A Stone Chest

An old slab of limestone for practise.

In the same way, a hole with stone sloping away from it makes a belly pretty quickly. I defined the profile of the chest from this belly hole up to the collarbone.

This piece of limestone is about average for stone. I have been working much harder limestone recently, and just wanted to finish something easier to work.

I was careful not to stray too far left and right from my 'profile'. In this case cleavage was not the issue, but the collarbone itself has a depression in the center of the neck, but bones on either side of it.

As with the cartoon face analogy, the mere hint of nipples above start to define a chest of some sort.

Since stone carving is subtractive only, I tend to start large and work my way toward the proper size. But, if things start looking acceptible even thought they are still way larger than life, I tend to want to leave them alone. This way, one gets the advantages of a additive process simply by changing the 'zero point'.

Certain problems result from this game, however. In this case, by starting low on the chest, the other features end up a bit higher than natural looking.

Chest

This is pretty close to finished for me. I may pour a base for it with a fine sand mix. The material itself is limestone, but the bottom needs some protection from its own weight.

The back is still rough stone.