What is it that carries your work? (surface pattern and form)

Quoted text begins.As for getting the biggest piece they can from raw material....I am made
fun
of constantly by my peers ( all good natured, of course) because I am the
one starting with a 97 lb stone and ending up with a 6 lb
giraffe...generally more than half the original stone ends up at my feet.
I
will admit i'm getting a bit weary of all the hacking to get rid of the
unwanted material but it's my own fault for not being comfortable enough
to
use electric saws and such to speed it all up. I have discovered a
technique called 'walking the line' I believe....scoring around the
unwanted mass and then using a flat chisel moving it back and forth on one
side until the whole chunk just falls off. : )
End of quote.

A 6 pound piece from a 97 pound stone?
Heresy!! What happened to being true to the material,the sacredness of
stone?The horror,the horror.;^)

Actually this may come back to the question about what to teach in a stone
carving class.
I think we should be teaching technique first with a goodly dose of form and
design thrown in.If beginning classes do nothing else they should be
teaching excercises that build safe and competent use of available tools and
options for the non-available ones.This would help bring folks past the
stone wasteing phase and help put to rest thier fear of power tools all in a
safe and controlled environment.
Then again if you teach ONLY technique then in the end you've just produced
a group of people who are capable of making bad sculpture(provided you agree
there is such a thing) more quickly and efficiently.
There's that balance thing again.
BTW-You can hand saw alabaster,soapstone,talc,etc.

Bob