Sylacauga Marble study and a Civil War Reenactment in Brandenburg,KY

 I thought I'd do a face study in some of the Slyacauga (Alabama)White Marble.  This is a fairly small piece of stone, I believe it is a scrap from the Meteor sculpture Don did for the town. 

I start out by drawing the face on the stone with a number 2 pencil.  I position the face so that the nose is in the corner of the stone.  There is not a lot of stone to work with and I have to make most of what I've got.

 I rough out the face with a 4" angle grinder and a die grinder using a fairly large mounted stone burr. I draw in eyes, mouth etc.  I cut the basic shape of the face and begin carving with the nose (as that is the farthest thing out on a face) and start working everything else back into the stone. I have tilted the face slightly to the left from the corner of the stone to add a little more feeling to the piece.

 I mark the areas that need to be cut off to open up the face.
 I have defined the face but it is still fairly flat.  The forehead and cheekbones are not carved back enough.

 The face about half finished...

 I use a die grinder with small diamond burrs to carve the details of the face. 

 The face study almost done, just needs a bit of tweaking.    The stone is very fine grained and fairly easy to work(if you're working with diamond tools).  While the marble is harder than limestone, this hardness is consistant through the stone as opposed to limestone which can be very uneven in hardness.  This unevenness makes fine detail difficult to achieve in limestone which is better suited to over lifesize work.

 Don and I went to Brandenburg yesterday to watch the Morgan's Raid portion of the Civil War reenactment. This is the old section of Brandenburg, KY down near the riverfront. 

It was really hot so they opened up the fire hydrant to cool off the horses - the horses didn't much care for the cooling spray.

 A boy playing on the soldiers, or is it a face out of the past?

 This is a friend of ours, Eddie Franke (he is wearing the hat).  He and another character just had a drunken brawl in the street...

This is another friend of ours, Loretta Young in period dress.  She has on layers of clothes, long sleeves and it is about 100 degrees in the shade.  She must be miserable but she doesn't look it.

The actors in this reenactment did an excellent job.  How they could handle the heat is beyond me.  I had a couple of hours of it and I was done.  This is truly a dedicated bunch.  A bit of news -this group is in the 2012 movie "Hatfields and McCoys, Bad Blood".   Which is pretty cool...