One of my favourite pieces is my Eagles Head which captures a wild moment in the angle of the head and the savagery of the beak. It is a contemporary piece which has been hollowed out from within. This enhances the impact of light and shade, especially through the pierced eyes.
Now I want to use these ideas when carving the head of a lioness. So where to start? I visited Liverpool’s World Museum and spent the morning drawing lioness skulls.
Then I developed my ideas drawing lioness heads, linking the external appearance with the underlying bone structure. I wanted to capture the savagery of a snarl based on lifelike representation which has been stylised.
Before starting to carve I still needed to get the shape firmly in my head, so I made a model of the lioness head in plasticine, gradually forming the head from a block. Fundamentally it is a different process because when modelling you can add and remove pieces of plasticine, but with carving you can only remove material. However it still helps to define the shape clearly in my mind. I gradually formed a head remembering to capture the snarl and keeping the eyes of the predator forwards.
My first attempt looked more like a Staffordshire Bull Terrier, so I remodelled it several times more until it became more cat like, then like a big cat. The shape of the nose and ears developed. During the process I was lucky enough to have a day carving with the sculptor Michael Painter. He helped me advising on how to set the eyes in, shape the brow and position the ears.
After several more remodelling sessions it has started to take on the form I had in my mind. Ways of stylising it into a more contemporary form are growing in my mind. Soon I will be able to start carving the lovely air dried block of cherry tree which is tucked away in a black bin bag in my shed.