My friend Akira Inman has been working with tatlock marble last week. He put on lots of winter clothing and worked alone in his tent in sub zero temperatures in Port Hope Canada chiselling this really hard stone. He told everybody he spent the day cutting his thumb. Friends were concerned of course. Here are some of the thoughts he had about his thumb project.
"Thoughts on cutting my thumb. This was my first time I carved without cutting to a line. I've only done architectural carvings so it was nice to just tackle a stone with a little more freedom, yet still have a goal in mind. Goal being carving a close replication of my right thumb with the stone I had picked up. I did not want the stone to inspire me to cut a thumb, but rather the other way round, I wanted to cut the thumb no matter what shaped stone I had. Over the two days I learned a lot about my thumb, folds and wrinkles, curves and shapes. I also learned that everyone has very different looking thumbs from all the comments I received..."mine does not look like that..", until they realize that theirs are different from mine. But they were still able to recognize it was a thumb even when it was disconnected from the rest of the hand.....Oh and I would of worked on the details a little bit more but ran out of time. I doubt I will get back to working on it though ... would love to carve other fingers so it looks like a hand that is clawing out of the ground."
Nice work there, on this your first 'thumb', Akira. We can't wait to see the next one, because no matter what, you'll have 'two thumbs up'.
