engaging and convincing face, because the human eye is especially good at seeing flaws. 

That is not to say, however, that we can can afford to neglect the rest of our sculpture as less important. The face might be the first thing our audience sees, but they will remember if the sculpture is lacking in other ways.

How you doin'?

Having done as much work on the face that I was willing to do for the time being, I moved on to the rest of the body. Here is the hound after about four more hours of work. You can see the collar has been added, his forelegs have much more definition, and the sculpture is taking on its final proportions.

Lookit my butt.

A view from the back of the sculpture shows the symmetry of the haunches, ears, and collar on both sides of the body. I have left the tail for last, as it will go quickly.

At this point, I only occasionally need a riffler to remove stone, relying instead on chisels and gouges to draw the hound out of the stone. For the most part, the actual carving is done. After adding the tail, all that remains is to do the final clean up on details like symmetry and proportion. I will also add a bit of musculature to to the haunches and ribs.
 
I wasn't really keeping track, but I would estimate that it has taken me roughly 20 hours from rough stone to this stage.

In the next post, we will examine ways of removing tool marks and polishing, making the sculpture ready for presentation.