Time flies, and this year's Maine Peace Walk is coming up in the not-very-distant-future! For the time being, work on my raven sculpture will have to be put on hold. I have again volunteered to design and create our Walk sweatshirt design and the 6 x 8 foot painted canvas banner that will be mounted on the walk's support van.

I have moved to my cleaner, brighter upstairs studio/dining room table to work on the sweatshirt design. If you look through the railing on the deck outside, you can see two of the wild turkeys who have just arriving for breakfast at our bird feeders. Wild turkeys are frequent visitors here this time of the year. Akemi and I love watching the birds and various other creatures out behind the house...

My sketchbook with some of the many designs I've been working on. None of them seem quite right yet,  so I've got to keep at it! More later...

As I mentioned in my last post, ravens, like most birds, have a lot of feathers. So I have been busy working on feathers. And oftentimes, reworking feathers. As in most of my art work, both in sculpture and print, I find myself not happy with certain parts or areas of what I have worked. And so I go back and rework it to attempt to get it closer to what I am after. This has been the case with this sculpture...I have spent a lot of time reworking areas already carved! But thats the way it is.

Here you can see some of the raven's reworked feathers...And for the time being, thats it for carving feathers! I need to begin work on another project...more on that in my next post.

Ravens, like other birds, have a lot of feathers...And so, not surprisingly, I have spent most of my time on this carving working on feathers. As you can see, the basic form of this sculpture is quite simple, but the feathers and the patterns created by the feathers are not. Here in this photo, I have penciled in some of the feather pattern on the raven's back and neck...

Beginning to rough in some of those back feathers...

A view of the back with feathers carved in...

And now roughing in some of the raven's left shoulder. The feather work continues...

One of the things that I love so much about ravens (and there are many things that I love about ravens) is how they seem to change how they look, sometimes appearing very sleek and streamlined, other times appearing with their feathers all ruffled up by the wind or their mood, as in this wonderful photo entitled "All Chuffed Up" by Paul Lantz. I love the textures and patterns the feathers create, and how I feel looking at them...And maybe that chuffed up look enhances the feistiness of these feisty beings.

Here I am just kind of roughing the feather forms in below the raven's wing. If you look carefully, you might see the beginnings of what will be the raven's outer left toe poking out from amongst the feathers.

I have placed the carving so I can work on the raven's throat and breast feathers...

Working on the throat feathers. The raven's outer toe has been defined a bit more and its middle toe is also beginning to emerge from feathers....

It might not be apparent in these photos, but after working on the throat feathers a while, I didn't like so much what was happening, and so I decided to rework much of that area. This photo shows more clearly the raven's left foot.

And here you can see that I have also started carving in the raven's right foot. Note the original, still un-fired terracotta maquette on the modeling stand behind the carving. Though I have not stuck very closely to the maquette in the carving, it still helps me to look at it from time to time.

And here is a closer view showing some of those ruffled feathers....